When the yuan was weakening, Chinese firms flocked to repay foreign debt, forming a powerful group of sellers at just the wrong time for the currency. Now the opposite may be set to occur.
In the second and third quarters of last year, overseas credit rose at a pace unseen since early 2015 to $1.68 trillion, near an all-time high. And Chinese companies’ sales of foreign-currency bonds reached a record $133 billion in the final three months of the year, Bloomberg data show.