It's already happening. There are high-profile stories of bridges collapsing and so on. I live in Shenzhen right now and was looking for a new apartment during the summer last year. My roommate noted that a lot of the landlords all know that the apartment buildings will be replaced and rebuilt in 20-30 years.
If that's true, the expectation is already there. However, my impression is that this belief stems from this idea that construction will always be happening because that's how the economy rolls.
The question is what percentage of the population believes that this cycle really is the end game and what percentage of the population thinks they're investing into infrastructure what will last their entire life.
Most ordinary people either don't understand the cycle, or even if they do, they're powerless to do anything about it.
If what happened in Korea is any indication, the first generation of apartment buildings will be demolished after 20-30 years, homeowners will be "asked to leave" with as little compensation as the construction company can get away with, and a new block of condos will go up that the previous homeowners just can't afford. In Korea, at least we let the previous homeowners file complaints and protest for a while before we send in the bulldozers. In China, the bulldozers will probably go in first, and the GFW won't let anyone else know what happened next.
This is an accurate picture of what happens right now in China, but limited protests are permitted by homeowners to haggle the price. An extra complication is Chinese can only own their properties for a maximum of 70 years anyway, with many having only 30 or 40 years left on the state-granted lease, so even without the demolition cycle Chinese aren't really looking ahead more than a few decades anyway.
If that's true, the expectation is already there. However, my impression is that this belief stems from this idea that construction will always be happening because that's how the economy rolls.
The question is what percentage of the population believes that this cycle really is the end game and what percentage of the population thinks they're investing into infrastructure what will last their entire life.