Year in Review: How Evergrande Shook China’s Real Estate Sector to Its Core

2021 was the year China Evergrande Group became a household name for all the wrong reasons.

In the latter half of this year, China’s second-largest developer by sales has been locked in an intensifying battle to keep the lights on. Evergrande’s liquidity crisis stems from slumping sales in a cooling property market amid the central government’s ongoing clampdown on real estate speculation and excessive borrowing, including the August 2020 introduction of the “three red lines” policy, which curbs borrowing in the troubled sector.