Chinese industrial activity has snapped back to pre-coronavirus growth levels, with factory surveys hitting multi-year highs in November, but the headline expansion masks struggles for smaller firms and looming pressures for exporters, Reuters reported. Readings from the official and Caixin’s Purchasing Managers Indexes hit three- and 10-year highs respectively last month, a reflection of the industrial sector’s strong overall recovery. Official data also shows industrial profits for large firms grew at their fastest pace since 2017 in October.

As debt defaults for state-owned enterprises in China rise, international investors find themselves in what for most is a new place: Chinese bankruptcy courts, Bloomberg News reported in a commentary. That may be just the right venue for them, debtors and regulators to meet and take a crucial step toward a better functioning economy. Investors have been spending years to recover their money out of court, but China’s bankruptcy law has now gained enough critical mass to test in modern markets.

Shares of Evergrande Property Services fell marginally on their Hong Kong debut on Wednesday, shedding initial gains as the spinoff of China’s second-largest property developer struggled to shake off worries about debt and competition, Reuters reported. Concerns about the financial health of its parent, China Evergrande Group, have clouded Hong Kong’s third-largest listing of the year, with China’s most indebted developer planning to use half the $1.8 billion raised for its own debt repayment.

China’s credit rating agencies are standing by their triple A scores for troubled state-owned enterprises, even as a series of defaults reverberates through the country’s $4tn corporate debt market, the Financial Times reported. Just five Chinese companies out of more than 5,000 have been downgraded to below double A ratings by domestic rating agencies since Yongcheng Coal and Electricity Holding Group, one of the country’s largest coal groups, kicked off a spate of defaults last month, according to data provider Wind.

China’s Tianqi Lithium Corp said on Monday it had signed a letter with a syndicate of banks to extend by a month the maturity date on $1.884 billion of loans that were due for repayment at the end of November, Reuters reported. Tianqi, one of the world’s top producers of lithium chemicals used in electric-vehicle batteries, had repeatedly said its operations could be severely impacted if it did not repay the money, which was used to acquire a 23.8% stake in Chilean miner SQM in 2018, by the due date.

Creditors of Yongcheng Coal & Electricity Holding Group Co have agreed to a proposed repayment plan, the bond’s chief underwriter said on Tuesday, after the company missed payments on maturing short-term commercial paper, Reuters reported. Creditors unanimously approved a plan for Yongcheng to first repay 50% of the principal on the 1 billion yuan ($151.88 million) short-term commercial paper, and to extend the repayment period on the remainder for 270 days, China Everbright Bank said in a statement posted on the website of the National Interbank Funding Center.

A spurt of missed debt repayments by three Chinese state-owned firms - a coal miner, a chipmaker and an automobile company - has shaken local markets and heightened speculation that a campaign to wean the economy off heavy credit is back, Reuters reported. The defaults have angered investors, who say their faith in the firms’ top-notch ratings, seemingly sound finances and implicit state backing has been violated.

When a state-owned coal company in central China defaulted on a bond worth $152m this month, the slip-up seemed unlikely to send tremors through the world’s second-largest economy, the Financial Times reported. Prior to the default by Yongcheng Coal and Electricity Holding Group on November 10, only five Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) had failed to pay back bondholders in the first 10 months of 2020, according to Fitch Ratings — consistent with levels in recent years. But within a fortnight, Tsinghua Unigroup, a high-profile state technology group, would also default.

A Chinese court has accepted an application from a creditor of Huachen Automotive Group Holding Co Ltd seeking the restructuring of the parent of BMW AG's joint venture partner Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd, Reuters reported. The Liaoning Shenyang Municipal Intermediate People’s Court accepted the application from GZ Tooling Group Co Ltd, an auto mould supplier, to restructure Huachen after the Liaoning government-owned company failed to pay mould costs and interest worth 10.2 million yuan ($1.55 million), showed a court filing published on Friday.

China’s investigation into the shock bond default by a state-owned coal miner hit shares of its listed underwriters on Friday, while shedding light on the creaking infrastructure of the country’s $4.4 trillion corporate bond market, Reuters reported. Top-rated Yongcheng Coal & Electricity Holding Group defaulted on a 1 billion yuan ($152 million) bond on November 10, stunning investors. Shares of Industrial Bank Co and China Everbright Bank fell in Shanghai on Friday after regulators said the two underwriting banks were suspected of misconduct.