Country Garden, a Chinese real estate giant, has lost billions of dollars and racked up $200 billion in unpaid bills. It’s on the hook to deliver, by one estimate, nearly one million apartments across hundreds of cities in China.The privately owned developer, founded by a farmer three decades ago, is inching closer to default.In China’s housing market, there are plenty of deadbeat developers no longer paying their bills. The possible collapse of Country Garden is one to pay attention to.The company has tried to project confidence. “One shall pick himself up from where he has fallen,” Mo Bin, Country Garden’s president, said last week, pledging to “spare no effort.”But the problem is much bigger than one company, and the timing could hardly be worse. A default by Country Garden would be the latest in a string of collapses in a housing market that has been hurting for years. Emerging from paralyzing lockdowns duri …
