MASTERS The risk factor is still there. Chinese buyers have provided a major support to the Australian property market, and if this disappears it is a big risk domestically. But it’s not a big concern at the moment. For instance, I have recently visited investors in North and South America, where questions about Chinese risk and the impact on Australia have historically been high on the agenda. This time they were hardly mentioned.

WHETTON None of the hard data from China are especially bad or good at the moment. The most recent Communist Party meeting went reasonably smoothly and didn’t produce any major changes. So we are probably all assuming that, as a control economy, things will remain on an even keel for some time.

No doubt something will emerge at some stage, and the debt issue is always there. But major disruption in China is not a central case at this stage.

DONALDSON It’s something of a boy-who-cried-wolf situation in China, in the sense that it’s not that the issues don’t exist or that everybody doesn’t recognise there is a large risk should there be a catalyst that makes the problem unfold. The issue is timing – is it a year away or five years away?

This is phenomenally difficult to call. Until it emerges as something that forces a wholesale recalibration it is more or less impossible to make it a core view. We don’t see the Chinese government forcing a problem on itself via excessive stimulus, anyway.

WHETTON The observers to watch are the global central banks. They don’t seem to be saying much – China rates one sentence in Reserve Bank of Australia statements, for instance. This probably downplays China’s importance, and it is more prominent in Federal Reserve statements on monetary policy. But those who could be more worried about China do not appear to be.

GOODMAN One thing that is interesting with China is capital controls arising from the authorities’ focus on stability. The restriction on making “trophy investments” and similar factors could have a significant impact on the Australian property market – and we have definitely seen a reduction in activity from offshore, and specifically Chinese, property buyers.

Part of this is down to Australian policy, for instance the introduction of vacant-home taxes and state-government stamp-duty levies, making it less attractive for foreign buyers. But I don’t think this is the main cause.

We are going to find out the answer to a question we have been asking for a long while, which is whether it matters to our economy that there is property being financed and built by Chinese companies and bought by Chinese investors.