A global real estate boom ignited by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has cooled, as Beijing seeks to rein in control on building projects across the developing world, said the Financial Times.
Less than $1 billion has been invested into overseas commercial property projects by Chinese developers in designated BRI countries in 2019, according to data compiled by the Washington-based consulting firm RWR Advisory.
That puts this year’s invested total on track to be far below last year’s figure of about $14 billion, and marks another sharp drop from the peak of $23.6 billion in 2016, RWR Advisory data.
Andrew Davenport, RWR’s chief operating officer, linked the slowdown in investment to possible measures of discipline from China, “There was a degree of concern about capital flight and, perhaps, in general, a sense that the exuberance and blank-cheque approach to BRI by state-owned enterprises and policy banks was reeling a little bit out of control.”