It is not yet clear how the China story will end, but this process of decay in the quality of a binge—from good investments in factories or roads to questionable ones in real estate megaprojects—often results in a meltdown of some kind. Thailand is a classic case, because its long record of strong investment—in the roads and factories that transformed its eastern seaboard—got derailed in the late 1990s. The optimism of the preceding boom inspired many Thais to begin borrowing heavily to buy real estate, creating a bubble that when pricked helped trigger the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98.
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