China's housing investment is preposterously large

The more we hear about China's housing market, the more outrageous it seems. China's real estate investment grew by 75% last year: in total, 4.4 trillion yuan was spent last year, a large part of which was fueled by 9.5 trillion in new loans. If you need a physical gauge for just how much that is, chew on this: over the course of the year, China sold 937 million square meters of space, nearly twice as much as in 2008. In order to curb housing market mania, Wen Jiabao announced new curbs on lending to manage credit growth, but with the enormous contribution that housing makes to the national GDP, we'd be surprised if anything but a crash will stop people from buying new houses.