China

China's central bank signaled it is considering speeding up the loosening of controls on investment flows in and out of China, indicating determination to press ahead with financial reform despite growing financial risks, The Wall Street Journal reported. With a stable economy, healthy banking system and an exchange rate "approaching balance," the timing is right for China to push capital-account opening, wrote Sheng Songcheng, head of the central bank's statistics department in an article in the central bank's own Financial News Thursday.

Chinese bank executives signaled concern that bad loans could rise, as earnings continued to slow in the face of declining economic growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. China's biggest bank by assets, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. 601988.SH +0.76% said Thursday its first-half net profit rose 12.4% from a year earlier to 138.35 billion yuan ($22.62 billion). Bank President Yi Huiman said the bank would remain cautious against a potential pickup in bad loans after its non-performing loan ratio increased marginally over the first half of the year.

Major Chinese cities are turning to fresh measures to temper home-buyer enthusiasm amid a renewed surge in housing prices, but analysts say the moves are unlikely to halt the rise, The Wall Street Journal reported. Beijing's local housing bureau has made it tougher for property developers to presell apartments in recent weeks, giving approvals only to projects that have completed a sufficient amount of construction.

The young urban Chinese who have entered the workforce over the past decade grew up amid plenty, and their views about saving and spending bear little resemblance to those of their parents. Their willingness to borrow for today and worry about repayment tomorrow is beginning to reshape China’s debt dynamics, the Financial Times reported in an analysis. Of the three kinds of debt – government, corporate and household – the latter is barely on the radar as a risk in China. Household debt is about Rmb15tn ($2.5tn), or a third of gross domestic product, according to RBS.

For most of its past 30 years of growth averaging 10.5 per cent, China did not rely on credit. But it has become ever more reliant on debt since the global financial crisis, drawing on banks, bonds and an array of lightly regulated institutions to keep its economy roaring. This debt dependency has put China at a dangerous crossroads. If the government is serious about containing financial risks, growth may slow sharply as it weans the country off debt, burdening the global economy. Yet that prospect is less frightening than the alternative.

Companies as diverse as retailers and gadget makers are reporting weakened results from China, as the economic slowdown there blunts Beijing's drive to make the nation's consumers a bigger driver of growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. Last month, Canon Inc. cut the Japanese company's year-end profit forecast to ¥380 billion ($3.89 billion), off 16% from forecasts three months earlier, citing in part the slowdown in China. Nike Inc.

Chinese regulators have tried for months to rein in lending by the country's banks, most recently by instigating a cash squeeze that left some scrambling for funds. But the banks have stayed one step ahead, keeping the lending spigots open largely through increasingly complicated transactions, The Wall Street Journal reported. The banks' latest effort in their cat-and-mouse game with regulators involves making corporate loans appear on their balance sheets as less risky loans to banks.

Fresh evidence of rapidly rising house prices underlined the role a resurgent property sector has played in supporting China's fragile growth, but also raised fears that a sharper correction would be required to bring prices into line with income. Prices rose an average 6.7% year-over-year in July, up from 6.1% in June, calculations by The Wall Street Journal based on official data released Sunday showed. On a month-to-month basis, the increase in prices moderated slightly.

A cornerstone of China's financial edifice is beginning to show some cracks, The Wall Street Journal reported. The country's banking sector, a key part of a financial system that has powered China through three decades of breakneck expansion, is feeling the strain of years of rapid credit growth. Bank-fueled lending to state enterprises and local governments has led to overcapacity; serious debt problems for local governments, companies and lenders alike; and numerous white-elephant projects, from nearly empty malls and resorts to bridges to nowhere.

China’s broadest measure of new credit fell to a 21-month low as Premier Li Keqiang extended a campaign to curb a record expansion of lending that’s added dangers to the nation’s financial system. Aggregate financing was 808.8 billion yuan ($132 billion), the People’s Bank of China said in Beijing, compared with the 925 billion yuan median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. New yuan loans exceeded forecasts and accounted for about 87 percent of the total, the most since September 2011. M2 money supply growth unexpectedly accelerated to 14.5 percent.