China August New Corporate Loan Rate Edges Below 3%

The striking detail is not the corporate loan rate itself but the 1.73% yield on five-year AAA corporate bonds — well below the cost of new bank credit. That inversion says high-grade issuers can fund themselves in capital markets more cheaply than through lenders, which pressures banks' corporate loan margins and could push credit demand toward bonds. For RWA and tokenized fixed-income watchers, the relevant question is whether this ultra-low onshore yield curve keeps steering Chinese issuers toward offshore and tokenized funding channels, or whether domestic rates simply stay low enough to keep them home.