An article on the Zhihu site reported that, according to the China Securities Journal, the number of court auctioned houses in 2021 has increased substantially. In 2015 it was only 500,000. In 2021 the number reached 2 million or around four  times as much.

In Beijing alone, in the first eleven months of this year, 4,909 houses were auctioned. The number was around 500 in the previous year. The sales price averaged 79 percent of the “normal” price.

The author commented that this is not a good sign since the owners are unable to make their payments on the mortgages and thus the banks have had the courts take over the houses by force in order to sell them.

Source: Zhihu, December 30, 2021
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/340431287

The government of Hegang, a city in China’s northwestern province of Heilongjiang, announced on December 23 that, “Due to the fiscal restructuring plan, the financial situation has changed significantly.” As a result, the city government of Hegang decided to suspend the recruitment of grassroots-level staff.”

The web announcement, according to the mainland newspaper National Business Daily, shows income has shrunk. The result is an ever-widening gap between revenues and expenditures. Debt financing has become the survival mode for some local governments.

As of October 2021, the balance of total local government debt in China reached 29.65 trillion yuan (US$ 4.65 trillion). Only five provinces – Shanghai, Guangdong, Beijing, Zhejiang and Jiangsu – have a debt-over-GDP ratio below the red line of 100 percent. Four provinces, including Qinghai, Heilongjiang, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia, have local debt ratios over 300 percent, with Qinghai being above 500 percent.

Days ago, the Hong Kong media also reported that a number of provinces and cities in China have cut the pay of civil servants at a rate between 20 and 30 percent.

Source: Central News Agency, December 28, 2021
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202112280146.aspxD

China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) Central Rural Work Conference took place in Beijing on January 25 and 26. The agenda focused on agriculture and rural areas in the year of 2022. CCP Chairman Xi Jinping said at the meeting, “The rice bowl of the Chinese people must be firmly in their own hands at all times.”

The meeting highlighted two issues:  food security and no falling back into poverty on a large scale. Emphasis was put on grain production and on the supply of important agricultural products to ensure at least 650 billion kilograms of total output in 2022.

China is the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans. On December 22, the Chinese website of Japan’s Nikkei cited a projection from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that China’s reserve of corn and other major grain stocks will account for more than half of the world’s total. With a population that is less than 20 percent of the world, China’s massive hoarding of grain is quite eye-catching.

Source: People’s Daily, December 27, 2021
http://papTer.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2021-12/27/nw.D110000renmrb_20211227_1-01.htm