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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Problems are mounting for China’s largest surviving property developer, Country Garden Holdings, which is desperately trying to avoid the same fate as its many defaulted rivals, the Wall Street Journal reported. The 31-year-old company said that it expects to post its worst loss since going public 16 years ago, and estimated the red ink could be as much as the equivalent of $7.6 billion for the first half of 2023. The developer also said its contracted sales slumped 60% in July from a year earlier—a much bigger decline than in previous months.
Ratings agency Moody's on Thursday downgraded Chinese developer Country Garden's corporate family rating (CFR) to Caa1 from B1, citing heightened liquidity and refinancing risk after the company missed bond payments, Reuters reported. Caa1 rating is a level that signals a very high credit risk, according to the ratings agency's website. Country Garden expects to record a half-year loss owing to higher impairment provisions on projects, it said on Thursday.
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Foreign investors funneled over $3 billion into Chinese debt in July in the first net monthly inflows this year for the world's second-largest economy, data from the Institute of International Finance (IIF) showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. Inflows were less than a third of the $10.6 billion poured into Chinese bonds in December as China geared up to lift nearly two years of strict COVID-19 curbs. July also saw a $7.7 billion inflow from non-locals to Chinese stocks, a big jump from the $1.9 billion in June and the second-largest monthly inflows in 2023.