China’s economy is a giant, sophisticated machine that requires numerous parts to work together. Behind its 1.4 billion consumers are 150 million registered businesses that provide jobs, food and everything that keeps the machine humming. Now, in the name of pandemic control, the Chinese government is meddling with the economy in ways that the country hasn’t seen for decades, wreaking havoc on business, the New York Times reported.

A prolonged slowdown in China would have substantial global spillovers, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday, but added that Beijing has room to adjust policy to provide support, Reuters reported. The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday cut its growth forecast for China this year to 4.4%, well below Beijing's target of around 5.5%, on the risks of widespread COVID-19 lockdowns and supply chain disruptions. In a video speech to the annual Boao Forum for Asia, Georgieva said China's actions to counter its economic slowdown are vital for the global recovery.

China's securities watchdog is holding regular talks with U.S. regulators over audit cooperation and expects a deal soon, a Chinese regulatory official said on Thursday about a dispute that could lead to delistings of U.S.-listed Chinese companies, Reuters reported. The comments by Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), represent the latest gesture from Beijing that it is willing to solve the long-standing dispute with Washington.

China reported its biggest decline in consumer spending and worst unemployment rate since the early months of the pandemic as Covid lockdowns put a strain on the world’s second-largest economy, adding another threat to global growth, Bloomberg News reported. The figures for March came alongside a stronger-than-expected acceleration in gross domestic product growth in the first quarter to 4.8%, an outcome that doesn’t capture the full extent of the economic damage from Covid lockdowns in financial and trade hub Shanghai and other places from the middle of last month.

China will step up financial support for industries, firms and people affected by COVID-19 outbreaks, the central bank said on Monday, as part of steps to cushion economic slowdown, Reuters reported. Authorities will guide financial institutions to expand lending and surrender profits to the real economy, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement on its website. Financial institutions should flexibly support COVID-affected individuals by reasonably delaying loan repayments and overdue loans may not be recorded, the central bank banks.

Easing property curbs may do little to brighten the outlook for Chinese residential sales as weak home-buyer confidence remains a key hurdle, with Covid’s spread adding extra near-term threats, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. China’s central bank reduced the reserve requirement ratio for most banks by 25 basis points Friday, giving lenders a modest cash boost. It also kept the one-year policy interest rate unchanged, disappointing the majority of economists who predicted a cut.

Nearly 400 million people are estimated to be under some form of lockdown in China as officials try to stop a fast-moving Omicron outbreak that is beginning to weigh on the world’s second-largest economy, the New York Times reported. Hundreds of thousands of people have been sent to isolation facilities in China, and millions more have been told to stay in their homes. Officials in dozens of cities have shut down normal daily life across the country in a race to track and trace the coronavirus and stamp out China’s worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic.

China's race to stop the spread of COVID-19 is clogging highways and ports, stranding workers and shutting countless factories - disruptions that are rippling through global supply chains for goods ranging from electric vehicles to iPhones, Reuters reported. While some factory owners try to tough it out through "closed loop" management that keeps workers isolated inside, some said that is becoming harder to sustain given the extent of local COVID-19 curbs aimed at heading off the Omicron variant, complicating efforts to procure materials or ship products.

Exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui is offering to repay the more than $100 million he owes creditors in part by offering up the yacht that drove him to bankruptcy, court papers show, Bloomberg News reported. The businessman’s debt stems from a $30 million loan he got from a fund in 2008, which according to the lender Guo failed to repay. Guo arranged for the yacht to leave U.S. waters sometime after October 2020, putting it out of the reach of debt collectors.

Luckin Coffee Inc., said on Monday that it had emerged from bankruptcy proceedings, two years after an accounting fraud derailed the coffee chain's business, Reuters reported. Founded in 2017, Xiamen-based Luckin had positioned itself as a homegrown challenger to U.S. coffee giant Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O), but the much-hyped company almost collapsed in 2020 after findings that about 2.2 billion yuan ($337.31 million) in 2019 sales was fabricated.