The capabilities of Those in Command to control the impact and consequences of potential major disasters is truly impressive. Case in point—Evergrande, the heavily indebted property developer. This week, the chairman of the company which has been missing payments to creditors and generally dancing on the edge of the abyss for months, vowed to resolve the mess by speeding up sales of apartments rather than doing a fire sale of assets to raise cash. The target, he said, is to complete 50% of pre-sold apartments currently under construction this year—that’s 600,000 apartments. Good grief, and also wow. However, interest in lending to the property sector has understandably declined—loans to property developers in January were down 70% compared to last year. But overall, if Evergrande can scrape over the line then the rest of it will be solvable too, one way or another.
In other news, there is of course sports, with the Winter Olympics. The standout for us has been the automated and isolated way in which the whole thing has been conducted, and our sympathies for Ms Gu. But as to who gets more medals for which events… we choose to rather move on to the next economic statistic. And one that caught our eye was China’s R&D spending which is escalating fast—a record $441bn for last year.
Enjoy the weekend ahead!
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