A view from Taiyuan, North China’s Shanxi Province File Photo: cnsphoto

Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), has refuted overseas media reports that China is experiencing a real estate crisis, saying that China's fixed-asset investment still has great potential for growth.

"Recently, the overseas media has continued to hype China's real estate crisis and decline of the construction industry. In fact, China is still in a peak period of urbanization and an initial stage of rural vitalization, and fixed-asset investment still has great potential for further growth," Guo said at the annual conference of the Financial Street Forum 2022, which opened in Beijing on Monday, according to a report by yicai.com.

Guo's words are another signal of government policy orientation to support China's real estate market, while ensuring that the domestic real estate market does not face large-scale systemic risks, despite having faced some turbulence in recent months.

The People's Bank of China (PBC), China's central bank, also convened a symposium along with the CBIRC on Monday. During the meeting, PBC Deputy Governor Pan Gongsheng noted that the PBC will launch a 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) loan support plan for six commercial banks, so that they can help in guaranteeing house delivery, according to a report by the Economic Daily.

At present, officials are soliciting opinion from commercial banks as to the specific operation plan for this structural policy tool, and the policy should be launched in the near future, the report noted.

The meeting also stressed that China would fully implement a long-term real estate mechanism, implement differentiated housing credit policies based on urban policies, and stabilize the issuance of real estate enterprise development loans and construction enterprise loans.

China's real estate development investment fell by 8.8 percent year-on-year to 11 trillion yuan in the first 10 months this year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

Global Times