Decades of double-digit growth have produced five problems that Chinese leader Xi Jinping hopes to correct with his “New Development Concept.” Will it work?
Two weeks ago, the concourse outside Evergrande’s glossy headquarters in Shenzhen was thronged by homebuyers, unpaid contractors, and investors chanting what has now become a slogan of China’s debt-saddled, post-reform economy: “Give back our money.” For the past few weeks, Evergrande and its debts have been treated like a fuse for a global crisis — the Chinese “Lehman Brothers.” That analogy is flawed. Evergrande is not like Lehman, said Phil Groves, a distressed debt expert and the president of DAC Management, because Evergrande has physical assets that can be dispersed in the event of a default. “For Lehman, it took years and years and still no one actually knew what the hell they owned, what their exposure was, or how many derivatives they had,” he told me.