Chinese property giant Evergrande’s shares were removed from the Hong Kong stock market on Monday, ending more than 15 years of trading.
This marks a grim milestone for what was once China’s biggest real estate company, valued at more than 50 billion dollars before collapsing under the weight of enormous debts. Experts say the delisting was both inevitable and final.
“Once delisted, there is no coming back,” said Dan Wang, China director at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
Evergrande is now most associated with a property crisis that has weighed on the world’s second largest economy for years.
What happened to Evergrande?
Just a few years ago, Evergrande was seen as a symbol of China’s economic rise. Its founder, Hui Ka Yan, rose from humble beginnings to briefly become Asia’s wealthiest man in 2017, with a fortune of 45 billion dollars. That wealth has since dwindled to less than a billion as his company collapsed.
In March 2024, Mr Hui was fined 6.5 million dollars and banned from China’s capital markets for life after regulators found that his company had overstated its revenue by 78 billion dollars. Liquidators are also examining whether they can recover money for creditors from his personal property.
At its peak, Evergrande had 1,300 projects in 280 cities across China, along with an electric car business and Guangzhou FC, the country’s most successful football team. The club was expelled from the league in early 2024 after failing to settle its debts.
Evergrande was built on 300 billion dollars of borrowed money, making it the most indebted property developer in the world. Trouble began in 2020 when Beijing imposed rules limiting how much developers could borrow. To stay afloat, Evergrande offered its properties at steep discounts, but it still struggled to meet payments and soon defaulted on some of its overseas debts.
After years of legal disputes, Hong Kong’s High Court ordered the company to be liquidated in January 2024. Its shares were suspended from trading at that time and were finally delisted this week, having lost more than 99 percent of their value.
Evergrande’s liquidators revealed earlier this month that the company still owes 45 billion dollars but has managed to sell only 255 million dollars worth of assets. They admitted that a full restructuring “will prove out of reach.”
“The delisting is symbolic, but it is still a major milestone,” said Wang. What remains now is to determine which creditors will be paid and how much they can recover. The next liquidation hearing is scheduled for September.
Impact on China’s Economy
China’s economy is already facing challenges, including high local government debt, weak consumer demand, rising unemployment, and an ageing population. Experts believe the property slump, led by Evergrande’s collapse, has been the biggest drag on growth.
“The property slump has been the ultimate reason why consumption is suppressed,” said Wang.
Real estate once accounted for about a third of China’s economy and was a vital source of revenue for local governments. Professor Shitong Qiao from Duke University noted, “I don’t think China has found a viable alternative to support its economy at the same scale.”
The crisis has also meant massive layoffs in the construction and real estate sectors, while those who kept their jobs often faced steep pay cuts.
Households have been hit hard too, since property is the main savings vehicle for many Chinese families. Housing prices have fallen by at least 30 percent, wiping out a large portion of household wealth.
In response, Beijing has rolled out measures to revive the housing market, support first-time buyers, stimulate consumer spending, and boost industries such as electric cars and household goods. Despite this, China’s growth has slowed to around 5 percent, far below the double-digit growth it enjoyed in the early 2010s.
Is the Crisis Over?
The answer appears to be no. Several major developers remain in trouble. Earlier this month, China South City Holdings was handed a winding-up order by Hong Kong’s High Court, making it the largest developer to be liquidated since Evergrande. Rival Country Garden is still negotiating with creditors to restructure more than 14 billion dollars of foreign debt, with its next court hearing scheduled for January 2026.
“The entire property sector is in difficulty. More Chinese firms will collapse,” Professor Qiao said.
Although Beijing has announced policies to stabilize the market, it has stopped short of directly bailing out developers, wary of encouraging further risky borrowing.
Goldman Sachs warned in June that property prices in China could keep falling until 2027. Wang estimated that the market may only bottom out in about two years, when demand catches up with supply.
Economist Alicia Garcia-Herrero put it bluntly: “There is no real light at the end of the tunnel.”
For now, China appears to be shifting away from property as a driver of growth, with President Xi Jinping putting greater focus on high-tech sectors such as renewable energy, electric vehicles, and robotics.
As Wang explained, “China is in a deep transition to a new age of development.”
