China's central bank has raised the reserve requirement for banks in order to cut back on the amount of lending currently taking place in that country. Their economy was growing so quickly that many worried that a financial crash would come before the 2008 Olympic Games. A prominent sign of this growth has been a boom in new construction paid for with borrowed money. As the Chinese stock market booms, more companies are raising money there instead of the Hong Kong stock market, and the Chinese yuan is gaining on the Hong Kong dollar. While Hong Kong merchants once refused payment in money from mainland China, they are now happy to accept it, and mainland business owners are less likely to accept payment in Hong Kong dollars than they once were.