Debt is as much a part of the real estate business as bricks and mortar. And as the great New York builder William Zeckendorf once famously remarked, ‘it’s better to be alive at 20 percent than dead at the prime rate.’

But the Evergrande Group, the second largest real estate company in China, has taken corporate debt to new heights, with liabilities of a staggering $310 billion, to finance its breakneck growth.