Economics
Beijing Has Built Thousands of Cheap Apartments No One Wants
- A 2016 affordable housing program has had limited success
- Units are often poor quality, too far away from transport hubs
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Even China can’t fix its affordable housing crisis.
When Beijing introduced price caps for almost two-thirds of apartments in late 2016 as part of a program to provide homes for millions of middle-class citizens to buy, an array of cheap condominiums began springing up on the city’s outskirts. Three years on, the cramped, poor-quality units that are far from anywhere lie mostly empty.