Beijing has often addressed economic troubles by boosting spending on infrastructure and real estate, but now heavy debt loads make that a hard playbook to follow.
China’s stock market was plunging and its currency was teetering. The head of the central bank, fielding questions at a rare news conference, said that China would make it easier to get home mortgages.
It was February 2016 and Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s longtime governor at the time, announced what proved to be the start of an extraordinary blitz of lending by China’s immense banking system.
