Collapse of China's Evergrande a sign of an economic model reaching its limits

Open this photo in gallery: A worker stands outside an abandoned Evergrande commercial complex in Beijing on January 29, 2024.GREG BAKER/Getty Images John Rapley is an author and academic who divides his time among London, Johannesburg and Ottawa. His books include Why Empires Fall (Yale University Press, 2023) and Twilight of the Money Gods (Simon and Schuster, 2017). It's not just Canada that has a housing problem. This week China's Evergrande Group, the country's second-largest property developer, was ordered into liquidation by a Hong Kong court. It's a symptom of a malaise in the country - namely, an economic model…