A meltdown in China's housing market is unlikely because government policies will keep rising prices in check, a Columbia University business conference was told.

"A crash is unlikely," said Youguo Liang, former managing director of Prudential Real Estate Investors, a unit of New Jersey-based Prudential Financial Inc.

But, he cautioned, "You don't know if there's a bubble until it bursts."

"China is still in a growth cycle," Liang said during a panel discussion on real estate, part of Columbia's 2013 China Business Conference on Friday.

On a per capita basis, Chinese GDP remains "very low, relative to developed countries and relative to developing countries. there's still tremendous room to grow," said Liang, who also worked for Lehman Brothers in New York and Hong Kong in private equity and investment banking.

The conference, sponsored by the Columbia Business School and its Greater China Society student club, focused on the prospects for doing business with China. the backdrop for the event was the Chinese government's stated aim of doubling both the size of the national economy and average income per capita by 2020.

Amid continued GDP growth, China's central government has ordered local administrations to rein in high housing prices. Measures to cool the overheating market have included reductions in bank loans, higher mortgage interest rates for people buying a second home, and a capital-gains tax on property purchases.

In March, real estate prices in major Chinese cities rose for the 10th straight month, with the average price of a new home reaching 9,998 yuan ($1,600) per square meter. that figure was 1.1 percent higher than February's, according to China Index Academy, a real estate research institute in Beijing. In 84 cities, prices increased, 10 more than had reported month-to-month rises in February.

The average price of a home in key cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, was 16,803 yuan per square meter, up 1.3 percent from the previous month and up 6.1 percent from a year earlier, in March 2012.

Liang told the conference that China's heavy investment of recent years in infrastructure and education have bolstered the nation's economy, while the central government uses policy "levers" to manage and control growth. these conditions, he said, have allowed China to avoid a "bubble" of the type that formed in Japan in the late 1980s and then broke, depressing that country's economy for 20 years.

Speakers also included Wang Shi, who is chairman of China Vanke Co, the country's biggest property developer.

Although Wang acknowledged in the interview, which aired in early March, that homes in China are, in the "60 Minutes" reporter's words, "too expensive" and that there is a bubble in the Chinese property market, he didn't address the subject at Friday's Columbia conference.

Top developer China Vanke Co is teaming with US-based Tishman Speyer Properties on a luxury condominium building in San Francisco, highlighting Chinese real estate firms' focus on projects abroad.

But Wang's fellow panelist, Jerry Speyer, founding partner of New York real estate firm Tishman Speyer Properties LP, whose assets include Manhattan's Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Center, said emphatically in an interview that the housing market in China isn't heading for a crash.

He said he expects that Beijing's moves such as instituting the real estate capital-gains tax will help stabilize prices.

Vanke and Tishman Speyer in February announced their joint development of a luxury condominium building in San Francisco, the Chinese companies first foray into the US market.

michaelbarris@chinadailyusa.com