Here's a growing list to further excite China bears this Thursday: Baoding Tianwei Group Co., China National Erzhong Group, Sinosteel Co., China Railway Materials Co. Ltd., Guangxi. These are the eight state-owned enterprises (SEOs) that have run into some sort of repayment problem this year, exacerbating already heightened concerns over the future of China's debt-fueled economy, Bloomberg News reported.

Just about the last thing China needs right now is another cement plant, The Wall Street Journal reported. Unused stocks have been piling up since the massively overbuilt real-estate market cratered in 2014. Demand will likely never fully recover; city skylines are dotted with cranes swinging idly atop half-finished apartment blocks. Alarmed, Beijing has declared that reducing overcapacity in industries like steel and cement is a national priority.

For Chinese banks, the decision to lend to companies like Bohai Steel was for years a no-brainer. Lenders took heart from its state backing, which appeared as solid as the millions of tons of steel pipes that rolled off its production lines each year, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. That ironclad image is now tarnished. Plunging demand and a worsening glut in production capacity have left Bohai Steel struggling to repay as much as $30 billion in debt. Worried creditors — more than 100 of them — are locked in negotiations with the company and local officials.

China etched in details of plans to help workers laid off from the bloated coal and steel industries, saying assistance would include career counseling, early retirement and help in starting businesses, among other measures, The Wall Street Journal reported. New guidelines released by seven Chinese ministries over the weekend build on previously announced commitments to restructure the coal and steel industries, whose excess production is dragging on the economy, and to take care of an estimated 1.8 million workers who will be displaced.

China and India are both grappling with escalating bad debt challenges lurking in their banking systems. Yet the two Asian economic giants are embracing markedly different strategies to clean up the mess, Bloomberg News reported. Impaired loans have reached a decade high in China and are at their most in 14 years in India, posing a threat to two economies that increasingly have fueled global growth. Troubled banking systems hurt economies by curbing new lending for corporate investment.

China Railway Materials Co., a government-backed company that halted trading of its bonds earlier in the week, said Wednesday it’s seeking to restructure its debt, Bloomberg News reported. The supplier of steel and cement for railways held a meeting with 19 lenders on April 5, according to a Wednesday company filing. China Railway reported on its operating and financial conditions in the meeting, the filing said, without giving details of the meeting result. As Premier Li Keqiang pushes through reforms, many bloated state firms have stumbled in the debt market.

Small investors, angry over lost savings, are emerging as a new security threat to Chinese authorities, who are watching warily as investors around the country hit the streets in protest and picket government offices to demand their money back, The Wall Street Journal reported. Protests have flared from Shanghai to the southwestern hub of Kunming to the ancient former capital of Xi’an. Crowds gathered outside the securities regulator’s Beijing offices after equity markets collapsed last summer.

Chinese courts have ordered cash-strapped Shandong Shanshui Cement Group Ltd to pay back its creditors 2.4 billion yuan ($372 million), the company said in a statement posted on the Shanghai Clearing House website on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The company said it was unlikely to be able to make the required payments due to financial difficulties, and the courts would take steps such as auctioning off the firm's assets to meet these obligations.

Debt-laden Australian steel maker Arrium Ltd will get a new administrator after the company's major lenders and workers union filed an application in a federal court seeking to have Grant Thornton replaced, Reuters reported. The application seeks to appoint KordaMentha as replacement voluntary administrators of Arrium and 93 of its Australian subsidiaries. Grant Thornton said in a statement that it supported the application. The decision comes a week ahead of the first creditors' meeting. Arrium went into administration last week with debts exceeding A$2.8 billion ($2.14 billion).

The Consumer Debt Clearance Act (消費者債務清理條例) should be amended to make it easier for debtors to apply for bankruptcy, campaigners said yesterday, adding that the number of applicants have not increased significantly following reforms in 2011, The Taipei Times reported.