A Dying Nation, Houses of Accomplices: A Country That Mortgaged Its Past, Present, and Future
A Dying Nation, Houses of Accomplices: A Country That Mortgaged Its Past, Present, and Future
China's real estate is not an economic bubble, but systematic collective suicide.
It is not the greed of one generation, but a nation choosing to mortgage time itself—without faith, without future, without moral constraints—in order to prolong political survival.
I. The Economic Form of Political Deception
China's housing prices are not the result of market laws, but the materialization of political deception.
The Communist Party carefully selected the most exploitative parts from global property systems:
It retained the burden of private property rights, but canceled the protection of property rights;
It retained the pressure of mortgages, but canceled bankruptcy protection;
It retained the revenue of land finance, but canceled the responsibility of local autonomy.
This ultimately formed a structure that only answers upward and only harvests downward.
Land belongs to the state, loans belong to banks, risk belongs to individuals.
Every house became an extension of taxation, a container of debt, and collateral for political loyalty.
II. America's Goodwill and China's Illusion
After 1989, China was almost on the brink of collapse.
To avoid Soviet-style dissolution, it promised America: we will not be like them, we will become better.
America believed. Dollars flowed in, technology was transferred, orders shifted, markets opened.
The Communist Party used this trust to create an illusion of economic prosperity.
Rising housing prices were the material form of this illusion.
It made every Chinese person believe:
Buy a house, and you can share in "the dividend of the nation becoming better";
Take on a loan, and you become "a beneficiary of the times."
People were not buying houses, but the belief that the future would be better.
III. The Greed of Accomplices
Ordinary people are not innocent.
They were not deceived into entering, but actively chose to become part of the scheme.
They know the land does not belong to them, yet still celebrate "having a property certificate";
They know prices are inflated, yet still urge others to "buy early, get on board";
They know the system is corrupt, yet still hope the system will preserve value.
This behavior is not ignorance, but instinctive complicity.
In a faithless society, houses replaced faith.
People no longer believe in truth or justice, only in rising prices.
They think they are investing, but are actually prolonging power's life.
IV. Mortgaging the Future: The Logic of Extinction
The true cost of the real estate bubble is not financial risk, but the collapse of fertility.
When a nation pushes housing costs to the limit, it is actually mortgaging the lives of future children.
A young couple taking a thirty-year loan means they will have no capacity to raise the next generation for the next thirty years.
They think they are buying a home, but are actually signing a death contract for their descendants.
The sharp drop in births is not accidental.
It is the entire society subconsciously refusing to extend this system's life.
Children became the most expensive luxury, and the future became the most dangerous investment.
Houses drained all possibility, even the desire to continue life was mortgaged.
This is "the Chinese people without descendants"—
They are not forced, but voluntarily exchange the future for the illusion of the present.
They bought not houses, but an end.
V. Conclusion: When the Future Disappears, Housing Prices Also Lose Meaning
The collapse of real estate is not market adjustment, but the collapse of faith.
When external dollars dry up, internal trust breaks, and birth rates plummet,
the three foundations supporting China's housing prices—capital, trust, and life—simultaneously disintegrate.
A nation can sustain itself on lies for ten years, twenty years,
but cannot sustain the future on the dead and the unborn.
China's housing prices will ultimately return to zero,
not only the zero of price, but the zero of meaning.
What it will leave behind is only cooling concrete,
and a generation that mortgaged themselves to the regime, to illusion, to nothingness.