Welcome to China Business News, NEO’s weekly roundup of top business developments as reported by news outlets in China and the region.
This week’s highlights:
- Chinese Central Bank report shows social financing fell short of expectations: the Chinese government’s newly adopted social financing measures showed worse performance than expected, according to a financial statistics report released by China’s Central Bank for April. The analysis shows that poor performance of newly added social financing – a measure of funds that individuals and non-financial firms receive from the financial system – was heavily influenced by such factors as RMB loans to the real economy, off-balance sheet financing and foreign currency loans. Chief macro analyst at Golden Credit Rating International Wang Qing explained that off-balance sheet financing decreased by RMB 255.7 billion in April, a decline of RMB 40.5 billion year-on-year, mainly due to the high increase in bill discounting and the transfer of more off-balance sheets to on-balance. A source in China’s Central Bank said growth of RMB loans slowed significantly in April, which reflects the impact of the pandemic on the real economy. While the operating problems of medium-sized, small and micro enterprises escalated, demand for effective financing notably decreased. (21 Economy News Platform)
- AI firm CloudWalk to list in Shanghai: CloudWalk, a leading AI enterprise incubated at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has announced plans to list on the Shanghai Sci-Tech Innovation Board. The amount of shares in the public offering accounts for RMB 112 million, and the total share capital is RMB 741 million, with all shares to be newly issued. The company said it expects to raise approx. RMB 1.728 billion in total equity capital. According to the prospectus, the money will be used mainly to develop the company’s projects including the Human-Machine Collaboration Operating System Upgrade Project, the Light Boat System Ecological Construction Project, the Artificial Intelligence Solution Integrated Service Ecological Project, as well as to replenish its working capital. (The Economic Observer)
- Chinese top officials support sustainable digital economy development: the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) held a meeting in Beijing on May 17 devoted to “promoting sustainable and healthy development of the digital economy”. Participants stressed that the platform economy has become an important part of the digital economy, providing a digital technology base for industry digitalization and transformation of the real economy. Vice Premier of the State Council Liu He said it is necessary to “support the sustainable and healthy development of the platform and private economy, balance the relations between the government and the market, and support the listing of digital enterprises on domestic and international equity markets.” (The Economic Observer)