Rethinking China’s growth

Abstract

China’s outsized growth has almost continually surpassed outsiders’ expectations for four decades and may continue to do so in the future. However, a key element of the growth model, heavy reliance on real estate and infrastructure construction, may finally be running into diminishing returns. This paper summarizes new city-level data on China’s real estate and infrastructure capital from 2000 to 22 and provides evidence suggesting that the growth returns to new building may be falling in some regions. At the same time, real estate investment in particular has been a significant contributing factor to the local government debt vulnerabilities. Finally, the paper presents new findings on the combined direct and indirect impact of real estate and infrastructure construction on China’s economy, which has consistently exceeded 30% of GDP in recent years.