Land prices have soared at recent auctions in Beijing in a sign that the Chinese property market is heating up again despite a long campaign by the government to cool it down.
A large parcel of land in Tongzhou, a Beijing suburb, sold this week for Rmb1bn ($160m), 491 per cent more than the starting price – the highest premium paid at an auction in the capital in two years.
A recovery in the Chinese land market began towards the end of last year and is a welcome development for local governments, which rely on land sales as an important source of fiscal revenue. But the price surge has triggered criticism that officials could be laying the groundwork for a property bubble by restricting the supply of land.