Respectable financial analysts once derided the tiny coterie of “China bears” for warning that the country could face a financial crisis. But over the last year the risk of a bad loan reckoning has become conventional wisdom. While Beijing possesses the resources to shore up the banking system, its continuing efforts to stimulate growth with more lending are complicating China’s economic and political predicament. The latest alarm comes from the Bank for International Settlements, the…
Posts published in “Day: September 21, 2016”
China’s huge credit binge has increased the risk of a banking crisis in the world’s second biggest economy in the next three years, according to global financial watchdog. An early warning of financial overheating – the gap between credit and GDP – hit 30.1 in China in the first quarter of this year, a report from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said on Sunday. Any level above 10 suggests that a crisis will occur…
Amid rising real estate prices across China, Chinese couples are scrambling to get divorced to buy new houses, in an effort to circumvent government restrictions that require residents to pay more in down payment if they want to purchase a second house. “We already have two apartments but if we do not buy a third one, our housing accumulation fund would be wasted. Besides, real estate is a good investment option,” an anonymous Shanghai resident…
France has repatriated a Chinese fugitive for the first time since the two countries signed an extradition treaty that came into effect last year. The suspect surnamed Chen, who was detained by French police in October, is accused of taking public funds of more than 20 million yuan (HK$23 million) without authorisation, the Xinhua news agency said, citing police from the city of Ruian in Zhejiang province. China has been trying to get increased international…
China’s Ministry of Agriculture says it will investigate claims by a dropout from a top doctoral programme that maintenance reports for a laboratory testing GMO products were made up. The commitment comes just days after Wei Jingliang, a former PhD student at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences’ Institute of Animal Sciences, said that a national GMO testing centre administered by the institute forged lab maintenance records for dozens of projects on genetically modified organisms.…
The northern city of Tianjin recently issued a circular to its bureaucrats denouncing a senior official for sucuumbing to “superstition”. According to the city’s Discipline Committee, Lu Fuchun, a former district party head, began acting strangely after failing to win two key positions. Lu then spent hundreds of thousands of yuan on a Buddha statue, wore lucky amulets and had fortune-telling charts printed on the back of government directives. Lu, 52, was put under investigation…
The competitive pressure on China’s manufacturing sector from India is perhaps much bigger than China imagined. China’s actual salary has grown 10.6 percent since 2008, while India has seen a salary growth of just 0.2 percent during the same period, the Times of India reported recently, citing a report from the Hay Group. The report comes after the news that some Chinese smartphone vendors, Huawei Technologies Co included, would soon start manufacturing handsets in the…
“We talked with open heart and both countries found new ground to move forward.” This is how Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, described his just concluded four-day visit to India, his first overseas visit after assuming office. Ironically, it is reported that while Prachanda aimed at rebuilding Kathmandu’s ties with New Delhi, which have experienced a chill over the past years, India was seeking to “claw back ground from China,”…
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday denied that Russia had cancelled planned joint military drills with the country in the aftermath of Sunday’s attack on an Indian army base in Uri. Talking to The Express Tribune from Moscow, Pakistan’s Ambassador to Russia Qazi Khalilullah said the joint Pakistan-Russia military exercises will take place as scheduled. The first-ever military drills between the two former Cold War rivals – named ‘Friendship 2016’ – will start from September 24 and…
The writer is a staff member of the daily ‘62 days of continued atrocities by the Indian occupation forces in IOK, with impunity due to international apathy, remains a matter of anguish and deep concern,’ is the line that our very dear Mr Nafees Zakaria, spokesperson foreign office, started his ‘opening remarks’ with at the weekly press briefing last week. Mere days after, India raised the issue of human rights violations in Balochistan. Ajit Kumar,…
ISLAMABAD: The growing Modi-Ghani nexus against Pakistan, the changing tone of Washington and the latest attack in Uri in Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) are likely to add challenges for Islamabad which could only be countered through focused response and unity of the nation. This is possible only if all the institutions restrict their roles within the defined constitutional limits and all politicians give up grimy politics and get united to face the latest challenges being…