Regulatory squeeze to kill a third of China’s hedge funds

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One-third of all Chinese hedge funds likely face liquidation next month when new minimum net asset values come into force. The measures mark Beijing’s latest regulatory squeeze on a key, fast-growing industry.

Hedge funds must maintain a net asset value of at least 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) for 60 consecutive trading days or face liquidation, according to the Regulations on the Supervision and Administration of Private Equity Investment Funds.

The new minimum capital requirements were unveiled by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and Ministry of Justice on July 9 and will take effect on September 1. The new regulations will cap leverage levels at 200% and the size of investments hedge funds can make in single securities at 25% of total assets under management.

Beijing seeks to weed out the smaller and often less professional players responsible for extreme volatility in a sector that has grown sevenfold over the last decade.

Around 93,000 hedge funds valued at 5.6 trillion yuan were in operation across China at the end of 2022, according to the Asset Management Association of China (AMAC), a self-regulatory fund management industry group.

Shanghai Suntime Information Technology Co, a financial data provider, says that nearly 35,000 products, or 37% of the total hedge fund industry, have less than 5 million yuan of assets under management.

The new regulations will also require hedge fund managers to maintain at least 10 million yuan of paid-in capital. Analysts estimate that thousands of hedge funds will have to be shut down within this year, resulting in a “historic” shake-up of the massive industry.

New Premier Li Qiang toughened industry curbs in July by approving a broad regulation on private funds that raised penalties for violations. The first State Council-level legislation on the industry will allow for criminal investigations into alleged irregularities including insider trading and can invalidate contracts that breach rules, news reports said.

Li Qiang is driving tighter regulation of the hedge fund industry. Image: Screengrab / NDTV

On December 30 last year, the AMAC issued a consultation draft of the Measures for Registration and Filing of Private Investment Funds requiring hedge fund firms to have at least 10 million yuan of assets. In January this year, a total of 1,564 private equity firms were de-registered. On February 24, the AMAC officially launched the measures, which took effect on May 1.

As of mid-July, 1,959 private equity firms had been de-registered this year, compared with the dissolution of 2,210 firms for the whole year of 2022. There are about 22,000 private equity firms in China, which are managing more than 15,300 funds worth a total of 21 trillion yuan.

Zhou Chenghan, a solicitor at Beijing Zhongwen Lawyer Office, said the measures that took effect on May 1 are “self-regulatory” rules for the fund management sector while those that will take effect on September 1 are CSRC regulations. 

The China Securities Journal said the new rules will act to remove “fake” private equity firms and shell companies from Chinese markets.

Big to get bigger

Zhou Yiqin, president of GuanShao Information Consulting Center, a financial regulations specialist, told Bloomberg that small hedge funds in China are facing growing compliance pressures while a large number of them will exit the markets. 

The same Bloomberg report said smaller funds often outperform the larger ones as they deploy high levels of leverage and experience extreme volatility. It said larger firms such as Perseverance Asset Management and Bridgewater Associates LP are set to benefit from the new regulations, which will drive out smaller players from the market. 

China’s hedge fund sector is much more concentrated than the US industry. The AMAC said in a report in 2021 that the largest 500 hedge funds managed about 57% of industry assets in the US while the top 500 firms held about 84% of assets in China.

Jiao Jinhong, chief lawyer of the CSRC, said the regulator had spent a decade working to improve its rules, which aim to standardize private equity investment activities and improve supervision.

He said the new rules will cover different activities from fund-raising to liquidations, support the healthy development of venture capital funds and effectively consolidate the legal foundation of private equity investment funds.

“The new rules will definitely benefit private equity investment funds and the overall asset management industry’s high-quality development,” Jiao said.

He added that the CSRC already reformed the stock listing system earlier this year and that it is high time to improve Chinese capital markets from the investor-side, which refers to hedge funds and their managers.

“Asset management products are one of the main sources of medium and long-term funds in the capital market,” he said. “Strengthening the market supervision and guiding fund managers to earnestly fulfill their obligations are the only way to achieve high-quality development of the asset management industry.”

Read: Country Garden’s cash crunch worries homebuyers

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

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Presidential hopeful Tan Kin Lian says he has submitted his election deposit

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At the launch of his bid for the presidency on Friday, Mr Tan said it is important that Singaporeans have a chance to vote for an independent candidate. He said he believes he will be the only candidate from “outside the establishment”.

Mr Tan added that while fellow presidential hopeful George Goh is an “independent person”, he is not certain Mr Goh will meet the eligibility criteria.

On Saturday, Mr Tan reiterated that he is independent despite his past links to the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP).

He was a member of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) from the 1970s to 2008, but did not hold public office. He served as branch secretary at Marine Parade from 1976 to 1979, then became chairman of the Marine Parade Community Centre.

He said the support for the PAP was “overwhelming” in the years when he was a member, citing an example of how residents, not “business tycoons”, donated to build a community centre.

“That was the PAP of the old days, and I was proud to be associated with them,” he said. But now, Mr Tan said the PAP is “leaning towards the elite and leaving behind the ordinary people”.

“Already 15 years have passed, so I don’t think I can be considered establishment now

“Furthermore, I’ve been quite outspoken on social media … most people would know that I’m independent,” he said.

Analysts have said Mr Tan may not automatically qualify to stand in the election this year because eligibility criteria have changed since 2011.

Private sector candidates must have served as chief executive of a company with shareholders’ equity of S$500 million (US$370 million) or more for at least three years. 

NTUC Income had net assets of around S$1.17 billion in 2006, the last full year that Mr Tan served as CEO. But analysts said NTUC Income is a cooperative and not a “company” within the meaning of the relevant Article in the Constitution. 

The PEC can still give its approval if it decides that Mr Tan has the experience and ability comparable to a chief executive of a company with shareholders’ equity of S$500 million or more.

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China’s high-tech Field of Dreams

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TIANJIN – Watching the giant cranes glide across the longshore of this ancient port, a visitor has to pinch himself to remember that this is not a gigantic toy, but one of the world’s ten largest facilities, moving more than 20 million containers a year from ships to trucks without a single human in sight.

Built in just 19 months in 2020-2021, the automated Tianjin port isn’t just a means to send Chinese exports to the world. A high-definition video on an enormous curved screen in the visitor center reminds the visitor that the most important export item is the port itself. Tianjin was built to be cloned worldwide.

Call it the Sino-forming of world trade: Supply-chain bottlenecks due to port congestion, endemic in the Global South, can be alleviated by this artificial intelligence-driven system that dispatches cranes communicating on a 5G network, and empties a large container ship in just 45 minutes. At the biggest US port at Long Beach, California, unloading the same ship takes between 24 and 48 hours.

Crane operators that used to scrunch up in a booth at the top of their equipment now control the blue behemoths with joysticks from a remote tower, with each worker monitoring several machines. An AI algorithm works out the fastest route from ship to land transport.

The AI-driven port at Tianjin. Photo: Asia Times

This is China’s “Field of Dreams.” Build it, and they will come is the essence of China’s long-term strategy. The “it” in this case includes the world’s largest 5G network, the world’s newest and most efficient infrastructure and a national commitment to apply AI to the so-called Internet of Things, including manufacturing, transportation, logistics, medicine, urban management, and finance.

“They” are China’s private entrepreneurs, who are slow to get past a series of speed bumps: the draconian 2022 Covid lockdowns, the government’s crackdown on Alibaba and other Big Tech companies, and the freeze-up in China’s property market, which is locking up a great deal of private capital.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is underway in China, although its applications are limited to a few big installations. Some of the productivity gains are remarkable. Near Shenzhen, this writer visited an automated factory where Huawei manufactures thousands of 5G base stations a day, adding to the 2.3 million that China already has installed out of 3 million worldwide.

It has several assembly lines that each require 15 workers, compared to nearly 80 workers three years ago. Most of them are there to check that the automated assembly and testing equipment is doing its job properly; only one stage of assembly required human hands.

Detailed data isn’t available, but China’s auto industry—the world’s biggest buyer of industrial robots—has achieved remarkable gains in efficiency, allowing BYD and SAIC to offer electric vehicles at a price of around US$10,000. That’s less than China’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP), and comparable to the $800 price at which Henry Ford sold his first Model T in 1908, cheap enough so that any modestly prosperous family could afford a car.

China exported more than a million vehicles in the first three months of 2023, overtaking Japan as the world’s largest auto exporter, and its offerings at the low end of the EV price spectrum will help raise its market share in Europe as well as the Global South.

China’s authorities know that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will stall unless private entrepreneurs embrace the new technologies. The National Development and Reform Commission issued a July 24 directive calling on authorities at all levels to “mobilize the enthusiasm of private investment.”

Government bodies, the directive said, should “boost private investment confidence,” “focus on key areas and support private capital participation in major projects,” and “give full play to the important role of private investment.”

The NRDC will “select a group of enterprises with large market share and strong development potential,” “in line with the requirements of major national strategies and industrial policies” and “conducive to promoting high-tech enterprises.”

But the animal spirits of private entrepreneurs are not fired up by directives from bureaucrats, who aren’t qualified to pick winners among private firms. Beijing’s belated acknowledgment that China’s economic future depends on private risk-taking isn’t enough.

Chinese firms have to believe that the government won’t repeat its 2020-2021 crackdown on Alibaba and other Big Tech companies. And Chinese households, who have about 10% of their assets in stocks and 70% in real estate, have to invest in technology instead of houses. None of that will change overnight.

In July, Huawei’s Cloud division CEO, Zhang Pingan, unveiled Pangu, an AI system for a wide range of business applications. In contrast to ChatGPT and other so-called Large Language Models, the Huawei executive told the 6th World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, “The Pangu model does not compose poetry, nor does it have time to compose poetry, because its job is to go deep into all walks of life, and help AI add value to all walks of life.”

Huawei’s Zhang Pingan says Pangu will impact all walks of life. Image: Twitter

The platform is powered by Huawei’s own Kunpeng chipset and Ascend AI processor. It’s a do-it-yourself system for training AI models on proprietary data. Huawei Cloud offers its customers “large-scale industry development kits. Through secondary training on customer-owned data, customers can have their own exclusive industry large models,” the company said.

Although “Nvidia’s V100 and A100 GPUs remain the most popular GPUs for training Chinese large-scale models,” a recent study notes, “Huawei used its own Ascend 910 processors” to train the Pangu model.

Second, China appears able to produce proprietary AI chips like Ascend, which requires 7-nanometer processors. US sanctions were supposed to prevent China from making 7nm chips for years, but Chinese chip fabricators appear to have worked around US restrictions—at a cost.

It’s hard to tell through the fog of tech war whether and to what extent US tech sanctions are holding back China’s rollout of business AI applications. Announcing Alibaba’s better-than-expected second-quarter results on August 10, the company’s Cloud division CEO mentioned that a short-term shortage of GPUs was a constraint on growth.

How rapidly Chinese businesses will adopt AI systems such as Pangu and its competitors is hard to predict. Pangu’s first commercial application to coal mining debuted in late July in a Huawei joint venture with Shandong Energy Group. Late in 2022, China’s largest appliance maker Midea opened China’s “first fully connected 5G smart factory,” according to a Huawei video.

China’s private entrepreneurs face some significant hurdles. It’s hard to quantify them, but a couple of simple parameters are helpful. The price-earnings multiple of China’s CSI 300 stock index is about 13, compared to 21 for America’s S&P 500. Equity is much cheaper in China, which means that entrepreneurs pay a lot more for capital than their American counterparts.

The riskiness of the Chinese equity index, moreover, is nearly double that of the S&P 500. The implied volatility of options on MCHI, the broad Chinese stock market ETF that tracks the MSCI China Index, is now roughly 30%, compared to just 16% for the VIX index of implied volatility for the S&P 500.

As recently as 2021, the implied volatility of the US and China indices was roughly equal. China employed AI-based systems to track and predict Covid outbreaks in 2020 and 2021, and China’s economy was the first to bounce back from the Covid recession. The more contagious strains of the virus defeated China’s systems in 2022, and the government responded with prolonged lockdowns (see “China’s avoidable Covid crisis,” Asia Times, May 13, 2022).

Another depressant is the continued upheaval in the property market, which in reality is a political standoff between the central government and local authorities who took on between RMB35 trillion and RMB70 trillion of so-called hidden debt.

The central government won’t bail out the cities without assuming control of their finances. On paper, municipalities own enterprises with RMB205 trillion in assets, and on the whole are solvent, but the political tug-of-war will keep the property market in crisis mode for some time.

If we believe analysts’ estimates for capital investment in China, private business remains cautious. Shown in the chart below are the Bloomberg consensus estimates for CapEx in several major sub-sectors of China’s CSI 300 Index. The only big increases in expected spending are in energy and utilities, both dominated by state-owned enterprises. Industrial and information technology company CapEx plans remain subdued.

Graphic: Asia Times

The future of business AI, though, doesn’t depend entirely on large-capitalization companies. AI is a force multiplier for small and medium businesses, a Huawei executive told me during a tour of the company’s exhibition halls in Shenzhen.

Smaller shops can achieve very high efficiency in flexible manufacturing by applying AI to automated factories. Ultimately, industrial AI may incubate a new generation of manufacturing entrepreneurs, just as the internet upended retailing.

Huawei is a protean enterprise that is transforming itself from a telecom equipment maker into a global business facilitator. 5G2C (5G for consumers) is a mature business with limited growth prospects, and the company envisions a future based on 5G2B (5G for business), with a full suite of AI-based solutions.

Whether China’s entrepreneurs will come to the “Field of Dreams” built on high-speed broadband and AI remains an open question, but it’s still early days. As Alibaba and Huawei executives emphasize, the new Cloud-based AI systems just came online.

The political will and profit opportunities are visible, and China may yet surprise the world as much as it did during the 1990s and 2000s.

Follow David P Goldman on Twitter at @davidpgoldman

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Tan Kin Lian launches bid for Presidential Election, stresses desire for candidate outside 'establishment'

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SINGAPORE: Former NTUC Income chief executive Tan Kin Lian announced his bid to run for President on Friday (Aug 11), emphasising his belief in the importance of offering Singaporeans the chance to vote for what he described as an independent candidate.

And while fellow presidential hopeful George Goh is an “independent person”, Mr Tan said he decided to throw his hat into the ring following comments and his team’s advice that Mr Goh might not meet the qualifying criteria, resulting in a possible two-way contest between former GIC chief investment officer Ng Kok Song and former senior minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

“I believe I will be the only candidate from outside the establishment,” added Mr Tan, 75.

Speaking at a press conference where he launched his presidential campaign, Mr Tan added that he was initially prepared to “stand aside” when Mr Goh expressed interest.

“I have high respect for him, I have high respect for his enthusiasm and his team,” Mr Tan said of Mr Goh.

“We don’t want to have a contest between two candidates that are from the establishment, and it will also look very bad … because the people of Singapore will be very sceptical,” added Mr Tan.

In response to CNA’s questions about whether he will continue if Mr Goh qualifies, Mr Tan said he does not want to split the votes between non-establishment candidates.

“I will certainly want to make sure that there is only one non-establishment candidate, that we will not split the votes … How it is going to happen depends on who and whatever the circumstances are, we’ll know about (it) when the time comes,” said Mr Tan.

Mr Goh, who is the founder of Harvey Norman Ossia, had on last Friday addressed doubts about his eligibility by laying out details from his summary of submission to the Presidential Elections Committee (PEC). 

To meet the private sector service requirement to be President, an applicant must have served as the chief executive of a company for at least three years. During this time, the company must, on average, have shareholders’ equity of at least S$500 million (US$372 million) and made a profit after tax for the entire time. 

“I have a group of five companies that have a combined shareholders’ equity of S$1.521 billion over three years,” said Mr Goh, adding that this is collectively equivalent to an average shareholders’ equity of S$507 million annually for the group as a whole.

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China’s default drama cries out for faster reforms

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Seeing “China Evergrande Group” trending on global search engines is the last thing Xi Jinping needs as 2023 goes awry for Asia’s biggest economy.

News that exports plunged 14.5% in July year on year was the latest blow to China’s hopes of growing its targeted 5% this year. It’s the biggest drop since February 2020, when Covid-19 was sledgehammering trade and production worldwide.

Yet the default drama at Country Garden Holdings is a reminder that the call for help is coming from inside China’s economy.

This week, Country Garden was trending in cyberspace as it faced liquidity troubles akin to those of the humbled China Evergrande in 2021. 

The whiff of trouble that tantalized markets in recent weeks proved true amid reports noteholders failed to receive coupon payments due on August 7.

That has global investors worried about an Evergrande-like domino effect. “If Country Garden, the biggest privately owned developer in China, goes down, that could trigger a crisis in confidence for the property sector,” says Edward Moya, senior market analyst for Oanda.

Analyst Sandra Chow at advisory firm CreditSights notes that “with China’s total home sales in the first half of 2023 down year-on-year, falling home prices month-on-month across the past few months and faltering economic growth, another developer default – and an extremely large one, at that – is perhaps the last thing the Chinese authorities need right now.”

The risk is slamming investor sentiment toward China. And it spotlights the urgent need for Chinese leader Xi and Premier Li Qiang to repair the shaky property sector and accelerate state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform.

A more vibrant and resilient property market is crucial to China’s economic recovery in the short run and reducing the frequency of boom-bust cycles in the longer run. The sector, if running smoothly, can generate as much as one-third of China’s gross domestic product.

Earlier this month, Li pledged to “adjust and optimize” Beijing’s approach to building a healthier, more stable property market. Li has urged major cities to devise measures to stabilize markets in their own jurisdictions. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and Premier Li Qiang (R) face economic troubles. Image: NTV / Screengrab

That followed a pledge by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) to provide developers with 12 additional months to repay their outstanding loans due this year.

This week’s default chatter raised the stakes. On August 3, Moody’s Investors Service slashed Country Garden’s credit rating to B1, putting it in the “high risk” category. 

“This downgrade reflects our expectation that Country Garden’s credit metrics and liquidity buffer will weaken due to its declining contracted sales, still-constrained funding access and sizable maturing debt over the next 12 to 18 months,” says Moody’s analyst Kaven Tsang.

Country Garden’s stock has cratered over the last week after the company’s warning of an unaudited net loss for the first six months of 2023. Clearly, Country Garden has been grappling with liquidity chaos for some time. 

As the company noted in a July 31 exchange filing, it “will actively consider taking various countermeasures to ensure the security of cash flow. Meanwhile, it will actively seek guidance and support from the government and regulatory authorities.”

A day later, Country Garden reportedly canceled an attempt to raise US$300 million by selling new shares. 

As analysts at Nomura wrote in a note, “recent signals from top policymakers… suggest Beijing is getting increasingly worried about growth and have clearly recognized the need to bolster the faltering property sector. They are starting a new round of property easing and may introduce some stimulus to redevelop old districts of large cities.”

More important, though, is for Xi and Li to tackle the underlying cracks in the financial system. The sector’s troubles are structural, not cyclical.

Thanks partly to slowing urbanization and an aging and shrinking population, demand for new housing is on the wane. When economists worry about a Japan-like “lost decade” in China, the unfolding property crisis is Exhibit A.

The more that already massive oversupply increases, the more difficult it’s becoming for Beijing’s stimulus to flow through to construction activity. 

And the more the property sector acts like a giant weight around the economy’s ankles, the more China’s financial woes look like Japan’s bad-loan crisis.

China’s beleaguered property market is dragging down the wider economy. Photo: AFP / Noel Celis

This dynamic is a clear and present danger to China’s ability to surpass the US in GDP terms, a changing of the economic guard many thought might happen as soon as the early 2030s. Yet so is the slow pace of SOE reform as China’s economic model shows growing signs of trouble.

Xi and Li clearly understand the urgency. In recent months, Xi’s Communist Party set out to help boost the valuations of SOE stocks, which represent a huge share of China’s overall market. 

According to Goldman Sachs Group, SOEs in sectors from banking to steel to ports account for half the Chinese stock market universe. Yet Xi’s talk of creating a “valuation system with Chinese characteristics” is a work in progress, at best.

The SOE conundrum is a microcosm of Xi’s challenge to balance increasing the role of market forces and boosting investment in listed state companies, while also pulling more international capital China’s way.

In his second term in power, from 2018 to 2023, Xi more often than not tightened his grip on the economy at the expense of private sector development and dynamism. 

The most drastic example was a tech sector crackdown that began in late 2020. It started with Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma and quickly spread across the internet platform space.

Since then, global money managers have grown increasingly more cautious about investing in Chinese assets. This, along with a steady flow of disappointing economic data, is undermining Chinese stocks, which are among the worst-performing anywhere this year. 

That has given Xi and Li all the more reason to ensure that the practices of China’s largest state-owned giants come into better alignment with global investors’ interests and expectations.

China needs a huge increase in global investment to realize its vision for a 5G-driven technological revolution. Monetary stimulus can’t get China Inc there any more than Bank of Japan stimulus can revive Japan’s animal spirits.

Given the fallout from Covid-19 and crackdowns of recent years, China’s biggest tech companies are no longer cash rich or self-supporting. And the transition from SOE-driven to private sector-led growth has become increasingly muddled.

“If SOEs are able to pick and integrate the right targets, control risk effectively and promote innovation, outcomes should be credit-positive for the firms involved and beneficial for China’s growth,” says analyst Wang Ying at Fitch Ratings.

The global environment hardly helps, as evidenced by recent declines in export activity. US efforts to contain China’s rise – whether one calls it “decoupling” or de-risking” – is an intensifying headwind.

On August 9, US President Joe Biden detailed new plans to curb American investments in Chinese companies involved in perceived as sensitive technologies such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence. 

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden are at loggerheads on tech issues. Photo: Pool / Twitter / Screengrab

Though nominally aimed at preventing US capital and expertise from flowing into mainland technologies that could facilitate Beijing’s military modernization, the limits are sure to have an added chilling effect on market sentiment.

Lingering pandemic fallout hardly helps. Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington-based think tank, argues that China is suffering “economic long Covid” that could mean its condition is even weaker than global markets realize.

In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Posen said that “China’s body economic has not regained its vitality and remains sluggish even now that the acute phase – three years of exceedingly strict and costly zero-Covid lockdown measures – has ended. 

He warns that the “condition is systemic, and the only reliable cure – credibly assuring ordinary Chinese people and companies that there are limits on the government’s intrusion into economic life – can’t be delivered.”

Xi is, of course, trying. The campaign, which recently fueled a jump of over 50% in some SOE stocks, is accompanied by a slogan of buying into a “valuation system with Chinese characteristics.”

Last month, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing said the government is redoubling efforts to deepen and hasten SOE reform. 

Zhang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said the aim is to boost core competitiveness and prod SOEs to innovate, achieve greater self-reliance and raise their science and technology games.

More recently, Liu Shijin, a former vice minister and research Fellow of the Development Research Center, said government agencies must begin viewing entrepreneurs not as “exploiters” but as growth drivers.

But pulling off a transition toward private sector-driven growth would be much easier to pull off if China’s underlying financial system was more stable. The biggest risks start with the property sector.

“The problems of China’s property developers are only getting more severe,” says economist Rosealea Yao at Gavekal Dragonomics. 

“The sales downturn is likely to throw many more private-sector developers into financial distress — a risk underscored by Country Garden’s recent missed bond payments. Unless sales can be stabilized, developers will be trapped in a downward spiral.”

Yao cites three reasons why a continued downturn in sales could push many private sector property developers into financial distress. 

First, private developers have been mostly shut out of capital markets and thus unable to roll over maturing bonds since late 2021, when China Evergrande fueled investor concerns that other highly leveraged private sector developers would also be unable to repay their debts.

“Private sector developer issuance in the onshore bond market is now minimal, and has collapsed in the offshore market as well,” Yao says. “Companies with state ownership, by contrast, still mostly retain the faith of onshore bonds with bondholders demonstrating that they are not entirely risk-free. 

“The combination of both weak revenues and lack of refinancing ability has led many firms to default or negotiate repayment extensions since the start of 2022, and the number of defaults and extensions remains elevated this year.”

A worker at the construction site of Raffles City Chongqing in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality. Photo: Asia Times Files / AFP / Wang Zhao

 Two, cash liquidity positions of private sector developers are deteriorating. According to the annual reports of 86 non-state-owned developers, she notes, short-term liabilities exceeded cash on hand by 725 billion yuan ($100 billion) in 2022, compared to a shortfall of 171 billion yuan ($23 billion) in 2021.

“This,” Yao says, “suggests that the firms may have insufficient liquidity to repay their maturing debts – though Country Garden boasted more cash on hand than its short-term liabilities at the end of 2022, suggesting this measure could understate the problem, as developer reserves may be shrinking rapidly this year.”

Third, many private-sector developers are not just illiquid – they are getting closer to insolvency. That is mostly due to rising impairment charges as the companies are forced to recognize that assets on their balance sheets have declined in value, often under pressure from auditors. 

“Such charges deplete the asset side of companies’ balance sheets, pushing them closer to a situation in which the value of their liabilities could exceed the value of their assets — similar to the more traditional path to insolvency through negative net profits reducing equity,” she adds.

Again, Xi and Li clearly know what needs to be done to put China on more solid economic and financial ground. They just need to accelerate badly needed reform moves – before more indebted property developers like Country Garden hit investor confidence in the country’s prospects and direction. 

Follow William Pesek on Twitter at @WilliamPesek

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George Goh formally launches bid for Presidential Election, wants to serve 'people left behind'

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AFTER Income, FIVE COMPANIES WORKED TO MAKE PROFIT

An applicant may have held the position of chief executive of a business for at least three years in order to meet the requirements for personal business services to become President. The business must have made a profit after taxes for the entire period and, on average, have shareholders’ equity of at least S$ 500 million( US$ 372 million ). & nbsp,

Analysts had stated that it was uncertain whether Mr. Goh would meet these requirements, but he could rely on the private sector’s” deliberative track,” also known as Article 19 ( 4 )( b ) of the Constitution.

According to this track, the candidate must have held a position for three or more years in opportunistic business, have the experience and skills necessary to be” comparable” to those of someone who has held the position of CEO of” typical company” with at least the required amount of shareholders’ equity, and be able to effectively carry out the President’s responsibilities.

According to Mr. Goh, I have a group of five companies with an ordinary shareholder equity of$ 507 million over the course of three years, or S$ 1.521 billion. & nbsp,

When investigators pressed him, he refused to give the names of the businesses. & nbsp,

For the past three decades, all five have been successful annually. The presidential candidate continued,” I am the senior executive in each of these businesses. & nbsp,

In a subtly ironic jab at other presidential hopeful and past GIC chief investment officer Mr. Ng Kok Song, Mr Goh made reference to the issue of being the most senior executive in each company by stating that” you may be number two” in the company.

He continued,” If I’m the CIO( chief investment officer ) in my private business organization, please don’t come forth because I most likely rank number five or number six in the organization.” He added that the president is ranked first, then the assistant chairman, chief executive officer, and chief financial officer.

Mr. Goh demonstrated in advertising materials that the five companies collectively made profits for each of the previous three years, though he did not specify how much income the combined businesses made annually. & nbsp, Over the course of three years, the five companies collectively earned S$ 377 million in profit. & nbsp,

You must have faith in me because I am now being honest with the number. This number is identical, he claimed.

The company name missing and which company made how much are the only things( that I ) don’t have. I’ve now told you that all of the businesses are successful. And you must have faith in me. I never say anything that goes against the tenet. I’ll tell you right away if it’s not making a income:”& nbsp,

Along with formal confirmation words of his visit in the businesses, a more thorough set of accounts had been submitted to the PEC. & nbsp,

On his web, Mr. Goh claims to be the leader and group chairman of ITG International, a company that develops real estate, as well as the director and founder of Harvey Norman Ossia. & nbsp,

He previously served as the head of international operations at the sporting goods company Rebel Sport, the founder and director of VGO Corporation( famous for the World of Sports stores ), the creator and director of United Envirotech, a company of water therapy solutions, and the owner and president of the house account manager SGL Capital Investment Management.

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Taiwan's new MeToo laws are welcome but activists wat more

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A woman holds a placard in support of the #MeToo movementReuters
By Benny Lu, Kelly Ng, andamp
Hong Kong and Singapore

Although activists claim that Taiwan’s fresh sexual harassment rules are a first stage in addressing its MeToo judgment, they still fall short in some areas.

After receiving a barrage of sexual assault allegations, the Democratic Progressive Party, which was in power, hurried to tighten rules.

These led to a number of party resignations and additional accusations against other influential people, including artists.

The constitutional changes are made five weeks prior to a crucial vote.

Professor of law Carol Lin praised the changes as a parliamentary victory but cautioned that it will take time for society to break down the deeply ingrained attitudes that make physical abuse commonplace.

Despite being praised for its liberal democracy for a long time, Taiwan’s society is still heavily masculine and hierarchical.

All organizations, including earlier exempt smaller firms with at least 10 workers, must set up programs for reporting sexual harassment under the new regulations passed in a special legislative session.

Additionally, companies are required to look into every sexual harassment complaint and inform the local labor government of their findings.

If they don’t, they could receive a fine of up to 1 million New Taiwan dollars($ 31,700 ).

In the past, alleged victims had no other option but to appear in court.

According to the new laws, acts that properly punish others for rejecting person’s advances as well as the use of derogatory or insulting language against someone because of their gender will be regarded as sexual harassment.

Additionally, the statute of limitations has been expanded.

Before patients may feel empowered to intervene, Prof. Lin from Taiwan’s National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University said,” I think we need to see some” victory stories” of the new legislation taking harassers to work.”

The revisions still do not provide victims with the proper remedies when abuse occurs outside of the office, according to former Taiwanese Labour Minister Wang Ju-hsuan.

For example, some campaigners have emphasized that the new rules do not address persistent sexual abuse in religious organizations.

A system to promote witnesses to act should be set up, according to Ms. Wang, a lawyer, who also wants harsher penalties to stop” malicious retaliation.”

She told Taiwan News that” it is difficult for sufferers to give information, not to mention the threat of retaliation and stress from societal bias.”

People walking down a street at the Ximen district in Taipei

Getty Pictures

The legal changes, according to media celebrity Anissa Chang, one of the MeToo prosecutors, are” useful in instilling anxiety” in those who abuse their authority to set on others, which she claimed is a common practice in sectors like entertainment.

Strangely,” crime, harassing actions are regarded as conventions or even as” unspoken guidelines.” She claimed that this social trend is severely distorted.

Schools are also subject to the new regulations.

Today, it is expressly forbidden for teachers to engage in intimate relationships with students under the age of 18. Fines may be imposed on teachers and administrators who fail to inform the Ministry of Education of undergraduate complaints of harassment.

According to Wang Yueh-Hao, chief executive of Chinese non-profit Garden of Hope Foundation, the new norms must be accompanied by an overhaul of female capital and sex education in schools.

It has taken so long for these patients to come ahead because it is expected that people will always follow their mothers and leaders. Like perspectives may alter, she said.

However, Ms. Wang claimed that in the last two weeks, her organization that supports victims of sexual assault has seen a 20-fold increase in cases brought by alleged victims. She sees this as evidence that Taiwan’s MeToo action, despite being long delayed, has been successful.

The movement has been credited with its motivation coming from the Netflix hit Wave Makers.

A key scene in the series, which centers on Japanese political workers preparing for an election, occurs when a party spokeswoman decides to take action after receiving complaints from female employees about being sexually harassed by coworkers. However, the revelation may be detrimental to the party.

Some Taiwanese with similar views stepped forward as a result of this.

However, the judgment has also sparked a backlash, with several people casting doubt on the alleged victims’ motivations.

Such responses serve as a reminder that cultural attitudes as well as the rules need to change, according to Ms. Lin.

The really effective changes will eventually be found in social culture and gender education. She argued that society should prevent blaming the victims.

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Commentary: Smart-toilet market will be a measure of China’s economic resilience

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TOKYO: In its capital research, Goldman Sachs does not frequently mention the fickle, cleanliness-obsessed Chinese kawayakami toilet gods. Even less frequently does it mention the worship of these gods while arguing for an investment case for a Foreign bathroom fixtures business.

However, these are definitely difficult times to pitch Shenzhen-listed stocks to anxious, anywhere-but-China global investors. It is obvious that this is why an elaborate map comparing” toilet culture and key penetration drivers in China vs. Japan and the US” was created.

This is intriguing information for those who believe that different parts of the world are ripe for different types of Japanification. & nbsp,

The gist of the message is that Goldman thinks a toilet-friendly Chinese culture is ready to embrace bright toilets, the kind of seat-heating, rear-washing, fundament-drying marvels pioneered in Japan as an alleged extension of its kawayakami worship.

TOILET’S MARKET POTENTIAL SMART – nbsp,

According to the word, toilets are considered” safe and comfortable place for me – time” in China.

The next phase of smart-toilet deployment in China is anticipated to attract younger buyers, despite the fact that middle-aged women from the middle class have been driving it for the past ten years. & nbsp,

The beneficiaries, according to the Goldman analysts, will be less expensive home offerings from companies like Arrow Home, a local sanitaryware behemoth, as opposed to pricey foreign ones from businesses like Toto, which are echoes of the trend in many Chinese industries.

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BlackRock, MSCI probed for investments in China

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Two New York-based financial institutions, BlackRock Inc. and Morgan Stanley Capital International ( MSCI ), have been the subject of an investigation by the US House Select Committee into their involvement in transferring US funds to Chinese companies on the blacklist.

With US$ 8.59 trillion in assets under control as of the end of 2022, BlackRock is the largest asset management company in the world. In 1994, it was split off from Blackstone and made people in 1999. Fund managers use MSCI’s international capital, fixed salary, and real estate stocks as measures. & nbsp,

The US and Chinese Communist Party’s Select Committee on Strategic Competition, which was founded in January, announced on Tuesday that it had sent individual letters to BlackRock and MSCI requesting information about how they had facilitated US investments in about 50 Chinese companies that had been placed on a blacklist due to allegations of aiding the Chinese military or alleged violations of human rights.

Legislators informed BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and MSCI CEO Henry Fernandez on Monday that their businesses are being investigated for their investments in specific Chinese firms.

With all investments in China, BlackRock claims in a speech that it complies with all relevant US laws. It stated that it would continue to discuss the issues brought up immediately with the House Select Committee. On Tuesday, MSCI announced that it was” reviewing the question” from the committee.

On Wednesday, The Global Times criticized the US government for using human rights concerns as justification to stifle Foreign businesses and politicize trade and investment issues.

The investigation was conducted prior to US President Joe Biden’s upcoming executive order, which will forbid US companies and funds from making investments in the semiconductor, artificial intelligence ( AI ), and quantum computing industries in China. The purchase will go into influence at the beginning of 2024 and is anticipated to be signed later this month.

The US Department of Commerce’s object list, one of the biggest firewalls, was not included in the first review, the Select Committee emphasized.

According to a report with the title” America’s Coercive Diplomacy and Its Harm ,” which was released by Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs on May 18, the US has placed more than 1, 000 Chinese companies, including ZTE, Huawei, and DJI, on various sanctions lists, using national security as an justification for clamping down on Chinese social media apps like TikTok and WeChat. & nbsp,

Some commentators are concerned that China’s systems firms’ growth plans will be slowed by the United States’ investment restrictions.

In the great technology areas, China needs to get up in a number of areas. According to Wu Kai, a Hebei-based tech journalist, Chinese firms must amass sufficient resources in order to make some technological advancements. ” China’s investment restrictions by the US are unquestionably a detail hit.”

Wu said,” One might argue that Chinese cash infusions can take the place of American ones to make opportunities.” Although fair, this viewpoint is not entirely accurate. China lacks people who know how to participate, no income.

Wu claims that Chinese venture capital firms are much more recent than foreign ones and that it is extremely uncommon to find a top-tier Chinese high-tech company that is entirely funded locally. He claims that before receiving Chinese investments, nearly all well-known Chinese high tech companies were groomed with foreign investment.

He continues by saying that foreign purchase brings China new technologies, purchase philosophy, and services in addition to money. If US businesses still want to engage in China, he claims, they can set up offshore products to get around US investment restrictions.

China’s FDI

The silicon, AI, quantum computing, new strength, and biology sectors in China would be the targets of the Biden administration’s purchase limits, according to a US media report from April. However, following her visit to China on July 6 and 9, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that the regulations would be strictly enforced, skipping the next two fields.

The US Senate passed a costs on July 25 mandating that US businesses inform the Treasury of any national security concerns they may have when investing in cutting-edge Chinese tech. Since it doesn’t call for review or purchase restrictions, the policy is seen as a softened version of the original Outbound Investment Transparency Act, which was introduced two years ago.

How the US investment restrictions did impact China’s ability to draw foreign investment has not yet been determined.

The US Ministry of Commerce refrained from using dollar terms to describe China’s foreign direct investment ( FDI ) on July 19. For the first six months of this year, it just stated that the FDI decreased 2.7 % to 703.65 billion yuan from a month earlier.

According to a calculation done by Asia Times, that means the number decreased 8.9 % to about US$ 102. 3 billion for the time. In the first five months of this year, it increased from a 5.6 % year-over-year decline.

In contrast, for the same time time, FDI increased by 0.5 % to US$ 10.02 billion in Vietnam and by 141 % to USD$ 10.37 million in Thailand. & nbsp,

Vice Minister of Commerce Guo Tingting reported that in the first half, investments from France, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany to China increased by 173 %, 135 %, 53 % and 14 %, respectively. She claimed that during the same time period, foreign investments in China’s high-tech manufacturing sector increased by 29 %.

After their top management visited China earlier this year, a spokesperson for the Foreign banking government stated in the middle of June that it would take some time for foreign corporations to make their purchase plans.

Optimistic viewpoint of BlackRock

After the crisis, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of Blackstone, and David Solomon, managing director of Goldman Sachs, made their second trips to China in March. Bill Winters, handling chairman of Standard Chartered, and Noel Quinn, chief executive of HSBC, both traveled to Beijing in the same quarter to enter the China Development Forum 2023.
 
They had meetings with Chinese authorities, but they refrained from discussing the Taiwanese economy in public.

Goldman Sachs released a report on July 5 downgrading five Chinese banks to” market” scores in response to mounting worries about statewide debt crises. Share prices of Chinese banks decreased by 12 to 15 % as a result of this research report and the Bloomberg report on the same subject that was released on July 3.
 
On July 11, Lucy Liu, BlackRock’s investment manager for international emerging markets stocks, declared that the Chinese stock market had” over-punished.” She claimed that while there was very little chance for the native debt problem to become a systemic issue, commercial fundamentals in China were also strong. & nbsp,

China is now central to all of our thinking, according to a report by BlackRock titled” The growing opportunity in China’s private markets ,” which was released on July 15. It also stated that” China is too big of an market environment to ignore.”

” We’re witnessing a deeper and healthier business.” Personal market activity has historically been heavily biased toward domestic investors, but as the nation develops deeper and more powerful markets, there is now a genuine desire to partner with international expertise.

Study: China increases use as service growth slows.

At & nbsp, @ jeffpao3 is Jeff Pao’s Twitter account.

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Alia Bhatt, Deepika Padukone: When Bollywood A-listers turn into start-up stars

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In this picture taken on July 29, 2022, Bollywood actors Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone walk the ramp for Mijwan Welfare Society and fashion show by designer Manish Malhotra in Mumbai.shabby graphics
Cherylann Mollan, & amp, Nikhil Inamdar
Mumbai-based BBC News

Alia Bhatt, one of Bollywood’s most sought-after young women, is officially cashing out three times after launching her clothing line Ed- a Mamma. According to Indian papers, her business will be purchased for 3 billion rupees($ 36 million,£ 28 million ) by the wholesale division of one of India’s largest companies, Reliance Industries.

According to early-stage investor Bhaskar Majumdar, the deal do” push” the now-established trend of Indian movie stars investing in start-ups and owning consumer-facing brands.

Bhatt is just one of many Bollywood celebrities who have just been actively investing in start-ups. Around the same time that her husband, actor Ranveer Singh, purchased a stake in the beauty company Sugar Cosmetics, her contemporary Deepika Padukone introduced her own skincare line, 82 ° E, last year.

The fad isn’t fresh, according to industry observers. It all started when India’s startup picture gained momentum in the early 2010s. When Salman Khan, one of Bollywood’s most well-known players, acquired a majority interest in the travel website Yatra in 2012, he was among the first to enter the industry.

However, this has gained more momentum as India becomes the third-largest start-up habitat in the world.

14 American actors invested in 18 start-up businesses in 2022 alone, the majority of which were in the first or growth stages. The majority of the investments went toward direct-to-consumer ( D2C ) brands, with the remainder going toward things like ed tech, online commerce, and food technology.

According to Aviral Jain, managing director of Kroll’s valuation consulting services practice,” Celebrities nowadays don’t want to be seen as only movie stars but also as clever investors.” ” Alica Bhatt has demonstrated how a celebrity can use her fame and fan base to turn an eco-conscious, homemade product into an effective business.”

Indian cricketer Virat Kohli (L) with his wife Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma attends a promotional event in Mumbai on February 23, 2022. (Photo by SUJIT JAISWAL / AFP) (Photo by SUJIT JAISWAL/AFP via shabby graphics)

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In the past, when several actors would happily admit to relying on family members to manage their finances, this is a major change from how Indian actors approached cash and investing. Stars like Amitabh Bachchan and Jackie Shroff faced bankruptcy because they invested the majority of their money in a high-risk endeavor like video production, despite the fact that many people, including Shah Rukh Khan, went on to become successful entrepreneurs by investing in sports businesses and eateries.

However, today’s stars are a more financially savvy group, and according to Navjot Kaur, associate producer at Epiq Capital, in addition to making investments in established industries like public markets, real estate and equipment, they are also allocating capital to start-ups as’ diversification tools from an investment portfolio standpoint.

She continues,” Indian venture capital is attracting funds from domestic ultra-high net worth individuals( UHNIs ), and many celebrities are a subset of that.”

According to Mr. Jain, many celebrities have also established family offices to handle their investments professionally.

According to experts, collaborations between famous people and businesses may be advantageous for both parties.

Getting opportunities and offers from a brand gives start-ups credibility right away and helps them reach millions of customers. According to Shauraya Bhutani, companion at Breathe Capital, these start-ups typically have limited resources, so” preserving income by giving away capital is frequently a smarter approach.”

According to Benaifer Malandkar, Raay Global Investments’ chief investment officer, start-ups can” use a person’s internet presence to publicize the brand.” Additionally, the connection to a well-known star gives branded goods immediate recognition and makes them appear more reliable to consumers.

The same thing happened to Blue Tribe Foods when actor Anushka Sharma and bowler Virat Kohli invested in the fledgling plant-based meat business.

” We wanted to raise awareness of the issue with the latest foods value chain and provide an alternate solution.” Instead of just promoting the brand, their endorsement has increased category awareness across the nation, according to Sohil Wazir, the company’s main business officer, who spoke to the BBC.

Stars get to participate in the face if the business does well and invest their money in companies that align with their own individual ethos by taking equity in a organization more than receiving cash up front. Kohli and Sharma are both eaters who frequently support the rights of species.

MAY 01: Alia Bhatt attends The 2023 Met Gala Celebrating "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line Of Beauty" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 01, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Cindy Ord/MG23/shabby graphics for The Met Museum/Vogue)

shabby graphics

But, K Ganesh, a serial entrepreneur and producer, asserts that relying only on the notoriety of famous people may not be sufficient to expand one’s company. He also cautions that celebrities should exercise caution when supporting start-ups, examining both the” reputation risk” associated with a business as well as its” business risk.”

Some well-known Indian start-ups have lately been rocked by governance scandals, and many of them have also seen their valuations decline as a result of the funding crisis.

According to a PwC report, between January and June 2023, India’s start-up ecosystem raised$ 3.8 billion across 298 deals, down 36 % from July to December 2022.

However, Mitesh Shah, companion at the god fund Physis Capital, claims that rather than viewing this as a deterrent, it might actually be an excellent time to take advantage of the opportunity.

According to Mr. Shah, these start-ups have the potential to long-term generate significant money for investors thanks to their appealing valuations.

Celebrities in the West have made sizable returns on their investments, including Jay-Z, who bought a$ 2 million stake in Uber, and Ashton Kutcher, an active investor who now owns venture capital.

According to Mr. Bhutani,” we can expect a couple billion dollar new-age consumer brands to be built or supported by Indian celebrities in India in the next ten years.”

First investments made by Bhatt and Katrina Kaif in the fairy Nykaa, which is now publicly traded, show some degree of success.
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