Hui Ka Yan, the billionaire chairman of beleaguered property developer China Evergrande Group, has been placed under police control, Bloomberg News reported. Hui was taken away by Chinese police earlier this month and is being monitored at a designated location. It’s not clear why Hui is under so-called residential surveillance, a type of police action that falls short of formal detention or arrest and doesn’t mean Hui will be charged with a crime.
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Guangdong Adway Construction has filed for bankruptcy in a Shenzhen court due to its inability to repay debts amid China’s stressed real-estate sector, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company filed the application with the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court, seeking restructuring to reduce its debt burden and improve operations, Adway said in a filing on Monday. Adway, which provides interior and exterior decoration and design services, is the latest company to fall victim to China’s weak property sector, which has weighed on the world’s second-largest economy.
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A major group of offshore creditors of China Evergrande Group is planning to join a winding-up court petition filed against the cash-strapped developer if it doesn't submit a new debt revamp plan by next month, Reuters reported. The creditor group holds a large portion of Evergrande offshore bonds and, if it decides to join, would add more weight to the winding-up petition filed against the developer by an investor in a Hong Kong court.
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Shenyang is the capital of Liaoning Province, one of three large provinces in the northeast that constitute the cradle of China’s heavy industry. Now the central government, confronting a national economy that has slowed because of a real estate crisis that defies easy fixes, is turning to cities like Shenyang. It hopes to squeeze more productivity and efficiency out of the region’s factories, the New York Times reported.
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Another obstacle to embattled developer China Evergrande Group's long-pending debt restructuring plan rekindled fears for China's crisis-hit property sector on Monday, sparking a stock sell-off, Reuters reported. Developer China Oceanwide Holdings added to investor concerns in an exchange filing which said that a Bermuda court had ordered its winding up and appointed joint provisional liquidators.
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The steepening downturn in China’s real-estate markets has led China Evergrande to scrap a $35 billion debt-restructuring plan designed to ensure the property developer’s survival, a sign that China’s ongoing housing crisis could still get worse, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. China Evergrande, among the largest property developers in China, popped the country’s real-estate bubble in 2021 when it spiraled into insolvency and set off a chain of developer defaults.
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Hundreds of thousands of Chinese investors are confronting a distressing reality: Their investments with Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, a financial giant managing $140 billion in assets, and its trust banking arm, Zhongrong, might be at risk, the New York Times reported. Starting in July, companies affiliated with Zhongzhi missed dozens of payments to investors. They have offered no timetable for when people will be paid, fueling concerns that one of China’s largest so-called shadow banks may be near collapse.
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China has limited room for further monetary policy easing, and it should pursue structural reforms such as encouraging entrepreneurs rather than counting on macroeconomic policies to revive growth, a central bank adviser said on Sunday, Reuters reported. Liu Shijin, a member of the People's Bank of China's (PBOC) monetary policy committee, told a financial forum in Shanghai that Beijing's room for monetary policy easing was limited by widening interest rate differentials with the U.S. Fiscally, Chinese governments at various levels are under stress, he told the annual Bund Summit conference.
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China's economic slowdown is polarising government advisers over the best way forward, with advocates of structural reforms now emerging from the shadows in a challenge to others calling for more state spending to shore up faltering growth, Reuters reported. The rare debate among advisers, who influence policy-making but do not wield direct power, comes as global markets scramble for clues on how authorities will halt a downturn that has left millions without jobs, forced investors to flee and the yuan to tank.
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China will speed up the introduction of more policies to consolidate its economic recovery, state media CCTV reported on Wednesday, citing a cabinet meeting chaired by Premier Li Qiang, after the economy showed tentative signs of stabilising, Reuters reported. With a flurry of support steps kicking in, the $18 trillion economy showed better-than-expected figures including bank lending, industrial production and consumption gauges last month, but the wobbling property sector still weighs on its economic outlook.
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