No fluffing up China’s slump; There is no entity today that has enough energy to rescue the global economy from a collapse that might be triggered by China

No fluffing up China’s slump

AUG 12, 2013

A big economic slump has started in China as predicted. The rest of the world has came to know about it through none other than Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang. They disclosed to the world a steep rise in short-term interest rates, falling exports and a slump in the nation’s economic growth — undesirable facts and figures that those in power in Beijing would have concealed in the past. This is because the Xi-Li leadership has realized that the Chinese economy is in such dire straits that any further deterioration would cause a serious global impact. How should the whole world, including Japan, respond to this alarm? Read more of this post

Does China have too many unpopular cities? Many lower-tier cities have actually been experiencing a net outflow of population while land sales there increased rapidly exacerbating the housing oversupply

Does China have too many unpopular cities?

Kate Mackenzie

| Aug 12 13:12 | 13 comments | Share

A little over half of China’s population is urbanised, and the country’s leaders plan to urbanise vast numbers of people over the next decade – although both the time frame and the number of people in the plan vary, depending where you look — both260m and 400m have been widely reported.

More clarity is expected at the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, probably in October. But could the country already have an excess of cities?

First up, a fascinating story from the WSJ:

Among the few business owners lured to a development park in Tieling New City is Bo Yuquan, the middle-aged owner of a flooring store. “Where are the people? There’s no one here,” said Mr. Bo. “I’ll be out of business soon. My staff and I are discussing moving to Beijing to find work.” Said Hu Jie, the designer of the new city’s landscape: “In 10 to 20 years, Tieling could be a good development, but only if you can manage to bring businesses in.” A city can certainly be sustainable if businesses start to pop up — but how does that happen, and what if it doesn’t? Jobs, naturally, can be a problem in this situation; a fact illustrated in the NY Times report on the recently-designated town of Qiyan, where high-rise housing for 6,000 replaced a village of about 200 households (residents from surrounding areas were encouraged to move there, too). A lack of jobs meant residents in newly-constructed Qiyan homes huddled around open fires for warmth because they couldn’t afford electricity. Read more of this post

The great Chinese collateral trade, illustrated; oldman estimates that in the copper collateral scheme alone, something in the region of $35bn-40bn may have been raised as of June 2013.

The great Chinese collateral trade, illustrated

Izabella Kaminska

| Aug 12 12:33 | 6 comments | Share

We’ve seen explanations of how the famous Chinese copper (and other commodity collateral) LC financing trade works in the past. But here’s a particularly good one from Goldman Sachs’ big report on China’s credit environment, which was out last week. The diagram also explains how SAFE’s new regulations are likely to restrict the trade from now on:

As Max Layton, from Goldman’s commodities research team, explains… over the last few years Chinese firms have been able to benefit from cheaper US interest rates by using various commodities with high value-to-density ratios, such as gold, copper, nickel and “high-tech” goods, as collateral. The deals were motivated by the fact that borrowing US dollars in this collateralised fashion was cheaper than borrowing in the domestic Chinese market. Goldman estimates that in the copper collateral scheme alone, something in the region of $35bn-40bn may have been raised as of June 2013.

Read more of this post

The chairman of Guangzhou Automobile Group (2238), who had not been seen in public for two months, was arrested by the anti-corruption bureau

Carmaker chairman arrested
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
The chairman of Guangzhou Automobile Group (2238), who had not been seen in public for two months, was arrested by the anti- corruption bureau, according to a mainland media report. “Zhang Fangyou was taken by [the authorities] in late June due to his close relationship with Liu Tienan,”Caijing Magazine reported yesterday. Liu is the former deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission and head of the National Energy Administration. He was expelled from the Communist Party and removed from public office as he “took advantage of his position and both Liu and his family accepted huge amount of bribes,” Xinhua reported. Read more of this post

Personalized services for officials booming in China

Personalized services for officials booming in China

Staff Reporter

2013-08-13

A lucrative new industry has emerged in China that helps cater to both government officials and the people who deal with them, reports the Guangzhou-based Topnews9 network.

Given the massive number of officials in China, most of whom are more well off than the general public, many entrepreneurs around the country have started tailoring their businesses to attend to specifically to their needs. Read more of this post

McDonald’s stuck in development bottleneck in China

McDonald’s stuck in development bottleneck in China

Staff Reporter

2013-08-13

Despite its leading status in the global fast food market, McDonald’s has invariably lagged behind KFC in the Chinese market, a food market with the largest potential in the world.

The strong rivalry has stilted McDonald’s sales performance and expansion in China, which has been aggravated by a litany of other problems, including increasingly acute competition in the market, rising operating costs, economic sloth and the company’s own sluggish localization process. Read more of this post

Kunming struggles to pay for costly subway project

Kunming struggles to pay for costly subway project

Staff Reporter

2013-08-13

In order to develop its subway network, authorities in Kunming, the capital of southwestern China’s Yunnan province, are mired in dire financial straits as the network calls for an outlay of 300 billion yuan (US$49 billion), equal to 10 years of the city’s total financial income, reports the Chinese-language Money Week magazine.

The financial leverage of the Kunming city government has reached an unsustainable level as its financial income is insufficient to repay debts. Like other major Chinese cities, the local government in Kunming relies on municipal financing platforms to fund the city’s infrastructure projects. Kunming has 48 financing platform companies, of which the three leading ones are the Rail Transportation Co, the Transportation Investment Co, and the reserves center for land and mining assets. Read more of this post

China Fines Shanghai-based Gold Shops for Price Manipulation

Chinese gold stores fined for price manipulation

Xinhua 2013-08-13

A Shanghai Laofengxiang store. (Photo/Xinhua)

Five Shanghai-based gold and jewelry stores and a local trade association have been fined a combined total of 10.59 million yuan (US$1.7 million) for manipulating the prices of their wares, China’s top economic planner said Monday. The five stores are Shanghai Laofengxiang, Shanghai Laomiao, First Asia Jewelry, Chenghuang Jewelry and Tianbao Longfeng, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The NDRC said probes by local pricing authorities found that the five stores had manipulated the retail prices of their gold and platinum jewelry in accordance with a pricing scheme created in cooperation with the Shanghai Gold & Jewelry Trade Association. Read more of this post

A fundamental shift in banking in China in recent years has created huge off-balance-sheet assets, raising questions over whether the risks have been accounted for

08.12.2013 17:04

Regulatory Concern Grows along with Surge in Interbank Business

A fundamental shift in banking in recent years has created huge off-balance-sheet assets, raising questions over whether the risks have been accounted for

By staff reporters Zhang Yuzhe, Ling Huawei, Li Xiaoxiao

In less than three years, the interbank business has expanded rapidly in China, creating huge off-balance-sheet assets that are starting to worry regulators. By the end of the first quarter of 2013, interbank assets in listed Chinese banks reached a total of 11.6 trillion yuan, accounting for nearly 13 percent of their total assets. In 2006, the figure was 1.6 trillion yuan. Banks use these assets to bypass lending quotas and capital restraints, and some small banks rely on the market for funding, too. Interbank business was initially limited to lending between commercial banks to address short-term liquidity issues. Since 2010, it has undergone a gradual but fundamental change, expanding a variety of off-balance-sheet assets and creating many types of interbank products that are often purchased by themselves: through money amassed by their own wealth management products. The scale of banks’ wealth management products, which have grown since 2010, reached 9.85 trillion yuan at the end of June. For most banks, this is a way to expand business while reduce what they call “regulatory costs.” Read more of this post

3-D printing development in China may be ‘problematic’; “I received a lot of visitors. However, they weren’t interested in printing their 3-D models, instead they were searching for investment opportunities.”

3-D printing development may be ‘problematic’

By Cheng Yingqi  (China Daily)    10:55, August 13, 2013

Although its application in the technology sector has given 3-D printing a high profile, a number of Chinese entrepreneurs and investors have expressed a pessimistic view of its likely development in the near future.
“Some people have said that 3-D printing will bring about a manufacturing revolution, but that’s an exaggeration,” said Ru Fangjun, founder of HangZhou Xundian Technology Co, which deals in 3-D printing devices in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Read more of this post

Handbag-Backed Loans in Hong Kong offer a quick fix for cash-strapped fashionistas willing to use their Gucci, Chanel, Hermès or Louis Vuitton handbags as collateral. “I’ve never seen anyone with a Birkin left out of a party,”

Updated August 13, 2013, 12:00 a.m. ET

Handbag-Backed Loans Tide Over Hong Kong’s Wealthy

Fashionistas Pawn Their Purses for Quick Cash

RIVA GOLD And CHESTER YUNG

HONG KONG—When 30-year-old housewife Maggie Wong is tight on cash, all she needs to do is reach for her designer purse—and then hand it directly over to a loan officer. Say hello to the handbag-backed loan, a unique Hong Kong phenomenon. While money lenders typically ask for cars and homes as collateral, Hong Kong’s Yes Lady Finance Co. seeks its customers’ beloved handbags. The four-year-old company accepts handbags on the spot, assesses them for their condition and authenticity and then procures loans within half an hour, as long as the bags are Gucci, Chanel, Hermès or Louis Vuitton. Occasionally, they’ll consider a Prada. In a city driven by consumers’ voracious appetite for the newest and latest luxury products, handbag-driven loans are a lucrative business. Yes Lady takes a purse and lends clients 80% of the bag’s value. Customers get the bag back by repaying the same loan with 4% monthly interest, within four months. Classic purses and special-edition handbags often retain much of their retail price. The company recently gave out a roughly US$20,600 loan in exchange for a Hermès Birkin. But Yes Lady’s purse-backed loans come in all sizes and start at about US$190 with no upper ceiling. Read more of this post

Tie-maker Aya Ohzeki: “I want to become a Coco Chanel of the Heisei Era”; wants “to try to keep creating something special and unique that no one else can copy”

Tie maker’s founder got early start

BY SATOSHI TOI

KYODO

AUG 12, 2013

Aya Ohzeki was still just a 17-year-old high school student when she founded her necktie company. “A company will go down if it fails to earn money, so it’s important to try to keep creating something special and unique that no one else can copy,” the 21-year-old president of Noble Apex Inc. said. Ohzeki, born in 1992, had wanted to start a business since she was in elementary school. In November 2006, she took part in the Kanagawa Business Audition, a business competition whose participants were mainly presidents of small and midsize companies. She was in her final year of junior high school. Ohzeki won a couple of awards at the age of 14, becoming the youngest winner in the competition. “The awards gave me enormous confidence and courage,” she said on the company’s website. But the private high school she first attended forbade her to start a company. After repeated negotiations failed to change the policy, she decided to leave the school instead of abandoning her dream of starting a business. “I wasn’t able to give up,” she said. Ohzeki then entered Tokyo Metropolitan Koishikawa High School, which allowed student business initiatives. She completed her basic business plan along with a sample of a tie by October 2009 and founded Noble Apex the following January. “I want to become a Coco Chanel of the Heisei Era,” she says on her website. Read more of this post

27% of 1,500 S. Korean listed firms “on alert” for bankruptcy: Global consulting firm AlixPartners

27 pct of S. Korean listed firms “on alert” for bankruptcy: AlixPartners

2013.08.13

Global consulting firm AlixPartners said Tuesday 27 percent of South Korea’s 1,500 listed companies are in danger of possible insolvency, as they were deemed to be in the “on alert” zone. AlixPartners rated the companies’ risk of insolvency based on their financial data and share prices with its independently developed analysis. 10 percent of the surveyed companies were estimated to be in the “high risk” zone, meaning they are highly likely to file for workout or bankruptcy protection or go bankrupt in the next three quarters, according to AlixPartners. Shipbuilders and marine shippers comprised the biggest share of 75 percent among the companies among the surveyed companies. Financial firms accounted for the second largest share of 35 percent, followed by companies in the culture and leisure sector (17 percent), those in the service sector (15 percent) and those in the construction and real estate sector (10 percent). Credit ratings of Woongjin Holdings, STX Pan Ocean and STX Offshore & Shipbuilding had been evaluated as investment grade right before they filed for court receivership or workout, the consultancy said. AlixPartners stressed such cases underscore the need for an early warning model, like the consulting firm’s insolvency risk assessment. Yung H. Chung, managing director at AlixPartners, said “companies achieve full corporate turnaround if they take steps to address the bankruptcy risk at an earlier stage, but a delayed detection or action significantly lowers the possibility of survival,” The managing director added corporations need to take a “proactive, company-wide response based on objective early warning system.” Yonhap News

Sushi-go-round – Japan tradition served with technology; “You can’t operate low-price revolving sushi restaurants without databases and scientific management”

Sushi-go-round – Japan tradition served with technology

Monday, August 12, 2013 – 15:16

Miwa Suzuki, AFP

TOKYO – With its masters required to hone their skills over decades, sushi in Japan is steeped in tradition. But it is also often a high-tech operation where robotic precision steals the limelight from the chef’s knife. The country is dotted with thousands of “kaiten” (revolving) sushi restaurants where raw fish slices atop rice balls travel on conveyer belts along counters waiting to be picked up by diners. Behind the scenes, however, it is far from a simple merry-go-round, with robots in some locations rolling out perfectly-sized rice balls onto plates embedded with microchips. Read more of this post

Abe Threatens Ministries With Power Shift Rivaling MacArthur Era

Abe Threatens Ministries With Power Shift Rivaling MacArthur Era

The bureaucracy that oversaw Japan’s postwar economic boom and a two-decade stagnation faces the biggest threat to its power since the U.S. occupation as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeks to seize control of ministries’ most senior appointments.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, 64, is leading the initiative, years after he got an education in civil servants’ sway when they frustrated his move as internal affairs minister to shift revenue between regions. The proposal in debate in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party would give the Cabinet Secretariat oversight of top bureaucrats’ promotions. Read more of this post

A record-setting heat wave across North Asia is straining power grids, killing and sickening residents, and raising concerns about farms and water supplies; Japan Heatwave Sees Temperature Hit Record 41 Degrees

August 12, 2013, 4:17 a.m. ET

Heat Wave Plagues Cities Across Asia

RIVA GOLD

A record-setting heat wave across North Asia is straining power grids, killing and sickening residents, and raising concerns about farms and water supplies.

Experts blame the heat on a high-pressure system that has settled over the region and prevented cloud formation, but they say it has been exacerbated by increased urbanization and the overall warming of the planet.

In Japan, hot weather was responsible for the death of four people over the weekend, as temperatures soared to over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in Kofu and Tokyo. Shimanto city in southwest Japan’s Kochi prefecture hit 41 degrees Monday, the highest temperature ever recorded in the country. Read more of this post

Sleepmaster, the company behind iconic homeware brands, in receivership as the parlous state of Australia’s retail sector continues to reverberate through the supply chain

Reported byMike King, The Motley Fool.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

One of Australia’s leading bedroom product companies, Sleepmaster, has gone into receivership as the tough retail sector claims another victim. Sleepmaster is the owner of iconic brands including Jason, a pillow and quilt brand, blanket brand Onkaparinga and Trailmaster camping equipment. It describes itself as Australia and Asia’s leading manufacturer of bedroom product including quilts, pillows, mattress protectors, underblankets and underquilts. The company has been operating in Victoria since 1938, and has manufacturing, warehousing and logistics facilities in China. Around 500 employees could lose their jobs, both in China and Australia, should the company be wound up. Read more of this post

Seven years after the collapse of Westpoint, Australia’s shadow banking system is showing no signs of improvement as it lurches from one crisis to the next

Revealed: $1bn of savings under a shadow as debenture firms snub capital buffers

Published 13 August 2013 10:15, Updated 13 August 2013 10:58

James Frost

Seven years after the collapse of Westpoint, Australia’s shadow banking system is showing no signs of improvement as it lurches from one crisis to the next. Over the last 12 months non bank lenders worth more than $1.1 billion have collapsed, been sold or frozen after troubles at firms including Victorian group Banksia – crippling the savings and retirement plans of thousands. What’s even more disturbing is that thousands more investors remain at risk as the companies that run these high risk schemes thumb their noses at universally accepted benchmarks. Read more of this post

Australian Taxation Office launches crackdown on scam using trusts and bankrupt companies

ATO launches crackdown on scam using trusts and bankrupt companies

Published 13 August 2013 11:01, Updated 13 August 2013 11:28

Katie Walsh

An increase in tax dodging through use of trust funds and bankrupt companies has triggered a crackdown by the Australian Taxation Office, which is trying to lure people into revealing their illegal activity on promise of smaller penalties. The ATO has criticised tax advisers for their part in promoting the schemes. “Most taxpayers and their advisers are correctly taxing trust income but we are unfortunately seeing more instances where some are trying to avoid or substantially reduce tax,” said ATO assistant second commissioner Mark Konza in a statement on Monday. Read more of this post

Indian banks have begun seizing assets controlled by flamboyant Indian business mogul Vijay Mallya due to debts run up by his failing Kingfisher airline.

Indian banks seize assets from mogul Mallya

POSTED: 12 Aug 2013 9:24 PM
– AFP/ec

Indian banks have begun seizing assets controlled by Indian business mogul Vijay Mallya due to debts run up by his failing Kingfisher airline.

MUMBAI: Indian banks have begun seizing assets controlled by Indian business mogul Vijay Mallya who could lose his luxury Goa holiday home over debts run up by his failing airline, a report said Monday. Lenders to his Kingfisher airline took possession of one of the group’s corporate offices, Kingfisher House, in suburban Mumbai, the Economic Times said, quoting an unnamed bank official. Read more of this post