At least 40 high-risk Chinese banks have been lost to mergers in the first six months of this year alone as local lenders buckle under exposure to debts, according to reports.
Small and medium-sized banks, long an integral part of poor towns and villages, numbered 1,636 at the end of last year, according to government statistics, comprising about 40 percent of China’s total number of banking institutions.
Many of these local lenders have been hit hard by China’s economic slowdown, in particular exposure to the debt crisis roiling the country’s real estate market, which earlier this year saw a Hong Kong court order property developer Evergrande to liquidate.
The number of smaller banks that had buckled as of June 24 is four times the number that shuttered in the whole of 2023. The trend is only expected to accelerate as restructuring picks up pace, financial news agency Yicai Global cited industry insiders as saying.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/china-reels-from-banking-crisis/ar-BB1q1JNl
China withdrew cash from its banking system for a fifth consecutive month amid caution toward monetary easing as currency depreciation pressures mount.
The People’s Bank of China drained a net 3 billion yuan ($414 million) of cash via its medium-term lending facility on Monday, while holding the interest rate on its one-year policy loans at 2.5%, as the Third Plenum gets underway in the nation’s capital. The twice-a-decade meeting of China’s top leadership has at times marked pivotal policy shifts.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-15/china-withdraws-cash-from-banking-system-amid-pressure-on-yuan?embedded-checkout=true