Beijing’s determination to tame China’s soaring debt levels has won plaudits from bullish observers who believe the government is finally tackling its key economic problem. Why, then, has there been so little stress in the country’s bond market? Defaults on Chinese bonds might appear to have risen sharply this year, in volume terms, The Wall Street Journal reported. A total of 13 issuers have defaulted on a combined 20.2 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) worth of corporate bonds in China’s domestic market in 2018, up 41% from the same period last year, when 11 issuers had defaulted.

The surge in Chinese company bond defaults has overseas investors deciding they need to take a closer look, Bloomberg News reported. Edmund Goh, an Asia fixed-income investment manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments, says he’s planning to take more trips to China to get intelligence that’s hard to gain from afar. Investors can get to see among others, people who work in risk departments at banks, who can tell them how they’re classifying loans, he said. Or corporate treasury executives who may shed some light on their use of shadow banking financing.

Hainan Airlines Holding Co. plans to raise as much as 7 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) by selling shares to investors, including an arm of Singapore state investment company Temasek Holdings Pte., as part of a restructuring planned by the unit of Chinese conglomerate HNA Group Co, Bloomberg News reported. The Haikou, Hainan-based carrier is selling up to 20 percent of its Shanghai-listed shares to 10 investors, the company said in a statement on June 9. Proceeds from the sale will be used to fund plane purchases, aviation training, maintenance and airport business.

As policy makers tighten the liquidity screws in China, what has been a handy window for companies to raise cash could now be closing, Bloomberg News reported. May capped the fourth straight month of contraction in outstanding loans that publicly listed companies got from securities firms through pledging holdings of stock, Moody’s Investors Service data show. While that still left the total, at 1.53 trillion yuan ($240 billion), near a record, it’s been the longest run of declines since the epic 2015 stock-market collapse.

China’s efforts to connect the world’s third-biggest bond market with the international financial system are hitting dual headwinds -- a climb in global borrowing costs, and the country’s own campaign to reduce financial leverage, Bloomberg News reported. The dynamics have contributed to defaults by 12 bond issuers in 2018 through June 4, after 18 for the whole of 2017, according to Fitch Ratings. Firms from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to Fidelity International are warning to prepare for more.

When other acquisitive Chinese groups were insisting they were not an arm of the state, China Energy Reserve and Chemicals Group was making the opposite case: trying to convince bankers and investors it belonged to the government. But the company’s recent default on a payment for a $350m bond, and its withdrawal from a $5.2bn property deal earlier in the year, was a sign that its state backing was not as strong as advertised, the Financial Times reported. The matter is sensitive for investors in Chinese bonds.

For all the talk of China’s mountain of debt, defaults and deleveraging, there’s a chasm nobody is talking about, a Bloomberg View reported. Here’s an alarming and frequently cited statistic: Chinese industrial companies have at least $124 billion of debt maturing over the next two years. Actually, it’s worse. They have another $34 billion of bonds with put options – giving creditors the right to sell back their securities or get a higher coupon – that can be exercised within the next two years. Lenders could be asking for their money back much sooner than companies and investors expect.

Debt collectors in China are harnessing new technologies such as artificial intelligence in a bid to collect on an estimated Rmb1.3tn ($200bn) debt bubble that has formed in the country’s peer-to-peer lending industry, the Financial Times reported. Thousands of online businesses connecting private lenders to people in need of cash sprang up across the country over the past five years, but a spate of scandals has put these lenders in the crosshairs of regulators. Many P2P lenders have been shut down since mid-2017 as lending controls have been implemented and licences required.

After more than two years on the back-burner, there are signs that China is once again focusing on its efforts to increase the yuan’s status in global finance, Bloomberg News reported. The yuan grabbed a record 2.8 percent slice of global payments three years ago, before a crackdown on outflows in the wake of the 2015 devaluation saw that figure shrink to 1.7 percent as of April. These days -- with China’s foreign reserves rising and volatility staying low -- officials have a window to refocus on President Xi Jinping’s quest for a bigger Chinese role in global finance.

China’s fast-growing dollar-bond market is facing a fresh test as investors that counted on a type of credit-protection pledge seldom seen elsewhere find out just what those promises actually mean, Bloomberg News reported. So-called keepwell provisions, disproportionately seen in the offshore Chinese debt market the past several years, are a sort of gentleman’s agreement - a commitment to maintain an issuer’s solvency which stops short of a payment guarantee from the parent company. Now, two issuers of debt with keepwell provisions, China Energy Reserve & Chemicals Group Co.