China's imports and exports fell much faster than expected in July as weaker demand threatens recovery prospects in the world's second-largest economy, heightening pressure for authorities to release fresh stimulus to steady growth, Reuters reported. The grim trade numbers reinforce expectations that economic activity could slow further in the third quarter, with construction, manufacturing and services activity, foreign direct investment and industrial profits all weakening.

Chinese developer Country Garden Holdings Co.’s stock and bonds plunged as noteholders said they haven’t received coupon payments effectively due Monday, further darkening sentiment in the crisis-stricken property sector, Bloomberg News reported. Some holders of two different notes said they didn’t receive coupon payments as of Tuesday afternoon. The investors asked not to be named as they’re not authorized to speak publicly. The company owed $10.5 million of interest on a dollar bond that matures in 2026 and $12 million on a note due 2030, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi dismissed the ongoing rumors against its insolvency, which was fueled by total value locked (TVL) data that briefly showed $64 million in outflows between Aug. 5-6 amid ongoing investigations from Chinese authorities, CoinTelegraph.com reported. Outflows from Huobi over the weekend, based on data collected by decentralized finance (DeFi) TVL aggregator DefiLlama, showed the exchange’s TVL falling to $2.5 billion at the time of writing, down from $3.09 on July 6. Moreover, rumors that the exchange’s leadership had been arrested in China first surfaced on Aug.

China’s local government financing vehicles are showing more signs of stress, with a record number missing payments on a popular type of short-term debt last month, Bloomberg News reported. A total of 48 LGFVs were overdue on commercial paper, which typically carries a maturity of less than a year, up from 29 in June, according to a Huaan Securities Co. report citing data from the Shanghai Commercial Paper Exchange. Their missed payments amounted to 1.86 billion yuan ($259 million), versus 780 million yuan in June.

One measure of new foreign investment in China fell to the lowest level in 25 years in the second quarter, fueling concerns about how much geopolitical tensions and the economy’s slowing recovery can hurt business confidence, Bloomberg News reported. Direct investment liabilities — a gauge of foreign direct investment in China — slumped to just $4.9 billion in the April-June period, according to figures released by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange on Friday. That was down 87% from the same period last year and was the smallest amount in any quarter in data back to 1998.

Half a year after China lifted Covid-19 restrictions and reopened its borders, few international travelers are coming—another sign of decoupling between China and the West that could have negative repercussions for a long time, the Wall Street Journal reported. Foreign travelers’ absence is particularly evident in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where the numbers of foreigners who visited in the first half of the year totaled less than a quarter of comparable figures in 2019, before the Covid pandemic.

China's central bank governor pledged on Thursday to guide more financial resources towards the private economy, suggesting refreshed urgency from Beijing to bolster the confidence among private firms as economic momentum weakens, Reuters reported. During a meeting on Thursday with at least eight private firms from sectors including property, aluminium and agribusiness, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) Governor Pan Gongsheng said the bank would roll out guidelines to support private firms.

China will lower financing costs for firms, stabilise market expectations and support the property sector in coming months, the central bank said on Tuesday amid a flagging economic recovery, Reuters reported. The world's No.2 economy staged a better-than-expected recovery in the first quarter following COVID reopening but has lost steam since the April-June quarter as demand waned both at home and abroad.

Some Chinese city governments have made it harder for developers to access tens of billions of dollars from property sales held in escrow accounts, raising risks the cash-strapped companies will be squeezed even more, Reuters reported. The moves are aimed at ensuring the completion of more unfinished projects at the city level, they said, at a time home sales are sliding and the future of the whole sector is uncertain.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, was supposed to leave China behind when the country made cryptocurrency trading illegal in 2021. Almost two years later, users traded $90 billion of cryptocurrency-related assets in China in a single month, according to internal figures viewed by The Wall Street Journal and current and former employees. The transactions made China Binance’s biggest market by far, accounting for 20% of volume worldwide, excluding trades made by a subset of very large traders.