China

China's central bank has asked domestic lenders to scale back outward bond investments according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, the latest in series of increasingly strong steps to support the yuan, Reuters reported. The directive, issued this week, is for banks to restrict southbound purchases under the Bond Connect scheme, and is aimed at limiting the supply of yuan offshore, the sources said. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to talk to the media. The PBOC declined to comment on the content of the window guidance.

Global investors fleeing China have one simple message for the country's leadership: put prudence aside for a short while, and start spending big, Reuters reported. As they go from hope to disappointment and now capitulation, investors are losing patience with what they see as incoherent, slow and stingy measures by China to revive its sputtering economy and defuse a deepening property crisis.

At an unfinished Country Garden residential complex on the outskirts of the northern Chinese metropolis of Tianjin, construction has slowed to a dull whirr and a few idle workers roam a near-empty site, Reuters reported. "They haven't paid us since Chinese New Year (in January). We are all worried," said a labourer surnamed Wang, 50, who said he had stopped work at the Yunhe Shangyuan site last week. The sprawling complex is one of two projects Reuters visited on Friday in Tianjin, a port city of 14 million people about 135 km (84 miles) southeast of Beijing.

Local governments in some Chinese cities owe property developers 1 billion yuan ($137 million) to 2 billion yuan each in unpaid bills, according to a local media report, with pressure building on the authorities to pay their debt, Bloomberg News reported. The outstanding amounts owed to the property firms include tax rebates and promised reimbursement of land sale fees, Economic Observer reported late Monday, citing unidentified executives at developers.

China’s stock market was plunging and its currency was teetering. The head of the central bank, fielding questions at a rare news conference, said that China would make it easier to get home mortgages. It was February 2016 and Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s longtime governor at the time, announced what proved to be the start of an extraordinary blitz of lending by China’s immense banking system. Minimum down payments for buying apartments were reduced, triggering a surge in construction. Vast sums were also lent to local governments, allowing them to splurge on new roads and rail lines.

At a moment when the U.S. is trying to reset its tense relationship with China, states across the country are leaning into anti-Chinese sentiment and crafting or enacting sweeping rules aimed at severing economic ties with Beijing, the New York Times reported. The measures, in places like Florida, Utah and South Carolina, are part of a growing political push to make the United States less economically dependent on China and to limit Chinese investment over concerns that it poses a national security risk.

China cut its one-year benchmark lending rate on Monday as authorities seek to ramp up efforts to stimulate credit demand, but surprised markets by keeping the five-year rate unchanged amid broader concerns about a rapidly weakening currency, Reuters reported. The recovery in the world's second-largest economy has lost steam due to a worsening property slump, weak consumer spending and tumbling credit growth, adding to the case for authorities to release more policy stimulus.

A model Chinese real estate developer in a sector replete with risk takers is teetering on the edge of default. Short of cash, one of China’s biggest asset managers has missed payments to investors. And billions of dollars have flowed out of the country’s stock markets. In China, August has been a dizzying ride, the New York Times reported. What started three years ago as a crackdown on risky business behavior by home builders, and then an ensuing housing slowdown, has spiraled rapidly this month.

China’s central bank and financial regulators met with bank executives and told lenders again to boost loans to support a recovery, adding to signs of heightened concern from policymakers about the deteriorating economic outlook, Bloomberg News reported. Authorities also urged for adjustments and an optimization of policies for home mortgages at the meeting on Friday, according to a statement from the People’s Bank of China on Sunday, without elaborating on the housing initiatives. Executives from China Life Insurance Co.

China Evergrande, which is the world's most heavily indebted property developer and became the poster child for China's property crisis, yesterday filed for chapter 15 protection from creditors in a U.S. bankruptcy court, Reuters reported. An affiliate, Tianji Holdings, also sought chapter 15 protection yesterday in Manhattan bankruptcy court. Evergrande's filing comes amid growing fears that problems in China's property sector could spread to other parts of the country's economy as growth slows.