Local Governments Battle Beijing Over China’s Real Estate Market – and more of Today’s China Real Estate Links | August 16, 2012

Here is a list of the day’s latest China real estate news collected from around the web:

• Local Governments Battle Beijing Over China’s Real Estate Market

  Over the past six months local governments have introduced various policies to stimulate real estate markets, which they see as a source of much-needed funds. This is in contrast to efforts by the central government, which in 2010 implemented controls to cool the market, something many fear was a dangerous bubble in the making. Local governments pay lip service to the central governments curbs, but at the same time have made efforts to boost the market. This is a sign that they see the need to balance central government policies with finance needs.

• China’s Bear Market Lures Foreign Bids as Locals Pull Funds

  International money managers are lining up to buy stocks in mainland China at a record pace, even as a third year of equity losses spurs local investors to empty trading accounts like never before. While overseas firms were granted $6.9 billion of quotas to purchase mainland securities since December, more than in any full year since the government program began, the number of Chinese stock accounts containing funds dropped by 788,000 to 56.3 million in the year to Aug. 3, the most for a 12-month period.

• Jiangmen denies reports over inspections

  The Bureau of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of Jiangmen in South China’s Guangdong Province denied that it had been criticized for slow implementation of the central government’s real-estate curbing policies, the China Business News (CBN) reported Tuesday. Over the weekend, there were reports saying that the State Council had finished its inspections, and that Jiangmen was the only city to be criticized for slack implementation of property policies among the 16 inspected cities. “But from what we know, the news is not true, since the inspection conclusion has not come out yet,” said Zhou Yongzhong, vice director of the city’s publicity department, as quoted by the CBN.

• China ‘Golden Years’ Are Gone as Growth Slows, Vale Says

  China’s “golden years” are gone as economic growth at the world’s second-biggest economy slows, said an official at Vale SA (VALE5), the top iron-ore producer. Vale, which shipped about 44 percent of its iron ore and pellets to Chinese steelmakers in the second quarter, expects the country to start to recover by the end of the year, said Roberto Castello Branco, the Rio de Janeiro-based company’s director of investor relations. Vale sees some “early signals” of recovery, which are still “very weak,” he said.

• Kwoks’ Charges Place Hong Kong Oligarchs Under Siege

  Sky City Church is the perfect spot for billionaire Thomas Kwok to contemplate his two passions: religion and the family property empire. The church occupies the 75th-floor glass-encased pinnacle of Hong Kong’s third-highest building and offers postcard views of the two taller ones — all at least partly owned by Kwok’s Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd. On a recent Sunday morning, with the sun glinting off the world’s most expensive skyscrapers and the blue waters of Victoria Harbor below, a fast-talking evangelical pastor is exhorting Sky City’s congregation to keep the faith, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September issue.

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