After spending about $200bn buying shares to prop up falling equity prices over the past seven weeks, Beijing capitulated to market forces on Monday by choosing not to intervene as the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index fell 8.5 per cent, the Financial Times reported. The fall was the worst since February 2007. But unlike on most other days since the government launched an unprecedented effort to reverse plunging equities last month, the “national team” of state-owned stock buyers did not jump in to support the market.

The People’s Bank of China is preparing to flood the banking system with liquidity to boost lending, according to officials and advisers to the central bank, as its recent currency moves are squeezing yuan funds out of the market and renewing concerns over capital leaving Chinese shores, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Bank of Portugal is in exclusive talks with China's Anbang Insurance Group Co on the sale of state-rescued Novo Banco, leaving two other bidders on the sidelines, sources said. Two sources close to the bidding process told Reuters China's Fosun International and U.S. fund Apollo Global Management had also made binding bids and could re-enter the race if talks with privately-held Anbang fail. A Beijing-based spokeswoman for Anbang declined to comment.

Chinese stock markets took a wild ride on Wednesday, tumbling and soaring in a session that made little sense other than to highlight that investors have almost no faith in a month-long government effort to stabilize them, the International New York Times reported. The Shanghai and Shenzhen markets fell 3 percent in morning trade, taking their losses to more than 8 percent since investors stampeded without warning on Tuesday. But state-backed buyers later rushed in, enabling stocks to finish the day more than 1 percent higher.

The shock waves from China’s surprise yuan devaluation are ricocheting through African economies, sending currencies tumbling and stoking anxiety that the continent’s biggest trading partner might be losing its appetite for everything from oil to wine, The Wall Street Journal reported. In South Africa, the rand hit a 14-year low of 12.94 to the dollar on Monday, extending a 2% drop since Aug. 10 and a 12% slide this year.

If finance were a boxing match, then the referee would be getting ready to intervene in emerging markets, the Financial Times reported. Already on the back foot because of fears over tighter US monetary policy, and taking a pounding from sliding commodity prices, the developing world’s stocks, bonds and currencies have just been on the receiving end of a haymaker from China — in the form of its modest but ominous devaluation. The rout has been fierce and broad.

The opening of the $3.5 billion Baha Mar mega-resort in the Bahamas is expected to be delayed beyond the start of the Christmas season, with the developer deep in an escalating legal battle with the Chinese companies that are providing most of the finance and construction work, Reuters reported. Even if construction on the unfinished resort resumed this month, there is little chance the project could be completed by mid-December, the start of the high season for Bahamas resorts, according to local contractors who have worked on the project.

China’s central bank has warned investors to expect more “two-way volatility” in renminbi trading when foreign exchange markets reopen on Monday, less than a week after a 2 per cent downward “adjustment” sparked a week of roller-coaster trading for the currency, the Financial Times reported. In a statement issued on Sunday, Ma Jun, chief economist at the People’s Bank of China, said the Chinese government had “no intention or need to participate in a ‘currency war’”.

For years, China looked like the principled noncombatant. As other countries, seeking to secure an economic advantage, let the value of their currencies slide on international markets, China held firm on the value of its money, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. But this week, China jumped into the fray. In a surprise decision on Tuesday, the country’s authorities devalued its currency, the renminbi, which has now fallen by 4.4 percent against the dollar this week, a huge drop for China.

Whenever China’s economy swooned in recent downturns, its currency never buckled. It held steady, or strengthened, even as China’s neighbors or trading partners scrambled to cut the value of their own currencies to deal with the fallout, the International New York Times reported. With the Chinese renminbi now taking its biggest plunge in decades, the worry is that the country’s already slowing economy is even worse off and the government is panicking. By the official measures, the economy is growing at 7 percent, right in line with government targets.