In years past, the one thing the Chinese experiment in foreign-assisted totalitarian-style capitalism could count on was a constantly growing economy. Creating goods for export around the world was enough of a boost to the system that it kept the masses from starving and eventually revolting. It also made a lot of insiders wealthy, and they were the ones who created the demand for housing that we’re going to discuss today.

According to The Wall Street Journal, frustrated Chinese homebuyers, upset because the dwellings for which they took out mortgages are months beyond their promised completion date, are threatening to withhold payment and place the lenders on the hook for a sum estimated at between $150 billion and $370 billion. “We’ve seen an increasing amount of frustration from Chinese citizens who have sunk their life savings into China’s real estate market, primarily viewing it as an investment vehicle or a safe investment, and now many of them are left unable to move into their homes,” said Craig Singleton, a fellow at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, to Fox News.

It’s not a large piece of the Chinese mortgage pie, but it’s enough to be noticeable and might be cause for the Xi regime to demand action. “If unpaid mortgages accelerate, external intervention from Beijing will be necessary, quickly,” said Rhodium Group analyst Allen Feng. “Without it, more developers will default on loans, bonds, and obligations to contractors and homebuyers, and construction will slow further, forcing more people to stop paying their mortgages.” Shades of our own housing bubble from 2007.

Mortgage defaults may not be all that’s wrong with China, but they can be a significant indicator of trouble. Battered by a zero-tolerance approach to COVID that’s led to shutdowns of major industrial centers and a sluggish economic recovery in other parts of the world, experts in that field disagree on whether the Chinese economy is “on the mend, but very weak” or still in a “rapid economic slowdown.” Reliable numbers are hard to come by from China — imagine that — but there’s no question that the wealth-creation machine of the 2010s is in need of repair. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty warns, “Maybe the whole [Chinese economy] is a house of cards.”

When economic tough times come, though, the refuge of the scoundrel is often a war, as it has the advantages of necessitating an increase in production and creating a decrease in mouths to feed, both now and in never-born future generations. And while an invasion of Taiwan wouldn’t be expected to be a high-casualty event, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was supposed to be a walk in the park, too. Author and former Pentagon strategist Elbridge Colby theorized in a Twitter thread that China has a “compelling case for action” regarding Taiwan, while CIA Director William Burns told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum, “I think the risks become higher, it seems to us, the further into this decade you get.” He added, “The Chinese leadership is trying to study the lessons of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and what it tells them.”

With the Chinese economy fraying at the seams, a lack of American leadership through at least 2024, and Xi Jinping hoping to remain in power for another term in office, would-be Chinese homeowners who withhold mortgage payments may ultimately become cannon fodder for an island invasion.