During more than two decades as a public company, Heilongjiang Agriculture never once reported a first-half loss. That run is ending this year. The trigger wasn’t a harvest failure, fraud or a stock market crash.
It was President Xi Jinping’s tax collectors serving the listed arm of China’s third-largest farming conglomerate with a bill totaling 120% of its net income in 2025, as they demanded back payment for previously enjoyed perks that they said it wasn’t eligible to claim. Over just three days in June, hundreds of millions of dollars were erased from the company share price — a fifth of its market cap — as investors digested the bad news. Far from an aberration, cases like this are playing out across China.
More than 100 listed companies were sprung with tax clawbacks and charges for delayed tax payments totaling around 7.7 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) in the first six months of 2026, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of filings. That tally exceeded the entire amount reclaimed in the 14 years since Xi came to power in 2012.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
