ELI5 about the Chinese real estate market in general? This is how they got to where they are today:
Investing in China sucks. The stock market is extremely volatile and there seem to be a lot of shady activities, banks get bank runs so you couldn't even put too much money in banks, etc
In contrast, real estate is heavily subsidized by China's state capitalistic approach, so it became a really "stable" investment... because government subsidized it
Because of this, everyone buys or want to buy real estate in China. In fact, people are willing to buy places that would almost never be lived in, because of possibility of appreciation... so we're approaching NFT-level bullshit here
Additional point: because of the above point, Chinese investors would buy real estate even when abroad & the RE market is not nearly as favorable. Obviously this causes some frictions... like a good chunk of Canadian citizen blaming Chinese ppl on raising home prices
Chinese economy is now facing hardship, so the real estate bubble is finally showing signs of leakage in the past few years
I am not an economist and cannot offer insight as to whether this would turn into an 2008 moment... Nevertheless, I am aware that Soho is an extremely well-known developer, and that the Chinese economy is to a large extent built on top of real estate. And despite how much I dislike China, it is one of the world's largest economies, and large economies don't just go belly-up without inflicting heavy damage on the whole world... So this is not good news by any means.