(Kalpit A Mankikar is Fellow with Strategic Studies Programme. The article was published in The Print on September 29, 2021)
- The optics of sit-in protests by irate investors in various offices of one of China’s largest realty firms, Evergrande, and clashes between demonstrators and law-enforcement gave credence to a view that this was a huge challenge to the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing may not let a good crisis go to waste. The company has become one of the most indebted entities with a burden of US $300 billion liabilities, which has decimated its credit rating and share price. Left in its wake are unfinished residential buildings and over a million home buyers who have partially paid for their properties. These developments have also sent shockwaves across the Chinese economy with a 9 percent plunge in prices of Chinese stocks—a new low since the global financial crisis in 2008—and bourses across the world.
