On social media forums and among friends, young people in China are questioning whether to save for old age. Some are opting out, citing the shortage of jobs, low pay and their ambivalence about the future, the New York Times reported. Their skepticism betrays the enormous challenge for China’s leaders. Over less than three decades, the country has changed from a young society to an aging one. Seven straight years of plummeting births are pushing up the day when there will be fewer people working than retirees.
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China’s largest property developer, Country Garden, on Tuesday said it had opted to suspend trading of its shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange after delaying publication of its 2023 results as it continues to grapple with the slump in the Chinese real estate market, MarketWatch.com reported. The heavily-indebted property developer said it had decided to suspend trading of its shares in order to comply with Hong Kong stock market’s listing rules, which require it to either publish its unaudited financial statements in their current form or halt trading of its shares instead.
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Chinese lenders are concerned about future investments at a $1.3 billion port in Peru set to be inaugurated this year, executives told a congressional committee, Bloomberg News reported. Peru’s government is trying to revoke a deal that granted Chinese state-owned company Cosco Shipping exclusive rights to run the new Chancay Port. While most major Peruvian ports have a single operator, Peru argues it didn’t have the legal authority to grant the new facility the same treatment.
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A private gauge of China’s services activities notched a 15th straight month of growth, adding to signs of green shoots in the world’s second-largest economy as government stimulus measures kick in, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Caixin services purchasing managers index rose to 52.7 in March from 52.5 in February, Caixin Media Co. and S&P Global said Wednesday. A reading above the neutral 50 mark suggests expansion, while one below indicates contraction.
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Several Chinese developers’ shares have been suspended from trading in Hong Kong starting today due to their failure to meet the deadline for publishing last year’s annual results, another sign of the turmoil in the country’s real-estate sector, the Wall Street Journal reported. Well-known names like Country Garden Holdings, Central China Management and Modern Land (China) are among the companies that failed to meet the Hong Kong stock exchange’s March 31 deadline due to an inability to sort out their financial and accounting estimates or delays in getting their accounts audited.
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A months-old speech by China’s top leader has stoked speculation around aggressive liquidity boosts from Beijing. While economists have generally shrugged off such a possibility, some say that more trading of treasury bonds could bring the country’s central bank more in line with practices adopted by peers in developed markets, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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A private gauge showed China’s factory activity expanded in March, marking a fifth successive monthly improvement in the country’s manufacturing sector and reaching its highest level since February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported. The China Caixin manufacturing purchasing managers index rose to 51.1 in March from 50.9 in February, according to data released Monday by Caixin Media Co. and S&P Global. A reading above 50 indicates that the manufacturing sector grew, while a reading below 50 indicates contraction.
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China’s home sales slump dragged on in March, signaling a much-hoped turnaround for the sector isn’t in sight yet, Bloomberg News reported. The value of new-home sales from the 100 biggest real estate companies slid about 46% from a year earlier to 358 billion yuan ($49.6 billion), following a 60% decline in February, according to preliminary data from China Real Estate Information Corp. China’s protracted property sales drought has weighed on many of the nation’s biggest builders and eroded the balance sheets of the largest state-owned banks as their bad loans swell.
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China's government devoted the week to a red carpet welcome for foreign executives to try to halt a retreat in corporate investment from a market once seen as the engine of global growth, Reuters reported. But many executives leave China with a shared caution: While things may not be getting worse, the risks of an expansion in China still outweigh the rewards, they say. In a series of high-profile events, Chinese officials pledged equal treatment for foreign firms, expressed confidence China will hit its 5% growth target this year and President Xi Jinping held an audience with 15 U.S.
A sentence from a months-old speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping has sparked speculation the central bank might start aggressively buying government bonds to support the economy, a stimulus measure China has long shunned, Reuters reported. But most analysts say the People's Bank of China (PBOC) will stick with traditional tools rather than resorting to massive liquidity injections through "quantitative easing" (QE), as some major economies such as Japan and the United States have done.