China's housing market continued to slow in August, data on Thursday showed, with new home prices falling for a fourth straight month.
Average new home prices fell 1.1 percent from the month before, after dipping 0.9 percent in July, according to Reuters' calculations of figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
On an annual basis, prices inched up 0.5 percent in August, slowing from July's 2.5 percent gain, its slowest annual growth in 20 months.
China's cooling property sector has been cited by many analysts as a major risk as it accounts for about 15 percent of the world's second biggest economy and directly affects other sectors such as banking and construction.
On Tuesday, Chinese media reports said the PBOC will inject $500 billion yuan ($81 billion) of liquidity into its five largest banks, seen as the latest form of targeted easing to support the economy that's been slowing in recent months.
Policymakers have maintained that Beijing won't be unleashing aggressive stimulus as long as economic growth hovers withing the government's targeted range. China has a 7.5 percent growth target for 2014. The economy grew 7.5 percent in the second quarter, after slowing to 7.4 percent in the first quarter, its slowest pace in six quarters.
"Currently, the focus of monetary policy is appropriate, we must keep our chin up and don't resort to strong stimulus as long as economic operations do not slip out of the targeted range," Chen Yulu, a member of the central bank's monetary policy, told the official Financial News on Thursday.