Even if all of a sudden this place were run by a bunch of Austrian economists, it’s too late.

From Zeihan on Evergrande: 1.5 BILLION Unsold Condos? by Lawrence Person.  

I haven’t been updating every twist and turn of the Evergrande collapse, but we’re going to look at it again because this Peter Zeihan video has a fairly staggering statistic. He asserts that there are 1.5 BILLION (with a B) unoccupied housing units in China. Even though we already knew about the ghost cities, that’s like an entire ghost nation for a China that was already headed down the economic crapper.

Two realities loom.

You can't trust any numbers out of China.  1.5 billion?  150 million?  Both are conceivable.  Or some other number.  We don't know and likely can't know.

Catastrophes usually happen slowly then quickly.  China's demographic and economic problems have been well publicized for a few years now and they are real but what the consequences might end up being is not so clear.  Nor how soon they might transpire.

It is a useful update about an uncertain complex and evolving system with low legibility.  I did like this:

“Even if all of a sudden this place were run by a bunch of Austrian economists, it’s too late.” Because of the one-child policy, there simply aren’t enough people of home-buying age.