They have built entire ghost cities with few people living in them:
Kangbashi District (Ordos, Inner Mongolia): The "poster child" of Chinese ghost cities. Originally planned for 1.5 million residents to accommodate a local coal boom, it only has around 120,000 residents today.
Chenggong (Yunnan): Built as a massive satellite city, it was planned for 1.5 million people but currently has just over 300,000 residents.
Xiangyun International (Hebei): A planned $3 billion "city within a city" featuring high-end apartments and theme parks, but currently sitting largely empty with fewer than 20,000 residents.
You can't borrow from your equity. They're worthless.
Falling Prices and 70 Million Empty Apartments: What's Happening to China's Real Estate Market?
A detailed analysis of the real estate market in China in 2025. The reasons for the debt crisis of real estate developers, government actions, and the current state of prices for new and secondary ...
You can always count on government to screw things up. When my daughter returned from China she commented on the number of empty apartment buildings.