China
Evergrande: investors in anguish + Ancient beer discovery + Fleeting foreigners
Dear reader,
Just a few years ago, all signs were pointing towards growth – now China's second-largest real estate group Evergrande is going downhill. And this dramatic slump has a troublesome reason: reports about payment stops are circulating. China's stock market now fears the worst.
Our author Ning Wang takes a look at the week that has been going more than bad for Evergrande and has been rife with bad news. She wonders: Will Evergrande's "too big to fail" case continue to result in loan defaults and corporate bankruptcies, or are more consequences looming? Even if the government in Beijing rushes to Evergrande's aid, things are now looking rather bleak.
Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, the People's Republic resembles a fortress: almost impossible to get in from the outside, and visas are hard to come by. And the weeks-long quarantine does its best in scaring off potential entrants. This is why foreigners in Beijing are virtually attracting each other's attention now, as a German expatriate told our columnist Johnny Erling. In today's issue, he writes about the dwindling number of foreigners in China. The supposedly globalized People's Republic brings up the rear in terms of the proportion of foreigners compared to all other major nations.
