This is the new Chinese dream: Drowning in debt Slaving for banks Owning nothing

China has 600 million houses. 95% are being abandoned. Borrowers are in mourning. 99% of people have no idea what the biggest ticking time bomb in Shanghai's property market is. But it's coming. In the next three to four years, that pressure will explode. You'll think prices have hit bottom, but that's just the beginning. Every month brings a new land king, and new home prices are still rising. Just when the market seems ready to rebound, boom, over 125,000 restricted homes will be dumped into the market. Massive sell-offs are coming across countless regions. This is no longer about rising or falling prices. It's about homes becoming worthless. From rural villages to sprawling cities, the country is drowning in empty buildings. You call it property? Who will buy it? You call it an asset? In 30 years, it's just a decaying ruin. Who's going to turn that into cash for you? Just look behind you. No one lives there. How many vacant homes are out there? Let's find out. Here, 3 million gone. There, 4 million lost. A store worth 6 million? Empty. Entire streets are unrentable and businesses are gone. I remember this place selling in 2015. It's been a decade. Still empty. The buyers back then? Now they're nothing but chopped green onions. In recent years, a tsunami of housing defaults has swept through China. Hundreds of thousands paused repayments. Millions who emptied their savings were crushed under the collapse. The dream of concrete and steel has shattered. Bank bills became death sentences, pushing families into nightmares. This economic quake didn't just pop a real estate bubble, it cracked the soul of China. When owning a home turns into a lifetime of debt, the Chinese family model collapses. Today's program tells the brutal story of real estate in China. Overnight, Dongguan's sky fell. In a Dalang community, not a single deal in three months. Colleagues downstairs? All quit their jobs to sell lychees. In Nancheng, a project once fought over by thousands? Now second-hand owners can't sell even after cutting WISO's $600,000 and throwing in free parking. At Yumen bus station in Gansu, the station still runs, people still walk the first floor. But online, it's called a ghost town. Homes go for 1,000 yuan. In one video, 70% of buildings are empty. Woman, our house? 500 yuan. Man, 500 yuan per house? Storefronts lie abandoned. You think mortgage holders are the most devastated? Wrong. It's the people without homes who suffer most. Real estate isn't just one sector. It props up over 60 industries. Once it cracks, furniture, decoration, materials, all crumble. Jobs vanish. Banks hold 70% of collateral in housing. When prices crash, banks freeze lending. Businesses can't get cash, can't pay wages. They collapse. People without homes can't find jobs, can't rent. It's survival mode. The scene is shocking. Look into my lens. A vacant city. And it's tragically spectacular. What I'm pointing at is District B, 60 vacant high-rises. If prices keep falling, no one will survive this. My friend bought a home for 3 million in 2018, then 2 million, then 1.5. Now, below 1 million. He lost over 2 million in 5 years. Everything he earned from business. Swallowed by the house. What do you think an ordinary person would do? In 2025, devastating news hit the real estate market. The secondhand market collapsed. Prices plunged. 150 million families are suffocating under mortgages. For many, this isn't a news story. It's their daily nightmare. Overnight, homeowners in Changde went into a frenzy, slashing prices and rushing to sell. Some lost their entire mortgage payments and renovation costs, but still bit the bullet and sold. Old houses for sale are flooding the market, with tens of thousands listed. Auctions and worker housing? Even worse. Even in downtown Shanghai, a brand-new apartment with a lift and 70-year title, Steps from the Subway, sells for just 28,000 yuanm2. And no one's buying. Housing offices sit empty, slashing hundreds of thousands off the price. Normal. No buyers. No viewings. Just silence. The real estate market is collapsing into chaos. On one side, unsellable homes. On the other, a shrinking population and hopeless youth. You still think house prices should be protected while people starve and cities empty? Madness. A viral video says it all. One mother sobs on camera, regretting buying a house during COVID. She paid over 1 million yuan. Now it's worth less than 500,000. But her mortgage stands at 600,000, with 5,000 yuan monthly payments for the next 14 years. Interest alone? Nearly 800,000. She bought it for her child's future. Now it's a life sentence. With a broken economy, soaring fees and mounting debt, she's trapped. Brokers told her no one's buying. Medical bills pile up. She's terrified of default. If that happens, the house is gone. But the debt stays. Home prices crash in Beijing and hundreds of Chinese cities, some slumped to just 20% of value. Homeowners cry in despair. This is the residential area a speculator once bought into in Zhongkai Tongqiao, Huizhou. My god. He's living there alone. Where did all the eager buyers who lined up beside him vanish to? Look at these buildings. This one has just two or three households. That one barely more. One unit here, three or four there. It's a ghost town. After China's reform and opening up, Beijing's construction boom exploded. High-rise apartments, luxury villas, and restored courtyard homes mushroomed across the capital, and housing prices skyrocketed. But now, with the economy stumbling and the real estate bubble officially burst, even Beijing, once the symbol of housing strength, has seen prices collapse off a cliff. Today, as the trade war keeps escalating, what's really happening in the city of power and prestige? In this episode, let's find out. Houses in Beijing's second western ring are now being sold at 40% off. But do you think this is rock bottom? Far from it. There's a saying in Beijing, the east is rich, the west is noble. While noble refers to status, in reality, western districts have long commanded higher prices. And even here, where values traditionally hold, 40% discounts are now common. Here's something you might not know. The number of homes being shown in Beijing is in free fall, revealing a brutal truth behind the crash. Landlords, take note. Has your listing been sitting untouched for half a year? Fresh data reveals that in just one week, secondhand home viewings in Beijing dropped 40% year on year. Real estate agents are quitting in droves. Many now deliver food for a living. Why? Three devastating facts. First, over 150,000 homes are now on the market, a historic record, flooding buyers with options. Second, Beijing's new population has shrunk by 40% in five years. The speculative book bag buyers are gone. Third, buyers now tour an average of 38 homes before making a decision. That's 15 more than just three years ago. I was just casually browsing news when I came across something that shook all of Beijing. Developers in Yizhuang are desperate. They've slashed prices to the bone. You can now buy a fully finished home for 350,000 yen, furniture and appliances included. Pay in full in the morning, get your keys in the afternoon. This is the new reality of Beijing's property market. Overnight, housing prices in Hangzhou seemed to rewind eight years. In the Xiaoshan district, a homeowner who refused to sell his 88-square-meter, three-bedroom apartment for 3.4 million yuan last year is now begging to let it go for 2.8 million. Tears in his eyes. After a buyer complained, he even slashed the price by 80%. It felt like prices had collapsed back to the pre-liberalization era. In Zhengzhou, the market has completely collapsed. It's now normal to buy homes inside the third ring for just 700,000 to 800,000 yuan. Some old city center units are going for 200,000 or 300,000. Five years ago, who would have believed this? One man shared his story. He bought a 78-square-meter apartment in 2019 for 1.1 million yuan, including fees. Add 120,000 for renovations, and he spent 1.22 million total. Today, it won't even sell for 400,000, but he still owes the bank 650,000. After 13 years of grinding in Zhengzhou, he's left with a home that's now a financial trap. Selling it means paying hundreds of thousands, just to get out. How much is your mortgage in Beijing? A friend of mine and his wife earn 30,000 yuan a month, raise two kids, and pay over 20,000 in mortgage. The pressure is suffocating. They can't afford to get sick, and any setback could break them. Their quality of life has plummeted. Last year, to ease the burden, they listed a second home for sale. A year later, not a single offer. Two days ago, they cut the price by another 100,000 yuan, down from the original 1 million. Who really understands the family's burden? A Beijing aunt recently admitted she's losing 2,400 yuan in rent every month. Tai and Tanjiu in rents have halved, vacancies keep rising. They say the end of the Beijing dream is Tianjin, but Tianjin isn't doing better. In three years, its population dropped by over 500,000, while new housing stock rose 40%. Buyers touring neighborhoods often ask, why so many buildings, yet so few people? If not for the lights at night, you'd think they were abandoned. Shanghai Pudong deserted. China's airlines lose money five years in a row. China's economy is in sharp decline. Shopping malls in Beijing are closing in waves. Companies are laying off staff nationwide, and incomes are falling. Many migrant workers in Beijing feel lost. Some live extremely frugally. Others have already returned to their hometowns. With consumption shrinking and travel costs dropping, international tourism and business travel to China have plummeted. Passenger traffic on major airlines has collapsed. Videos show once-bustling airports like Shanghai Hongqiao, Pudong and Beijing Capital now eerily empty. Terminals look like ghost towns. At Shanghai Pudong Airport on April 29, the first day of the holiday, travelers were shocked. Is it just us three here? Duty-free shops at Beijing Capital's Terminal 3 are nearly empty, many completely shuttered. It's nothing like before, one traveler said. Another passenger heading to Thailand filmed near-deserted halls. I only see 20 to 30 people. Despite claims that Shanghai is full of Koreans, I didn't see any. Maybe the city's just too big. China's aviation industry is still in deep trouble. Air China, China Eastern and China Southern all reported major losses again in Q1, marking five straight years in the red. At Huangshan Tengsi Airport, one visitor found the terminal completely empty at 2 p.m. Not a single passenger, only staff who just laughed. It's the most deserted airport in the world.