Halting house-purchase subsidies helps correct distortion of market

ON TUESDAY, the government of Shenyang, the capital of northeastern China's Liaoning province, issued a guideline lowering the down payment requirements for house purchases in the city to as low as zero, and subsidizing purchases by college students and fresh graduates to encourage sales. The higher authorities suspended the guidelines on Tuesday night. An article in Beijing Youth Daily commented on Wednesday:

For almost a decade the real estate market has been propelling China's economic growth. Now the market is cooling and it is casting huge pressure on the economy as a whole, due to the chain effects.

That is why one local government after another has issued policies aimed at reducing local housing inventories.