China Great Wall Asset Management Corp. said today that two state entities will become investors and that it will seek more investors to pave the way for an eventual initial public offering, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The asset-management company--one of four Chinese financial institutions known as “bad banks” for buying up sour loans--said that China’s National Social Security Fund and China Life Insurance will buy unspecified stakes in the firm. It didn’t disclose details.

China’s central bank said that it would extend the yuan’s trading hours in the mainland market starting next month, in a much-anticipated move aimed at increasing the Chinese currency’s global appeal, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The People’s Bank of China said that beginning on Jan. 4, the hours for buying and selling the yuan on the mainland will be extended to 11:30 p.m. local time, from the current 4:30 p.m.

Shades of the 1990s are haunting China’s rust-belt cities as strapped state-owned employers look at cutting jobs, with beleaguered Wuhan Iron & Steel Group the latest company said to be laying off thousands of workers, the Financial Times reported. The dismantling of market pricing reforms and the “iron rice bowl” system of life-long jobs in the 1990s eliminated thousands of state-owned small or medium-sized enterprises, which specialised in everything from industrial boilers to wedding photographs.

The Hong Kong-based civic group China Labour Bulletin says strikes and labor protests nationwide nearly doubled in the first 11 months of 2015 to 2,354 from 1,207 in the same 2014 period. China’s labor ministry says 1.56 million labor-dispute cases were accepted for arbitration and mediation in 2014, up from 1.5 million in 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported. Behind the strife is an economy decelerating faster than the government expected, sparking layoffs and factory closings.

Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd.’s debt restructuring will probably succeed after gaining local support as both onshore and offshore creditors met over the weekend to align their interests, advisers said, Bloomberg reported. The Shenzhen-based developer is believed to be getting backing from a committee of onshore creditors, the local government and the China Banking Regulatory Commission, according to an e-mailed statement from Kirkland & Ellis and Moelis & Co., who are advising some offshore bondholders. There’s “high likelihood” that the onshore restructuring can succeed, they said.

China Shanshui Cement warned investors it will default on more than $300 million of onshore debt payments due on Thursday and will seek to appoint liquidators, a sign Chinese authorities are more willing to let weak firms fail, Reuters reported. The privately controlled company, with a market capitalisation of $2.7 billion, has felt the squeeze from falling demand in a sector struggling with overcapacity as the giant economy shifts gears. It reported a 31 percent decline in revenues and a net loss for the first half of the year.

As China's economy slows and Beijing becomes more relaxed about letting its companies fail, a rising number of foreign bondholders risk being caught up in the country's unpredictable court system, Reuters reported. Last month, solar producer Baoding Tianwei Group became China's first ever state-owned company to default on a bond coupon payment, showing Beijing's increasing willingness to let companies go bust in a bid to reform its corporate market. Also in April, Kaisa Group became the first Chinese property developer to fail to pay a coupon on its U.S.

China’s “national team” owns at least 6 per cent of the mainland stock market as a result of the massive state-sponsored rescue effort this year to prop up share prices following the summer equity market crash, the Financial Times reported. One member of the team, China Securities Finance Corp, the main conduit for the injection of government funds, owned 742 different stocks at the end of September, up from only two at the end of June. CSF was one of a number of government rescue funds that were corralled into buying shares when stock markets went into meltdown over the summer.

China said it cracked the nation’s biggest “underground bank,” which handled 410 billion yuan ($64 billion) of illegal foreign-exchange transactions, as the authorities try to combat corruption and rein in capital outflows that have hit records this year, Bloomberg News reported. More than 370 people have been arrested or face lawsuits or other punishment in the case centered in eastern Zhejiang province, the official People’s Daily reported on Friday, citing police officials.

Chinese borrowers are taking on record amounts of debt to repay interest on their existing obligations, raising the risk of defaults and adding pressure on policy makers to keep financing costs low, Bloomberg News reported. The amount of loans, bonds and shadow finance arranged to cover interest payments will probably rise 5 percent this year to a record 7.6 trillion yuan ($1.2 trillion), according to Beijing-based Hua Chuang Securities Co., whose lead fixed-income analyst was top-ranked by China’s New Fortune magazine in 2012 and 2013.