Leaders split over China’s property crackdown
Chinese regulators have raised concerns that the government has underestimated the impact of its crackdown on the property sector.
Vice-premier Liu He, president Xi Jinping’s longtime financial and economic adviser, is leading attempts to ease the pressure on the real estate sector, but he is being opposed by other officials.
Liu, who heads a powerful committee that co-ordinates policy between the central bank and China’s banking, securities and other regulators, has supported recent moves by many regional governments to ease restrictions on property purchases.
Chinese regulators have raised concerns that the government has underestimated the impact of its crackdown on the property sector.
Vice-premier Liu He, president Xi Jinping’s longtime financial and economic adviser, is leading attempts to ease the pressure on the real estate sector, but he is being opposed by other officials.
Liu, who heads a powerful committee that co-ordinates policy between the central bank and China’s banking, securities and other regulators, has supported recent moves by many regional governments to ease restrictions on property purchases.
But according to the officials and policy advisers, two other vice-premiers – Han Zheng and Hu Chunhua – have sided with the housing ministry in wanting to maintain the pressure on developers by tightly regulating how they can use project revenues.
Meanwhile, mainland Chinese property companies are scaling back their presence in Hong Kong.
Cash-strapped property company Kaisa sold an entire floor at the Center, a prime office tower in Hong Kong’s central district in December. Property agents said China Aoyuan, a developer based in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, has tried to sell a 117,000 sq ft office building in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district that it had been hoping to redevelop.
And land sales, which account for a large proportion of Hong Kong’s tax receipts, have also been affected. None of the tendered sites in the government’s land sale programme this year and last year were awarded to mainland developers. In 2020, at least eight of the 15 tendered sites were awarded to mainland-linked companies.
The FT (£)
and The FT (£)
