Video

Dateline Australia on China’s Emerging Housing Bubble [VIDEO]

Sean W. Malone Producer and Composer
Font Size:

According to a recent video by SBS Dateline (Australia), China’s government has spent the last several years dictating “GDP Targets” and forcing citizens to produce massive quantities of housing and retail office space in order to meet those targets. While China has been successful in artificially inflating their GDP numbers, the buildings themselves remain unused and unoccupied.

As analyst Gillem Tulloch explains in the film:

“[China is experiencing] a property bubble, the likes of which I don’t think we’ve ever seen… It’ll make the United States’ pale in comparison. It’s said that there’s around 64 million empty apartments in China.”

Since many governments, including the United States, frequently point to increasing GDP as an expression of economic growth, it is understandable that the Chinese government wants their GDP to be as high as possible. But in truth, the number itself can be very misleading.

Gross Domestic Product refers to all of the money spent within a nation, but there is no way to distinguish between government & private spending when calculating GDP. Consequently, there is no means of determining whether the spending actually improved the lives of direct consumers based on their own values, or instead reflected only the whims of the politicians and bureaucrats dictating how the money was used.

Tulloch describes the situation in China this way:

“It’s essentially the modern equivalent of building pyramids. It doesn’t really add to the betterment of people’s lives, but all it does is promote GDP growth… It’s basically happening because China is a command economy, and the Chinese government can basically dictate where resources are spent.”

According to the film, while China’s government is spending extraordinary amounts of money (and labor) on building these major infrastructure projects, they remain unoccupied because they are simply too expensive for the average Chinese citizen to rent. The Chinese government’s spending on these projects is reflected in its impressive increases to GDP, but none of this so-called growth translates to improved standards of living for the people of China, who must now pay for millions of unwanted buildings with their taxes.

Many economists, particularly those from the “Austrian School” frequently point out that when government policies such as credit expansions, tax incentives & subsidies promote the production of goods & services which don’t meet consumer demand in a free market, the supposed GDP growth reflected by increased spending is unreliable as a measurement of economic success.

What sometimes looks like a booming economy is, in fact, a bubble and not meaningful economic growth at all. According to Austrian Business Cycle Theory, as misallocated resources build up in an economy, the inevitable consequence is a painful correction (known as a “bust”) that puts many people out of work as the capital structure shifts towards producing different goods & services.

The United States experienced this firsthand with its own housing bubble and financial collapse, but it seems that China could be poised for a much larger problem.

View the full SBS Dateline video here:

Sean W. Malone

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel