Chinese authorities are seeking to crack down on a surge of unregulated lending that is pushing up property prices in the country’s biggest cities, before it wreaks damage on the wider economy.
Zhou Xiaochuan, head of the People’s Bank of China, denounced loans for downpayments on homes as illegal, in comments at the weekend. Pan Gongsheng, a central bank vice-president, said regulators would act against the peer-to-peer companies that grant such loans.
But many experts are worried that property speculation in China’s four biggest cities has reached new highs, largely due to such shadow financing. Unregulated funds have ploughed billions of renminbi into the property market in recent months.