China

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.

China's property slump persisted in February, with official figures on Monday showing declines in prices, investment and sales, as government measures and promises of more stimulus did little to boost demand in the crisis-stricken sector, Reuters reported. New home prices dipped 0.1% versus a month earlier after two months of relatively steady prices, showed Reuters calculations based on National Bureau of Statistics data. On a year-on-year basis, new home prices fell 4.8% versus a 5.0% drop the previous month.

Country Garden Services, the property services arm of China's Country Garden, on Friday forecast a higher full-year profit on the back of lower impairment charges, Reuters reported. The property services arm expects a net profit attributable between 1.60 billion yuan ($221.03 million) and 2 billion yuan for fiscal 2024 ended December, compared with 292.3 million yuan a year earlier. Country Garden Services said it benefited from optimising some businesses it had acquired previously that led to lower impairment charges for the year ended 2024.

The Chinese government has strongly criticized a planned deal by a Hong Kong conglomerate to sell ports in Panama and elsewhere to an investment group led by an American asset manager, warning that the deal would deprive China of needed influence over key shipping routes, the New York Times reported. The criticism marks an abrupt shift in Chinese policy toward Panama and the control of seaports around the world. When President Donald Trump raised concerns soon after taking office that China had too much power in the Panama Canal, his comments were initially ridiculed by Beijing.

The China Shipowners' Association opposes a U.S. proposal to slap hefty port entry fees on ocean cargo carriers that own or have ordered vessels from China, saying it violates international rules and U.S. laws, according to a statement seen by Reuters on Thursday. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration aims to partially pay for an American shipbuilding comeback with those fees, according to a draft executive order seen by Reuters. The CSA's members include China's COSCO Shipping, which is expected to be among the hardest hit by the fees proposed by the U.S.

Zhengzhou Exchange on Tuesday raised the trading margin requirements for some rapeseed meal futures contracts to 9% from 7% after Beijing's 100% tariff on Canadian imports triggered a two-day rally that pushed prices to a five-month high, Reuters reported. The most active rapeseed meal futures contract surged 7.23% to close at 2,684 yuan per metric ton, building on a 6% gain in the previous session, to its highest since September 2024. The new trading margin requirements will be effective from settlement on March 12.

Chinese tariffs as high as 15% on a range of US agricultural goods take effect Monday, potentially exacerbating a trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies, Bloomberg News reported. The levies announced last week are far-reaching, touching commodities from beef and poultry to grains. Along with the tariffs, Beijing also said it would completely suspend soybean imports from three US entities and also halted purchases of American logs. Beijing’s move came after the Trump administration doubled a blanket tariff on all Chinese exports.

China’s consumer inflation dropped far more than expected to fall below zero for the first time in 13 months, an assessment skewed by seasonal distortions but also a sign of deflationary pressures persisting in the economy, Bloomberg News reported. The consumer price index declined 0.7% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Sunday, compared with a 0.5% gain in the previous month. That was lower than all but one forecast in a Bloomberg survey of analysts, whose median estimate was for a 0.4% drop.

China's Evergrande Property Services Group said on Friday that it expects to record a decrease of up to 37% in its annual profit for the year ended December 31, 2024, due to legal expenses related to a deposit pledge, among other reasons, Reuters reported. In early January, a Guangzhou city court ordered the firm's parent China Evergrande to repay pledge guarantees on deposit certificates totalling 13.4 billion yuan ($1.85 billion).