China's financial regulator on Sunday reduced the risk weighting it attaches to insurance companies' holdings of blue-chip shares and tech stocks, encouraging them to invest more in the country's lagging stock market, Reuters reported. The National Administration of Financial Regulation (NAFR) said on its website that the risk weighting for CSI300 Index constituents would be reduced to 0.3 from 0.35, while that for stocks listed on Shanghai's tech-focused STAR Market would be cut to 0.4, from 0.45. A lower risk weighting frees up more capital for insurers to invest.

China's central bank is tightening its scrutiny of bulk dollar purchases by domestic firms, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Monday, at a time when the Chinese currency faces mounting depreciation pressure, Reuters reported. Companies that need to purchase $50 million or more will now need approval from the People's Bank of China (PBOC), which convened a meeting with some commercial banks over the weekend on the matter, the sources said. "The approval process will be extended," said one of the sources.

On the southern tip of peninsular Malaysia, a cluster of high rises built to house tens of thousands of people in luxury condominiums overlooks the sea. Nearly a decade after troubled Chinese real-estate giant Country Garden began building the enclave, it is almost completely vacant, the Wall Street Journal reported. Some people are now highly interested in it: Country Garden’s international creditors.

China’s securities regulator pledged more measures to support capital markets and said that it recently met with investors including BlackRock Inc. and Bridgewater Associates to hear their suggestions, Bloomberg News reported. Three meetings were held in recent days between officials from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), including its head Yi Huiman, and representatives from foreign and domestic investment firms, as well as economists and academics.

Creditors of Country Garden Holdings are doubtful the Chinese developer will be in a position to service debt that will come due later this year without liquidity support, after it averted a catastrophic default this week at the last minute, Reuters reported. With its financial situation precarious and prospects of China's property sector remaining grim, the offshore creditors expect the country's largest private developer to get liquidity support soon or for it to undergo a debt revamp.

China’s exports to the rest of the world dropped for a fourth straight month in August, bringing little relief to the country from a deepening economic malaise and weighing on the global trade outlook, the Wall Street Journal reported. China has struggled to sustain a wave of overseas demand for Chinese-made goods that carried it through much of the three years of the pandemic, particularly as Western consumers tilted their spending back toward services and away from smartphones, furniture and other goods. Higher borrowing rates in the U.S.

Speculative bets that Chinese authorities will widen support for the property sector sent some of the country’s ailing developers surging by the most on record, Bloomberg News reported. A Bloomberg Intelligence gauge tracking Chinese builders gained nearly 10% Wednesday, the most in more than a month. Heavily indebted developers with depressed valuations were among those to rally the most, with Sunac China Holdings Ltd. soaring 68% alongside a spike in trading volume. China Evergrande Group closed up 83% — capping the biggest gain since its 2009 listing.

China's Country Garden made interest payments on U.S. dollar bonds hours ahead of a grace period deadline, a person close to the firm said, pulling back from the brink of default for the second time in four days and bringing some relief to the country's crisis-hit property sector, Reuters reported. China's largest private property developer failed to pay coupons on the bonds totalling $22.5 million due on Aug. 6, exacerbating fears over how much cash it has left and keeping markets on tenterhooks throughout the bonds' 30-day grace periods.

Italy is preparing to cancel its controversial membership in China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, engaging in an elaborate diplomatic dance to avoid angering Beijing and triggering retaliation against Italian businesses, the Wall Street Journal reported. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani held talks in Beijing on Sunday and Monday to facilitate as smooth an exit as possible from the initiative while laying the groundwork for alternative economic deals with China.

China's largest private property developer, Country Garden, faces a deadline for making interest payments on two U.S. dollar bonds on Tuesday, just days after dodging an onshore debt default with a last-minute payment extension deal, Reuters reported. Country Garden last month said it had not paid coupons on the bonds due on Aug. 6 totalling $22.5 million, exacerbating market fear that the developer was slipping into a worsening liquidity squeeze. Both payments had 30-day grace periods, ending on Tuesday.