China Injects $36B in 48 Hours as Yuan Plummet
• The People’s Bank of China injected $36 billion of liquidity via Reverse Repo in 48 hours.
• The Yuan dropped 1.5% in two days due to an economic downturn exacerbated by a US bankruptcy filing from real estate developer China Evergrande Group.
• The largest spike in liquidity injections has been seen since February 2023, signaling deflationary territory and a negative CPI for the first time since early 2021.
China Liquidity Injections
The People’s Bank of China conducted reverse repo operations through interest rate bidding to keep the liquidity in the banking system adequate at a “reasonable level”, injecting 168 billion Yuan (CNY), or approximately $23 billion, on Aug 17th and 98 billion CNY on Friday, Aug 18th (just over $13 billion). This is the largest spike in liquidity injections since February 2023, signifying deflationary territory and a negative CPI for the first time since early 2021.
China Evergrande Group
On Aug 18th, China Evergrande Group filed for bankruptcy protection in a US court as part of one of the world’s biggest debt restructuring exercises worth $32 billion. The real estate firm had defaulted on its massive debt back in Sept 2021 and offered creditors a choice to swap their debt into new notes issued by the company and equities in two subsidiaries: Evergrande Property Services Group and Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group. However, after posting combined losses of $81 billion for 2021 and 2022, worries about the viability of the debt restructuring plan surfaced.
Impact on Economy & Currency
As expected, this news had an immediate impact not only on global stock markets but also China’s economy as well as its currency—the Yuan dropped 1.5% over just two days due to these developments. This further exacerbated an already poor economic situation that has been developing over several months now due to poor management decisions within China itself.
Debt Restructuring Plans
In order to address this situation, Evergrande has proposed a number of debt restructuring plans that are currently being negotiated with creditors both offshore and domestically. These plans aim to create more favorable terms for all parties involved while attempting to reduce financial losses across all sides of this issue as much as possible within legal boundaries set forth by Chinese law as well as international regulations governing such transactions.
Conclusion
Despite numerous attempts by Chinese authorities and private companies alike towards alleviating economic woes through various measures such as liquidity injections via reverse repos or debt restructuring plans, it remains unclear whether any significant progress can be made without addressing underlying management issues that have contributed significantly towards creating this situation in the first place.