China’s Comeback

While the world still contemplates on how impossible for China to solve her current economic problems, Warren H. Lau provides us a solution: Agricultural modernization, drive people into cities to absorb excess urban housing supply.In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing real estate crisis, China faces a pivotal moment defining its economic trajectory and role in the world. This book analyzes the country’s current challenges centered around a depressed property market and excess housing supply. It argues that strategic policy reforms focusing on agricultural modernization can spark a revitalization. Through heavy investment in automation and technology to boost productivity on farms, China can wean itself off intensive labor-based farming. This would spare millions of workers who could migrate to cities as new residents and occupants for the oversupplied urban real estate. With more human capital populating urban centers, demand for housing and domestic consumption of goods and services would rise. The book outlines how coordinating initiatives across infrastructure, public works, tourism and development can convert rural economies, depopulate the countryside and smoothly reallocate human resources. Such an orchestrated effort can relieve stresses in the property sector, stabilize the financial system and refill urban population density. With a rebalancing of China’s internal dynamics, strong ripple effects are plausible across global trade, investment and economic cooperation.