If Evergrande has defaulted a loan/filed bankruptcy, why is this a global big deal?
Are they the only real estate company is China?
Is real estate the only business they are in?
I just wonder why so many folks are wound up about this. I've been too busy watching a volcano to study this shit.
To try to crash course you through why this is interesting;
Real estate makes up a big portion of the Chinese economy and the sector is heavily indebted (There's even theories that overall China has amassed the largest corporate debt in history). Large enough a slowdown or collapse would potentially wipe like 1-2 off global GDP.
In China the only form of investment for the average Chinaman is real estate. As long as China has had a real estate market the property values have gone up, and bonds and stocks are considered unstable and dangerous, so the average Chinese have significant exposure. 90% of homes bought in China in 2019 were 2nd or third homes. If a man wants a wife it's expected he will buy a house. Families take out massive unofficial debt from all sources to buy more houses.
The provincial governments of China can't get funding through taxes or your traditional methods, the gov in Beijing takes that, so the main funding for the provincial governments and their projects and maintainance is heavily financed through this weird method that involves leasing land to a company that sells it to companies to build more real estate and pile money into the system.
Evergrande is the second largest real estate company in China indebted over $300B, now that they've defaulted we could see the Chinese real estate sector bubble pop or deflate.
Global exposure directly is likely minimal; most global real estate has seen the writing on the wall and taken steps to get out. But China is facing power rationing right now, and food shortages are on the horizon, whack that with a market crash? China has already been acting irrationally on the world stage, and Xi's already been beating that Ethno-nationalist drum, things could get messy. (Reaches for Taiwan)
There is another possibility, in which China enters a Japan-style era of stagnation and the various bubble markets of China are slowly tamed back into reality. But by then, with the Chinese demographic collapse, there's a possibility that they wouldn't be able to rise back to the old Tiger economy the world has been expecting since the 2010s.
I think the Chinese might be able to keep the train on the track for another year or two but sooner or later something has to give.
Or the usual and 'nothing' happens as nothing ever happens.