There’s been no shortage of bad news when it comes to China’s massive debt pile, from turbulence in the corporate bond market to last month’s sovereign rating downgrade by Moody’s Investors Service, Bloomberg News reported. But look beyond the negative headlines, and one encouraging fact stands out: China’s biggest companies are healthier than they’ve been in years. Thanks to a combination of economic stimulus and state-owned enterprise reform, debt-to-equity ratios at China’s largest non-financial firms have dropped to the lowest levels since 2010.

The bank regulator in a rust-belt Chinese province has urged regional lenders to roll over maturing loans to struggling coal and steel companies, a policy that cuts against the Communist party’s pledge to shut down “zombie” enterprises, the Financial Times reported. Investors widely assume that Chinese banks keep lossmaking companies on life support by rolling over maturing loans, often under pressure from local governments.

As recently as two years ago, owning shares in a bad bank charged with cleaning up nonperforming loans in China probably seemed like a good bet. Not so any more, at least for China Cinda Asset Management Co.The Beijing-based firm's costs are rising and soured-loan growth has leveled off, or in some cases, dropped at the banks Cinda purchases nonperforming advances from. Cinda's Hong Kong-listed stock is down 46 percent from its peak in January 2014 and is trading at a price-to-book ratio of 0.67 times, well below the one times at which it was listed at the end of 2013.

ChemChina has raised $20 billion (15.4 billion pounds) mainly in perpetual bonds to finance its purchase of Swiss seeds firm Syngenta, with Bank of China becoming the single largest investor providing half of that funding, according to a regulatory filing, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

The downgrade of China’s debt by Moody’s Investors Service may push Chinese companies to borrow even more money from domestic banks as overseas debt becomes more expensive, increasing risks for the nation’s finance industry, Bloomberg News reported. With growing indebtedness at home, compounded by a slowing economy, there’s a risk of a “negative feedback loop,” said Khoon Goh, head of Asia research for Australia & New Zealand Banking Group who sees state-owned enterprises and property developers feeling the biggest impact.

The founder of LeEco, a Chinese Netflix-to-Tesla-like conglomerate, has stepped down as the CEO of the group's main listed unit, as the company begins to streamline and cut debt after rapid expansion led to a cash crunch, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Jia Yueting, who will remain as chairman and CEO of LeEco, envisions the group maintaining its separate unlisted automotive unit but rolling all other areas of business into Leshi Internet Information & Technology Corp Beijing, according to a transcript of his remarks to journalists on Sunday.

For global investors and, indeed commentators, China remains a fascinating subject and one that carries a health warning, the Financial Times reported. Nearly a third of fund managers say the recent tightening of credit by authorities in Beijing, who are taking aim at the shadow banking sector, is now the biggest tail risk for markets, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey released this week. Not since January of 2016 has China ranked above the threat of a eurozone break-up as the biggest worry for investors.

The yield on Chinese five-year government bonds hit its highest since 2014 on Friday, as tight liquidity and a regulatory crackdown on leveraged investment caused a rarely seen inversion of the yield curve, the Financial Times reported.

There's growing evidence that China is finally scaling back its epic borrowing binge. That's important for a lot of reasons, not least for reducing risk and avoiding a financial crisis, a Bloomberg View reported. The question is whether the government can sustain the pain. Regulators in Beijing are well aware of the risks that excessive leverage poses, and have tried many times over the years to crack down. Yet they routinely fail to rein in local government officials who get promoted by boosting economic growth, regardless of what systemic risks they may be incurring by binging on debt.

A tightening of leverage, coupled with soaring land costs, looks set to end the home price windfall that China's developers have enjoyed this year.Prices of new dwellings, excluding government-subsidized housing, gained in March in 62 of the 70 cities tracked by the government, compared with 56 in February, the National Bureau of Statistics said last month. On Monday, Longfor Properties Co.