The root cause that all comments here in Lemmy miss is the Chinese approach to tax funding, which is entirely built on cities and provinces being expected to generate tax income through land sales to property developers, and then public officials competency and rise inside the party being measured by the size of that tax income generated trough land sale.

China needs to adopt a western style of income and consumption taxation if they don't have one but I understand that internal enforcements is very lax (to prevent popular protests) and corruption (that ends up siphoning off any revenue raised through taxes).

In short, that housing stock will remain unused and, without maintenance and continued use, will only deteriorate over time, leaving cities with a terrible burdensome legacy