Debt-laden China Evergrande Group said that the committee helping steer its massive restructuring is deploying extensive resources to help contain risks and will engage with creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported. The reassurance echoes a pledge earlier this month to work with holders of offshore debt and follows a sustained selloff in the company’s stock and bonds, with Evergrande shares recently hitting a series of record lows.

December is poised to be a record month for Chinese offshore corporate defaults after missed payments by indebted companies including China Evergrande Group and Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd., Bloomberg News reported. Chinese firms have defaulted on a record $3.8 billion in offshore bonds so far this month, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The previous monthly high was in January when Chinese borrowers failed to repay $2.7 billion of such notes.

China is ramping up support of the embattled real estate sector as growing stress in the industry threatens to deepen an economic slowdown, Bloomberg News reported. Authorities are encouraging banks to fund acquisitions of projects of distressed developers and pushing financially healthy property firms to make such purchases, the central bank-backed Financial News reported Monday. China is also providing credit support to an economy showing strain from the property slump, with domestic banks on Monday lowering borrowing costs for the first time in 20 months.

Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd., which in 2015 became one of the first Chinese developers to default abroad, said it had failed to make several payments on dollar bonds as planned, and is talking to creditors about a wide-ranging restructuring plan, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move sets the stage for parallel debt workouts by two of the mainland real-estate sector’s biggest offshore borrowers, Shenzhen-based Kaisa and China Evergrande Group. Kaisa said Monday it had $11.8 billion of dollar bonds outstanding, while the tally for Evergrande is nearly $20 billion.

China's antimonopoly bureau will step up legal enforcement against monopolistic behaviour and push forward the amended antimonopoly law to improve the regulatory framework, said Gan Lin, chief of the national antimonopoly bureau, Reuters reported. China last month elevated the seniority of the market regulator's antitrust unit, the National Anti-monopoly Bureau, and appointed Gan as chief, a move which would help antitrust investigators gain resources when examining mergers and acquisitions.

China’s financial regulator is coordinating negotiations between Shimao Group Holding Ltd. and some trust firms for loan extensions, according to people familiar with the matter, a sign that authorities want to prevent a cash crunch at the embattled developer, Bloomberg News reported. Officials from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission helped arrange talks between Shimao and trust firms including Guotong Trust Co. and China Minsheng Trust Co., the people said, asking not to be named discussing a private matter.

Chinese creditors have sued China Evergrande Group for more than $13 billion in allegedly overdue payments, according to a report. A Chinese court assigned to handle civil lawsuits against Evergrande accepted 367 cases, with claims totaling 84 billion yuan ($13.2 billion), the Financial Times reported, citing official records.

Chinese property stocks sank to a nearly five-year low after a deal between two units of Shimao Group Holdings Ltd. heightened corporate governance concerns in an industry already grappling with a liquidity crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Shares of Shimao Group and its property-services unit both tumbled by the most ever on Tuesday, while a Bloomberg index of property stocks dropped 4.3% to the lowest level since February 2017.

China should lower interest rates and boost infrastructure investment to ensure the economy will grow by at least 5% next year, according to an influential Chinese think tank, Bloomberg News reported. Authorities need to boost domestic demand, including consumption and investment, to counter the property slump and any slowdown in exports, Zhang Bin and Zhu He, research fellows at China Finance 40 Forum, wrote in an article Monday.

A wave of selling swept through Chinese developers’ bonds and shares after the sudden plunge in a major property firm’s notes renewed concern over the health of the sector, Bloomberg News reported. Shimao Group Holdings Ltd.’s dollar notes dropped as much as 12 cents on the dollar, with the selloff spreading to other company bonds including Sunac China Holdings Ltd. and KWG Group Holdings Ltd. Trading was halted in six of Shimao’s yuan bonds after they plunged, with one falling more than 50%.