Is there homelessness in China? Why or why not? What happens in China if someone can't pay rent?

There is homeless all around the world. Except maybe Antarctica.

I used to work in china and i have seen some super fucked up shit like a homeless paralized guy with his legs tied to his back (literally folded in half) and rolling around on some makeshift skateboard asking for money.
China is cutthroat as fuck and anyone saying otherwise is fucking lying

When I visited Beijing, we passed through a shantytown--people living in huts made out of whatever debris they could find, such as corrugated metal sheets. So I'd call that homeless.
- As a libertarian I appreciate their government’s not razing all that shit, and just letting people do what they need to do.
  A friend of mine is homeless in SF. His mental health has dropped significantly ever since the city forcibly moved him from the spot where he was camping to a shelter. He says he was doing much better in the tent than in the shelter.
  
  Oh, they razed all that shit when it came time for the Olympics in Beijing.

China really isn't as communist as they and their antagonists claim.
- China doesn't even claim that much as the American propaganda does.
- China is capitalist so...
- Or as a lot of their tankie supporters claim.

China is communist
Not really.
Communist would mean the workers own the means of production. If they truely did, then they wages wouldn't be so low while the west get to benefit from cheap labor.
Rental properties still exist, landlords still exist. Usually the tenants are migrant workers from rural areas and the landlords are people who happened to have money to buy up few apartments in the city. ("Buy" is really a misnomer tbh, you're buying the remainder of a 70-year lease term)
When the tenants don't pay, the landlord will keep calling you or put up a notice on your front door and keep nagging for you to pay. But if it last for a few months, the lanlord usually engages in self-help eviction. Waiting for the tenant to be not at home, then go in and change the locks.
Sometimes, the public security bureau (police) will help the landlord if they have leases and can clearly show the tenant be in the wrong.
Sometimes, they would also help the tenant retrive their belongings if the landlord didn't give them the opportunity to get their stuff and just locked everything inside.
Often times, the tenants would just leave before the landlord starts doing self-help evictions to "save face".
Court hearings for residential evictions are rare. Even most criminal issues (things like petty theft, simple assault) are settled outside of court. Things like fighting is just mediated by the public security bureau.
This is assuming residential leases. Commercial leases would probably end in a lawsuit.
As for what happens after evictions, I'm not sure about that. In China, most migrant workers would have an "ancestral home" that's passed down each generation. its usually given to the eldest son, but if everyone already went to the cities to look for work, then it'd be empty and they'd just tell the elders who you were, hope someone recognize you and confirm your identity, and you then ask for the keys. If a family member is already home, then I guess you just knock on the doors and say hi. (Although, I'm not sure what happens if someone has multiple decendants and they all simultanesly got kicked out of the cities.)
For those with Urban Hukou, I think they just have to go to a homeless shelter since they likely don't have "ancestral homes". Its a homeless shelter just like in the US, overcrowded and not fun to be in.
This is anecdotes from people I know, I can't find much news sources reporting on this. So take it with a grain of salt.
For actual answers, internet searches isn't gonna reveal a lot. Maybe go visit a Chinatown in the west and try to talk to a first-generation immigrant? (and bring a translator with you)

Honestly, you're probably going to have a hard time getting a legitimate answer from someone with experience. Misinformation and disinformation are likely to be tried on both sides but the reality is that it's very difficult to really know.
Even when China does release statistics, you have to take it with a grin of salt.
homeless statistics, accounts and even acknowledgement of their existence is hard to trust even in the most democratic societies simply because of the nature of homeless living. Homeless generally tend to avoid official looking people if they can.
propaganda abounds from every angle when it comes to homeless, propaganda built from within, for within. Propaganda built from within, for export. Propaganda from outside, for themselves. Propaganda from outside, built for us.
The odds of getting first hand experience from a homeless (or formerly) person in China, on Lenny is unrealistically small. A large portion of Chinese housed don't have internet, let alone the homeless. What I can guarantee you is that it's not like the homeless you see in the west. They're not sitting outside of a Starbucks on a cell phone.
- I think the homeless are also largely pushed out of public view as well
  
  That's a large part of it. They don't care if there's a homeless camp 20 k in the forest, as long as it isn't visible.
- A large portion of Chinese housed don’t have internet
  They do. Most people, even some in rural areas, have access to the internet. But due to both censorship issues, and most importantly, the language barrier, its really rare for someone to seek out the western internet. Even first generation Chinese immigrants to the US still mostly use Wechat, even when they have unrestricted access to western-based media (because of the language barrier).
  
  Also because WeChat is definitively the best app on the internet for communicating with their Chinese friends and family both at home and abroad.
  
  Agreed, I dumbed it down a bit to summarize the point. The main point being that there isn't any free pipeline of communication between these groups.
- They're not sitting outside of a Starbucks on a cell phone
  My dude can we not gatekeep homelessness‽ Lack of a home in societies with abundance is a systemic issue stemming from the diversion of tax funds away from supporting those who desperately need it. Just because the Starbucks people are human enough to give the guy a cup of coffee while he charges the best chance he has at getting the support doesn't mean he is the problem.
  Dehumanization of any population is the issue. Your neighbor is not a subhuman to you, nor you to him (I hope) but suddenly the neighbor a few blocks down is a subhuman? What's the local "radius of exclusion" before we start othering more humans?
  
  Do you just comb through comments assuming the worst intentions and inferring the most negative connotation possible from everyone? Or is this a one time thing? Leave that shit on Reddit please you added absolutely nothing to the discussion

Are there homeless in China? Yes
Is there extreme poverty in China? Yes
One thing that western people rarely truly understand is that there are also workers putting in 70+ hour weeks living in company forms under conditions so bad it makes American prisons seem reasonable, and not actually getting ahead with money because they are sending it all to their family in the countryside just to keep them fed.
There are also more than a hundred million Chinese people who don't even have running water.
They also have tens of million people living rich in luxury apartments driving luxury cars with servants to do everything.
- I'm sorry, did you say China or the US?
  
  Funny, and partially accurate.
  The US has fewer people living in the type of poverty that China has, they take some of their poverty to the extreme.
  There are millions living in a tin and brick slums with no running water or access to toilets in the middle of nowhere, Or living 12 people to a single bedroom in literal stacked cages in big cities.
  I'd rather be homeless in the US, by quite a significant margin.

China is about as communist as the Democratic Republic of (insert any country that used that prefacing moniker).

I am going to assume you are American here which I normally avoid but it is relevant to this context. Other countries do not have homelessness like America does. I know people from the war torn countries like Iraq that have come to America and been horrified by the depravity with which we treat our poorest. I have even known people that returned to their relatively dangerous home country because they were poor and found western society too alienating and heartless. So when we talk about homelessness in China I need to insist that the Chinese people do not have this culture. They are incredibly recently industrialized and still have HIGHLY isolated rural regions. I've seen villages only accessible by foot beyond a certain point. This may seem irrelevant because homelessness is a largely urban phenomenon but I mention it to show how prevalent their sense of communal identity still is. In recent years a wealthy urban individualist sub-culture has developed but even still few in China would say that a homeless person is at fault for their homelessness. Instead homelessness is looked upon as a failure of their government and it is because of this that homelessness in China is considerably lower than other countries of similar or even greater economic developement. To give you an idea, over 90% of families in China own a home. For the 10% that do not, rent is 30% of their income at most and usually less (though this is a recently development caused by the "Homes are for living, not for investment" act). Homelessness is low in China because the people find homelessness unacceptable and the government is able and willing to interfere with the profits of private housing investors in order to insure it does not occur. To the Chinese state, someone who is homeless is someone who's labor goes unutilized. For the American state a homeless person is an implicit threat that keeps its laborers working.

Yes, I’ve seen it. I never asked.

Yes. I’ve been there a few times and there are homeless people in the major cities. The property market is largely capitalistic. Maybe someone with more expertise can elaborate but there (or maybe were?) restrictions on working in some cities. Basically like “internal” immigration restrictions.
The policies may not be around anymore and they weren’t necessarily made with ill-intent. It was more of a “Beijing can’t handle anymore people until we build housing and water infrastructure.” But people obviously go where economic opportunity is no matter what governments say. So, there are people working in the informal economy illegally like “illegal immigrants” might be classified in the U.S. or Europe. It’s not like shanty towns or favelas, in my limited experience, but there are slums with, at best, makeshift shelters.
I’m not making excuses for another country but to me, it was like in the West but at a different scale and so a different situation. Some of the policies struck me as harsh at first but I don’t know what the fuck to do if a city’s infrastructure really can’t handle sudden mass migration. And they do build public housing, even if often in ways I wouldn’t. (For instance, demolishing what are to me historic neighborhoods to build giant apartment towers. But I also understand that what’s “historic” to an American is a laughably small period of time.)
I’m trying to be fair, here. Like in any country, there’s homelessness, mental illness, addiction, etc. but I don’t think the Chinese government is ignoring it any more than my own country. And I don’t know what it’s like to have zillions of years of history and over a billion people. Hopefully, someone who lives there can correct any mistakes I’ve made in this summary.
- "Internal migration rules" - yes, the Hukou system is alive and well.
  Though for some smaller cities the restrictions have been lifted, but for any city most non-Chinese have heard of legal migration to it won't be easy.
  But there is a lot of illegal internal migration, and those people are pretty much the bottom rung of Chinese society, working hard jobs long hours in poor conditions, and often sleeping 4, 5 to a small room.
  
  Thank you for clarifying and adding detail. I’m basically just a tourist who had friends living/working/studying in China. But Sinophobia annoys me in a dozen ways.
  It’s one of those situations where you have first-hand experience and other people have imaginary concepts based on propaganda. Assume everywhere is similar and be delighted when you find cultural differences or new food or whatever. Regular, sane people all want the same things, regardless of borders.
- China introduced the "Homes are for living, not for investment" act a while ago. It's significantly reduced the rents. Buying a place and renting it out isn't really profitable anymore.
  So no, the property market isn't capitalistic.
  
  Thanks for the correction. “Capitalistic” was a poor word choice. I meant it as “sort of capitalist” rather than “fully capitalist.” Market-based but with Chinese characteristics, I guess? Capitalistish?
  Some friends lived/worked there when we were younger — in college, they focused on China and I focused on Europe/Econ — so I’d visit and talk to them about their housing situations but they weren’t speculators or anything. I didn’t know about the “homes are for living, not for investment” act. (You won’t believe this about a Lemmy user but I’m a software engineer and science/tech nerd. So, at this point, I mostly follow their space program and tech industry. All my other knowledge is based on personal experience or what friends told me and is definitely a bit outdated.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_China
I'd probably start there.

This is the sort of specialized question that should be asked in a specialized community, rather than here. It even concerns a country, and communities always exist for countries.

I'd argue to say in some aspects, China is more capitalist. Though, some good things showing for them is that they're extremely innovative and fast growing. But absolutely capitalist.

No, they eat the homeless in China.
- 🤯 that's crazy 💀
  also guys, I think this one is pretty obvious sarcasm/joke
  
  How can you tell?
- This is what I've heard as well
  Edit: source