MNI China Press Digest Nov 17: Sino-US, Yuan, Evergrande

The following lists highlights from Chinese press reports on Wednesday:

• The U.S. should implement the consensus spirit of the Xi-Biden virtual summit on Tuesday and relay the positive momentum from the talks to key areas of bilateral ties, the party's tabloid Global Times said in an Editorial. China-U.S. relations have come to a point where they must manage divergences and ease the tense atmosphere, and the two heads of state sent a positive signal by declaring they reject a new Cold War and could co-exist peacefully, the newspaper said. If either party violated this commitment they would be committing a sin, the Times said.
• More global asset management institutions and sovereign wealth funds are using the Chinese yuan to hedge against the risk of falling exchange rates of other countries and are actively increasing yuan assets, the 21st Century Business Herald reports. The yuan has continued to rise against a basket of currencies this year amid China's robust trade and steady economic growth, with the latest CFETS RMB index rising to 101.08, the highest level since Dec. 2015. The more than 6% rise in the CFETS is also encouraging more domestic and foreign companies to use the yuan for settlement in cross-border trade and investment, the newspaper said. Although the rising CFETS was partly due to the adjustment of lowering the weight of the U.S. dollar to 0.1879 from 0.2159 last year, strong exports and the large trade surplus are playing the leading role in driving up the index, even amid the sharp dollar rebound due to rising expectations of the Fed's QE taper, the newspaper added.
• Evergrande's founder, Xu Jiayin, has been selling his personal assets or pledging equity to inject over CNY7 billion of cash into the company since July in a bid to maintain the basic operations of China's second largest and most indebted developer, Yicai.com reported citing an anonymous insider. During this period the company's financing and sales were stalled, but it needed to ensure the 10% monthly payment of the wealth management products it sold, the payment of salaries and bond interest, as well as promoting the resumption of projects nationwide, the newspaper said. The company has been faced with setbacks in selling its property management and electric vehicles unit since mid-August, and its home sales also failed to make it into Top 50 developers which posted more than CNY3.69 billion of monthly sales in October, the newspaper said.