Once China's top-selling developer and now reeling under more than $US300 billion ($A399 billion) of debt, Evergrande was in talks to sell a 50.1 per cent stake in its Evergrande Property Services arm to smaller rival Hopson Development Holdings.

In a stock exchange filing late on Wednesday, Evergrande said the company had reason to believe that Hopson had not met the "prerequisite to make a general offer" for its unit without elaborating further.

In a separate exchange filing, Evergrande said barring its sale of a stake worth $US1.5 billion ($A2 billion) in Chinese lender Shengjing Bank Co, it had made no material progress in selling other assets it has put on the block.

Evergrande's disclosures came after a number of top Chinese officials had sought to reassure homebuyers and markets that the current woes in the property sector would not be allowed to turn into a full-scale crisis.

Worries that a cash crunch at Evergrande, whose liabilities are equal to two per cent of China's gross domestic product, could cause economic contagion have seen swathes of other heavily-indebted developers hit with credit rating downgrades, while some smaller ones have already defaulted.

In comments reported by state media Xinhua and echoing words from the country's central bank late last week, Vice Premier Liu He told a Beijing forum on Wednesday that the risks were controllable, and that reasonable capital demand from property firms was being met.

The chairman of China's securities regulator, Yi Huiman, added at the same forum that authorities would properly handle the default risks and look to curb excessive debt more broadly.

"(We need) to improve the effectiveness of the constraint mechanism on debt financing, to avoid excessive financing through 'high leverage'," Yi said.

Chinese property developers have total outstanding debt of 33.5 trillion yuan ($A6.98 trillion), according to Nomura, equivalent to roughly a third of the country's gross domestic product.

Evergrande, which has epitomised China's freewheeling era of borrowing and building, has been scrambling to raise funds to pay its many lenders and suppliers, amid expectations it is about to formally default on one of its international bonds.

In its Wednesday filing, Evergrande said it would continue to implement measures "to ease the liquidity issues" and would use best efforts to negotiate for the renewal or extension of its borrowings with its creditors.

"In view of the difficulties, challenges and uncertainties in improving its liquidity, there is no guarantee that the group will be able to meet its financial obligations under the relevant financing documents and other contracts," it said.

Creditors have so far said there has been no contact from Evergrande despite weeks of effort on their behalf. Evergrande will officially be in default if it doesn't make an already-overdue March 2022 bond coupon payment by Monday.

Australian Associated Press