This paper studies whether financial technology (FinTech) changes loan contract design by reducing banks’ reliance on collateral in corporate lending. Using loan-level data on Chinese listed firms from 2007 to 2023 and exploiting the People’s Bank of China’s 2019 FinTech Development Plan as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that banks with stronger pre-policy FinTech capability significantly reduce secured lending after the policy shock. In the benchmark specification, the probability that a loan is secured falls by 1.64 percentage points, or about 2.7% relative to the baseline secured-loan share. The result is robust to alternative loan classifications, matching procedures, alternative measures of FinTech adoption, aggregated lending outcomes, and alternative inference procedures. The pattern is more pronounced among small and medium-sized enterprises, lower-tier branches, and branches located outside bank headquarters’ cities, where borrower information is likely to be more limited. Supplementary analyses are consistent with FinTech reducing banks’ information-production costs and suggest that technological proximity to FinTech-active peers may amplify the collateral-reducing effect. Overall, the evidence indicates that FinTech can enhance banks’ screening capacity and shift lending decisions away from reliance on asset-based guarantees toward information-based credit assessment.

This paper studies whether and how policies that promote a currency’s use in international invoicing can also strengthen its role as an anchor currency in other economies’ exchange rate baskets. We exploit the establishment of swap lines by the People’s Bank of China as a natural setting to examine this mechanism. First, we estimate countries’ implicit currency baskets and the weights assigned to the RMB. We then use a staggered difference-in-differences design to assess the effect of initiating swap line agreements on the RMB’s weights in these baskets. Our results indicate that RMB weights increase by approximately 5% about nine months after a swap line is introduced and remain persistently higher thereafter. Finally, we develop a three-country DSGE model to interpret these findings, showing that by promoting RMB invoicing, swap lines reinforce the RMB’s role as an anchor currency for exchange rate stabilization.

Small scale mining has always been part of life in Ghana, but its illegal form known as galamsey has grown into one of the country’s biggest problems. Galamsey gives work to many people, yet still it destroys rivers, forests and farms, leaving communities struggling to survive. This paper looks at the laws that guide small scale mining in Ghana, from the days of traditional mining, through the colonial period, the Small Scale Gold Mining Law of 1989, and the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703) as amended by Act 995. It explains how weak enforcement, corruption, political interference and the role of foreigners, especially some Chinese nationals, have made the laws less effective. The paper also shows, through recent court cases such as Republic v Fynn and Republic v Domotey and Others, that Ghana’s courts are ready to punish offenders when cases are well presented. The courts have given long prison terms and heavy fines, showing that they are not the weak link in the fight. The real problem is poor enforcement and selective justice, since many foreigners are deported instead of being put on trial. The paper argues that solving the galamsey problem needs strong enforcement, freedom from political interference, the setting up of special environmental courts, and better job opportunities for rural communities. With these steps, Ghana can protect the environment while also supporting its people to make a living in lawful ways.

Central bank digital currency (CBDC) is intended to boost financial inclusion and limit threats to bank stability posed by private cryptocurrencies. Our study examines the impact of implementing CBDC on the bank stability of two countries in Asia and the Pacific, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and India, that initiated research on CBDC within the last ten years (2013 to 2022). We construct a bank stability index by utilizing five dimensions, namely capital adequacy, profitability, asset quality, liquidity, and efficiency, using a novel “benefit-of-the-doubt” approach. Employing panel estimation techniques, we find a significant positive impact of adopting CBDC on bank stability and a moderating role of monetary policy. We also find that the effect is greater in India, a lower-middle-income country, than in the PRC, an upper-middle-income nation. We conclude that by taking an accommodative monetary policy stance, adopting CBDC favors bank stability. We confirm our results with various robustness tests by introducing proxies for bank stability and other model specifications. Our findings underscore the potential of adopting CBDC, when carefully managed alongside appropriate monetary policy, for enhancing bank or overall financial stability.

Background: How to cope with the rapid growth of LTC (long-term care) needs for the old people without activities of daily living (ADL), which is also a serious hazard caused by public health emergencies such as COVID-2019 and SARS (2003), has become an urgent task in China, Germany, Japan, and other aging countries. As a response, the LTCI (longterm care insurance) system has been executed among European countries and piloted in 15 cities of China in 2016. Subsequently, the influence and dilemma of LTCI system have become a hot academic topic in the past 20 years.Methods: The review was carried out to reveal the effects of the LTCI system on different economic entities by reviewing relevantliterature published from January 2008 to September 2019. The quality of 25 quantitative and 24 qualitative articles was evaluated using the JBI and CASP critical evaluation checklist, respectively. Results: The review systematically examines the effects of the LTCI system on different microeconomic entities such as caretakers or their families and macroeconomic entities such as government spending. The results show that the LTCI system has a great impact on social welfare. For example, LTCI has a positive effect on the health and life quality of the disabled elderly. However, the role of LTCI in alleviating the financial burden on families with the disabled elderly may be limited. Conclusion: Implementation of LTCI system not only in reducing the physical and mental health problems of health care recipients and providers, and the economic burden of their families, but also promote the development of health care service industry and further improvement of the health care system. However, the dilemma and sustainable development of the LTCI system is the government needs to focus on in the future due to the sustainability of its funding sources.

As China’s Zero-COVID policy has come to an end and travel restrictions have been removed, the country’s mobility patterns are very likely to become more heterogeneous than during the pandemic. Human mobility is a key mechanism through which economic activities emerge and viruses spread. It can bring both advantages and challenges to cities with different characteristics. This paper investigates intra-city mobility trajectories of 368 Chinese cities within a non-linear time-varying latent factor framework to uncover the evolution of heterogeneity in local travel behavior amidst that China has been approaching the turning point of the post-pandemic new normal. To this end, we compiled a novel panel on a weekly basis, using the latest Baidu Mobility Data and the risk-level data released by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. We further examine the effects of exposure to high COVID-19 risk in the city on commuting behavior between May 17, 2021 and June 26, 2022. Our results provide stylized facts on stratified local travel across China: first, the 368 cities can be categorized into six clusters based on their mobility dynamics, and second, the gaps in intra-city mobility tend to narrow within each cluster but widen between different clusters. Moreover, exposure to high COVID-19 risk has a stronger impact on home-workplace commuting rates than on dining-, leisure, and recreational travel rates, persistently dampening commuting behavior. In addition, divisions in intra-city travel strength and commuting behavior between western regions and the rest of China are evident. In sum, this paper suggests that the daily life and economic activities which depend heavily on human mobility are recovering at different rates across China.

Developing countries are taking advantage of FinTech tools to provide more people with convenient access to financial market investment through digital wealth management. Using COVID-19 as an uncertainty shock, we examine whether and how digital wealth management affects the resilience of consumption to shocks based on a unique micro dataset provided by a leading Big Tech platform, Alipay in China. We find that digital wealth management mitigates the response of consumption to uncertainty shocks: residents who participate in digital wealth management, especially in risky asset investments, have a lower reduction in consumption. Importantly, digital wealth management helps improve financial inclusion, with a more pronounced mitigation effect among residents with lower-level wealth, living in less developed areas, and those with lower-level conventional finance accessibility. The mitigation effect works through the wealth channel: those who allocate a larger proportion of risky assets in their portfolio and obtain a higher realized return show more resilience of consumption to negative shocks. We also find that digital wealth management substitutes for conventional bank credit but serves as a complement to FinTech credit in smoothing consumption during uncertainty shocks. Digital wealth management provides a crucial way to improve financial inclusion and the resilience of consumption to shocks.

Firstly, the article elaborates on the concepts of metaverse and industrial metaverse, pointing out that the metaverse has driven changes and optimizations in multiple dimensions such as urban form, social organization form, and industrial production form; Secondly, the metaverse has empowered urban governance in Guangzhou, improving the efficiency of urban management, enhancing the city's emergency management capabilities, improving the quality of interaction between people and the city, and promoting the construction of a smart city; Once again, the focus was on the practices and good results achieved by Guangzhou in utilizing blockchain technology, digital twin technology, generative artificial intelligence technology, unmanned aerial vehicles+AI and other technologies in urban governance and serving the public; Finally, it is clarified that metaverse related technologies will promote the integration of carbon based civilization and silicon-based civilization in urban and social governance. Humans can use silicon-based civilization technology to expand their living space and improve their quality of life, while silicon-based civilization can also draw inspiration from the culture and emotions of carbon based life, achieving more comprehensive development.

With the elimination of absolute poverty and the improvement of the urbanization rate in China's rural areas, the phenomenon of “urbanization of poverty” has become increasingly prominent. Restricted by the influence of the household registration system, sources of livelihood, social capital, etc., the rural migrants are facing higher social exclusion and a stronger sense of relative deprivation, which makes the rural migrant population become the focus and difficulty of relative poverty governance. Based on the data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this paper discusses the impact of digital financial inclusion on the relative poverty of the rural migrant population. It is found that the development of digital financial inclusion can significantly reduce the incidence of relative poverty among the rural migrant population. Considering different model settings, relative poverty standards, dimensions of digital financial inclusion and the introduction of the number of banks in 1937 as an instrumental variable, the endogeneity test does not change the conclusion of this paper. Further results showed that digital financial inclusion has a greater relative poverty alleviation effect for traditionally disadvantaged groups such as those with low education levels and the older generation, which is in line with the original intention of the development of digital financial inclusion. Therefore, the paper emphasizes that the improvement of the inclusive financial system can restore power and enhance the financial capacity of the rural migrant population, drive the governance of urban relative poverty with the dual wheels of “financial empowerment and ability enhancement”, stimulate the endogenous motivation of common prosperity, and ultimately achieve “people-oriented urbanization” and common prosperity of the people.

The e-CNY, with its information transparency and financial inclusion, activates an innovative solution to cure the financing obstacles among the small and medium enterprises in China. The research establishes a game model between enterprises and commercial banks embedded in information asymmetry, and incorporates the e-CNY payment choice within the framework to analyse the cure effect of e-CNY on enterprise financing obstacles. With equilibrium results calculated, it simulates the outcomes of changing parameters on the behaviours of enterprises and banks. The findings involve that, based on the incremental utility of e-CNY and subsidies attached, e-CNY is preferred in transaction, reducing the bad debt risk caused by misalignment when both achieving excess returns. The People’s Bank of China must strengthen a more transparent publicity of e-CNY and structure an inclusive system of financial regulation to well use digital currency and realise high-quality socio-economic development.