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The "Life in Venice" housing development, a multibillion-dollar replica of the Italian city on the Chinese coast, stands silent. Many of the tens of thousands of homes are hollow husks of concrete and alabaster. But in recent years the remote, partially abandoned complex has drawn unlikely new residents like Sasa Chen, a burned-out young Chinese woman who until recently worked a high-earning finance job in Shanghai, China's bustling commerce hub. The appeal? Chen pays just 1200 RMB, or USD 168, a month for her apartment in faux Venice in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu. It's so cheap that it's allowed Chen to retire at the tender age of 28. Experts say Chen is part of a broader trend that has seen a growing number of young people across China migrating to small towns and cities, taking advantage of cheap real estate prices that have been plummeting since the COVID pandemic. It's a stark reversal from previous generations that prised upward mobility. In decades past, China'
China will turn from a capital provider to a debt collector of 75 developing countries, including the world's poorest and most vulnerable, this year as they are due to pay back a record USD 22 billion loans owed to Beijing, according to data released by an Australian think tank. China has become the leading debt collector of developing countries, shifting from a net capital provider, "as bills coming due from its Belt and Road lending surge in the 2010s now far outstrip new loan disbursements", the latest research report of the Australian think tank, the Lowy Institute, said. In 2025, about 75 of the world's poorest and most vulnerable countries will make record high debt repayments totalling USD 22 billion to China as a result of peaks in new loan commitments made from 2012 to 2018, the report said. China faces a dilemma and growing diplomatic pressure to restructure unsustainable debt besides mounting domestic pressure, particularly from its quasi-commercial institutions, to recov