If you “leave it to the free market”, you will just get further sprawl of single family homes; Los Angeles-ifying the rest of the country. Maybe at best sprinkle in some paper mache five-over-ones in there. The US does need more, denser housing, but will never be provided by the free market.

The actual “Chinese” solution would be to take genuinely blighted areas of a place like Detroit, build very dense, affordable public housing, provide tons of services and public transportation, and ensure local residents get priority. It would be a solution everyone would love, better than Americans could possibly imagine, but the idea that this could be done by the free market strains credulity.

Edit: kicking myself for missing the bigger point in my original comment. In China housing is largely decommodified, it’s something to ensure everyone has. Meanwhile housing in the US is a speculative asset driven by exchange values first and a use value second. Of course there is a speculative element in Chinese real estate but it is not primary. This is a direct result of socialist vs capitalist relations. Since changing THAT isn’t on the table, the US cannot do what China is doing.