China

Bank of China Ltd. reported a 2.6% increase in full-year profit as a drop in impairments helped offset pressure from falling interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Net income rose to 237.8 billion yuan ($32.7 billion) for 2024, it said in a Wednesday filing. The net interest margin narrowed to 1.4% from 1.59% a year earlier, while the non-performing loan ratio slid to 1.25% from 1.27%. Chinese banks have been contending with lower loan yields as authorities since late last year cut mortgage interests and key policy rates to inject momentum to the world’s second largest economy.

After a long period of pessimism, a number of global financial institutions have turned more upbeat on China’s economic outlook this year even amid concerns around tariffs, citing a stronger-than-expected recovery fueled by Beijing’s stimulus push, the Wall Street Journal reported. Over the past month, economists at HSBC, ANZ and Citi raised projections for China’s gross domestic product growth to 4.8%, 4.8% and 4.7% from previous estimates of 4.5%, 4.3% and 4.2% respectively.

China’s central bank unveiled a new method for pricing its one-year loans to banks, the latest move in policymakers’ efforts to revamp their monetary toolkit, Bloomberg News reported. The People’s Bank of China announced in a statement that banks will be able to bid for different prices on its one-year loans, known as the medium-term lending facility. Qualified lenders will be able to pay different interest rates for the loan starting from Tuesday, and the loans will come in a fixed amount each month, according to the statement.

For a symbol of the chaos engulfing world trade since the Trump administration walked into the White House, look no further than a pile of 16,000 metric tons of steel pipes. Stevedores in Germany should be preparing to load the first batch on a ship bound for a massive energy project in Louisiana. Instead the cargo is sitting in a German warehouse after Washington proposed putting million-dollar levies on Chinese ships docking in the US, Bloomberg News reported.

During Donald Trump’s first presidency, China was determined not to yield to American pressure over trade like Japan did in the 1980s, the Wall Street Journal reported. Now, faced with an even greater economic assault from the second Trump presidency at a time of sluggish growth at home, Beijing may take a page from Tokyo’s playbook—on one specific issue it sees as in its own interest. Like Japan decades ago, China is considering trying to blunt greater U.S.

Buried in China’s latest government budget were some numbers that add up to an alarming trend. Tax revenue is dropping, the New York Times reported. The decline means that China’s national government has less money to address the country’s serious economic challenges, including a housing market crash and the near bankruptcy of hundreds of local governments. Weak tax revenue also puts China’s leaders in a box as they square off with President Trump, who has imposed 20 percent tariffs on goods from China and threatened more to come.

Iron ore miner Vale, a Chinese commercial partner since the 1970s, is welcome, along with other Brazilian firms, to further expand economic links with China, its commerce ministry said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The comments came as chief executives of foreign firms gathered in Beijing this week for a key annual corporate forum and China mounted a charm offensive to woo foreign investment.

The U.S. mission told China and Canada it was ready to confer with its officials in Geneva after those two countries filed trade disputes in response to new tariffs, World Trade Organization documents showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Canada requested consultations - the first step in a WTO trade dispute - earlier this month in response to "unjustified tariffs" imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this month. China launched a dispute after Trump tariffs on Chinese goods in February.

Political pressure is mounting over a plan by a Hong Kong conglomerate to sell its Panama ports to BlackRock, the American investor, raising questions about the future of the $19 billion deal, the New York Times reported.

Property developer Sunac China said on Monday it expects to report a wider loss for the year ended December 2024, Reuters reported. Beijing-based Sunac, once among China's largest real estate developers, attributed the higher net loss forecast to the absence of gains that it had logged last year after the completion of its offshore debt restructuring. In late 2023, Sunac completed a comprehensive overhaul of its $9 billion offshore debt, exchanging its existing debt for a combination of notes, among others.