When China’s top leaders pledged this summer to act more aggressively to stimulate economic growth, they rounded off their remedies with a political order: Slash red tape, the Wall Street Journal reported. There were promises to revitalize the world’s second-largest economy by boosting household incomes, consumption and bank lending to businesses. But plans will be hobbled, the Communist Party’s elite Politburo warned in July, if front-line officials remain bogged down by busywork.

China's commerce ministry on Thursday announced a series of policy measures aimed at boosting the country's foreign trade, including pledging to strengthen financing support to firms and expand exports of agricultural products, Reuters reported. With U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's threat to impose tariffs in excess of 60% on all Chinese goods, which has rattled Chinese manufacturers and accelerated factory relocation to Southeast Asia and other regions, exporters in the world's second-biggest economy are bracing for any trade disruptions.

On his first day in office, leader Xi Jinping inherited an ambitious road map to build 10,000 miles of high-speed rail to link China’s biggest cities. He took those plans and supersized them. What has emerged 12 years later is one of the biggest public works in history, soon to exceed 30,000 miles of high-speed rail, the Wall Street Journal reported. For many of its citizens, the vast network is one of the clearest signs of China’s progress, especially compared with the U.S., which has struggled to get any high-speed rail going.

China’s beleaguered solar industry, wracked by a glut and fierce price war, is already on the road to recovery, according to one of the country’s largest panel manufacturers, Bloomberg News reported. “We’re at a turning point,” Li Zhenguo, founder and president of Longi Green Energy Technology Co., said in an interview.

In ways big and small, Beijing’s takeover of Hong Kong’s financial sector is looking irreversible. With stunning speed, the world’s pre-eminent East-meets-West investment hub has become more Chinese as international financial institutions, corporations, and expatriates retreat, the Wall Street Journal reported. Foreign banks played major roles in one-fifth of Hong Kong’s initial public offerings this year, compared with roughly half just two years ago. Chinese banks have taken the places of Western ones as top earners in the city’s debt-capital market.

China has made a $1.3 billion bet that a new port in Peru will boost access to South America’s agricultural bounty. Cashing in on the investment may be harder than expected, Bloomberg News reported. China’s President Xi Jinping and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte officially inaugurated Chancay port during a ceremony at Peru’s presidential palace in Lima on Thursday. The move epitomizes Beijing’s ambitions to strengthen commerce with South America as the world braces for more restrictive trade measures under US President-elect Donald Trump.

China is cutting taxes for homebuyers and developers, as the government tries to put a floor under falling prices and sustain an improvement in housing transactions, Bloomberg News reported. The nation lowered home purchase deed taxes to 1% for first- and second-house buyers of flats of 140 square meters and below, from a current level of as much as 3%, according to a joint statement on Wednesday by the Ministry of Finance, State Taxation Administration and Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

China’s consumer prices edged up in October, while factory-gate prices continued to decline, underscoring the challenges Beijing faces in battling deflationary pressures despite a recent stimulus push, the Wall Street Journal reported. China’s consumer-price index rose 0.3% from a year last month, compared with the 0.4% gain seen in September, according to data released Saturday by the National Bureau of Statistics. The producer-price index, meanwhile, fell 2.9% in October, for a 25th straight month of decline.