Communist Party Congress: The Chinese economy is losing steam: Why that should worry us | Economy and Business

It’s remarkable how real estate bubbles always seem to burst in the same places: big city suburbs, abandoned farmlands and empty lots where rows of empty concrete shells rise above roads closed to traffic and cheerful billboards touting middle-class dreams. “Central Mansion,” announces one such billboard in a residential development about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from downtown Beijing. Unfinished projects stretch in every direction, including a cluster of apartment buildings owned by Evergrande, a Chinese developer that has the distinction of being the most indebted real estate company in the world, and that has now become the poster child for China’s deflated real estate sector. At the entrance to Evergrande’s Royal Peak apartment complex is a gatehouse where visitors have to scan a QR code to confirm that they are Covid-free. The empty buildings and the ubiquitous Covid checks, a product of China’s ambitious zero-Covid strategy, have come to symbolize the challenges facing the world’s second-largest economy.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned in mid-October that the Asian giant’s economic slowdown is one of three major threats to the global economy; the other two are Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and persistent inflationary pressure. The international lending agency based in Washington, DC cut China’s projected real GDP growth forecasts to 3.2% in 2022 and 2.7% in 2023 (down from 8.1% in 2021), according to the World Economic Outlook report…