China's Comeback

While the world still contemplates the impossibility of China solving its current economic problems, Warren H. Lau provides us with a solution: agricultural modernization. He suggests driving people into cities to absorb the excess urban housing supply.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing real estate crisis, China faces a pivotal moment that will define its economic trajectory and role in the world. This book analyzes the country's current challenges, focusing on a depressed property market and excess housing supply. It argues that strategic policy reforms, centered around agricultural modernization, can spark revitalization.

By heavily investing in automation and technology to boost productivity on farms, China can transform its labor-intensive farming practices. This would spare millions of workers who could then migrate to cities, becoming new residents and occupants of the oversupplied urban real estate. With more human capital populating urban centers, there would be increased demand for housing and domestic consumption of goods and services.

The book outlines how coordinating initiatives across infrastructure, public works, tourism, and development can convert rural economies, depopulate the countryside, and smoothly reallocate human resources. Such an orchestrated effort can relieve stresses in the property sector, stabilize the financial system, and increase urban population density. This rebalancing of China's internal dynamics could have strong ripple effects across global trade, investment, and economic cooperation.