Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GST who wrote (133408)	10/24/2001 2:24:13 AM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

>Published: October 23 2001 21:48 \| Last Updated: October 23 2001 22:31 China has ordered a virtual freeze on the bankruptcy of its larger state-owned enterprises in a sign that crucial industrial reforms are being slowed as Beijing seeks to ward off social unrest. People inside the government said the supreme court had told provincial courts not to proceed with bankruptcy cases of state-owned enterprises with assets of more than Rmb50m ($6m) unless they had supreme court approval. "This in effect centralises the decision-making process for all bankruptcies of state-owned enterprises," said one official, who declined to be identified. "The government wants to stop bankruptcies of state-owned companies." The order, which has not been publicly announced, appears set to frustrate what is widely seen as one of China's most pressing tasks - the liquidation of tens of thousands of inefficient, overstaffed state companies that suck in state credits but fail to repay them. Non-performing loans in the Chinese banking system are officially put at around 30 per cent of total assets. However signs of slowing growth and irregularities in the bankruptcy process appear to have convinced Beijing that liquidations should be all but halted, despite the urgency injected into domestic reforms by the prospect that China will join the World Trade Organisation later this year or in the first half of next. Gross domestic product grew 7 per cent in the third quarter of the year, China's lowest quarterly expansion since the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. This compares with 7.9 per cent in the first half of the year and widespread predictions that growth in the final quarter - hit by uncertainty over the US-led war in Afghanistan - will fall to well below 7 per cent.