Hong Kong's June retail sales rose 19.6% from a year earlier in the seventh consecutive month of growth thanks to a tourism recovery and positive consumption sentiment and the outlook is favourable, the city government said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Sales increased to HK$33.1 billion ($4.25 billion). That compared with a revised 18.5% rise in May and 14.9% growth in April. The government launched a promotional campaign in March called "Hello Hong Kong" after lifting all strict COVID-19 restrictions in the city, to bring back tourists and businesses.

Signs of deflation are becoming more prevalent across China, heaping extra pressure on Beijing to reignite growth or risk falling into an economic trap it could find hard to escape, the Wall Street Journal reported. While the rest of the world tussles with inflation, China is at risk of experiencing a prolonged spell of falling prices that—if it takes root—could eat into corporate profits, sap consumer spending and push more people out of work. Its effects would ripple across the globe, easing prices for some products that countries like the U.S.

China’s 200-million-strong army of individual investors has turned away from the stock market, the Wall Street Journal reported. The country’s benchmark CSI 300 index lost around a fifth of its value last year, and has risen much less than major indexes in the U.S., Japan and elsewhere in 2023. That is creating a sense of despair among the office workers, civil servants and other ordinary citizens who are responsible for the bulk of trading in China’s stock market.

Two of Japan’s largest lenders posted profits that beat analysts’ forecasts in their fiscal first quarter, marking a solid start to the year that is projected to deliver bumper results, Bloomberg News reported. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. said net income for the quarter ending June 30 was 248 billion yen ($1.75 billion), above an average estimate of 236.1 billion yen by six analysts. This was about 1.8% lower than the same period a year ago.

Hong Kong's economic growth slowed in the second quarter from a year earlier, advance government data showed on Monday, with the momentum softening after a strong rebound in the preceding quarter, Reuters reported. Total exports of goods continued to plummet as the external demand for goods remained weak, and overall investment expenditure saw a mild decline amid tightened financial conditions, the government said.

Australia and Luxembourg-registered Kleos Space, which uses small satellites to detect and locate radio frequency signals to uncover illegal activity on land and sea, has filed for bankruptcy in Luxembourg, Advanced-Television.com reported. Trading in its shares in Australia had already been suspended on May 3. It already has 16 satellites in orbit (although there are problems with two) and numerous contracts in place. The business was formed in 2017 but suffered launch delays and problems with satellites. Kleos made a statement on July 26th that it had been unable to source fresh financing.

Growing pessimism about China’s housing market is dragging down the country’s largest surviving developer, which is again struggling to convince investors that it can weather the storm, the Wall Street Journal reported. At the start of this year, investors had regained confidence in Country Garden 2007 4.97%increase; green up pointing triangle, a 31-year-old property giant that benefited from a slew of measures that Chinese authorities rolled out in November to support the real-estate sector.

China’s top housing official urged financial regulators and lenders to strengthen efforts to revive the country’s ailing property sector, Bloomberg News reported. In a recent meeting with property developers and builders, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ni Hong called for homebuyers who had paid off previous mortgages to be considered as first-time purchasers, the official Xinhua news agency reported Thursday. Up to now, many buyers in big cities who have a mortgage history but don’t currently own a property are subject to higher down-payment rules.

China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group said on Thursday that it had applied to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to resume trading in the company's shares on Friday, Reuters reported. Trading in the shares of the company, the electric vehicle unit of China Evergrande Group, has been suspended since April 1, 2022, after it got sucked into a debt crisis in mid-2021. Read more.

China’s debt-to-GDP ratio rose to a record in the second quarter, although consumers and businesses are borrowing at a slow pace, reflecting low confidence that’s hitting economic growth, Bloomberg News reported. Total debt — combining the household, corporate and government sectors — climbed to 281.5% of gross domestic product in the second quarter, according to Bloomberg’s calculations based on data from China’s central bank and the National Bureau of Statistics. That was up from 279.7% in the first quarter.