China

Sino-Forest Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection as part of a plan that may see the Chinese timber grower company sold to bondholders, nine months after it was accused of fraud by short seller Carson Block, Bloomberg reported. The company obtained an initial order for creditor protection in the Ontario Superior Court under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, Sino-Forest said yesterday in a statement.

A new wave of scandals involving Chinese companies listed overseas could hit New York and Hong Kong in the coming weeks as the annual results season get under way with auditors on high alert for fraud, the Financial Times reported. Auditors are under great pressure this year to detect discrepancies in their clients’ results, having faced embarrassment and legal action in 2011 following dozens of accounting scandals at Chinese companies listed in North America.

The economic slowdown weighing on both China and Europe may test Beijing's tolerance for a more flexible currency, thus creating competing policy interests for both regions, Dow Jones reported. Thursday's grim Chinese and euro-zone manufacturing data underscored how synchronized the world's largest economies have become. The 17-nation currency zone is widely expected to see a recession this year, which has bolstered forecasts for a weaker euro. Yet China has, at least for now, become the bigger worry.

The Chinese government has begun making it much easier for foreign investors to put money into China’s stock market and other financial investments, in a slight relaxing of more than a decade of tight capital controls, the International Herald Tribune reported. The move, not publicly announced but disclosed by some private money managers, indicates that Chinese officials are eager to counter a rising flight of capital from the country, a worsening slump in real estate prices, a weak stock market and at least a temporary trade deficit caused by a steep bill for oil imports.

Fears of a hard landing in China are looking increasingly overdone, indicators in the past few days show, and investor fears of sudden slowdown in the world’s second largest economy are easing, the Irish Times reported. Data at this time of year are always skewed by the two-week holiday for Chinese new year, but the trend remained upbeat. February inflation dropped more than expected to give a 3.2 per cent year-on-year rise, its slowest pace in 20 months, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, and compared to 4.5 per cent the previous month.

China intends to extend renminbi loans to other Brics nations, in another step towards the internationalisation of its currency, the Financial Times reported. The China Development Bank will sign a memorandum of understanding in New Delhi with its Brazilian, Russian, Indian and South African counterparts on March 29, say people familiar with their talks. Under the agreement CDB, which lends mainly in dollars overseas, will make renminbi loans available, while the other Brics nations’ development banks will also extend loans denominated in their respective currencies.

The Chinese economy, after nearly three decades of rapid, almost uninterrupted growth, seems to be settling down to a still strong but less blistering pace. But some sectors are struggling, including exports and luxury residential real estate construction, the International Herald Tribune reported. Premier Wen said in his annual report to the National People’s Congress on Monday morning in Beijing that the government had scaled its economic growth target back to 7.5 percent this year, down from the 8 percent that Beijing has set as a minimum growth target in recent years.

A major creditor of Proview Electronics, which is challenging Apple Inc.'s use of the iPad trademark, has moved to have the ailing computer monitor maker liquidated, reports said Monday, the Associated Press reported. Taiwan-based Fubon Insurance is seeking $8.68 million in debts and has filed an application to have Proview declared bankrupt, the reports by the Xinhua News Agency and other mainland media said.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said that China's economic growth model is "unsustainable" and urged deep reforms to avoid a sharp downturn on growth over the coming two decades, The Wall Street Journal reported. There are "stress points [in the economy] that will expand over time rather than [turn into] a crisis," he said at a conference in Beijing where the World Bank and the Development Research Center, an influential government think tank, jointly introduced a report, "China 2030," that recommended sharp reforms in China's economy.

China's two-year push to drive down property prices has punished many of the nation's once highflying property developers and stymied a number of upscale projects, The Wall Street Journal reported. Real estate was once one of the nation's most successful industries. Some stocks of mainland property developers in Hong Kong more than doubled in 2009, faster than the Hang Seng Index's 50% gain that year. As a result, developers plowed billions of dollars into huge developments—with apartments, commercial space, pools and golf courses—outside top-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.