I remember him from the "Karate Kid" movie, he played Daniel san right?
They are real and its not sinister at all. The Chinese are just greedy, they thought they could all put money into a housing investment and sell it later for a profit. The problem is the developers kept building creating a surplus of housing. This youtube video channel has a pretty good explanation of it.
https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcyYyyaPz84