A post from Sober Look on tight interbank liquidity conditions In China, as explained by someone from JP Morgan: http://soberlook.com/2013/06/good-explanation-for-tight-interbank.html.
To avoid any squeeze from this mismatch upon maturity of the WMP, small banks started to engage in a kind of sale-and-buyback operation of the underlying bonds, consisting of two steps. In step 1, bonds were sold before quarter-end in a “fake” sale to a friendly counterparty, with the aim to obtain cash to pay back the maturing WMP. In a second phase of the trade, the bond was then bought back using cash from new WMP issues. But in May the regulator banned this practice, as part of a general clampdown of the abuses in the WPM market.
From what I understand, smaller banks in China are investing in higher risk and longer maturity bonds to support its wealth management products. When the payout to product holders occurs every quarter, the steps quoted above happen. With the government banning this practice, banks are having a hard time liquidating the bonds temporarily to pay out the wealth management products.
The steps above seem like some form of inform repo for high risk assets. I find this interesting because I am only aware of repo markets for safe assets such as US Treasury securities. I also wonder what the implied borrowing rates are for these pseudo repo transaction carried out by Chinese banks.