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Its the strength of US$ stupid... RMB is relatively stable against S$ and hence China could well be having a mgt float system similar to MAS' exchange rate policy

China Sets Yuan at Four-Year Low in ‘Stress Test’
The central bank wants to see to what extent it can let market forces determine currency’s value



[Image: BN-LP934_1209YU_J_20151209000312.jpg]ENLARGE
A stack of 100-yuan notes at a bank in Anhui province; economists and investors say Beijing may not be able to resist the mounting depreciation pressure on its currency. PHOTO: ZUMA PRESS
By 
ANJANI TRIVEDI in Hong Kong and
 
LINGLING WEI in Shanghai

Updated Dec. 9, 2015 3:57 a.m. ET
4 COMMENTS
China guided the yuan to its weakest level in more than four years as the country deals with currency outflows and a slowing economy while trying to loosen its grip on the exchange rate.
The central bank is testing how far it can let market forces go in determining the yuan’s value without setting off a sharp selloff and incurring wrath from trading partners, according to people familiar with the matter.
“It’s a stress test of sorts,” one of the people said. “What the central bank is trying to avoid is the kind of panic selling that resulted from the August devaluation.”
China set the yuan at 6.414 to the U.S. dollar Wednesday, its weakest level since August 2011, continuing a month-long trend and following the market’s lead. In the past, the setting didn’t always coincide with where the yuan had last traded in the market, as the central bank tightened its grip to stabilize the currency.
Beijing is also bowing to investor pressure to deliver on its pledge of a more market-driven yuan, while trying to avoid a repeat of mistakes like its market-roiling summer devaluation. The heavy selloff caught People’s Bank of China officials somewhat off guard, according to people close to the central bank.
The yuan has lost as much as 3.4% of its value since Aug. 10, the eve of the 2% devaluation.
Efforts since then to steady the yuan have been costly. Internal estimates at the PBOC show that it spent as much as $130 billion in August alone in bolstering the yuan’s value. And in recent months, Beijing has tested various ways to intervene to provide traders with forward guidance.
Rounds of monetary easing, deteriorating foreign-exchange reserves and a market convinced that China’s currency has only one way to go have left Beijing in a bind. On one hand, it has vowed to global investors and the International Monetary Fund that it will act to make its currency more market-driven. On the other, billions of dollars continue to flow out and competing domestic pressures are rising.
“The central bank is in a dilemma right now,” said Zhang Ming, a senior economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.
Mr. Zhang and other analysts now think the yuan is overvalued relative to its purchasing power, forcing Chinese companies to cut prices and lower wages to stay competitive, which could raise the specter of deflation.
“At the same time, the central bank should attach high importance to the risks associated with depreciation, such as Chinese companies’ abilities to repay dollar-denominated debts and its potential impact on currencies of China’s trading partners in Southeast Asia,” he said.
Investors and traders have since expected the yuan to weaken as Beijing works to boost an economy hurt by a relatively strong currency.
“What has happened in the past few days shows a clear intention from the authorities that they would like to see an orderly and mild depreciation of the yuan,” said the head of trading at a Guangzhou-based, state-run bank. “Everything, ranging from the dismal trade data to the prospect of a Fed rate increase, calls for a weaker yuan. If you ask 10 traders in China, nine will tell you that they expect the currency to depreciate in the near term.”
Data earlier this week showed China’s foreign-exchange reserves fell in November to their lowest level in more than two years, dropping $87.22 billion to $3.44 trillion.
Economists and investors say Beijing may not be able to resist the mounting depreciation pressure on its currency, given the capital outflows.
Stephen Jen, founder of SLJ Macro Partners LLP, a London-based hedge fund, says China’s pent-up demand for foreign assets “must be satiated sooner or later.”
As China evolves “from the world’s largest exporter of goods to a large exporter of capital,” it seems the yuan should continue to depreciate, he says.
“We could debate on the timing and the pace of this trend, but the direction of the trend seems to be clear,” he wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. Like other emerging-market currencies facing pressures from a strengthening U.S. dollar and the prospect of rising U.S. interest rates, he added, China’s yuan should depreciate “due to capital account reasons, not current account reasons.”
Beijing has few options: Continue to lean on its foreign-exchange reserves, let the currency fall in an orderly manner or let the currency fall freely and lose enough value to absorb the rising economic pressures.
Last week, the International Monetary Fund said it would include the yuan in its elite basket of reserve currencies, the Special Drawing Rights, along with the U.S. dollar, the euro, the pound and the yen. While some critics worry that Beijing now has free rein to lets its currency fall to make its monetary policy more effective, China has vowed to communicate better with financial markets.
The IMF action is merely symbolic at this point—the yuan won’t be added to the emergency lender’s basket until October 2016.
China also faces external pressure not to devalue the yuan too sharply. A big depreciation would hurt Beijing’s credibility at a time when the leadership wants to attract more foreign capital. Also, China hosts the Group of 20 major economies next year. A cheaper yuan could renew U.S. election-year criticism that China is keeping its currency artificially low to help its exporters.
At a press briefing after the IMF’s inclusion announcement, PBOC Vice Governor Yi Gangsaid Beijing will continue to keep its currency “stable at a reasonable and equilibrium level,” intervening only to smooth excessive volatility.
The weak setting Wednesday didn’t trigger any sharp selling in the yuan traded onshore, which fell as much as 0.14%. The yuan traded offshore, which has lost 0.6% of its value over the past three days, was last down 0.04%.
China’s yuan closed trading onshore at 6.4280 to the dollar, its weakest closing level since August 2011.

—Shen Hong in Shanghai contributed to this article
Write to Anjani Trivedi at anjani.trivedi@wsj.com and Lingling Wei atlingling.wei@wsj.com
China’s industrial production showed unexpected strength in November and retail sales rose the most this year, adding to evidence that the world’s second-largest economy is seeing signs of stabilization in old growth drivers and renewed vigor in the newer ones.

Industrial output climbed 6.2 percent from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Saturday, compared with the 5.7 percent median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg and October’s 5.6 percent. The fresh data helped lift Bloomberg’s monthly China gross domestic product tracker up to an estimated 6.85 percent growth pace last month for the best reading since June.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2...stabilizes
A investment product, with a high liquidity, and high return of close to 14% annually. The promoter must be taking the rare metals similar as Pu-erh tea in China...

The China metal exchange at center of investment scandal

KUNMING, China - The plain four-storey Fanya exchange building in this southern Chinese city is teeming with investigators trying to understand how an obscure metal trading business turned into one of China's most audacious investment schemes.

Tucked behind an upmarket shopping mall, the Fanya Exchange was founded in 2011 with the aim of giving China greater global control over the supply and price of 14 strategic and rare metals. It also offered an investment product promising annual returns as high as 13.68 percent and the flexibility to deposit and withdraw money at will.

It almost seemed too good to be true. And it was.
...
http://www.todayonline.com/business/chin...epage=true
(21-04-2015, 03:43 PM)BlueKelah Wrote: [ -> ]Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd. became China’s first real estate company to default on its U.S. currency debt, capping a month of distress in bond markets amid an anti-corruption probe and fueling concern that losses will spread.

The default coincides with the expiration of a 30-day grace period on $52 million of missed interest payments on two dollar-denominated bonds, according to a Hong Kong stock exchange statement Monday. Kaisa, based in the southern city of Shenzhen, is struggling to service 65 billion yuan ($10.5 billion) of debt owed to both onshore and offshore lenders while becoming embroiled in President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on graft.

The developer’s problems have rippled across the region’s debt market, where investors starved of yield elsewhere in the world have swooped in to boost returns. As the government’s anti-corruption probes widen, it’s raising concern that defaults will spread after overseas noteholders bought a record $21.3 billion of bonds issued by Chinese property companies.

“It’s been a canary that has been chirping for some time,” Gary Herbert, a money manager who helps oversee about $45 billion of fixed-income assets at Brandywine Global Investment Management LLC in Philadelphia, said in a telephone interview. “This is the beginning of an adjustment period in China that will see a lot of credit investors, who were chasing the promise of higher yields, ultimately disappointed.”
Founder’s Return

Kaisa’s default follows the surprise return of founder Kwok Ying Shing last week.

Major Chinese Developer Says It Can’t Pay Dollar Debts


China CITIC Bank Offers Kaisa 30 Billion Yuan Loan for Debt Restructuring

http://english.caixin.com/2015-12-11/100885018.html

20bil to settle 48bil of debts from domestic financial institutions? 60% hair cut?
Chinese Officials Admit They Faked Economic Figures
http://fortune.com/2015/12/14/china-fake...hp-popular
(15-12-2015, 06:52 PM)Behappyalways Wrote: [ -> ]Chinese Officials Admit They Faked Economic Figures
http://fortune.com/2015/12/14/china-fake...hp-popular

as expected, as conditions deteriorate more and more dodgy stuff will show itself. China's energy use numbers and company earnings have been in direct contradiction to their published GDP growth numbers. Their real GDP growth is likely to be flat if not negative given the monthly contractions in their PMI.

Once the Ponzi scheme deflates, things will get pretty bad over there. Commodity prices (which were good when demand from China was good) are now telling the story. the way I see it, there's a recession brewing in many parts of China, its the communist propaganda that's trying to keep things under wrap.
Banks Set Lending Record Even before 2015 Ends
Some 11.1 trillion yuan lent out so far this year – more than 2014's record 9.78 trillion yuan – as companies borrow to repay old debt

http://english.caixin.com/2015-12-22/100891543.html
The long-waited rules on P2P online platform. IMO, the rules fovour Baidu's Baixin Bank, which Citic Bank is the partner. Both Alibaba's MyBank, and Tencent's WeBank are partnering non-bank companies.

What is your view?

China Lays Out Rules for Peer-to-Peer Lending Platforms
China’s banking regulator seeks to promote sector as source of financing for small businesses

Dec. 28, 2015 4:48 a.m. ET
0 COMMENTS
BEIJING—China’s banking regulator released draft rules for fast-growing peer-to-peer, or P2P, lending platforms in a bid to promote their development as a solution to small-business financing difficulties.

The China Banking Regulatory Commission said in rules seeking public comment that P2P platforms would be banned from providing guarantees to clients, and could work only as intermediaries linking investors with borrowers.

Platforms should file for record with local financial regulators after they receive business licenses, the draft rules said.

The rules also said that the amount of credit extended on these online financing platforms should be small and that platforms should set a ceiling on the credit that an individual borrower can access in a bid to better manage potential risks. The rules didn’t elaborate on the amount or the ceiling.

P2P lenders should also publish information on their websites on lending turnover, overdue loans and bad loan ratios, according to the draft rules.

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The regulator also said P2P lenders aren’t allowed to sell wealth management products, insurance, funds or trust products.

P2P platforms, which fill a gap in the market where the state banking system favors big state companies and small businesses have little access to credit, reported rapid growth in recent years. But as the Chinese economy has lost momentum, some P2P platforms--which are lightly regulated--have run into trouble.

At the end of November, there were 2,612 P2P platforms operating normally in China, while more than 1,000, or about 30%, were found to have problems, the regulator said.

—Grace Zhu
http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-lays-o...1451296090
Their stock market likely to continue tanking soon. The six month lock down is almost over so big fund s will be outflow again.

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk
China approves second shipping related merger this month.. involves China merchants group. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2...this-month