And the way I read it, if the government buys the properties, that means the people who previously owned them would get paid off. They would be made whole. The author goes on to suggest an alternative that would have let the scheme continue and gradually wind down in order to not cause people to lose their shirts, but fails to realize that buying their properties (at a fair value) achieves the same result but quicker, and likely more efficiently. The one thing that I think makes sense is that the CPC really sat on their hands for too long with this one. BTW, they could have created a national pension system in exchange for blowing up this bubble, which would have probably worked better than a buyout but Xi doesn't believe in welfare so...