This information is so out of date it borders on misinformation. China's real estate market "crashed" at least 5 years ago at this point. And it didn't just crash in the same way that, say, the Toronto condo market has crashed. It crashed because the government burst the bubble, deliberately, to make housing a priority not an investment. Put another way, like I said above, housing people was made a priority over investor returns.
> HSR isn’t used for commuting in China
China's HSR now has over 4 billion passenger movements a year [1]. It's largely an alternative to short=to-medium distance air travel eg Beijing to Shanghai is ~1200km, roughly equivalent to Chicago to NYC. What's commuting got to do with it? Are you comparing to Japan where people might live 2 hours commute away from work for various reasons?
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/chinas-p...
Second, this is a good thing. It is a success not a failure. I mean it's bad for the investors but China has decided people having affordable housing is more important than the investors. The investors aren't being bailed out.
Why is this a good thing? Because the only way we can correct Western housing markets at this point is by doing what China has already done. That is, crashing the housing market. And that is political suicide so we are where we are and it's not going to get better anytime soon.