Aurelia Butler

UK foreign minister James Cleverly on Wednesday sought to repair ties with China during the first high-level British government visit to Beijing for five years, emphasising the need for further dialogue even if it included areas of “disagreement”.In a meeting with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, Cleverly said he had “always been able to speak frankly” with his counterpart but also pointed to “opportunities that could benefit the wider world if we can ensure that our bilateral relationship is positive”.“As two countries that have a global outlook, that trade widely across the world, and whose future prosperity is dependent upon peace and dialogue, it is important for us to maintain these channels of communication,” he added. Cleverly’s visit came as worsening ties between Washington and Beijing have cast a cloud over China’s wider relations with the west and pressured international businesses to reduce their dependence on the country.It coincided with a visit from US secretary of commerce Gina Raimondo, who this week also pushed to reopen communication with China but warned that American companies were beginning to see it as “uninvestable”.Over the course of his one-day trip, which also included a meeting with Chinese vice-president Han Zheng, Cleverly sought to balance a push for more communication with a willingness to highlight the differences that have weighed heavily on relations between the two countries for years.Cleverly has been criticised for going to Beijing by parliamentarians in his own Conservative party, with some expressing concern over China’s human rights record in Xinjiang and its policies in Hong Kong, where a 2020 national security law has suppressed protest.“I’ve had a number of conversations with senior representatives of the Chinese government, and I have raised human rights in every single one of those meetings and I will continue to do so,” Cleverly told broadcasters on Wednesday.In response to a question about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said it was in China’s interests for the war to come to “a fair and successful conclusion”, according to the BBC. China has declined to condemn the invasion.Wang struck a similarly cautious tone to Cleverly, emphasising “dialogue and co-operation” but also referring to “current difficulties” and “noise” in Sino-British relations, which he said were “facing the decision of what path to take”.Both UK prime minister Rishi Sunak and Chinese president Xi Jinping are expected to attend the G20 summit in New Delhi next month.

“Ultimately, it is important for our prime minister and your president to have the opportunity to speak directly as well,” Cleverly told Wang.At talks with Cleverly at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Han referred to meetings he had attended this year “with friends from the UK business community”, including HSBC, Standard Chartered and Jardine Matheson. “British and Chinese enterprises look forward to more practical co-operation and deepening our co-operation in the economy and finance, and more areas,” said Han.At a meeting at the British ambassador’s residence with about 15 UK businesses with a presence in China, Cleverly emphasised the need to avoid disengaging with the country, according to one person in attendance.British business groups said the UK foreign secretary’s visit had been received well by companies, many of whom have this year sent senior executives to the mainland for the first time since three years of zero-Covid restrictions were lifted.Julian Fisher, chair of the British Chambers of Commerce in Beijing, said “three years of zero Covid have left China in a very unusual position”, adding visits by senior UK government representatives should be “more frequent”. More

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BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) -Two of China’s biggest cities eased mortgage curbs and the country’s top banks flagged mounting risks from the deepening property sector turmoil on Wednesday, as Beijing ramps up efforts to shore up the sputtering economy.Guangzhou, China’s fifth biggest city, and the tech hub of Shenzhen said that mortgage curbs would be eased, allowing home buyers to enjoy preferential loans for first-home purchases regardless of their previous credit record.The moves comes after Chinese authorities called on cities to broaden the definition of first-home mortgage as part of a string of other measures to revive the troubled property market, which accounts for roughly a quarter of the economy.In other support measures, some Chinese state-owned banks are also expected to lower interest rates on existing mortgages, three sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, in the first such cut since the global financial crisis.Beijing hopes the reduction in mortgage payments will help revive consumer demand for property.Those measures are, however, adding to concerns about the impact on Chinese banks.Two of China’s biggest banks – Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) and Bank of China (BoC) – reported sluggish profit growth and shrinking profit margins for the first half.In a sign of mounting challenges for lenders from the deepening property crisis, BoC’s Chief Risk Officer Liu Jiandong said the bank’s mortgage asset quality was facing pressure, but there was no material deterioration.China’s mortgage loans totalled 38.6 trillion yuan ($5.29 trillion) at the end of June, representing 17% of banks’ total loan books.The Chinese property sector has lurched from one crisis to another since 2021, and contagion fears deepened this month after liquidity stress in leading developer Country Garden became public.Just how cash-strapped Country Garden is will be the focus when China’s largest private property developer reports its first-half results on Wednesday. SUPPORT MEASURES The expected reduction in existing mortgage rates is one of several support measures Beijing has announced in recent weeks, as concerns mount about the health of the world’s second-largest economy. Some analysts and home buyers were not convinced about how effective the steps would be in reviving buyer demand, as consumer confidence has been badly hit by economic woes that pushed the youth unemployment rate to a record high in June.Property agents said there were few people shopping in the secondary market, and commercial mortgage rates are still much higher than the rates offered by the housing provident fund, a savings program by governments for housing purchases. Homeowner Jackson Wang said he is going to move his mortgage with a top Chinese bank to the provident housing fund, which would lower his interest rate to 3.2% from the current 4.8%. He pays more than 5,000 yuan per month for a flat in the eastern city of Linyi.”I have already bought a home at a high price and been paying a high mortgage, so I’m hoping for a rate cut,” Wang, 38, said. “I’m too disappointed in China real estate. I will not be attracted by the sector again unless home prices are reduced, a lot.”Raymond Cheng, Hong Kong-based head of China research at CGS-CIMB Securities Ltd, said the easing in mortgage rules came too late and any boost to home sales may not be significant given very weak home buyer sentiment.”The impact could be much bigger on developers’ sales if regulators implemented the policy six to nine months ago,” he said.BANKS’ MARGINThe mortgage rate cuts will add to margin pressure on banks already battling headwinds such as lower lending rates, pressure from the government to prop up the economy, as well as bad debts related to developers and local government financing vehicles.BoC said that some local government financing vehicles (LGFV) — which play a key role in the country’s infrastructure development — have defaulted, but the business is operating steadily.”For Bank of China the current overall business with local government financing platforms remains stable, and the total amount of credit granted is relatively moderate among peers,” BoC’s Liu said.”Therefore, the asset quality has declined slightly compared with the beginning of the year but it is still under control.”Big state-owned banks have recently been rolling over loans to LGFVs – which have an estimated $9.1 trillion in debt – or lent more to them.Vivian Xue, director of APAC Financial Institution at Fitch Ratings, said revenue pressure on the banking sector was expected to persist into 2024, due to narrowing margins and tepid retail loan demand. To soften the effect, the sources told Reuters that major state banks would also lower interest rates on some fixed-term deposits, and the quantum of cuts would range from 10 basis points to 25 basis points. More

STEINHATCHEE, Florida (Reuters) -Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida as an “extremely dangerous” Category 3 storm on Wednesday after millions of residents evacuated or hunkered down in homes and shelters in anticipation of a life-threatening storm surge. Drawing strength from the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters, Idalia unleashed destructive winds and torrential downpours that were forecast to cause coastal flooding up to 16 feet (4.88 m) deep along the state’s Gulf Coast. Idalia came ashore at 7:45 a.m. EDT (1145 GMT) at Keaton Beach, an ocean-front community of 13,000 people in Taylor County, about 75 miles (121 km) southeast of Tallahassee, the state capital. The town lies in the center of the Big Bend region, where the state’s northern panhandle curves into the Florida Peninsula. “It’s just ripping through Taylor County now. Hope all is safe,” County Commissioner Jamie English told Reuters. “Winds gusting. Terrible power outages all over. Debris flying everywhere.”Video footage from Keaton Beach posted on social media platform X by storm chaser Sidney Grimmett showed heavy downpours and trees whipping in the wind as an electrical line sparked along the side of a roadway. Overnight, Idalia attained “an extremely dangerous Category 4 intensity” on the five-step Saffir-Simpson wind scale on its way to landfall in Florida Wednesday morning, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said.But by 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) it weakened slightly, slipping into Category 3, with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph (201 km). Any storm reaching Category 3 or higher is considered a major hurricane.Sparsely populated compared with the Tampa-St. Petersburg area to the south, the Big Bend features a marshy coast, threaded with freshwater springs and rivers, and a cluster of small offshore islands forming Cedar Key, a historic fishing village demolished in 1896 by a hurricane’s storm surge. Early Wednesday morning, storm winds were knocking bent palm tree tops against Ken Wood’s house in Dunedin, near Tampa and 185 miles south of landfall. Wood, 57, a bridge tender in Pinellas County, did not heed evacuation orders even after he shut down the bridge between on the Dunedin Causeway on Tuesday, saying he figured he was on high enough ground. “Mainly it’s a lot of loud wind and rain right now, some thunder,” he told Reuters by telephone, adding that roads were flooded. “The sky is dark.”DANGER TO LIFEMost of Florida’s 21 million residents, and many in the adjacent states of Georgia and South Carolina, were under hurricane warnings and other storm-related advisories. State emergency declarations were issued in all three.Florida’s Gulf Coast, southeastern Georgia and eastern parts of North and South Carolina could face 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 cm) of rain through Thursday, with isolated areas seeing as much as a foot of rain (30 cm), the hurricane center warned. Officials said the storm’s most dangerous feature would be a powerful surge of wind-driven surf that is expected to flood barrier islands and other low-lying areas along the coast.Surge warnings were posted for hundreds of miles of shoreline, from Sarasota to the sport fishing haven of Indian Pass at the western end of Apalachicola Bay. In some areas, the surge could rise as high as 16 feet (4.9 m), the NHC said.”If you end up with a storm surge that even approaches 16 feet, the chances of surviving that are not great,” DeSantis said. “You would need to be in a three-story building because it is going to rise very, very high.”At the White House on Tuesday, U.S. President Biden said he and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in the 2024 presidential election, were “in constant contact” about storm preparations.Biden was set to speak about the government’s hurricane response efforts later on Wednesday.Idalia grew from a tropical storm into a hurricane early on Tuesday, a day after passing west of Cuba, where it damaged homes, knocked out power, flooded villages and prompted mass evacuations. It was the fourth major hurricane to strike Florida in the past seven years, following Irma in 2017, Michael in 2018 and Ian, which peaked at Category 5, last September.More than 40 school districts in Florida canceled classes, DeSantis said, and Tampa International Airport suspended commercial operations on Tuesday.About 5,500 National Guard members were mobilized, while 30,000 to 40,000 electricity workers were on standby. The state has set aside 1.1 million gallons of gasoline to address interruptions to fuel supplies, the governor said. More