China frees lenders’ funds as economic threats persist

ALEXANDRA STEVENSON

HONG KONG — Troubled by slowing growth, persistent debt problems and President Donald Trump’s trade war, the Chinese government has taken steps in recent months to shore up its economy.

It pared a high-profile campaign to tackle debt. It restarted big infrastructure projects, a traditional economic engine. It even censored bad economic news.

On Sunday, Beijing took another step.

The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, pulled a financial lever that will effectively pump $175 billion into the economy. The

● government is aiming to help small and midsize businesses, which have had trouble obtaining loans and which face other rising pressures.

The move signals that China’s economy “is really not doing well,” Chen Shouhong, the founder of the investment information platform Gelonghui, wrote on WeChat, a popular Chinese social media service.

The growing trade war with the United States has been the most visible threat. In September, the U.S. imposed tariffs on $200 billion in goods from China. Trump has shown little inclination to back off, and relations between the two countries have cooled, suggesting the trade war could worsen.

So far, the trade war has had only a minor effect on

China’s $12 trillion economy. Trade is not as important to China as it once was, in part because of the rise of a middle class that has been a ready buyer of Chinese goods. Still, tariffs could hurt the economy the longer they last. In September, new export orders — an indicator of China’s manufacturing — fell to the lowest level since 2016.

But China has bigger problems than the trade war.

Consumers are spending less. Retail sales this year have grown at the slowest rate in a decade. Wage growth is plodding. Infrastructure investment, a pillar of the Chinese economy, slowed significantly in the first half of the year. The pace at which companies are defaulting on their bonds has quickened.

China also has to contend with a stock market that has fallen by about 15 percent this year and a currency

that has lost 10 percent of its value against the dollar. In addition, some Chinese entrepreneurs say the business environment is souring. And the government could soon require companies to pay more in taxes and benefits.

Government officials in recent months have worked to counter the broader economic slowdown. They pledged to pump billions of dollars into infrastructure projects, shored up the value of the currency and moved to protect the falling stock market.

China has used these methods for years to spur growth, but they represent a retreat from more recent government efforts to pare the nation’s debt. China unleashed a wave of spending and lending measures beginning a decade ago, rescuing its economy from the global economic downturn but leaving many of its companies and local governments heavily burdened with debt. Economists have warned that China must address its debt problems if it hopes to keep its economy humming.

On Sunday, the People’s Bank of China said it would cut the amount of money that some lenders are required to hold in reserve — called the reserve ratio — by 1 percentage point. The move essentially frees up more money for China’s state-controlled banks to lend.

About $65.5 billion of that cash injection will be directed to banks to repay debts that are due in the coming weeks, while the rest will be pushed into the financial market.

The central bank made the move to ensure “reasonable and sufficient liquidity” in China’s economy, it said. This is the fourth time this year that the central bank has cut the reserve ratio.