China

Signs of financial stress at a large asset manager in China are making investors nervous about contagion from the country’s slumping property sector, rekindling a debate over whether a “Lehman moment” could occur in the world’s second-largest economy, the Associated Press reported. Zhongrong International Trust, a seller of esoteric financial products that had the equivalent of $108 billion in assets under management at the end of 2022, has become the market’s latest worry.

China's securities regulator unveiled a package of measures on Friday aimed at reviving a sinking stock market, but investors said they would do little to boost confidence if the economy remains sluggish, Reuters reported. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) proposed steps including cutting trading costs, supporting share buybacks and encouraging long-term investment to support a stock market that has slid to nine-month lows.

China's central bank said on Thursday it would keep liquidity reasonably ample and keep its policy "precise and forceful" to support the country's economic recovery, amid rising headwinds, Reuters reported. Data for July has highlighted the intensifying pressure on the economy on a number of fronts, including a property downturn and deflationary pressure, prompting Beijing to introduce direct stimulus to revitalise growth.

Buy the state, sell the capitalist - that's how global investors are trying to play China's latest anti-graft crackdowns as they see private enterprise increasingly sidelined in Beijing's quest for "common prosperity," Reuters reported. China's recent sweep of the medical sector came as a shock to many investors who had thought the end of Beijing's three-year regulatory purge of the property and tech sectors meant there would be no more industry-wide crackdowns as policymakers prioritised economic recovery.

The U.S. Commerce Department on Thursday said it will set preliminary anti-dumping duties on tin-plated steel from Canada, Germany and China, in a move to shield domestic steelmakers that will prompt warnings of higher prices for cans made from the steel and the foods, paint and other products they contain, Reuters reported. The department said it will propose preliminary anti-dumping duties of 122.5% on tin mill steel imported from China, 7.02% on imports from Germany and 5.29% on imports from Canada. A formal Federal Register notice is expected later on Thursday.

Country Garden, a Chinese real estate giant, has lost billions of dollars and racked up $200 billion in unpaid bills. It’s on the hook to deliver, by one estimate, nearly one million apartments across hundreds of cities in China. The privately owned developer, founded by a farmer three decades ago, is inching closer to default, the New York Times reported. In China’s housing market, there are plenty of deadbeat developers no longer paying their bills. The possible collapse of Country Garden is one to pay attention to. The company has tried to project confidence.

Chinese officials said they would stop reporting the country’s youth unemployment rate after months of spiraling increases, depriving investors, economists and businesses of another key data point on the declining health of the world’s second-largest economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The surprise move extends China’s efforts to restrict access to a variety of data on its economy and corporate landscape to outside scrutiny.

China's largest private real estate developer Country Garden is seeking to delay payment on a private onshore bond for the first time, the latest sign of a stifling cash crunch in the property sector, piling pressure on Beijing to step in, Reuters reported. Adding to worries about contagion risk, a major Chinese trust company that traditionally had sizable exposure to real estate, Zhongrong International Trust Co, has missed its repayment obligations on some investment products.

For more than a quarter-century, China has been synonymous with relentless development and upward mobility. As its 1.4 billion people gained an appetite for the wares of the world — Hollywood movies, South Korean electronics, iron ore mined in Australia — the global economy was propelled by a seemingly inexhaustible engine. Now that engine is sputtering, posing alarming risks for Chinese households and economies around the planet, the New York Times reported.