China’s $1.7 trillion hangover

China’s $1.7 trillion hangover

Up to 40% of China’s $1.7 trillion LGFV loans are at high risk of default. What’s a panicking Beijing to do?

The truth about Asian investment banking

December 1999

Donald Tsang: scourge of the hedge funds


Euromoney editor Peter Lee talked to Donald Tsang, finance secretary of Hong Kong, during his hectic visit to the UK in November. Though he is finance secretary of what is only a special autonomous region of China, Tsang cuts the figure of a fully fledged finance minister on the international stage. He shot to worldwide prominence last year when, in an extraordinary step for an official from a freewheeling free-market centre, he intervened massively in the local stock market, buying up HK$118.1 billion ($15 billion) of shares in response to an attack by international hedge funds that was set to spread from the stock market to a devaluation of the Hong Kong dollar.


Tsang: greater transparency among governments should be matched by the hedge funds
Hong Kong withstood handover from Britain to the UK with scarcely a tremor, withstood the onset of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 far better than its neighbours, has shrugged off plunging property prices despite a disproportionate amount of its wealth and economic activity being tied to property, and today remains a world-class city despite pollution from mainland China that, were it any other regional centre, might be sufficient to dissuade companies and employees from locating to it. Two things might destroy Hong Kong: an increase in the tax rate or a collapse of the Hong Kong dollar. As an article of faith Hong Kong has maintained full convertibility of its currency while pegging the exchange rate to the dollar.

Tsang acted in extraordinary circumstances when he intervened in the equity market. A popular story in Hong Kong...


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