by
David Harvey
One of the reasons that a troubled global capitalism survived as well as it did after 2007-8 was because of China's sustained growth of productive consumption. The Communist Party leadership in Beijing almost certainly did not set out to save global capitalism, but this is in effect what they did.
basically the govt pushed for a massive construction boom during the downturn, not necessarily because the country actually needed these new buildings/cities, but because it was the best way of holding economic depression at bay