Building stress

China's real estate sector totters on the brink

The importance of China’s real estate market to the global economy can hardly be overstated. Measured in financial terms, it is according to many estimates the largest asset class in the world, worth over $60 trillion. Swings in the market determine the global price of commodities from steel to cement. And it is intimately linked to the financing of local government in China and, therefore, to the country’s overall balance sheet. Last year, when the aggressive property developer Evergrande began defaulting on loan payments, observers began to understand that the market was facing a crisis; those defaults have now reached