In the last decade, over RMB 90 trillion of fixed asset investment has been channelled into the real estate sector. But as we explain in this note, this has been used unproductively, increasing the size of the stock of unfinished residential floor space to over 4 billion square metres. Completion times have lengthened by a factor of six — the average project now takes more than six years from start to finish. This strategy has enabled house price inflation to...