what Ukraine means for China, page-23

More and more debt, to build more and more apartments, for a population that will be shrinking is a recipe for disaster.

China's growth in the last couple of decades has been on the back of hundreds of millions of people moving from the countryside to the cities and a resultant construction boom. The construction boom has reached the end of its life, because its population has peaked. (countries like Australia use migration to keep housing roaring, but China is too big for this option)

This is at the same time that manufacturing is starting to move away from China to countries like Vietnam, India, Bangladesh. This is partly due to lower wages and costs in those countries, and accelerated by China's approach to covid, as well as China's foreign policy behaviour encouraging countries to either bring manufacturing home, or diversify into other countries. To win this manufacturing back, China would have to cut wages, which would exacerbate the problems described in my previous paragraph.