Alarming China statistic of the day

More news from China about the miraculous recovery in the nation's real estate market comes via this Bloomberg report.

Record bank lending in China drove average prices for new homes 6.3 percent higher in June in 36 large and medium-sized Chinese cities, according to government data. That gain came even as urban unemployment rose and wage growth for workers in Chinese cities slowed.

“The government should do something to effectively control the speed of growth of the real estate market,” Han said. “The housing price in Shanghai is already too high. We must prevent excessive inflation of home prices in this market.”

Chinese banks made 7.37 trillion yuan ($1.07 trillion) of new loans in the first six months of 2009 as the government sought to bolster economic growth that slowed to the weakest in almost a decade in the first quarter.

As a point of reference, going back more than 20 years in the U.S. Case-Shiller 10-City Home Price Index, the largest monthly price increase was just over two percent in July 1988.