The world's second-largest economy is faring worse than previously thought, with government stimulus measures proving too short-lived to counter China's sharp real-estate downturn or to prop up flagging factory output, The Wall Street Journal reported. The latest indicator of China's deceleration came over the weekend with a sharper-than-expected drop-off in industrial production for August to 6.9% year-over-year, the slowest pace since 2009, during the global financial crisis.

Housing sales in China in the first eight months of the year fell 10.9% to 3.43 trillion yuan ($559 billion), according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics issued Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported. Sales in the first seven months of the year were down 10.5% from a year earlier at 2.98 trillion yuan. Property developers across the country have been struggling with weak sales, bulging inventories and tight credit conditions since the start of the year, and some authorities, mostly at the local level, have been loosening policies to support the sluggish market.

Li Keqiang, Chinese premier, has assured global investors they are still welcome in China and said a rash of recent fines and regulatory investigations into their businesses were not specifically targeting them, the Financial Times reported. Mr Li’s comforting words to global companies, made on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Tianjin, came as revised government figures showed that, in 2013, outbound Chinese investment exceeded $100bn for the first time.

Major private shipbuilder China Ronsgsheng Heavy Industries Group looks like its fate is being forced upon it with upcoming government intervention, SeatradeGlobal reported. The group had suspended its shares last month and flagged that a potential announcement relating to restructuring was imminent.Over the weekend, made a further announcement that it had been "notified by a government authority that they are procuring an independent third party to consider and, if appropriate, to initiate a potential restructuring involving Jiangsu Rongsheng Heavy Industries".

Will rising defaults and stricter rules halt the breakneck growth of China’s shadow banks? When one of the country’s many trust companies, which sell high-yield investments, warned earlier this year of a looming default on one of its products, its clients reacted with anger and the wider market with alarm, The Economist reported. As panic spread, regulators orchestrated a bail-out of the product, reassuringly named “Credit Equals Gold #1”. But in recent weeks investors in its sibling, “Credit Equals Gold #2”, have met a crueler fate.

Growth in China’s vast factory sector slackened in August as foreign and domestic demand slowed, surveys showed Monday, stoking speculation that further stimulus measures would be needed to prevent the economy from stumbling, the International New York Times reported. At the same time, surveys of purchasing managers across Asia told a tale of fewer new orders and faltering exports, but with brighter spots like India and Taiwan.

In a situation eerily reminiscent of the perfect storm that engulfed Irish property developers at the end of the boom, fears are growing over the astronomical debt exposure of developers in China, the world’s second-largest economy, where house sales and prices are falling rapidly, the Irish Times reported. Cash-strapped Chinese developers are borrowing a record amount in the offshore loan market this year, adding to the highest debt loads since 2005.

In the latest sign of Chinese developers’ desperation to unload inventory into a weak property market, China Vanke Co is offering discounts of up to $325,000 to homebuyers who shop on Alibaba’s Taobao, an e-commerce platform, the Financial Times reported. The country’s biggest developer will give discounts that match shoppers’ spending of up to Rmb2m ($325,000) on the eBay-like service. Homes in real estate developments in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing, among other cities, will qualify, according to an advertisement on Taobao’s website.

On desolate salt flats on the far outskirts of China’s sixth-largest city, dozens of enormous half-built skyscrapers stand as a monument to the excess and optimism of the Chinese real estate market, the Financial Times reported. As physical manifestations of China’s property bubble go, few examples can beat this effort to replicate Wall Street in a wasteland 40km outside Tianjin and 150km from the capital Beijing.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang urged the heavily scrutinised railway sector to seek more private investment and rely less on state support as a key plank of its reform, the government website said on Sunday, the International New York Times reported. Beijing has vowed to deepen reforms of its state-owned enterprises and to open up protected industries such as finance, petroleum, power, telecoms and railways to private investors for the first time.