Asia Pacific

The saving opportunity with the rural bank in central China looked, to Sun Song, a 26-year-old-businessman, like a great find, the New York Times reported. It would be linked to his existing account at a large, reputable state-owned bank. The rural bank was also offering high interest rates, making it seem like an ideal place to park his roughly $600,000 in savings. Then the bank abruptly froze his account this year, and officials said they were investigating potential fraud. “I owe money on my credit card and have to repay my car loan,” he said. “I have two sons.

Taiwan's government is considering fining tech giant Foxconn up to T$25 million ($835,600) over its investment in a Chinese chip conglomerate without first getting regulatory approval, two sources briefed on the matter said on Friday, Reuters reported. Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, said this week it has become a shareholder in embattled Chinese chip conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup via a 5.38 billion yuan ($797 million) investment by a subsidiary.

Public sector banks as well as their private sector peers have added a staggering amount of non-performing assets (NPSs) to their respective portfolios over the past year, according to data submitted by the Union Finance Ministry in Parliament on Monday, July 18, The Federal reported.

The Supreme Court has refused to interfere with the judgment of a Division Bench of the High Court of Tripura, where the High Court had held that a decree holder falls under the class of "other creditors" and so cannot be treated as a "financial creditor" under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016, Mondaq reported.

Two U.S. congresswomen made a bipartisan call for companies to take action to comply with a newly operative U.S. law intended to block the import of goods made with Uyghur forced labor, the Wall Street Journal reported. The remarks underscored congressional concern over enforcement of a law that presumes that goods with ties to Xinjiang, the home region of China’s Uyghur minority, have been made with forced labor. The law, which went into effect last month, gives U.S. Customs and Border Protection the power to stop their import. Reps.

China is expected to report a sharp slowdown in economic growth in the second quarter after widespread COVID lockdowns jolted factories and consumers, although activity in June may have perked up, Reuters reported.

Chinese regulators on Thursday vowed to help local governments deliver property projects on time after homebuyers threatened to stop mortgage payments on unfinished apartments, in the first sign Beijing was stepping in to end the market chaos, Reuters reported.

With a sinking currency, dwindling foreign-exchange reserves and hefty debt repayments to China and other creditors falling due this year and next, the tiny Southeast Asian nation of Laos is displaying many of the hallmarks of a new emerging-markets crisis waiting to happen, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“How did you go bankrupt?,” Bill asked (in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises). “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” Sri Lanka is much the same, according to an opinion in the London Free Press.