Vacant But Not for Sale

Housing market speculation in previous years has resulted in an "empty apartment" phenomenon— houses and apartments are purchased as investments but left unoccupied.Various Chinese media outlets reported that about 64.5 million urban electricity meters read zero in the first six months of this year in empty apartments across the country.Andy Xie,an independent economist based in Shanghai,said the huge number of empty apartments foreshadows a bubble burst in an article recently published on Century Weekly.Edited excerpts follow: