does a video show that dozens of new buildings are being destroyed right now across the country?

Dozens of buildings barely out of the ground that collapse, destroyed with dynamite. This is what we can see on a video shared massively on social networks at the moment. Internet users explain that this is happening in China and illustrates the real estate crisis which is severely hitting the country at the moment. These images were also broadcast in TV topics in France. However, these are old images.

Real estate crisis in China, dozens of unfinished buildings are destroyed. pic.twitter.com/glv9fmmCqy

— Pat Peka (@Pekapat) September 3, 2022

These images are very real and were shot in China. But these are old images, contrary to what some messages on social networks may suggest. In this succession of images we see that at least three of the four videos date back at least a year. Some of these images were also broadcast by Chinese television on August 28, 2021. They can also be found on September 16, 2021, in a television news broadcast on franceinfo. Another video seems even older since it is already found on the internet in 2018.

Some of the buildings that we see correspond to a construction site launched ten years ago and whose promoter went bankrupt in 2013, as explained in articles published last year and citing in particular the agency Chinese state Xinhua News. The real estate crisis in China, it especially worsened about two years ago. The construction site in question took so long that the towers suffered irreversible damage. The buildings were therefore finally destroyed last year.

The real estate crisis in China remains no less real. Many promoters have gone into debt and are putting the key under the door. They built a lot but not sold enough. Result: many sites are stopped dead. Chinese who have bought apartments find themselves completely destitute, forced to pay a loan for accommodation in which they still cannot live. According to Agence France Presse, which quotes a Japanese bank, Chinese developers have so far only delivered 60% of pre-sold homes between 2013 and 2020.

In summary, mistrust in the face of these images that circulate everywhere. They are true but old and do not illustrate at all what is happening precisely at the moment in China.