China's rural families are sitting on a debt bomb, according to an article on potential risks of the rural family indebtedness problem published by Wuhan University Rural Governance Research Institute task force in 2023. The authors described how spillover of China's frothy real estate frenzy into the countryside drained the savings of two generations of rural families and saddled the younger generation with debts they will owe for 20 to 30 years. The Wuhan University authors say families that appear wealthy are living in dread of a job loss or sickness that could tip them over the edge into bankruptcy. A 2022 article in Daily Economic News explained that a boom in demand for real estate in county-level towns was driven by reverse migration from big cities to rural hometowns, demand for better quality housing, and villagers commuting from small city apartments to factories or farms in their village. An article about a county town in Anhui Province traced a count...
Retired USDA economist Fred Gale peers through the "dim sums" of puzzling data to provide insight about China's agricultural markets in bite-size pieces like Chinese "dim sum" snacks. See the Archive and Labels for posts on various topics going back to 2008.