The clock is ticking for the world’s most indebted developer, whose liquidity woes sparked a broader debt crisis in China’s property industry that’s gone on to engulf more home builders, threaten banks and pose growing challenges for President Xi Jinping, Bloomberg News reported. China Evergrande Group, once the country’s largest real estate firm, previously said it was on track to deliver a preliminary restructuring plan by the end of July. That leaves mere days for the builder with about $300 billion of liabilities, just as a shakeup stirs fresh uncertainties.
Read more
A group of angry suppliers to China Evergrande Group are threatening to stop paying their bank loans to protest the struggling developer's unpaid bills, hitting a property sector already reeling from a mortgage-payment boycott, Nikkei Asia reported. China has seen a wave of debt defaults among real-estate developers including Evergrande, which is saddled with about $300 billion in liabilities.
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.
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.
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. The homebuyers' threats have deepened investor concerns about the property sector, which accounts for a quarter of the economy. Investors also worry about banks, rattled over the past year by developers' cash squeeze and some debt defaults.
Read more
China's central bank is widely expected to keep unchanged the borrowing costs on its medium-term policy loans for the sixth consecutive month on Friday, a Reuters survey showed. Aggressive global monetary tightening and higher domestic inflationary pressure have limited room for further easing, and analysts and traders believe China's central bank is poised to steadily normalise its monetary policy after June data indicated the economy had started bottoming out.
Read more
Chinese exports to the rest of the world grew strongly in June as trade picked up following the easing of pandemic lockdowns and logistics bottlenecks in its ports, the Wall Street Journal reported. Still, economists say the trade bounce is unlikely to last, as rate increases by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks to cool inflation weigh on global growth. Chinese exports rose 17.9% in June compared with a year earlier, China’s General Administration of Customs said Wednesday.
Read more
Financial regulators in central China’s Henan and Anhui provinces have promised to give some bank customers some of their deposits back after a protest over their frozen accounts Sunday turned violent, the Associated Press reported. In statements issued late Monday, officials said customers with deposits of 50,000 yuan (about $7,400) or less would be reimbursed. They said others with larger bank balances would get their money back at a later, unspecified date.
Read more