China Millennials’ Love of Credit Cards Raises Debt Fears

Tom Hancock and Wang Xueqiao
Financial Times
Mr Wang is part of a generation of young consumers who have rejected the thrifty habits of their elders and become used to spending with borrowed money. Outstanding consumer loans — used for vehicle purchases, holidays, household renovations and...

Viewpoint

05.30.18

Who’s Really Responsible for Digital Privacy in China?

Shazeda Ahmed & Bertram Lang
While the United States is reeling from the revelation that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested data from over 87 million Facebook accounts, China’s biggest tech companies and regulators are confronting a wave of of their own...

China's Ant Financial Raises $10 Billion at $150 Billion Valuation: Sources

Kane Wu
Reuters
The capital-raising comes ahead of a widely expected initial public offering.

Alibaba Opens Car Vending Machine in China That Gives Free Test Drives for People with Good Social Credit

Thuy Ong
Verge
Alibaba and Ford signed a deal to form a partnership last year that would see both companies working together on new technological opportunities.

Reports

12.12.17

Central Planning, Local Experiments

Mareike Ohlberg, Shazeda Ahmed, Bertram Lang
Shazeda Ahmed & Bertram Lang
Mercator Institute for China Studies
The “Social Credit System” is designed to monitor and rate citizens and companies in China and to guide their behavior. “It is a wide-reaching project that touches on almost all aspects of everyday life,” the authors Mareike Ohlberg, Bertram Lang,...

China to Debtors: Pay up or Be Shamed

Keith Bradsher and Ailin Tang
New York Times
Troubled by huge debts run up by big state companies and politically connected local governments, China is taking steps instead to go after the little guys.

Viewpoint

09.15.17

The Unprecedented Reach of China’s Surveillance State

Stanley Lubman
The Chinese Party-state is building a social credit system for collecting information about all of its citizens by police, courts, and other institutions. This enables the government to reach into society to a degree unprecedented in history...

Books

06.20.17

Shadow Banking and the Rise of Capitalism in China

Andrew Collier
This book is about the growth of shadow banking in China and the rise of China’s free markets. Shadow Banking refers to capital that is distributed outside the formal banking system, including everything from Mom and Pop lending shops to online credit to giant state owned banks called Trusts. They have grown from a fraction of the economy 10 years ago to nearly half of all China’s annual 25 trillion renminbi (U.S.$4.1 trillion) in lending in the economy today.Shadow Banks are a new aspect of capitalism in China—barely regulated, highly risky, yet tolerated by Beijing. They have been permitted to flourish because many companies cannot get access to formal bank loans. It is the Wild West of banking in China. If we define capitalism as economic activity controlled by the private sector, then Shadow Banking is still in a hybrid stage, a halfway house between the state and the private economic. But it is precisely this divide that makes Shadow Banking important to the rise of capitalism. How Beijing handles this large free market will say a lot about how the country’s economy will grow—will free markets be granted greater leeway? —Palgrave Macmillan{chop}

Why China No Longer Fears the Fed

Tom Mitchell
Financial Times
In 2016, the People's Bank of China got a reprieve from the U.S. Federal Reserve. This year it needs no such help.

Meet the Ma Family: How Millennials are Changing the Way China Thinks About Money

Engen Tham and Adam Jourdan
Reuters
China's millennials - roughly those aged between 18 and 35 - are embracing debt like never before

Caixin Media

01.27.15

China Boots Up an Internet Banking Industry

Premier Li Keqiang recently launched a new era for banking in China by ceremonially pressing the "confirm" button for a 35,000 yuan loan issued to a Shenzhen truck driver.Li's gesture on January 4 on behalf of Shenzhen Qianhai WeBank...

Caixin Media

11.17.14

Visa and MasterCard Confront China’s Stacked Deck

Visa and MasterCard executives eager to expand in China were thrilled recently when Premier Li Keqiang seemed to suggest that a door would open to them for bank card yuan business in the country.But they had read Li wrong: The premier's...

China Eases Credit Rules for Some Property Developers

Esther Fung
Wall Street Journal
The biggest of China's some 85,000 property developers are the only ones likely to benefit from this credit loosening. Authorities have been trying to streamline the number of companies as part of economic overhauls.

Media

05.13.14

Why Are There No Credit Scores in China?

Few would dispute that Chinese society suffers from a serious trust problem. After surviving crafty scams and shoddy products for years, Chinese people have become guarded with strangers and cautious in business dealings. Given all that, it would be...

Is China really running out of cash?

Leslie Shaffer
CNBC
Citibank fund transfer delays sparks concern over a possible nation-wide liquidity shortage. 

Chinese Trust Fund Avoids High-profile Default

Simon Rabinovitch, Josh Noble
Financial Times
One of China's biggest “shadow banks” raises Rmb3bn from investors, which was backed by a coal mine which later collapsed. 

China Dwarfs U.S. in Monetary Stimulus

Keith Bradsher
New York Times
Can China slow credit growth and money supply without causing slumps in real-estate and business?

China Inflation at Seven-Month High, Limits Room for Easing Despite Export Tumble

Kevin Yao and Xiaoyi Shao
Reuters
China's annual consumer inflation rate rose to a seven-month high of 3.1 percent in September as poor weather drove up food prices, limiting the scope for the central bank to maneuver to support the economy even as exports...

China Locks Foreign Investors Out of Another Bad-Debt Cleanup

Stephen Aldred
Reuters
Foreign investors that specialise in buying up distressed debt are queuing outside the industry's door, but bankers say China's reluctance to pay the price of a privately funded clean-up means that door probably won't open. 

Too Much, Too Fast: China Sees Backlash From Massive Growth

Jim Zarroli
NPR
At a time when much of the world is mired in economic torpor, China still enjoys enviable growth rates. Yet there’s no question that its economy is growing more slowly these days. 

A Chinese City is Asking Its Companies to Pay Public Sector Salaries Because It Can’t Afford Them

Jake Maxwell Watts
Quartz
Local government debt is now so unwieldy in China that some desperate city governments, such as that of western Ordos, have turned to the private sector for help to pay their employees. 

Inside China’s Bank-Rate Missteps

Lingling Wei and Bob Davis
Wall Street Journal
A rare peek into the actions of China’s leaders in a month when a Chinese cash crunch spooked global investors shows a leadership falling short in its struggle to redirect China's economy and also faltering in its efforts to convey its...

Caixin Media

06.25.13

Legal, Economic Reforms Important At Coming Party Session

China’s blueprint for economic reform is finally taking shape. The government has appointed a taskforce to draft the plans, ahead of the third plenary meeting of the 18th Central Committee. With the country’s economy at the crossroads, these plans...

The Role of Trust Companies in China’s Recent Credit Growth

Nicholas Borst
Peterson Institute for International Economics
If any institutions fit the classic definition of shadow banking in China, it’s trust companies. Trust companies take money from institutional investors and individuals and make loans and investments to a wide variety of projects. 

Caixin Media

03.29.12

Give Wenzhou What It Needs

The development of China's private economy requires financial support, especially private financial support. Wenzhou is the home of the private economy. With 99.5 percent of companies falling into the category of small and micro enterprises,...

Reports

09.01.08

Creating Financial Harmony: Lessons for China 

James A. Dorn
Cato Institute
The current turmoil in global financial markets, which began with the American subprime crisis in 2007, has put market liberalism in a bad light. But it was the socialization of risk—not private free markets—that precipitated the crisis. This...

Reports

03.01.06

Progress in China's Banking Sector Reform: Has China's Bank Behavior Changed?

Richard Podpiera
Sara Segal-Williams
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Substantial effort has been devoted to reforming China's banking system in recent years. The authorities recapitalized three large state-owned banks, introduced new governance structures, and brought in foreign strategic investors. However, it...