After the CCP's Aggressive Market-Rescue Efforts, Multiple Indicators Fell Short of Expectations; Housing Prices in 70 Cities Hit the Largest Drop in Nine Years.

In China, unfinished buildings are visible everywhere. (Screenshot from X Platform)

[People News] The effectiveness of the CCP’s launch of a package of market-rescue policies has drawn much attention, and October’s latest economic data became the focus. The official report card showed several rebounds and growths, but the data fell short of market expectations, especially in various real estate indicators, where the downward trend has not stopped even after the rescue efforts. Housing prices in 70 cities have recorded the largest drop in nine years.

According to Radio Free Asia, on Friday (November 15), the National Bureau of Statistics of the CCP released multiple economic data. Aside from retail data surpassing market expectations, other indicators were all worse than expected. The industrial added value for enterprises above designated size grew by 5.3% year-on-year in October, a decline of 0.1 percentage points from September and below the market expectation of 5.6%. Fixed-asset investment for the first ten months of this year reached 42.32 trillion yuan, growing by 3.4% year-on-year, with the growth rate remaining unchanged, also lower than market expectations.

Multiple real estate indicators continue their downward trend, vastly differing from the official interpretation.

The most notable real estate data shows that in the first ten months, real estate development investment dropped by 10.3% year-on-year, with the decline further widening. The floor area of houses under construction also decreased by 12.4% year-on-year. The sales revenue and area of newly built commercial housing continued to show double-digit declines year-on-year. According to calculations by Reuters based on official data, real estate prices in 70 cities fell by 5.9% year-on-year, marking the largest decline since 2015.

Housing price declines hit a new low, reflecting the ineffectiveness of rescue measures.

Wang Guochen, Assistant Researcher at Taiwan's Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research, stated that based on data from the CCP's National Bureau of Statistics, housing prices in 70 large- and medium-sized cities fell by 6.2%. This further proves that the CCP's recent rescue measures have failed to revive the housing market.

Wang Guochen said: "We also calculated for the 70 large- and medium-sized cities. The national average has once again hit a historical low. It’s clear that no one is willing to invest, and the downward trend is ongoing. Sales have shown double-digit declines. Last month, the rescue measures reduced mortgage interest rates, yet people are still unwilling to buy houses. So, they are completely ineffective. The National Bureau of Statistics can only claim that every month is 'bottoming out and rebounding,' but the bottom is never visible. Every month is the bottom, isn’t it?"

Reasons for not buying houses shift from lack of confidence in housing prices to lack of confidence in the future.

Wang Guochen stated that even after implementing measures such as reducing mortgage interest rates to lower investment costs, these have failed to stimulate private willingness to buy houses. This indicates that the public has shifted from merely lacking confidence in the recovery of the housing market to lacking confidence in the recovery of the economy.

Wang Guochen said: "The problem is that people are unwilling to buy houses because the economy has been stagnating and is about to enter its fourth year. Currently, people simply do not have the money to buy houses. The most critical policy is to first address the public’s pessimism toward real estate. The key point is to allocate 10 trillion yuan to purchase the unsold housing inventory. If you don’t achieve this, the economy fundamentally won’t improve."

Various data show no signs of stabilization, and official interpretations are one-sided.

Economist Si Ling also stated that despite aggressive measures to rescue the market, the latest real estate data has generally shown no improvement, highlighting a collapse in confidence from businesses to the general public regarding economic prospects, especially in real estate development.

Si Ling said: "The growth rate of new construction projects is a crucial indicator of whether the real estate market is truly regaining confidence and whether consumers are beginning to restore their trust in Chinese real estate. However, it has not increased alongside China's so-called growth. Real estate companies, seeing that no one is buying houses and demand is severely insufficient, lack the motivation to start new projects. They would rather channel the large amounts of liquidity provided by the CCP government to support real estate companies into completing previously abandoned projects than build new ones."

Si Ling stated that among the latest data, only retail figures can be considered an improvement. He believes that the spokesperson for the CCP's National Bureau of Statistics selectively reports good news while ignoring bad news, interpreting the data in a one-sided manner.

Si Ling said: "October includes China's National Day holiday, so the warming of consumer spending is a natural figure, and this growth has seasonal factors. Moreover, with China's macroeconomic performance being so poor in September and the base figure being low, achieving growth in October was relatively easy. This is just playing with numbers and word games. It’s similar to the period after the pandemic lockdowns were lifted when China heavily emphasized economic growth, which had no real substantive meaning."

Si Ling stated that the economic problems China is currently facing have accumulated over a long period. Unless bold reforms are introduced, such as changing land ownership from public to private, it is impossible to stimulate economic recovery in the short term.