Dear readers, after so much hemming, hawing and hedging we’re pleased to inform you that it’s been a week of actual, even factual developments here in China. A week of snap judgments, of commitments, of just doing it, as the much-quoted corporate slogan goes. Whether that’s all for the better, who knows. But at least stuff happened.
The much-constrained yuan did prove less ready for a dip than other currencies, even as it edged down toward its lower limits . But after word came ’round that both manufacturing and services took a hit last month, the People’s Bank of China finally went with the flow, cutting domestic banks’ reserve ratio requirement. Now granted, some were more skeptical than others about which corners of the economy all that newly freed-up cash would eventually slosh its way into, but we’ve no time for such trifling concerns.
Some have also suggested that China has been backpedaling in the South China Sea. But that’s one geopolitical arena where we’d say China is in fact chugging along at full steam. Now there was that boat-ramming spat, the latest of many, with the Philippines this week. But we’d suggest that as spats go, this one barely registered on our imminent-war-o-meter. And while Sri Lanka’s new president had been pegged as an imminent challenge for top cadres, it now appears a China-backed port-building project there will proceed as previously planned under his pro-Beijing predecessor.
Others have called into question resolve of China’s online heavyweights to play outside their own sandbox. (Although with China’s Internet users now totaling 649 million we daresay they’ll keep one eye on the home front in any case.) But now Tencent is planning to issue another US dollar bond that we’re sure won’t lay fallow for long, and Alibaba–having patched things up with regulators–has enlisted US-based Lending Club to help facilitate peer-to-peer loans for smaller US buyers who use its online wholesale platform. We must say, it truly is a thing of beauty when two sites renowned for their role as online middlemen come together to make practically offensive wads of cash off of others’ transactions.
But it was developer Kaisa–sweet, sweet headline fodder that it is–which provided us with the most exemplary example of going whole hog. Where its CEO’s departure early in the week might’ve appeared to signal the property firm’s imminent doom, it now seems to have scored succor from fellow developer Sunac thanks to that firm’s purchase of a nigh-on 50% share. If there’s one lesson we can take away from all of this, it’s that everyone should just do what feels right all the time and expect it to turn out just fine.
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