The world's most indebted property developer, Evergrande, has been given a winding up order by a court in Hong Kong. The company, which has extensive holdings in China, has more than $300 billion in liabilities. Evergrande's shares fell by more than 20% on the news before trading was suspended on the exchange in Hong Kong. Let's go live to Beijing now and speak to our China correspondent, Stephen McDonald. Stephen, this has been rumbling on for a long time. Finally, a court in Hong Kong has said, enough is enough.

Yeah, and I don't think anyone in China will have been surprised by this decision. I mean, the court had been giving Evergrande more chances. There'd been adjournments, and the judge said, you know, you haven't given me a plan that shows a restructuring that would enable you to make the repayments you have to make. And so I'm going to order you into liquidation. Now, people who've been following this story will know that Evergrande was like a huge pillar of the economy here until 2021, when it started to miss its repayments. Now, it, as it turned out, had been going further and further into debt to stay one step ahead of its creditors, selling residential properties before it could even finish the ones that are already promised. And as it went further into debt, it kept borrowing more, and eventually it's all come undone for it. Actually, I should add, we have just had a statement from their company, by the way. So, according to the executive director of Evergrande, today's court ruling is contrary to our original intentions. Sean Shule said, we can only say that we have tried our best and that the decision is very regrettable.

But the decision has been made, which means now Evergrande is going through this very long and complicated process of paying back those that it owes money to. But in some cases, people might not see any money they may have invested. Families, for example, who've put deposits on a flat that was going to be built one day.

Yeah, I mean, very long and very mean people are already trying to understand how this is going to play out. One problem is it's not even guaranteed that officials in China will recognize the court appointed liquidator their right to be able to seize assets in mainland China. I mean, according to some estimates, only a very small percentage of what's owed can possibly be repaid via this method. And so, in a funny way, it's also the chinese system on trial, if I could put it, that, know, this country wants more foreign investment, and investors are going to be look at how this plays out. And if these international creditors, and they're the ones who've brought this to the courts in Hong Kong in the first place, if they can't get their money back, if they can't get access to these assets that Evergrande has in mainland China, well, I think yet again there'll be people questioning, should I really be investing that much money in China? Is it too risky? And so a lot to be played out yet? And funnily enough, in the interim for potentially years to come, Evergrand will keep building buildings here because there's a lot of unwinding, a lot of reorganization that has to take place.

And even, would you believe the chance of yet another attempt to strike a deal to somehow bail them out?