Resilience of real estate sector is not just of its own making

BY TUESDAY, all the 31 major listed real estate enterprises in China had published their sales performance for 2017, showing their combined annual turnover was 3.38 trillion yuan ($519 billion), soaring 54 percent year-on-year. Guangming Daily commented on Thursday:

The dramatic rise in housing sales last year is beyond the expectations of many, given that it coincides with "the harshest controls" on the market, which have created the illusion that the property market is struggling for survival in a cold winter.

But the fast growth of the real estate sector is evident from the performance of these real estate enter-prises, and it is also verified by the rapid rise in government revenues from land sales. The governments of 300 cities pocketed a total of 4.01 trillion yuan from the land sales last year, 36 percent more than 2016.