Drowning in debt, metals trader Sinosteel Corp. got an unprecedented lifeline last month from the Chinese government " a multibillion-dollar debt-for-equity rescue that could be the first of many for struggling state-owned companies, The New Zealand Herald reported on an AP story. China's economy is still growing relatively quickly, but a prolonged slowdown is raising fears that companies in many industries have borrowed and invested too much, too fast, posing a serious risk for the world's second-largest economy.

Forged seals, fake letters, and counterfeit documents. They’re all part of China’s recent spate of fraud coming to light in the country’s $3 trillion corporate debt market amid a rout that has analysts predicting a record number of defaults in 2017, Bloomberg News reported. As it becomes harder for Chinese companies to issue new notes to repay maturing debt, expect more scandals to come -- and to worsen the bond market’s already-precipitous downturn.

The monetary easing and strong property market that buoyed China’s economic growth last year are petering out, leaving policy makers with fewer tools to keep the economy humming steadily in an important political year, The Wall Street Journal reported. Pushed ahead by a torrent of credit and fiscal spending, the world’s second-largest economy clocked 6.7% growth for 2016, according to government data released Friday.

The omens for the Chinese yuan seemed bad heading into 2017, The Economist reported. The capital account looked as porous as ever, making a mockery of the government’s attempts to fix the leaks. The new year, when residents received fresh allowances for buying foreign currency, was due to bring even more pressure. Analysts braced for a stampede for the exits from China. The yuan had fallen sharply at the beginning of 2016, catching them by surprise. This time, they were ready. Instead, the yuan began the year as one of the world’s star performers.

Chinese regulators have taken steps to ensure bitcoin is not used to facilitate capital flight, even as investors in the cryptocurrency say they doubt it is being used to transfer large amounts of cash out of China, the Financial Times reported. The apparent correlation between a depreciating renminbi and bitcoin’s price surge in recent months has prompted suspicion that the virtual asset is contributing to outflows. Bitcoin’s Chinese price rose 145 per cent in 2016, as the renminbi suffered its worst year on record, weakening 6.5 per cent.

Global markets spent most of 2016 adjusting to the reality of a slow but steady weakening of China’s currency, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Now, Beijing appears uncomfortable with that state of affairs. Financial regulators in recent days have introduced new rules to curb the amount of capital flowing out of the country, helping to slow the pace of the renminbi’s decline. They issued stricter rules on the movement of renminbi offshore for conversion into dollars.

When China’s stock market and currency both plunged last January, many global investors assumed the end was near. After years of debt-fuelled stimulus used to fund investment in housing, infrastructure and excess manufacturing capacity, many believed the bubble was finally bursting, the Financial Times reported. It didn’t. China’s economy is expected to have met the government’s target of at least 6.5 per cent growth of gross domestic product for 2016. The stock market has stabilised and is up 19 per cent since its low point in late January 2016.

Soaring price growth in China’s top cities has slowed almost to a standstill, as government measures to cool the overheated property market take hold, the Financial Times reported. Price growth of newly built homes in China’s “first tier” cities of Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Guangzhou slowed to 0.1 per cent in November compared with the previous month, the National Statistics Bureau said on Monday — well below month-on-month growth of 3-4 per cent seen in such cities earlier this year.

Last year the reformist head of China’s central bank convinced his Communist party bosses to give market forces a bigger say in setting the renminbi’s daily “reference rate” against the US dollar, the Financial Times reported. In return, Zhou Xiaochuan assured his more conservative party colleagues that the redback would finally secure coveted recognition as an official reserve currency by the International Monetary Fund. Some people familiar with Mr Zhou’s sales pitch described it as a “Trojan horse” strategy because it wrapped difficult reforms in an alluring package.

The days when a Chinese iron ore miner could buy a UK video game developer are drawing to a close as Beijing tightens up on cross-border investment by its companies, the Financial Times reported. Investment banks in Asia have worked overtime this year on bringing an expansive range of acquisition targets to aggressive Chinese groups, many of which have strayed far beyond the acquirers’ original scope of business.