China can avoid Japan-style property bubble

[BEIJING] China's policy fine-tuning and ongoing urbanisation can help it to avoid a Japan-style property bubble, a senior housing official said, amid fears that a housing market crash could lead to a hard landing for the world's second-largest economy.

Beijing has allowed local governments to take differentiated property tightening measures, rather than a one-size-fits-all bid to cool the market, Vice Housing Minister Qiu Baoxing said in remarks published in the Southern Metropolis Daily.

He said that Japan's property bubble burst in the 1980s, when the country's urbanisation was near an end and it could not generate fresh drivers to keep the market afloat.