" We drove for miles, past half-constructed houses, block after block after block, forty-storey towers standing on the ruins of old Beijing neighbourhoods. The driver told us the flats were empty. People invested in them, but did not want to rent them out: rental rates weren’t high enough and a brand-new flat was easier to resell than a ‘used’ apartment. These were hundred-square-metre bank accounts. By 2018, around fifty million flats stood empty in China, according to estimates. Enough to accommodate the entire population of Germany – and France, too. "

― Andri Snær Magnason , On Time and Water