Chinese courts have ordered cash-strapped Shandong Shanshui Cement Group Ltd to pay back its creditors 2.4 billion yuan ($372 million), the company said in a statement posted on the Shanghai Clearing House website on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The company said it was unlikely to be able to make the required payments due to financial difficulties, and the courts would take steps such as auctioning off the firm's assets to meet these obligations.

China rattled markets around the world last year when vast sums of money began flowing out of the country. Estimated at nearly $1 trillion, the money flows represented growing skepticism that China would be able to fix its deep problems and resume its place as a driver of global economic growth. Doubts remain about Beijing’s ability to rev up slowing growth and patch up its frayed financial system. But new data suggests China has stanched, at least for now, the flow of money that had been pouring out of the country, the International New York Times reported.

When it comes to analyzing China's economy, few topics polarize views like the nation's debt levels, Bloomberg News reported. By some accounts, borrowing is out of control and has the country teetering on the edge of a crisis. Others point to the nation's long list of assets, which can more than offset any funding crunch. An example of the opposing views was on display when two separate April 5 research reports each cited the risk of a "Minsky moment" (a collapse in asset prices following the exhaustion of credit expansion) but both came to very different conclusions.

Standard & Poor’s, the ratings agency, has cut its outlook on China’s government credit to ‘negative’ from ‘stable’ as it believes rebalancing of the world’s second largest economy would take place more slowly than expected, the Irish Times reported. China’s credit rating is AA- with a negative outlook, S&P said on its website. The agency also affirmed the long-term and A-1+ short-term sovereign credit ratings for China.

A thrifty Asian powerhouse saves and invests its way to economic stardom, inspiring admiration and paranoia in the rich world. The powerhouse begins to lose momentum, driving its corporations to switch their investment appetites towards assets abroad. But, lacking worldly experience, the corporations bungle. Billions in hard-earned national savings disappear down a black hole.

China’s economic collapse no longer seems imminent. The Wall Street hedge funds who bet against the Chinese currency have taken heavy losses and battered stock markets are stabilizing, The Wall Street Journal reported. In fact, collapse was never in the cards. Over the short term, as Beijing has demonstrated, it has enough financial firepower left to fight off threats to stability and prevent the economy from stalling. It’s time to worry about something much more likely: political failure.

High on the Chinese government’s priority list is building leaner, more competitive state companies, The Wall Street Journal reported. But the dismal earnings reported by national oil giants in recent days underscore the difficulties in meeting that goal. These companies are maintaining large workforces even as Western peers continue to slash payrolls in response to the collapse in oil prices. The listed units of China’s big three oil companies reported sharply lower earnings for 2015.

The southern Chinese city of Shenzhen has raised deposit requirements for some home buyers, the latest in a series of measures being introduced across the country to calm property markets, according to the official Xinhua news agency, the Irish Times reported. Authorities in Nanjing, in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu, issued similar measures on Monday, underlining how the government’s tightening campaign has spread to more “second tier” cities.

The debt restructuring of a leading Chinese steel company has caught the attention of the market in what some analysts see as a landmark case for reform of the troubled sector, the South China Morning Post reported. Bohai Steel, a steelmaker based in northeast China Tianjin is struggling with debt of 192 billion yuan (HK$228.96 billion). Analysts believe the lack of a government bailout may signal China’s desire to develop a test case for other loss-making state-owned enterprises and local governments to follow.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank shouldn’t be seen as an attempt to upend existing multilateral development lenders, nor should it be a hot spot for conflict between China and the U.S., the AIIB president said Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Beijing-based infrastructure bank, which was conceived as China’s answer to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, has faced skepticism, particularly from the U.S., over how it is managed and whether it has a political agenda to advance Beijing’s interests.