City Beijing Financial News

Joe Biden and Xi Jinping head into their big meeting at a country estate on Wednesday hoping to stabilise US-China relations after a period of tumult, but the US president also is prepared to confront his counterpart on difficult issues such as trade, Beijing's burgeoning relationship with Iran and human rights concerns. The two leaders, who will meet on the sidelines of a summit of Asian-Pacific leaders, last spoke a year ago. Since then, already fraught ties between the two economic superpowers have been further strained by the U.S.

BEIJING — The size of unfinished, pre-sold homes in China is about 20 times the size of property developer Country Garden as of the end of 2022, according to a Nomura report on Wednesday.

UBS Group AG. Stocks in China have currently priced in “lots of negatives,” making them poised for a sharp rebound when catalysts arrive, said Sunil Tirumalai, UBS’ global emerging market strategist. Meanwhile, earnings-based valuations for Indian shares are already at “fairly extreme levels.” Additional stimulus measures from Beijing and improving geopolitical relations can provide “positive sustained market reaction” for China, he said in an interview last week.

BEIJING — China on Wednesday reported better-than-expected retail sales and industrial data for October, while the real estate drag worsened. 

Nepal’s government has decided to ban the popular social media app TikTok, saying it was disrupting “social harmony” in the country

President Joe Biden and Indonesian President Joko Widodo have formalized closer ties between their countries at the White House

President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping’s have no shortage of difficult issues to discuss when they meet Wednesday in the San Francisco area

Mint breaks down the situation. On Monday, Britain’s first Asian-origin premier fired his controversial Home Secretary Suella Braverman and brought former Prime Minister David Cameron back to frontline politics as foreign minister. Observers of British politics speculate that Sunak is trying to return his government to a policy of centrist pragmatism.

Amid the violent challenges to the world system in Ukraine and the Middle East, it’s easy to overlook the corroding economic pillars of international order. Under President Biden, American economic policy is morphing into a toxic combination of protectionism and green activism guaranteed to slow growth and create global friction. That matters.

By Yukiko Toyoda, Kiyoshi Takenaka and Laurie Chen

BEIJING (Reuters) — China has ordered its local governments to halt public-private partnership projects identified as «problematic» and replaced a 10% budget spending allowance for these ventures with a vetting mechanism by Beijing as it tries to curb municipal debt risks.

By Roxanne Liu and Kane Wu

On a 2011 visit, then US vice president Joe Biden went for lunch at Yaoji Chaogan, sparking a social media craze over his "noodle diplomacy". Outside the eatery in one of the capital's historic hutong neighbourhoods this week, Chinese people expressed hope that a meeting between leader Xi Jinping and now President Biden might help the two men to cook up a diplomatic success of their own. Biden and Xi will hold talks this week in San Francisco — their first in just over a year — set to address hot-button issues from trade to geopolitical tensions. Near Beijing's 700-year-old Drum Tower, passersby told AFP the two leaders needed to learn to get along for the sake of the world. The China-US relationship is «tense, you can see that», said economics student Yuan, who only offered her family name. «But they're also very closely linked,» she added. «These are two very large countries with huge global economic systems, so this is very important. Their relationship has a great impact on the entire world's economy.» Outside the packed bistro — where steaming bowls of soup and buns offered a welcome respite from freezing weather outside — retired driver Yu said he welcomed the meeting between the rival powers' leaders and expressed a little admiration for the US president.

Investing.com -- Shares in Boeing (NYSE:BA) rose in premarket U.S. trading on Monday after Bloomberg News reported that China is mulling potentially resuming purchases of the planemaker's fast-selling 737 Max jets.

BEIJING (Reuters) — New bank lending in China fell less than expected in October from the previous month, even after policymakers ramped up measures including cutting banks' reserve requirement ratios to get the shaky economy back on more solid footing.

By Trevor Hunnicutt

(Reuters) — Global ratings agency Fitch said on Monday it plans to withdraw all the ratings on China's Country Garden Services Holding on or about Dec. 12 for commercial reasons.

(Reuters) -China is considering resuming purchases of Boeing (NYSE:BA)'s 737 Max aircraft when the U.S. and Chinese presidents meet this week at the APEC summit, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Joe Biden and China's Xi Jinping have no shortage of difficult issues to discuss when they sit down for their first talks in a year, even if expectations are low that their meeting will lead to major breakthroughs. Each leader has clear objectives for the highly anticipated talks on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a meeting that comes after what's been a fractious year for the world's two biggest economies. Both Biden and Xi are looking to bring a greater measure of stability to a relationship that is being defined by differences over export controls, tensions over Taiwan, the wars in the Middle East and Europe, and more. A look at what each president is hoping to achieve during their talks: WHAT BIDEN WANTS The White House has made clear that the U.S.-China relationship is beyond the days where a meeting ends with a long list of announcements and agreements. Instead, Biden comes to San Francisco focused on managing the countries' increasingly fierce economic competition and keeping open lines of communication to prevent misunderstandings that could lead to direct conflict between the two powers. Expect Biden to defend U.S. expansion of export controls on semiconductor chips.

So when Washington and Beijing do economic battle, as they have for five years running, the rest of the world suffers, too. And when they hold a rare high-level summit, as Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will this week, it can have global consequences. The world's economy could surely benefit from a U.S.-China detente.

Shoppers in China have been tightening their purse strings, raising questions over how faltering consumer confidence may affect the annual Singles’ Day online retail extravaganza