Market News

On the last day of November, two of the most drably named agencies in China were thrust into the spotlight.

China Real Estate Information (CREI) and the China Index Academy are private data agencies, and both release monthly readouts on home sales made by the country’s top 100 developers.

Their numbers come out well before official stats are released. So for investors wanting a glimpse into China’s painful, four-year property slump, the agencies are the go-to.

Interest was particularly acute last month on the back of troubled property giant China Vanke revealing it was asking bondholders for more time to repay a chunky 2bn yuan (£212m) debt that matures mid-December.

But the data for November never appeared. China’s property market suddenly went dark.

Bloomberg later reported that Beijing had told the two private sector agencies to withhold the numbers until further notice.

Clients who paid for the reports could reportedly still get them but would be required to keep the data confidential.

The reports were unlikely to have contained good news. CREI’s October reading showed a 42pc slump in sales from a year earlier – the sharpest decline for 18 months.

President Xi Jinping’s administration actually engineered the 2021 property slump, hoping to shift lending and investment away from developers and into more productive sectors. But the CREI numbers suggest Beijing has been perhaps a bit too successful.

Now the authorities are standing confusedly at an economic policy crossroads, apparently hoping that if they hide the signposts then nobody will notice.

“Resorting to data suppression suggests officials are running out of viable policy levers and are now managing optics instead of fundamentals,” said a note from US-based China intelligence firm Trivium.

This isn’t the first time Beijing has switched off the lights. Figures on land sales, foreign investment, business confidence and urban unemployment have all been suppressed in recent years.

But the latest act of data censorship comes as more and more Chinese economic numbers are flashing amber.

Consumer confidence is in a trough, as are retail sales. The youth unemployment rate is stuck above 17pc.

The economic health indicators known as PMIs are hovering in contraction territory. Investment is wilting, especially in the private sector.

Although exports have weathered US president Donald Trump’s tariffs better than expected, Beijing’s target of pumping up GDP by 5pc this year looks decidedly optimistic.

“In the broader economy, there isn’t a load of reasons to be positive,” says Leah Fahy, of Capital Economics. She expects Chinese growth to slow to 3pc next year and just 2pc by 2030.