Chinese local governments' real estate-related special bond issuance surges in Q1

Chinese local governments accelerated new special-purpose bond issuance in Q1 of 2026, with issuance of real estate-related bonds surging from a year earlier, and the issuance scale of urban renewal-related special-purpose bonds has reached one-third of last year's total.

According to data from the China Index Academy (CIA), since Q2 2025, newly issued local government special-purpose bonds allocated to real estate-related sectors have consistently exceeded Yuan 200 billion ($29.3 billion) per quarter, and in this segment, funding for land reserves and affordable housing projects has recorded particularly strong