Finance

China’s central bank says local government debt risks are declining

Published

8 months ago

August 16, 2024

Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), during the Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai, China, on Wednesday, June 19, 2024.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

BEIJING — China’s financial risks have dropped, including from local government debt, People’s Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng said in state media interviews published late Thursday.

Pan also said the central bank will work with the Ministry of Finance to enable China to reach its full-year growth targets. He said that monetary policy would remain supportive.

Beijing has increasingly prioritized addressing risks from high debt levels in the real estate sector, which is closely linked to local government finances. International institutions have long called on China to reduce its ballooning debt levels.

“China’s overall financial system is sound. The overall risk level has significantly declined,” Pan said in an interview released by state broadcaster CCTV. That’s according to a CNBC translation of the transcript.

He noted that “the number and debt levels of local government financing platforms are declining,” and that the cost of their debt burden has “dropped significantly.”

Beijing should focus on domestic market to support the economy as geopolitical risks set to remain

Local government financing vehicles emerged in China in the last two decades to enable local authorities, who couldn’t easily borrow directly, to fund infrastructure and other projects. LGFVs primarily obtained financing from shadow banking.

The lack of regulatory oversight often meant indiscriminate funding of infrastructure projects with limited financial return. That raised the debt burden on LGFVs, for which the local governments are responsible.

Coordinated efforts in the last year by local governments, financial institutions and investors have “alleviated the most pressing repayment needs of the weakest LGFVs and boosted market sentiment,” S&P Global Ratings analysts said in a July 25 report, one year since Beijing made a concerted effort to reduce LGFV risk.

However, the report said LGFV debt “remains a big problem.” The analysis found that more than 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion) of LGFV bonds are due to mature over the next couple of quarters, while such debt growth remains in the high single digits.

Exacerbating debt challenges is China’s slowing growth. The economy grew by 5% in the first half of the year, raising concerns among analysts that the country would not be able to reach its target of around 5% growth for the full year without additional stimulus.

The International Monetary Fund on Aug. 2 said in its regular review of China’s financial situation that macroeconomic policy should support domestic demand to mitigate debt risks.

“Small and medium-sized commercial and rural banks are the weak link in the large banking system,” the IMF report said, noting China has nearly 4,000 such banks that account for 25% of total banking system assets.

Addressing real estate

The number of high-risk small and medium-sized banks has dropped to half of what it was at their peak, Pan said via state media on Thursday, without sharing specific figures.

In real estate, he pointed out the mortgage down payment ratio has reached a record low of 15% in China, and that interest rates are also low. Pan noted central authorities are helping local governments with financing so they can acquire property and turn them into affordable housing or rental units.

Property and related sectors once accounted for at least one-fourth of China’s economy. But in recent years Beijing has sought to shift the country away from relying on real estate for growth, toward advanced tech and manufacturing.

Pan’s public comments come after a week of heightened volatility in the government bond market.

Earlier on Thursday, the PBOC made the rare decision to delay a rollover of its medium-term lending facility in favor of a 577.7 billion yuan capital injection via another tool called the 7-day reverse repurchase agreement. Pan highlighted that 7-day tool in June when discussing PBOC efforts to revamp its monetary policy structure.

The PBOC is scheduled Tuesday morning to release its monthly loan prime rate, another benchmark rate. The central bank cut the 1-year and 5-year loan prime rates by 10 basis points each in July, after keeping the 1-year unchanged for 10 straight months, and the 5-year unchanged for four months.

Finance

China’s response to U.S. tariffs will likely focus on stimulus, trade

Published

2 hours ago

April 3, 2025

Business Finance News

Chinese national flags flutter on boats near shipping containers at the Yangshan Port outside Shanghai, China, February 7, 2025.

Go Nakamura | Reuters

BEIJING — China’s reaction to new U.S. tariffs will likely focus on domestic stimulus and strengthening ties with trading partners, according to analysts based in Greater China.

Hours after U.S. President Donald Trump announced additional 34% tariffs on China, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce called on the U.S. to cancel the tariffs, and vowed unspecified countermeasures. The sweeping U.S. policy also slapped new duties on the European Union and major Asian countries.

Chinese exports to the U.S. this year had already been hit by 20% in additional tariffs, raising the total rate on shipments from China to 54%, among the highest levied by the Trump administration. The effective rate for individual product lines can vary.

But, as has been the case, the closing line of the Chinese statement was a call to negotiate.

“I think the focus of China’s response in the near term won’t be retaliatory tariffs or such measures,” said Bruce Pang, adjunct associate professor at CUHK Business School. That’s according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese-language statement.

Instead, Pang expects China to focus on improving its own economy by diversifying export destinations and products, as well as doubling down on its priority of boosting domestic consumption.

Watch for cascading tariffs as tariffs reroute trade within Asia, says economist

China, the world’s second-largest economy, has since September stepped up stimulus efforts by expanding the fiscal deficit, increasing a consumption trade-in subsidy program and calling for a halt in the real estate slump. Notably, Chinese President Xi Jinping held a rare meeting with tech entrepreneurs including Alibaba founder Jack Ma in February, in a show of support for the private sector.

The policy reversal — from regulatory tightening in recent years — reflects how Beijing has been “anticipating the coming slowdown or even crash in exports,” Macquarie’s Chief China Economist Larry Hu said in a report, ahead of Trump’s latest tariff announcement. He pointed out that the pandemic-induced export boom of 2021 enabled Beijing to “launch a massive regulatory campaign.”

“My view stays the same,” Hu said in an email Thursday. “Beijing will use domestic stimulus to offset the impact of tariffs, so that they could still achieve the growth target of ‘around 5%.'”

Instead of retaliatory tariffs, Hu also expects Beijing will focus on still using blacklists, export controls on critical minerals and probes into foreign companies in China. Hu also anticipates China will keep the yuan strong against the U.S. dollar and resist calls from retailers to cut prices — as a way to push inflationary pressure onto the U.S.

China’s top leaders in early March announced they would pursue a target of around 5% growth in gross domestic product this year, a task they emphasized would require “very arduous work” to achieve. The finance ministry also hinted it could increase fiscal support if needed.

About 20% of China’s economy relies on exports, according to Goldman Sachs. They previously estimated that new U.S. tariffs of around 60% on China would lower real GDP by around 2 percentage points. The firm still maintains a full-year forecast of 4.5% GDP growth.

Changing global trade

What’s different from the impact of tariffs under Trump’s first term is that China is not the only target, but one of a swath of countries facing hefty levies on their exports to the U.S. Some of these countries, such as Vietnam and Thailand, had served as alternate routes for Chinese goods to reach the U.S.

At the Chinese export hub of Yiwu on Thursday, businesses seemed nonchalant about the impact of the new U.S. tariffs, due to a perception their overseas competitors wouldn’t gain an advantage, said Cameron Johnson, a Shanghai-based senior partner at consulting firm Tidalwave Solutions.

He pointed out that previously, the U.S. had focused its trade measures on forcing companies to remove China from their supply chains and go to other countries. But Chinese manufacturers had expanded overseas alongside that diversification, he said.

“The reality is this [new U.S. tariff policy] essentially gives most of Asia and Africa to China, and the U.S. is not prepared,” Johnson said. He expects China won’t make things unnecessarily difficult for U.S. businesses operating in the country and instead will try harder to build other trade relationships.

Since Trump’s first four-year term ended in early 2021, China has increased its trade with Southeast Asia so much that the region is now Beijing’s largest trading partner, followed by the European Union and then the U.S.

The 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) joined China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand in forming the world’s largest free trade bloc — the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) — which came into being in early 2022. The U.S. and India are not members of the RCEP.

“RCEP member countries will naturally deepen trade ties with one another,” Yue Su, principal economist, China, at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said in a note Thursday.

“This is also partly because China’s economy is likely to remain the most — or at least among the most—stable in relative terms, given the government’s strong commitment to its growth targets and its readiness to deploy fiscal policy measures when needed,” she said.

Uncertainties remain

The extent to which all countries will be slapped with tariffs this week remains uncertain as Trump is widely expected to use the duties as a negotiating tactic, especially with China.

He said last week the U.S. could lower its tariffs on China to help close a deal for Beijing-based ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations.

But the level of new tariffs on China was worse than many investors expected.

“Unlike some of the optimistic market forecasts, we do not expect a US-China bilateral grand bargain,” Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, said in a note Thursday.

“We expect tensions between these two mega economies to worsen significantly,” he said, “especially as China has been making large strides in high-tech sectors, including AI and robotics.”