China

The measures announced by the National Financial Regulatory Administration on Tuesday will come into effect April 18.The new rules stipulate that firms eligible to provide consumer loans — excluding those for home and car purchases — need to have a minimum registered capital of 1 billion yuan ($139 million).It comes at a time when Beijing is tightening its grip on the financial sector. China has tightened the screws on consumer finance companies, raising the capital limit for non-bank financial firms which provide small personal loans. The measures announced by the National Financial Regulatory Administration on Tuesday will come into effect April 18. It comes at a time when Beijing is tightening its grip on the financial sector. The new rules stipulate that firms eligible to ...

Economic interdependence in the Asia-Pacific and beyond has facilitated China’s use of economic statecraft – the manipulation of trade or investment ties for political purposes. Beijing has become more active at using both coercion and inducements in attempts to shape the actions of governments as well as companies. While China’s economic statecraft has altered the strategic calculations for many countries and could have far-reaching implications for the trajectory of great power competition, Chinese influence is not a foregone conclusion. Beijing has encountered considerable pushback and often shot itself in the foot, suggesting that U.S. policymakers need not be overly concerned about undue influence. At the same time, the diffuse lure of economic interdependence remains a powerful d...

The National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA) will resolutely follow the spirit of the Central Financial Work Conference, Central Economic Work Conference and the recent two sessions, and carry out regulation using both "teeth and thorns" to ensure that no systemic risks arise, Li Yunze, head of the administration, said on Friday. The NFRA is committed to following the path of financial development with Chinese characteristics, Li said. He said the administration will continue to boost the high-quality development of the financial sector, make significant efforts in financial technology, green finance, inclusive finance, pension finance, and digital finance, and continuously deepen financial reform and opening-up, according to a press release appeared on the NFRA website o...

China's yearslong real-estate debt crisis has already taken down the property giant Evergrande, which is undergoing liquidation. Home sales and prices in the country have also slumped. But China's property crisis could still get worse. "I think, at the moment, there's an assumption in the market that the levels of activity have come down so much that things can't get much worse, but that's not really true," Charlene Chu, a senior analyst at Autonomous Research, told Bloomberg TV on Monday. Chu — who issued warnings about China's debt more than a decade ago — said China was still "very much in the middle of a collapse in the property sector, and this could still get uglier than it already is." Concerns grow over another Chinese real-estate giantChu's assessment of China's pr...

A more nuanced look at China’s economic indicators is necessary to understand current trends. In recent years, there has been a notable shift among certain Western politicians, media outlets and think tanks regarding their perspective on China’s developmental trajectory. The once-popular theory of an imminent Chinese collapse, famously asserted by Gordon G. Chang over two decades ago, has finally begun to lose traction. But there is still a lingering reluctance to acknowledge China’s sustained ascent, prompting the emergence of a new buzzword: “Peak China.” As the second-largest GDP globally for 15 consecutive years, China’s economic landscape has naturally witnessed expansion alongside moderated growth rates, a phenomenon well-recognized in economic theory. In the context of China’...

Xi Jinping is ignoring the country’s biggest economic problems. The Chinese government outlined on Monday its plan to boost the country’s sluggish economic growth, but experts say it fell short of the kind of transformative strategy necessary to fix the country’s debt and consumer confidence crises. China has enjoyed miraculous economic expansion for the past few decades, solidifying itself as a global power and building an emergent middle class. It achieved that growth through a blend of the governing regime’s Communist principles and a strategic embrace of the free market, creating a novel form of state-guided capitalism that ushered in a new era of economic prosperity. Recent economic stagnation, however, has called this model into question, forcing the Chinese government to r...

Premier Li Qiang made the announcement at the opening of the annual National People's Congress (NPC) on Tuesday. Mr Li acknowledged that China's economic performance had faced "difficulties", adding that many of these had "yet to be resolved". It comes as China struggles to reinvigorate its once-booming economy. "Risks and potential dangers in real estate, local government debt, and small and medium financial institutions were acute in some areas," he said. "Under these circumstances, we faced considerably more dilemmas in making policy decisions and doing our work." A series of other measures to help tackle the country's slow recovery from the pandemic were also announced, including the development of new initiatives to tackle problems in the country's crisis-hit property sec...