Bankers muzzled on capital outflows?
Business & Technology
Top business and technology news for January 11, 2017. Part of the daily The China Project news roundup "Taiwan scrambles jets."
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Banks forced to cover tracks of China’s forex regulator / Reuters
After the yuan’s decline of more than 6 percent against the dollar last year, several bankers told Reuters that the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) had told banks to keep its instructions about tightening capital outflows secret. SAFE, an agency under of the People’s Bank of China, denied the allegation and called the report “inaccurate” and “misleading.” In a statement released on Wednesday, SAFE’s Shanghai branch said it didn’t impose new measures but had asked banks to conduct “strength checks on compliance and deal authenticity.” Reuters reported that “a representative from an international bank attending the meeting said there were no written instructions, but a high-ranking SAFE official told them explicitly what was expected of them. ‘You must control your forex deficit, but you can’t say that SAFE is controlling capital outflows,’ the official told the bankers.” -
China’s 2 percent inflation feels more like 20 percent to big-city renters / Bloomberg
Soaring rental and purchase housing prices mean that many urban Chinese have been feeling squeezed despite China’s low official inflation rate of 2 percent. “‘For college graduates in Beijing or Shanghai, rental can take up 50 percent of their pay checks,’ said Ding Shuang, chief China economist at Standard Chartered Plc in Hong Kong, adding that what people spend on will dictate their inflation perceptions.”
- In China, insurers sell risky products to fund risky investments, freaking out regulators / WSJ (paywall)
- Yahoo to become Alibaba alter ego with name change / Caixin
- Alibaba looks to bricks and mortar with bid for mall operator in China / NYT (paywall)
- Bitcoin falls 10% as China plans to investigate exchanges / CNBC
- Why is Nokia’s smartphone comeback limited to China? / Newsweek
