Receive free Country Garden Holdings Co Ltd updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Country Garden Holdings Co Ltd news every morning. When the state-backed Postal Savings Bank of China unveiled a Rmb50bn ($7bn) credit line to Country Garden in November, it appeared China’s biggest private homebuilder would survive a sector-wide liquidity crisis. Nine months later, it is dangerously short of cash. The company expects to have lost Rmb45bn-Rmb55bn in the first half of the year and is confronting what it calls “the biggest…
Day: August 10, 2023
China a ‘ticking time bomb’ because of economic woes, Joe Biden warns
Joe Biden has called China a “ticking time bomb in many cases” because of its economic challenges, saying the country was in trouble because of weak growth. The US president pointed to the country’s high unemployment and ageing workforce, saying: “China is in trouble.” “They have got some problems. That’s not good, because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things,” Biden said at a political fundraiser in Utah on Thursday. He said he did not want to hurt China and wanted a rational relationship with the country. Biden’s…
China population: 2023 births could plunge by a quarter from record low set last year, academic warns
Births in China could drop below 8 million this year, setting a record low and further clouding the country’s gloomy demographic outlook, according to a leading medical academic. “The expected number of births in 2023 is estimated to be around 7 million to 8 million,” Qiao Jie, dean of the Health Science Centre at Peking University, said on Tuesday at a forum on innovations in medical technologies. She added that the number of Chinese newborns has been cut by around 40 per cent in the past five years, and that…
Storm clouds gather over Xi Jinping’s political beach retreat
Receive free Chinese politics & policy updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Chinese politics & policy news every morning. Since the 1950s and the days of Mao Zedong, Chinese Communist party leaders and their top advisers have headed to the idyllic beach resort of Beidaihe to escape the capital’s summertime heat and mull the country’s prospects. As Chinese officials gathered in recent days for their summer retreat — the first since Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term as leader of the party and…
Storm clouds gather over Xi Jinping’s summer beach retreat
Receive free Chinese politics & policy updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Chinese politics & policy news every morning. Since the 1950s and the days of Mao Zedong, Chinese Communist party leaders and their top advisers have headed to the idyllic beach resort of Beidaihe to escape the capital’s summertime heat and mull the country’s prospects. As Chinese officials gathered in recent days for their summer retreat — the first since Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term as leader of the party and…
China pushes to dominate trading in clean energy metals
China is making a push to dominate the trading of lithium carbonate futures, as it seeks to wrest the financial plumbing linked to metals vital to the clean energy revolution away from the western dollar-based financial system. Last month Guangzhou Futures Exchange became the fourth global commodities exchange to launch contracts tracking the price of lithium carbonate, a mineral used in the manufacture of electric-vehicle batteries. Within three weeks open interest — a key measure of the size of the market — had risen to more than 20,000 lots and…
Nasa chief warns moon’s south pole may become ‘another South China Sea’
According to Nelson, the US and China are in a race to see who can be first to gain access to the water ice believed to be trapped at the lunar south pole. “We need to protect the interest of the international community … If indeed we find water in abundance that could be utilised for future crews and spacecraft, we want to make sure that that’s available to all, not just the one that’s claiming it.” Why is a rusty old Philippine warship involved in the South China Sea…
Experts Say China, Facing Economic Woes, May Become More Aggressive
washington — China’s domestic economic woes are prompting fears that Beijing could compensate by escalating the risk of a war with the U.S. over Taiwan, according to experts who closely follow the U.S.-China rivalry. And China’s economic slowdown, already evident in slowing growth, plunging exports and the increasing municipal debt, unemployment and deflation, is likely to worsen if other nations follow the U.S. lead in restricting investments in China. “China may act more aggressively in the near term — as its military capabilities mature — to lock in gains while…
Huobi grapples with rumours of employee arrests, insolvency and fraud in roller coaster week for crypto world
Huobi Global, a cryptocurrency exchange founded in mainland China with a large presence in Hong Kong, is grappling with a torrent of rumours surrounding alleged arrests of employees, insolvency and fraud that triggered a roller-coaster ride in the crypto market over the past week. The drama began on Saturday when blockchain news website Wu Shuo reported that several crypto exchange executives had been investigated by mainland police. Soon after, Hong Kong-based Techhub News reported that at least three executives from Huobi had been taken away by mainland police as part…
Joe Biden calls China ‘ticking time bomb’ due to economic troubles
US President Joe Biden on Thursday called China a “ticking time bomb” because of its economic challenges and said the country was in trouble because of weak growth. “They have got some problems. That’s not good because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things,” Biden said at a political fundraiser in Utah. Biden’s remarks were reminiscent of comments he made at another fundraiser in June when he referred to President Xi Jinping as a “dictator.” China called the remarks a provocation. 02:35 US President Biden defends calling Chinese…