Owning a home in Beijing should have been a profitable investment for Zhang, a 32-year-old consultant. But the Chinese property market’s years-long collapse has meant he is “definitely losing money”. Asked if this week’s bumper stimulus measures would restore his faith in the Chinese economy, he was clear: “Absolutely not.”
The package — Beijing’s biggest since the pandemic — includes billions of dollars from the central bank to support the stock market, policy rate cuts, measures to boost bank liquidity and efforts to stabilise China’s prolonged property crisis, including a 50-basis point interest rate cut for mortgage holders such as Zhang.
This was followed by one of the most forceful statements on Thursday from China’s politburo, which held what analysts called an “emergency” meeting on the economy and announced that it would intensify fiscal spending to support growth.