Hangzhou’s local government is piloting a “social credit” system the Communist Party has said it wants to roll out nationwide by 2020, a digital reboot of the methods of social control the regime uses to avert threats to its legitimacy, The Wall Street Journal reported. More than three dozen local governments across China are beginning to compile digital records of social and financial behavior to rate creditworthiness. A person can incur black marks for infractions such as fare cheating, jaywalking and violating family-planning rules.

Officials in one of China’s hottest property markets have banned developers from borrowing money to buy land, as local governments embrace increasingly drastic measures to curb soaring home prices, the Financial Times reported. Prices of new residential properties in Nanjing were up 40 per cent year on year in September, in line with increases in other big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Over recent months, local governments have tried to cool residential property prices by making it more difficult for people to buy homes.

In its never-ending quest to rein in profligate local officials, China this week ordered its indebted cities and provinces to draw up detailed repayment plans. But for these rules to work, the central government must prove that it is willing to let the miscreants default. Creditors doubt its resolve and expect it to go on bailing out the spendthrifts. As a result, they systematically give more generous lending terms to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) than to their private peers, The Economist reported. The bias is not immediately obvious.

The Chinese company that’s said to be in exclusive discussions to acquire English Premier League soccer team Southampton for as much as 200 million pounds ($248.8 million) has requested a halt to trading in its shares for a further month pending the conclusion of efforts to acquire sports assets, Bloomberg News reported. Shares in Lander Sports Development Co. have not traded since October, and the company requires the suspension to remain pending “major asset restructuring,” it said Wednesday in a regulatory filing.

China removed its high-profile, reformist finance minister from the post in a shuffle that comes as President Xi Jinping positions trusted allies in key roles and Beijing prioritizes short-term growth over major overhauls, The Wall Street Journal reported. The shuffle put more senior government posts in the hands of Xi loyalists ahead of a twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress next fall that will shape policy for years to come. Mr.

Creditors of Guangxi Nonferrous Metals Group have vetoed an insolvency plan in a case that shows the obstacles that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) face as they try to complete the bankruptcy process, Caixin Online reported. In the plan, the firm's bankruptcy administrators proposed auctioning, presumably at a discount, not only the equity stakes the parent has in its seven subsidiaries but also the debts that the subsidiaries owe to the parent, according to several of the firm’s creditors who voted on the bankruptcy plan on Oct. 28.

A succession of asset bubbles has formed in China, caused by a torrent of speculative money sloshing from stocks to bonds to commodities, The Wall Street Journal reported. The biggest apparent bubble is in housing, but prices have surged for niche assets, too, such as calligraphy, antiques and art. In May, futures prices for soybean meal, used as pig feed, jumped 40%. The trading volume of 600 million tons was nine times higher than China’s annual consumption. The pipe-making material PVC is up 40% so far this year on the Dalian Commodity Exchange.

With its debts surging and growth sluggish, China has hit on a new strategy to revitalize its ailing economy. It’s the same as the old strategy. Only this time, it won’t work, Bloomberg News reported. Earlier this month, China’s State Council released guidelines for a new swap program, in which companies can exchange troubled debt with banks in return for equity. The government hopes this will give the firms a chance to restructure on favorable terms, and avoid the prospect of “zombie companies” propped up indefinitely by state-owned lenders.

Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd said on Monday its European routes services have completely halted, and a Seoul court overseeing its receivership process has approved winding down four of its European units, Reuters reported. The four units, Hanjin Shipping Europe GmbH & Co, Hanjin Shipping Hungary Transportation Ltd, Hanjin Shipping Poland Sp and Hanjin Spain S.A., will begin winding down by early November using methods such as declaring bankruptcy or being liquidated, Hanjin said in a regulatory filing.

Economic data released in China last week revealed the government’s two-steps-forward, one-step-back approach to macroeconomic management, the Financial Times reported. While the rest of the world fretted about runaway debt levels in the world’s second-largest economy earlier this year, Chinese economic planners kept their eyes firmly on their target range for gross domestic product growth, set at 6.5 to 7 per cent.