One of the bigger headaches Asian economies face at the moment is overbuilding, induced by years of easy money before summer last year. It is to be seen everywhere, from the ambitious Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur to 30 per cent commercial vacancy rates in Bangkok.
From this observation it is an easy step to attribute Hong Kong's difficulties to an inflated property market as well. Prices rocketed last year to levels that put home ownership out of reach of an increasing number of people.
There is a crucial difference, however. In the rest of Asia there was overbuilding without much overpricing, barring some notable exceptions. In Hong Kong there may have been overpricing but there was certainly no overbuilding.
Take the first chart below. It shows the square footage of completed private residential buildings as a ratio of Hong Kong's population. This has come down from a peak at the end of the 1980s of 3.5 square foot per person annually to barely one square foot, and the trend is still down.
In other words, developers may have been charging more for their flats but they have not been building more.
There has been a decline bordering on collapse in private residential construction.
In non-residential construction, there has admittedly been an increase in new completions in the past year, as commercial buildings started in the heady days up to last summer were finished.