Economic growth, which surprisingly slumped to a seven-quarter low of 5.4% in the second quarter, is on a rebound as demand has regained momentum, though the stickiness in food inflation warrants careful monitoring, the latest RBI bulletin has said, the New Indian Express reported. The surprise deceleration of growth in the September quarter had led to a rash of downgrades and cat calls for rate cuts. The list of forecasters pegging lower-growth was led by the central bank itself.

Defaulted Chinese builder Sino-Ocean Group Holding Ltd. is entering a London court Wednesday for a three-day hearing, looking to exercise a legal mechanism allowing a debtor to potentially complete restructuring without creditors’ full approval, Bloomberg News reported. Company representatives will press for a court sign-off on its restructuring proposal, centered on turning about $5.6 billion of debt into new debt and other types of securities paid to creditors. Many bondholders oppose the terms, and a group of them will tout their proposals that they consider to be more favorable payouts.

China Vanke Co.’s top executive was taken away by police and the Chinese property giant may be assumed by state authorities, the Economic Observer reported, Bloomberg News reported. A task force sent by the local government of Shenzhen, where the state-backed developer is based, has stepped in to run the company, according to the report. Vanke may be taken over or restructured, the report added. The Observer reported separately that Vanke Chief Executive Officer Zhu Jiusheng was taken by police. Zhu didn’t respond to calls seeking comment about the report.

Donald Trump kicked off a new era of Western economic rivalry with Beijing when he took office in 2017. As he prepares for his second term, China’s dominance of global manufacturing is greater than ever, the Wall Street Journal reported. China just posted a trade surplus with the rest of the world of almost $1 trillion for 2024, according to official data released this week.

China’s central bank injected a near record-high amount of liquidity into the banking system to help meet demand for cash even as it looks to support the yuan, the Wall Street Journal reported. The People’s Bank of China on Wednesday pumped 959.5 billion yuan, or about $130.9 billion, worth of liquidity via seven-day reverse repurchase agreements. It was the second-largest such capital injection via the mechanism on record, according to data from the Wind, a local data provider.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is bringing the country’s financial sector to heel, one banker at a time, the Wall Street Journal reported. For decades, China sought to learn from Western finance. Now it’s purging many of the internationally experienced financiers who helped steer the country’s economic rise, while ushering in a new generation of loyal functionaries willing to carry out Communist Party edicts and disavow capitalist excess.

Thailand may permit Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) to list on local exchanges for the first time as the country vies to nurture a digital-assets hub, Bloomberg News reported. The securities and exchange commission is considering allowing individuals and institutions to invest in local Bitcoin ETFs, secretary-general Pornanong Budsaratragoon said. Thailand’s One Asset Management launched a fund-of-funds offering exposure to overseas Bitcoin ETFs in June 2024, but the country hasn’t yet given the green light to vehicles that invest directly in the original cryptocurrency.

Country Garden, once China's top property developer by sales, posted on Tuesday a net loss of 12.84 billion yuan ($1.75 billion) for the first half of 2024, as conditions deteriorated amid a prolonged sector-wide slump, Reuters reported. The loss followed a full-year net loss of 178.40 billion yuan for 2023, the company said in a separate statement. Country Garden, which defaulted on $11 billion in offshore bonds in late 2023, had delayed the publication of its 2023 full-year and 2024 interim results.