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China Evergrande, set to be delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday, leaves behind a giant pile of debt and long line of desperate creditors.
Alexandra Stevenson, who has written about China Evergrande’s rise and fall, reported from Hong Kong.
Aug. 24, 2025, 7:59 p.m. ET
The moment is expected to pass without fanfare. China Evergrande, a real estate developer that once represented the pinnacle of China’s economic prowess, will be kicked off the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday.
Evergrande, which made its financial debut in Hong Kong 16 years ago, had once been the fastest growing property developer in a country brimming with promise of profits for investors. It will be remembered as one of the world’s most indebted companies whose collapse brought China’s financial system to the brink.
The company tested Beijing’s longtime “too big to fail” policy toward its biggest companies. It shattered its tolerance of unchecked borrowing by giant corporations. And Evergrande’s collapse in 2021, under more than $300 billion of debt, exposed the vulnerabilities of China’s economy and its dependence on real estate as a driver of growth.
Now what’s left is the carcass of a corporate behemoth — 1,300 not-yet-finished real estate projects in more than 280 cities and hundreds of thousands of home buyers still waiting on their apartments. Then there’s the long line of creditors, from businesses in China that worked for Evergrande to investors in London and New York who bet on it, still waiting to be repaid.
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Last year, a Hong Kong judge ordered Evergrande to be dismantled. She appointed Alvarez & Marsal, a firm that specializes in bankruptcies and had once helped unwind Lehman Brothers, to do the task. A year and a half into the job, the liquidators, as Alvarez & Marsal is known, have made small steps toward helping overseas creditors get tiny slices of what they are due.
