China

China’s post-Covid growth spurt is sputtering and its youth unemployment rate hit a record high, signaling trouble for a recovery that was expected to boost global growth, the Wall Street Journal reported. A bundle of economic indicators for April, including retail sales, factory production and fixed-asset investment, fell short of economists’ expectations, according to data released Tuesday by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. Investment in the country’s property sector also dropped in the first four months of the year.

Global investors seeking to trade China’s reopening will have a new strategic tool from Monday: onshore interest-rate swaps that had an annual turnover of $3 trillion last year, Bloomberg News reported. The so-called Swap Connect program between mainland China and Hong Kong provides overseas funds with easier access to the derivatives that will help hedge their exposure to the world’s second-biggest bond market. The channel also enables them to bet on key money-market rates that are sensitive to China’s monetary policy.

China’s two leading cross-border online brokerages said they will remove their trading platforms from app stores in mainland China this week as Beijing takes a harder stance on capital flows out of the country, Bloomberg News reported. Futu Holdings Ltd. and Up Fintech Holding Ltd., also known as Tiger Brokers, said Tuesday that the move was to comply with the Chinese securities regulator’s requirements on cross-border brokerage businesses. Futu’s app Futubull will be removed Friday, and Tiger Brokers’ app will be taken off on Thursday.

China's April industrial output and retail sales growth undershot forecasts, suggesting the economy lost momentum at the beginning of the second quarter and intensifying pressure on policymakers to shore up a wobbly post-COVID recovery, Reuters reported. Tuesday's batch of data, which also showed a further decline in property investment, adds to concerns about the outlook for the world's second-biggest economy as both its domestic and export engines of growth remain underpowered.

China's central bank rolled over maturing medium-term policy loans while keeping the interest rate unchanged on Monday, as expected, but markets expect monetary easing may be inevitable in the coming months to support the economic recovery, Reuters reported. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) said it was keeping the rate on 125 billion yuan ($18.08 billion) worth of one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans to some financial institutions unchanged at 2.75% from the previous operation.

China's clampdown on its consultancy and due diligence sector has driven companies to review their operations after some tested the limits of the laws and Beijing's patience to meet surging demand as China emerged from its COVID-lockdowns, Reuters reported. These consultancies thrived by providing investors - from global hedge funds to private equity firms - access to industry experts and investigators who could obtain valuable corporate information.

China's consumer prices rose at the slowest pace in more than two years in April, while factory gate deflation deepened, data showed on Thursday, suggesting more stimulus may be needed to boost a patchy post-COVID economic recovery, Reuters reported. The weak consumer price rise reinforces the signals from this week's trade data suggesting domestic demand remains lacklustre, while the deflationary impulse in producer prices underlines the strains on factories - a double-whammy for the world's second-biggest economy as it tries to shake off the COVID-induced damage.

China's securities watchdog on Thursday said that it was willing to work with its counterparts in the United States to promote regulatory cooperation on audits and safeguard the rights and interests of global investors, Reuters reported. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) was commenting a day after a U.S. accounting watchdog said that it found unacceptable deficiencies in audits of U.S.-listed Chinese companies. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) was commenting a day after a U.S.

A U.S. accounting watchdog found unacceptable deficiencies in audits of U.S.-listed Chinese companies performed by KPMG in China and PricewaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong, the government agency said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)published the findings of its inspections after gaining access to Chinese company auditors' records for the first time last year following more than a decade of negotiations with Chinese authorities. That access kept roughly 200 China-based public companies from potentially being kicked off U.S.

Defaulted Chinese developers facing key court dates in coming weeks received an abrupt reminder that it’s actions not words that count in restructurings, if you want to avoid getting liquidated, Bloomberg News reported. Jiayuan International Group Ltd., a residential and commercial builder focused on areas northwest of Shanghai, received a winding-up order from a Hong Kong court last week despite having launched a debt exchange offer. That made it the first developer during China’s property crisis to face court-ordered liquidation after public efforts to restructure debt.