房地产恒大 中国押注房地产付出代价

成败皆由它：中国经济为押注房地产付出代价

艾莎  2023年10月17日

 

在违约之前，开发商恒大曾在中国的经济繁荣中占据核心地位。

 

在中国房地产热潮似乎还是一场稳赚不赔的赌局时，加里·孟（音）的父母购买了一套恒大的公寓，恒大是中国最大的开发商。很快，该公司又打来电话向他们推销另一项业务：理财。

 

这家人以为这会是风险很小的划算交易。恒大享有全球声誉，又是具有重要政治意义并在中国不断增长的经济中处于核心地位的企业。于是他们投入了毕生积蓄。

然后，不敢想象之事成为了现实。2021年，恒大的违约标志着房地产危机的开始，这场危机动摇了中国经济，一些规模最大的企业先后崩溃，上百万套公寓无法按时交付。上周，另一家陷入困境的房地产公司碧桂园称其现金已经耗尽，这意味着最糟糕的情况可能尚未到来。这两家公司合计负债5000亿美元，在未来一段时间内都将面临重大考验。

中央延缓房地产市场崩溃的能力如今已受到质疑，哪怕最近有往往会推动销售的黄金周假期，消费者依然对买房没什么兴趣。

 

房地产危机给中国政治领导层带来了严峻挑战：他们要努力让国家摆脱数十年来对房地产推动经济增长的依赖，但此举却加深了信任危机。金融市场正在质疑中国经济奇迹的前景，普罗大众正在放弃对中共承诺的信念，即未来经济会更好。

 

“以前的话，还是蛮相信政府的，相信党和国家，”加里·孟说，他们家在恒大理财项目上投入了220万人民币，目前还有140万没能讨回。警方警告他们不准上诉，但加里·孟说信任已经受到考验。“现在的话只能说挺心寒的反正，”他说。

 

全球经济学家、投资人和央行都对中国金融稳定面临的风险发出了警告，呼吁北京采取措施稳定住房危机。国际货币基金组织首席经济学家皮埃尔·奥利维尔·古林查斯上周表示，中国的房地产危机正在削弱信心，并造成了财务困难。

 

“问题很严重，”他在摩洛哥马拉喀什举行的决策者峰会上表示。世界银行和国际货币基金组织均下调了对中国经济的增长预期。

国际货币基金组织首席经济学家皮埃尔·奥利维尔·古林查斯（中）表示，中国的房地产市场正在损害人们的信心。

 

经济学家认为，中国需要重新调控政策，减少对基础设施和房地产等领域投资的依赖，转而更加重视消费者。

 

“挑战在于如何在不刺激另一场房地产泡沫、不适得其反导致问题恶化的情况下，给予房地产行业足够的支持，帮助其应对转型的难关，”研究公司凯投宏观的中国问题负责人朱利安·埃文斯-普里查德表示。“要让经济出现转机，确实需要让房地产行业稳定下来，”埃文斯-普里查德还说。

 

近段时间，中国官员曾试图遏制房地产销售的下跌，但目前收效甚微。碧桂园周二未能偿还近2000亿美元的债务，还有40多万套已出售公寓尚未完工。

 

房地产市场变成中国的经济支柱经历了一个漫长的过程。多年来，每个人都把赌注押在了房子上。地方政府靠卖地收益来充实自己的金库。家庭纷纷投资公寓。建造、油漆、园林和房地中介方面的就业机会遍地都是。

 

在崩盘引发住房危机之前，恒大曾写就一段与中国经济增长相辅相成的成功故事。该公司由企业家许家印在1996年创立，当中国的农业经济刚开始拥抱资本主义之时，恒大修建的公寓楼就已经在推动中国大片地区的城镇化了。

 

随着恒大通过向国内各银行和国外投资人借贷而快速扩张，它变成了一个拥有无数子公司的庞然大物，涉足业务包括瓶装水、养猪、电动汽车、甚至还有职业足球。

 

其它开发商也效仿起恒大模式，为中国的高速增长做出了无可比拟的巨大贡献。2020年，中央政府开始重点解决债务堆积问题，并限制了房地产企业向银行借贷的能力。这项被称为“三条红线”的政策让恒大等公司争相寻找变现渠道，为避免现金短缺而更加冒进。

 

恒大变本加厉地通过预售房屋来筹措资金，这是该行业的惯例。该公司还要求员工投资短期贷款，否则就会失去奖金。它还劝说已购买恒大公寓的业主购买回报丰厚的理财产品。加里·孟及其父母得到的承诺收益率为8%和9%。2021年，他们有两笔投资获得了收益，但到2022年，利息支付就完全停止了。

 

中国的密集借贷助长了其它行业的过度扩张：保险公司收购酒店，一家娱乐公司买下了一家好莱坞制片公司。所有这些经济活动都很容易让政府忽视正在形成的泡沫，因为包括恒大在内的这些企业都在帮助地方政府——先是购买土地，然后建设大型综合体，既促进了经济增长，又让地方官员得到了提拔。

2021年，一处上了锁的恒大楼盘入口。 

 

如今，这些企业大多陷入了过度的泥淖，许多人都在关注中央下一步会采取怎样的措施。

中国专家的共识是，中国不会再回到那种过度扩张的时代。但问题依然存在，尤其是在经济大前景愈发黯淡的情况下。

 

“房价持续上涨了30年，要停止这个进程，经济的方方面面都不可能不承受巨大的阵痛，”卡内基国际和平基金会高级研究员迈克尔·佩蒂斯说。从房地产繁荣中受益的所有人——银行、地方政府和家庭——都面临利害攸关的风险。“政治上的问题是谁来承担损失，”佩蒂斯说。

 

目前，政府已经明确表示购房者不会成为房地产市场清算的受害者。尽管出现违约，但恒大去年仍获得官方许可继续建造30万套公寓。

 

恒大对政策制定者的重要性如今似乎已不复存在。本月，公司称许家印因涉嫌“违法犯罪”已被当局拘捕。恒大理财部门的其他几名高管和员工也被带走接受问讯。

 

日本金融公司野村证券的经济学家估计，要确保破产开发商建楼交房，将需要550亿美元到820亿美元的资金。

 

但这些开发商还欠了很多其他人的钱。据估计，油漆、建造和中介等方面的供应商还未要回超过3900亿美元的欠款。向中国开发商提供了巨额贷款的外国债权人正联合起来，试图通过复杂的重组方案收回部分资金。

 

研究中国经济的亚洲协会政策研究所名誉高级研究员郝福满(Bert Hofman)表示，中国领导人需要投入更多资金来支持私营企业和家庭，这样才能鼓励他们消费，推动经济发展。这将意味着将更多资金转移到农村养老金和扩大医保覆盖范围等领域。

 

“更宽泛地说，（中国）需要进行改革，在不利用房地产为杠杆的情况下解决经济需求侧的问题，”郝福满说。

 

“光靠嘴说是不够的，”他说。“而是要让政策行动和切实办法给民众带来信心，让他们觉得经济是在好转的。”

Claire Fu自首尔、Patricia Cohen自摩洛哥马拉喀什对本文有报道贡献。

艾莎(Alexandra Stevenson)是时报上海分社社长。

China Bet It All on Real Estate. Now Its Economy Is Paying the Price.

After relying on a borrow-to-build model for decades, Beijing must make difficult choices about the country’s housing market and economic future.

 

Before it defaulted, the developer China Evergrande was at the center of China’s economic boom.

 By Alexandra Stevenson， Reporting from Hong Kong

Oct. 16, 2023

When China’s housing boom seemed like a one-way bet, Gary Meng’s parents bought an apartment from China Evergrande, the country’s biggest developer. Soon the company called with another pitch: to manage their wealth.

It was a good deal with little risk, the family thought. Evergrande had global recognition and was a politically important company at the heart of China’s growing economy. They invested all their savings.

Then the unthinkable happened. In 2021, Evergrande defaulted, representing the start of a real estate meltdown that has shaken China’s economy, felled some of its biggest companies and left home buyers waiting on more than a million apartments. Last week, another embattled real estate company, Country Garden, said it had run out of cash, signaling that the worst may be yet to come. The companies have a combined $500 billion in debt and face critical hurdles in the coming weeks.

Beijing’s ability to slow the collapse is now in doubt as consumers continue to show a lack of interest in buying real estate, even during a recent Golden Week holiday, usually a bumper period for sales.

The housing crisis has presented an acute challenge for China’s political leadership: It is trying to wean the country off its decades-long dependence on real estate to drive economic growth, but doing so is deepening a crisis of confidence. Financial markets are questioning the future of China’s economic miracle, and households are abandoning their faith in the Chinese Communist Party’s promise of a better economic future.

“In the past, I believed in the government and the party and the country,” said Mr. Meng, whose family invested $300,000 in Evergrande’s wealth management arm and is still owed $194,000. Warned by the police not to file a complaint with higher levels of the government, Mr. Meng said that trust had been tested. “Now I can only say that I am quite bitterly disappointed,” he said.

Economists, investors and central banks around the world are warning of the risks to China’s financial stability, calling on Beijing to act to stabilize the housing crisis. The International Monetary Fund’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, said last week that China’s real estate crisis was undermining confidence and causing financial difficulties.

“The problem is serious,” he said at a summit of policymakers in Marrakesh, Morocco. Both the World Bank and the I.M.F. have cut their growth outlook for China’s economy.

 

The I.M.F.’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, center, said problems in China’s real estate market were damaging confidence.Credit...Fadel Senna/Agence France-PresseChina needs to recalibrate, according to economists, to be less dependent on investment in areas like infrastructure and real estate and more reliant on consumers.

“The challenge has been trying to give the sector enough support to cope with the transition without stimulating another property bubble or a rebound that makes these problems worse,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, the China country head at Capital Economics, a research firm. “To get a turnaround in the economy,” Mr. Evans-Pritchard added, “you really need the property sector to stabilize.”

China’s Stalling Economy

• What to Know: China’s economy, which once seemed unstoppable, is plagued by a series of problems, and a growing lack of faith in the future.
• Real Estate Crisis: Country Garden and Evergrande, two of China’s largest developers, are at the center of the spiraling property crisis that has shaken the country’s economy.
• A Worrying Sign: Prices are falling again in China after a two-month reprieve, renewing fears that the country is on the cusp of a pernicious economic condition called deflation.
• Beijing’s New Plan: China’s political leaders, under pressure to support the country’s fragile recovery, are slowly steering the economy on a new course that calls for investing heavily in manufacturing.

Chinese officials have tried to put a floor under falling real estate sales in recent weeks but so far to little effect. Country Garden failed to make a payment on nearly $200 billion of debt on Tuesday and still has more than 400,000 apartments that it sold but has not finished building.

How the real estate market came to be at the center of China’s economy was long in the making. For years, everyone bet on housing. Local governments lined their coffers with the proceeds from selling land. Families invested in apartments. Jobs for builders, painters, landscapers and real estate agents were in abundance.

Before its collapse set off the housing crisis, Evergrande was a story of success that ran alongside China’s growth. Founded in 1996 by the entrepreneur Xu Jiayin, who is also known as Hui Ka Yan, Evergrande built apartment complexes that helped to urbanize large sections of the country just as China’s agrarian economy began to embrace capitalism.

As Evergrande borrowed from Chinese banks and foreign investors to fuel a rapid expansion, it became a behemoth with thousands of subsidiaries. It moved into businesses like bottled water, pig farming, electric cars and even professional soccer.

Evergrande’s model was copied by other developers and real estate became the single-biggest contribution to China’s breakneck growth. In 2020, the central government turned its focus to the debt that had piled up and restricted the ability of real estate companies to borrow from banks. The policy, known as the “three red lines,” put a limit on how much debt developers could have and left companies like Evergrande scrambling for cash and turning to more risky ways to avoid a cash crunch.

Evergrande ramped up an industry practice of raising money by selling apartments before they were built. It also turned to employees, telling them to invest in short-term loans or lose out on bonuses. And it persuaded people who had already bought Evergrande apartments to buy investment products offering huge returns. Mr. Meng and his parents were promised 8 and 9 percent interest on their investments. They made money on two of them in 2021, but by the next year, interest payments had stopped altogether.

The intensive borrowing in China fed excesses in other sectors: Insurers bought hotels, and an entertainment company bought a Hollywood studio. All the economic activity made it easy for the government to ignore the bubble that was building because companies, including Evergrande, were helping local governments — first by buying land and then by building complexes that contributed to economic growth that got local politicians promoted.

 

The locked entrance to an Evergrande residential project in 2021.Credit...Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

Now that most of these companies are in the graveyard of corporate excess, many are wondering what Beijing will do next.

Consensus has emerged among experts in China that it will not return to those days of excess. But questions remain, especially as the broader economic outlook darkens.

“When you have 30 years of rising prices, there is no way you can stop that process without tremendous pain in every part of the economy,” said Michael Pettis, a senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Everyone who benefited from the real estate boom — the banks, local governments and households — has a lot at stake. “The political question is, who takes the loss,” Mr. Pettis said.

Until now, the government had made clear that home buyers would not be the casualties of the reckoning in the real estate market. Despite having defaulted, Evergrande was allowed by officials to continue building 300,000 apartments last year.

Evergrande’s importance for policymakers now appears to be over. This month, the authorities detained its founder, Mr. Xu, on suspicion of what the company called “illegal crimes.” Several other top executives and employees of its wealth management arm have been taken in for questioning.

Ensuring that apartments promised by now-broke developers get built will cost $55 billion to $82 billion, according to estimates from economists at the Japanese financial firm Nomura.

But these same developers owe many other people money. Suppliers, like painters, builders and brokers, are waiting on more than $390 billion, by one estimate. Foreign creditors who lent billions to Chinese developers are banding together to try to get some of their money back through complicated restructuring plans.

And China’s leaders will need to spend much more money to bolster private businesses and households to encourage them to spend and get the economy moving, said Bert Hofman, an honorary senior fellow on the Chinese economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute. This will mean transferring more money into things like rural pensions and increasing health care coverage.

“More broadly, reforms need to be put in place to manage the demand side of the economy without using real estate as a lever,” Mr. Hofman said.

“Just words is no longer enough,” he said. “It is about policy actions and visible events that would give people confidence to say yes, there is something to this.”

Claire Fu contributed reporting from Seoul, and Patricia Cohen from Marrakesh, Morocco.

Alexandra Stevenson is the Shanghai bureau chief for The Times. More about Alexandra Stevenson