Money Is Pouring into Tech Like It’s 1999, and That's Not Good

In short, the Chinese federal government sets GDP growth targets for each and every state. Every state is therefore obligated to meet these targets. Post 2009, real GDP growth has been underperforming, and more of the remaining GDP has to be made up for in infrastructure spending (which includes building apartments, airports, and the usual roads, bridges rails etc on debt). This is visible in various "ghost" cities and malls which have popped up recently (in addition to undercapacity airports and elaborate train stations). This in itself isn't necessarily a problem. The problem comes in when increasingly, a large amount of the money the states are lending is coming from "shadow loans" (unregulated black-market loans, analogous to sub-prime mortgages (kindof)) because regular forms of more legitimate financing have dried for these purposes (too much infrastructure already).

This is simultaneously fueled by difficulties rich Chinese have in being able to invest abroad, leaving condos in these ghost cities being owned, and purchased by investors' excess capital as assets (similar to a real estate bubble as what happened in Dubai a few years ago).

This excess capital, sourced from underperforming Chinese states leaking over to other markets, have been responsible for local real estate bubbling over in major cities like London, Vancouver, San Francisco, New York, etc by foreign nationals buying these properties as investments as a way to shelter money. It's very likely this capital is also indirectly being displayed in public equity markets.

(note: this is my own analysis of several articles and reports I read, so take it with a grain of salt)

I have, and although I don't think the current tech boom is as bubbly as the late 90's, I do see a lot of similarities in the area. Traffic, though, is no where near as bad as it was back then. But, it's getting there. However, construction is at an all time boom. I have never seen more cranes nor construction in SF ever. I think we are back to heady times, and I would be really cautious as an investor in the next 2 years.