Barring a decision to loosen the government’s control of credit and property investment and purchases, China’s real estate market will continue to decline next year. The threat of a sharper downturn in the sector could hurt the country’s northwestern and central regions, which are heavily indebted, as well as small property developers and industries connected to real estate. Beijing’s options for addressing these problems will be limited, and despite its effort to stabilize the market with a nationwide property tax, the property sector will come under significant strain in 2018. China’s property sector is no stranger to the booms and busts that characterize most capitalist economies. But in the two decades since the country commercialized the allocation of real estate, the flourishing industry has become a model of the investment-driven growth on which the Chinese economy so heavily relies. After ballooning in 2015-16, the property sector now accounts for […]