lots of local damage and a massive clean-up From my reading it's expected that authorities will do all in their power to honour the deposits of locals by getting their homes built.
Foreigners are the ones expected to get a haircut.
In other news investors taking a haircut from exposure to United States commercial property.
Interesting story in AFR from a China expert about their prospects.
Financial repression and Japanification.
https://www.copyright link/policy/foreign-affairs/why-china-can-t-stop-its-decline-20240131-p5f1giSnippet:
A new shift has occurred recently, and if anything, it has been even more dramatic. Here and there, and then suddenly almost everywhere, opinion shapers and experts have been saying that the great Chinese growth engine is broken and that the country is no longer destined to lead the world in the decades ahead.
Among specialists who follow China most closely, the two main causes cited for this new conventional wisdom have been known for years. The first is that China’s growth model has been over-reliant on policies such as financial repression and extraordinary levels of investment.
Here, repression has nothing to do with the usual political usage of the word. It means, rather, that the state controls domestic interest, exchange rates, and capital outflows in such a way that citizens receive little accrual or benefit from their high rates of savings. Instead, these are captured by the state and channelled into industries that are favoured or prioritised by bureaucrats, including many that are state-owned.
The other big factor, by now almost universally cited by the new China sceptics, is the country’s dismal demographic situation. Every week seems to bring new stories about either the rapid ageing of Chinese society or the growing reluctance of women and couples to have children
