For a straight forward analysis of the daily situation in China, I would recommend Tony at

https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaUpdate

I have been following him for a few years now and his daily reports cover all the important events as they unfold.
For the "why" I would suggest Peter Zeihan's China videos. Peter tends to cover more global subjects but his China videos are rather insightful.

China's housing market will continue to crash due to various factors that were not limited to Evergrande due to the way it rose to its giddying heights.

Chinese people do not have access to the same ways of investing money that we enjoy in the west. Thus the property market allowed many to reap huge rewards through speculation. Recent policy decisions aimed at rejuvenating the market have simply fallen flat and house prices are continuing to fall. And those figures are the official figures so expect the true numbers to be even worse.

Tied into all of this is the local government debt which is primarily in LGFV (Local Government Financing Vehicles) and it is these LGFV's that, historically, were paid by selling/leasing land rights to housing construction companies. Those sales have fallen off a cliff and so many local government bodies are going to go bankrupt. Well they wont actually go bankrupt as the central Gov. wont let them but the pain will be real and felt by those at the bottom.

To go back to the "speculation" that drove the boom. It explains the ghost cities... The houses were never meant to be lived in. They were bought as assets ... to be sold as the price of property rose. Now that rise is abating and no one is buying these partly built homes will never be finished and their value will drop to mere pennies on the dollar (or yuan, as it were).
Then there's the demographic shift that is starting to be felt. There is not enough people having babies as those living in cities don't have large families. If they have families at al! This is a ticking time bomb for China and will mean that since the country never got "rich" before it went to being a service based economy then it never will.

Slowly, but surely, as the world moves away from China and base their manufacturing elsewhere. In countries that won't steal their IP then China will become even more bellicose and belligerent on the world stage. The few friends China thinks it has in countries tied to its Belt & Road Initiative will start to move westwards as their citizens become disillusioned with their governments and those in power will follow the will of the people to stay in power. As almost all of these countries "friendly" towards China atm are about as corrupt as they can get. But, they are also the most unstable and staying in power is the only goal the elite in these country will be thinking of. And if that means dumping China in favor of a more western centric view then I believe that is the way they will go.


All in all, the Property sector in China is just 1 part, albeit a large part, of the current train wreck that we are witnessing in slow motion in China and before the dust settles lets hope Xi doesn't do anything stupid.

PS: if anyone knows anything about history then we know that countries that are in an existential crisis (see Russia/Ukraine right now) then I personally dont hold out much hope for how this will all end.