Business reporter, BBC News<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Chinese property giant Evergrande’s shares were taken off the Hong Kong stock market on Monday after more than a decade and a half of trading.<\/p>\n It marks a grim milestone for what was once China’s biggest real estate firm, with a stock market valuation of more than $50bn (\u00a337.1bn). That was before its spectacular collapse under the weight of the huge debts that had powered its meteoric rise.<\/p>\n Experts say the delisting was both inevitable and final.<\/p>\n “Once delisted, there is no coming back,” says Dan Wang, China director at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.<\/p>\n Evergrande is now best-known for its part in a crisis that has for years dragged on the world’s second-largest economy. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Just a few years ago Evergrande Group was a shining example of China’s economic miracle.<\/p>\n Its founder and chairman Hui Ka Yan rose from humble beginnings in rural China to top the Forbes list of Asia’s wealthiest people in 2017.<\/p>\n His fortune has since plummeted from an estimated $45bn in 2017 to less than a billion, his fall from grace as extraordinary as his company’s. <\/p>\n In March 2024, Mr Hui was fined $6.5m and banned from China’s capital market for life for his company overstating its revenue by $78bn<\/a>.<\/p>\n Liquidators are also exploring whether they can recover cash for creditors from Mr Hui’s personal property.<\/p>\n At the time of its collapse, Evergrande had some 1,300 projects under development in 280 cities across China.<\/p>\n The sprawling empire also included an electric carmaker and China’s most successful football team, <\/b>Guangzhou FC, which was kicked out of the football league<\/a> earlier this year after failing to pay off enough of its debts. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Evergrande was built on $300bn (\u00a3222bn) of borrowed money, earning it the unenviable title of the world’s most indebted property developer.<\/p>\n The rot set in after Beijing brought in new rules in 2020 to control the amount big developers could borrow.<\/p>\n The new measures led Evergrande to offer its properties at major discounts to ensure money was coming in to keep the business afloat.<\/p>\n Struggling to meet interest payments, the firm soon defaulted on some of its overseas debts. <\/p>\n After years of legal wrangling, the Hong Kong High Court ordered the company to be wound up in January 2024. <\/p>\n Evergrande’s shares had been under threat of delisting ever since because they were suspended from trading after the court order.<\/p>\n By that point the crisis engulfing the firm had wiped more than 99% from its stock market valuation.<\/p>\n The liquidation order came after the company was unable to offer a workable plan to shed billions of dollars of overseas liabilities.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, liquidators revealed that Evergrande’s debts currently stand at $45bn and that it had so far sold just $255m of assets. They also said they believe a complete overhaul of the business “will prove out of reach”.<\/p>\n The “delisting now is surely symbolic but it’s such a milestone,” Ms Wang says.<\/p>\n All that remains is which creditors are paid and how much they can get in the bankruptcy process, says Professor Shitong Qiao from Duke University.<\/p>\n The next liquidation hearing is due to take place in September.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n China is facing a number of major problems, including US President Donald Trump’s tariffs<\/a>, high local government debt, weak consumer spending<\/a>, unemployment<\/a> and an ageing population.<\/p>\n But experts say Evergrande’s collapse, along with the serious problems faced by other developers, has hit the country hardest.<\/p>\n “The property slump has been the biggest drag on the economy, and the ultimate reason why consumption is suppressed,” Ms Wang says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is particularly problematic as the industry accounted for about a third of the Chinese economy and was a major source of income for local governments.<\/p>\n “I don’t think China has found a viable alternative to support its economy at a similar scale,” Professor Qiao says.<\/p>\n The property crisis has led to “massive layoffs” by heavily-indebted developers, Jackson Chan from financial markets research platform Bondsupermart says.<\/p>\n And many real estate industry employees that kept their jobs have seen big pay cuts, he adds.<\/p>\n The crisis is also having a major impact on many households as they tend to put their savings into property.<\/p>\n With housing prices dropping by at least 30%, many Chinese families have seen their savings fall in value, says Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at French bank Natixis.<\/p>\n This means they are less likely to spend and invest, she adds.<\/p>\n In response, Beijing has announced a raft of initiatives aimed at reviving the housing market, stimulating consumer spending and boosting the wider economy.<\/p>\n They range from measures to help new home owners and support the stock market to incentives to buy electric cars and household goods.<\/p>\n Despite the hundreds of billions of dollars Beijing has poured into the economy, China’s once-blistering growth has eased to “around 5%”.<\/p>\n While most Western countries would be more than happy with that, it’s slow for a country that saw growth of more than 10% a year as recently as 2010.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In short, probably not.<\/p>\n Even as Evergrande continues to grab headlines, several other Chinese property firms are still facing major challenges.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, China South City Holdings was handed a winding up order by Hong Kong’s High Court, making it the biggest developer to be forced into liquidation since Evergrande.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, rival real estate giant Country Garden is still trying to secure a deal with its creditors to write off more than $14bn of outstanding foreign debt.<\/p>\n After a series of postponements, its next High Court liquidation hearing in Hong Kong is due to take place in January 2026.<\/p>\n “The whole property sector has been in trouble. More Chinese property firms will collapse,” Professor Qiao says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While the Chinese government has taken a number of measures to help shore up the property market and support the economy as a whole it has not swooped in to directly bail out developers.<\/p>\n Mr Chan says these initiatives seem to be having a positive impact on the property market: “We think the bottom [has been reached] and it should be in a slow recovery. However, we probably don’t expect the recovery to be very strong.”<\/p>\n Wall Street investment giant Goldman Sachs warned in June that property prices in China will continue to fall until 2027.<\/p>\n Ms Wang agrees, and estimates that China’s stricken property market will “hit the bottom” in around two years when demand finally catches up with supply.<\/p>\n But Ms Garcia-Herrero puts it in starker terms: “there is no real light at the end of the tunnel.”<\/p>\n Beijing has sent a “clear message on its intention of not bailing out the housing sector,” Ms Wang adds.<\/p>\n The Chinese government has been careful to avoid the kind of measures that could encourage further risky behaviour by an already heavily indebted industry.<\/p>\n And while <\/b>in the boom times, the property market was a key driver of China’s economic growth, the ruling Communist Party’s priorities now lie elsewhere.<\/p>\n President Xi Jinping is more focussed on high-tech industries like renewable energy, electric cars and robotics.<\/p>\n As Ms Wang puts it, “China is in a deep transition to a new age of development.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"AFP](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/2598\/live\/ed5e6e00-7d80-11f0-98a0-956f61945264.jpg.webp\")
AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nWhat happened to Evergrande?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/static.files.bbci.co.uk\/bbcdotcom\/web\/20250814-092707-b0ec5bc3fc-web-2.27.1-1\/grey-placeholder.png\")
![\"AFP](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/28df\/live\/781391f0-7bde-11f0-a23c-9955f17f3255.jpg.webp\")
AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nHow was China’s economy impacted?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
![\"Getty](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/9eda\/live\/9129d120-7e47-11f0-b9c8-bf093da3c87a.jpg.webp\")
Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nIs the property crisis over yet?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
![\"AFP](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/27df\/live\/9f367b80-7bcf-11f0-9765-e18c86810ff5.jpg.webp\")
AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n