China’s property developers are facing a reckoning with their outsized debt burdens. Evergrande Group may have avoided defaulting on its bonds for now, but several of its peers have already done so. Nervous consumers are holding off from buying homes — property prices dropped for the first time in six years in September.  As the music stops for property developers, fewer of them are buying new land. More than a quarter of land parcels offered at public auctions in September reportedly went unsold, the highest rate since 2018. That will have grave implications for China’s local governments, key drivers of Chinese economic growth which for decades have leaned heavily on land sales to generate revenue.  This week, The Wire explains how China’s property downturn could shake China’s local governments, looking at which regions are most at risk, and whether a controversial new property tax could help solve local government’s fiscal woes. Read an op-ed by UCS