The Fall of Evergrande, China’s Property Titan

Evergrande Delisted: The Fall of China’s Property Titan

In 2009, investors crowded the Hong Kong Stock Exchange floor for the public debut of China Evergrande Group. Demand for shares was so high that for every person lucky enough to buy, more than forty others were turned away. The company’s story fit neatly into the grand narrative of China’s rise where apartments sold before the first bricks were laid and a middle class that believed home ownership was the safest path to prosperity.

Sixteen years later, as reported by BBC this morning, Evergrande disappeared from that same stock exchange. The shares, once worth over $50 billion in total, were stripped from trading screens. Investors had seen the writing on the wall for years, but the delisting still landed like the final shovel of earth on a grave that had been dug slowly, painfully, and publicly.

“Once delisted, there is no coming back,” said Dan Wang of Eurasia Group. Her words were blunt but accurate. Evergrande was not only insolvent. It had become symbolic of a broader unraveling in China’s economy.

At the center of Evergrande’s rise was Hui Ka Yan, born in 1958 in rural Henan province. His father was a warehouse worker. His childhood was marked by hardship, and Hui often spoke about surviving on little more than sweet potatoes. After studying metallurgy, he entered the steel industry before moving into real estate in the 1990s.

By 2017, he was the richest man in Asia, worth an estimated $45 billion. His name topped Forbes lists. His company sponsored China’s most successful football club, Guangzhou Evergrande, where confetti fell from the sky as the team lifted yet another trophy. He even dabbled in electric cars, convinced that his empire could extend from homes to highways.

But behind the spectacle was a fragile model. Evergrande grew by borrowing heavily, leaning on pre-sold apartments to fund new projects. At its peak, the company carried $300 billion in liabilities, more than the GDP of Finland.

In 2020, Beijing introduced new rules called the “three red lines” to limit reckless borrowing by developers. For Evergrande, the restrictions were like cutting oxygen to a man already gasping for breath. To generate cash, it slashed apartment prices, but discounts only delayed the inevitable. This caused projects to slow, and of course, interest payments piled up. By late 2021, the company had defaulted on foreign bonds.

Ordinary families began to feel the pain. Buyers who had paid upfront discovered that their apartments might never be finished. Some organized protests, holding signs outside provincial government offices. In cities like Changsha and Zhengzhou, groups of middle-class homeowners even threatened to stop paying mortgages on unfinished flats.

By January 2024, Hong Kong’s High Court ordered the company to be liquidated. Evergrande’s stock, already suspended, was hanging by a thread.

Hui himself became a cautionary tale. In March 2024, regulators fined him $6.5 million and banned him from China’s capital markets for life after investigators found the company had overstated revenue by $78 billion. His personal wealth collapsed from $45 billion to under a billion.

Liquidators are now probing his assets, searching for yachts and overseas properties that could be sold to pay creditors. The man who once symbolized the promise of Chinese capitalism became the face of excess and failure.

Evergrande’s empire was vast. At the time of collapse, it had 1,300 projects in 280 cities. Its portfolio extended from luxury towers in Shenzhen to sprawling developments in provincial towns. It also owned theme parks, bottled water brands, and even a pig farm.

But many of those projects stand unfinished. Concrete shells dot city skylines. Families who poured their savings into apartments now face the prospect of owning nothing more than an empty frame.

The company’s football club, once coached by Italian legend Fabio Cannavaro, was expelled from the league in 2024 for unpaid debts. Its electric car division barely produced vehicles.

The property sector has long been the backbone of China’s economy. At its height, it accounted for about 30 percent of GDP when linked industries such as steel, cement, and household goods are included. Local governments relied on land sales to developers for a significant portion of their revenue. Families stored most of their wealth in property.

The Evergrande collapse added fuel to an already dangerous fire. Prices of new homes have dropped by around 30 percent in many regions. Consumer confidence has weakened. With savings tied up in declining property values, households spend less. Businesses across construction, landscaping, and property sales have faced layoffs or shuttered entirely.

The shock has not been contained within Evergrande. Other firms have stumbled. Country Garden, once viewed as a more conservative rival, faces a liquidation hearing in early 2026. China South City Holdings has already been ordered to wind up. Analysts warn more collapses will follow.

Behind the billions in losses are personal stories, as recounted by the New York Times.

Victoria Yu, a marketing officer in Hefei, listed her apartment for sale earlier this year. She and her husband had paid around $330,000 for it in 2022 and spent another $80,000 on renovations. But all offers came in 15 percent below her asking price. Angry and disillusioned, she pulled the listing. “I could not accept losing more than $100,000,” she said.

Her case is not isolated. Chinese households keep around 70 percent of their wealth in property. The downturn has eroded savings and diminished spending power across the country.

Some commentators rushed to compare Evergrande’s collapse to the 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers. It’s easy to see the parallels in the massive debts and a property bubble, even the shaken investors’ confidence. But there are key differences. Lehman imploded overnight, setting off a global financial crisis. Evergrande’s decline has been a slow-motion collapse, managed carefully by Beijing to avoid systemic contagion.

That said, the consequences are real. China’s growth has slowed to about 5 percent, a steep drop from the double-digit pace of the 2000s. Trade wars and demographic decline compound the strain. A weakened property market leaves Beijing searching for alternatives, from electric cars to renewable energy to semiconductors.

For the global economy, China’s slowdown carries risk. If Chinese demand for steel, oil, copper, and consumer goods continues to shrink, exporters from Brazil to Germany will feel the pinch. If Beijing resorts to pushing cheap exports abroad, it could trigger deflationary pressure on industries worldwide.

During past downturns, the Chinese government often poured money into the property market to stimulate growth. In 2015, it funded massive housing redevelopments that gave cash to residents and reignited a building spree. This time, Beijing has been more cautious.

Officials fear that bailing out Evergrande and others would encourage more reckless borrowing. Instead, they have offered targeted support. Beijing has slowed eased purchase restrictions and encouraging banks to lend. Subsidies for electric cars and household appliances have grown. These steps have softened the blow but not reversed the slump.

President Xi Jinping’s government has also shifted priorities. Instead of propping up a debt-ridden housing sector, the focus is now on industries deemed strategic for the future, such as robotics and renewable energy. As analyst Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at French bank Natixis, puts it, “there is no real light at the end of the tunnel” for property.

What comes next

Evergrande’s liquidation will drag on for years. Creditors must line up, and courts must decide how to distribute whatever scraps can be sold. With debts still at $45 billion and asset sales amounting to only $255 million so far, recovery for investors will be minimal.

Meanwhile, the wider property crisis is unlikely to resolve soon. Goldman Sachs predicts falling home prices until at least 2027. Analysts estimate the market will hit bottom in two years, when demand finally meets supply.

For ordinary Chinese families, the adjustment is painful. The belief that apartments were a one-way ticket to wealth has been shattered. For local governments, the collapse of land sales is a budgetary crisis. For the Communist Party, it is a challenge to its social contract, which promised prosperity in exchange for political control.

The delisting of Evergrande’s shares is symbolic, but symbols matter. In 2018, Evergrande was named the world’s most valuable real estate company. In 2019, its football club lifted a championship trophy under showers of golden confetti. Today, its name conjures images of empty towers and angry homeowners.

The end of trading in its shares marks the close of an era in Chinese economic history. It is a warning to other developers, a burden for millions of households, and a signal that the country must find new engines of growth.

The spectacle that began with a frenzy on the trading floor in 2009 ends in silence. The company that once seemed too big to fail has been erased from the market. What remains are debts, memories, and the challenge of moving forward.