China

China's State Power Investment Corp said Westinghouse's bankruptcy filing would not have a "substantial impact" on the country's nuclear plans and the two sides would ensure a key AP1000 reactor project would be completed on schedule this year, Reuters reported. The project is the world's first Westinghouse-designed AP1000 reactor project, being built at Sanmen on China's eastern coast, and is one of four reactors planned with State Power.

China’s economy held steady in the first quarter, though the momentum, fueled by government-directed spending and low-cost funding, may be tough to sustain, according to a private quarterly survey, The Wall Street Journal reported. The stimulus-fueled engines that powered the Chinese economy in the second half of last year and early this year, including real estate and commodities, are increasingly wobbly and are adding to already high debt-levels, China Beige Book International said in its latest survey.

A new specter is haunting China’s financial system: the negotiable certificate of deposit. An explosion in banks’ use of the bondlike loans, whose durations range from a month to a year, is testing Beijing’s resolve to cure the economy of its addiction to debt-fueled growth and investment booms, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The founder and a former executive of China Medical Technologies Inc. were charged in the U.S. with stealing more than $400 million from investors in the bankrupt maker of medical diagnostic tests as part of a seven-year scheme, Bloomberg News reported.

Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said growth prospects have improved in the world's second-largest economy, but its monetary policy remains prudent and neutral, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Earlier this week, China published upbeat data showing its economy got off to a strong start to 2017, supported by bank lending, a government infrastructure spree and a long-sought resurgence in private investment.

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) lifted borrowing costs in step with the Fed overnight, the Financial Times reported. But the real question is: can China’s economy handle this sort of tightening at this stage in its cycle? Diana Choyleva of Enodo Economics (one of the few economists to accurately forecast the yuan’s depreciation) believes it can’t. On one hand the PBoC is lifting rates, on the other, it’s been engaged in the injection of a record amount of liquidity over the last year to prevent market rates from rising organically.

Investors trying to make sense of China’s National People’s Congress last week and its relation to the more important 19th Party Congress to be held later this year should familiarize themselves with an old saying: “The mountains are high and the emperor is far away.” Orders from Beijing are often ignored in the cities and provinces. Instead, important decisions such as whether and how to restructure the debt of insolvent local governments and state-owned enterprises are made locally, a Bloomberg View reported.

China is getting serious about dealing with so-called zombie companies through court-led bankruptcies as it seeks to cut overcapacity in industries and boost economic growth, Bloomberg News reported. The country’s Chief Justice Zhou Qiang said at the National People’s Congress Sunday that authorities will improve the country’s judicial system for dealing with bankruptcies in 2017 to support those goals.

China’s central bank governor said Friday the country needs to get soaring corporate debt under control but its economy and currency are stable and the decline in its foreign exchange reserves is no cause for concern, The Washington Post reported. Zhou Xiaochuan’s comments at a news conference held during China’s national legislature follows warnings a rapid rise in debt could lead to financial trouble. Beijing is trying to reduce reliance on credit and to clear away debts of state companies but private sector analysts say it needs to move faster.

Li Keqiang’s annual, 42-page “work report” to China’s parliament is packed with obscure details on matters such as mobile roaming and urban utility tunnels. But one of China’s biggest policy initiatives of 2016 — the reimposition of capital controls — went unmentioned in the premier’s address to the National People’s Congress, the Financial Times reported.