There's a huge cultural difference there though -- people don't trust stocks, bonds, or bank accounts. Housing is the only investment most people will consider.
Also those houses are being bought with money being smuggled out of China. For all of the reasons that patio11 gives in https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-..., real estate is an excellent investment for money whose provenance you wish to be hard to discover.
This is a negative way to look at China's history.
As a Chinese-American, whose family and friends all profited greatly from China's rise, I do wonder, how much of that profit was just being lucky enough to support the "winning team," and how much blood was shed on the other side.
We have a model for that in your birth country (American Civil War). But from my fractured knowledge of Chinese history, there's been a lot less backpedaling vis-a-vis the Civil War on ideological differences between the winning and losing side (and we mostly lament those as regression instead of progress).
In China, things have come back. People who escaped were invited back with promises of better treatment, even given platforms (eg, martial arts) but who knows what we Earthlings have lost from people who didn't. Biomechanics, biology, art, technology, philosophy...
Nor should they, cultural or not. Look how the government destroyed the Ant group recently. When they can unilaterally do that, how can you find a safe stock?
The Chinese situation is caused by government rather than by their culture. Chinese corporations are forced into inefficient state-mandated investments and provide meager rates of returns for shareholders. They get tons of shiny public infrastructure while savers are given nothing, and are not allowed to invest internationally. In other words, it is pure financial repression.
