How were they shielded? Do you have a source I can read? I'm genuinely interested.

I remember reading that there were protests because people bought condos and were essentially told they were never going to get completed. Did those people get a refund from the government or the company?

What about all those unfinished buildings that people got in debt to buy?

There's a high percentage of Chinese workers that invested their savings in real estate instead of having a pension. ~~And there's no welfare~~*, which means a lot of people who will be left on the street when they are too old to work.

*After a complain, I did some research so I can provide enough clarity on my statement:

• A new pensions system was built on top of the previous communist system (1986~1990s), then in 2004 the gov added enterprise annuities and finally, an IRA system was launched.
  This last part was launched in 2022, which finally covered about 1.05 billion people.
• There is though a difference in which plan can someone join, depending on their residence permit (either rural or urban).
  The residence permit doesn't have a link to where you live, so a rural hukou won't become an urban hukou just for moving to the city.
• Why does this matter? Well, an urban hukou will get about $461 US dollaridoos, while the Old-Age Insurance for Urban and Rural Residents plan (entirely used for rural residence permit holders and unsalaried urbant residents), it's about $25 US dollars and a smile.

The why enterprise annuities didn't work (0.25% of companies enrolled) is a very complex one but let's say is mostly due to the abnormally high statutory pension contribution rate.

So up until 2022, a little more than 500 million people had few options for extra savings beyond those $25 dollars/person, and that was real estate (you know, the thing that always goes up).

With IRAs now, and a possible conversion from the two main basic pension plans into a centralized one, it's possible newer generations will have a foothold for a safer savings method, however there are several challenges on the horizon:

• All the economic turmoil of COVID-19, foreign firms moving out, pandemic lockdowns, etc.. is making it harder to strengthen the pension system.
• Demographic issues and high youth unemployment.
• Runs on small banks.
• Recent cuts on local health care benefits.
• The statutory pension contribution rate was lowered, but is still about 16% Iirc. This means though the pension bags are getting 4% less full every year.

Altogether this could very well be a ticking time bomb.