Even a half-decade after the global financial crisis, participants in Asian emerging property markets keep a close eye on the major central banks of the Western developed world: the US Federal Reserve Bank, the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank. And, increasingly, they also watch the People’s Bank of China.

But what a difference a year makes.

In mid-2013, world capital markets gyrated when then–US Fed chairman Ben Bernanke only announced plans to “taper” and ultimately end “quantitative easing”, or QE, the Fed’s monetary stimulus programme. The Fed then was buy