MNI China Press Digest Feb 23: Yuan, Ukraine, Properties

The following lists highlights from Chinese press reports on Wednesday:

• The yuan has increasingly appeared as a safe-haven currency in the past two years, and it has enough room and resilience against possible spillover effects from the Federal Reserve’s expected rate hike, said the Securities Times in a front-page commentary. The yuan has maintained its strength amid the gradually rising U.S. dollar index since H2 2021, and become an alternative asset in the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the newspaper said. The increase in the proportion of yuan in global payment currencies will also provide strong support for the basic stability of yuan, as the proportion has increased to 3.2% in January to a four-year high, making it the fourth most active currency in the world, the newspaper said.
• China will definitely stay neutral and keep its principles related to sovereign states' territorial integrity, the Global Times said citing Cui Heng, an assistant research fellow at the Center for Russian Studies of East China Normal University. China has close strategic ties with Russia, and also many investments and long-standing cooperation with Ukraine, Cui said. As the U.S. will have to focus on Europe for a few years, its "Indo-Pacific Strategy" will be reduced to an empty slogan, and the arena of fierce strategic competition will be in Europe rather than in the Indo-Pacific, the state-owned newspaper said.
• China's local governments should guard against excessive easing of housing policies, pushing the real estate market back to excessive growth and returning to overly relying on real estate for economic growth, the Economic Daily said in a commentary. With local policies to stabilize the property market and improve the credit environment, the market has shown some stabilizing trends from the overall cooling since H2 2021 with home prices in some cities rebounding, the newspaper said. Any easing measures should be more targeted to meet the demand of first-time buyers while avoiding speculation, the newspaper said.