Quoted from The Australian: An excerpt from Peter Cai's...

Quoted from The Australian: An excerpt from Peter Cai's interview with China Central Banker:

"The housing market is arguably the Achilles heel of the Chinese economy. So what does Zhou think of the state of real estate sector, which is a major contributor to GDP growth?
The short answer: he is not too concerned.
Zhou maintains the economy is still in reasonable shape despite some cyclical turbulence. His diagnosis of the housing market problem is that it is reasonably benign.
He says China is very big with many cities, and the performances of the housing markets in these cities are quite different. “There are problems of oversupply in some places, and in some cities the demand is still very strong,” he said.
Essentially he does not think the housing downturn is a very serious problem for the country. The central bank’s view is that the housing market is just going through a period of cyclical adjustment. Some reports lend support to the view, but there seems to be a problem of oversupply in a lot of third and fourth tier cities where demand is not as strong as in major cities.
The central message is China’s housing market is too varied to make sweeping generalisations. He was asked about what tools the central bank would use to boost the housing market if the situation got worse."