Li Qiang heads CFC; Real Estate; Taiwan election; US-China; Prosecutors and Xi Thought on Culture
Summary of today’s Essential Eight:
Li Qiang heads Central Financial Commission - Premier Li Qiang is the head of the Central Financial Commission. The readout on the meeting today does not list other members or their titles, other than to say that "He Lifeng and Wu Zhenglong attended the meeting 何立峰、吴政隆参加会议". The English readout is abridged but there were no details of specific measures in the full Chinese readout either.
Real estate - This week’s Caixin has a grim cover story on the “property market meltdown”, as policymakers tell financial institutions to give more credit support to real estate firms and Bloomberg reports they are drafting a list of 50 firms who should be eligible for more funding. But so far nothing is moving the needle, and as the Caixin article notes “risks in the real estate industry have started spreading from private firms to companies with mixed-ownership, with the contagion now poised to reach state-owned builders if the weak market condition persists”. There…