Fears of a hard landing in China are looking increasingly overdone, indicators in the past few days show, and investor fears of sudden slowdown in the world’s second largest economy are easing, the Irish Times reported. Data at this time of year are always skewed by the two-week holiday for Chinese new year, but the trend remained upbeat. February inflation dropped more than expected to give a 3.2 per cent year-on-year rise, its slowest pace in 20 months, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, and compared to 4.5 per cent the previous month.

China intends to extend renminbi loans to other Brics nations, in another step towards the internationalisation of its currency, the Financial Times reported. The China Development Bank will sign a memorandum of understanding in New Delhi with its Brazilian, Russian, Indian and South African counterparts on March 29, say people familiar with their talks. Under the agreement CDB, which lends mainly in dollars overseas, will make renminbi loans available, while the other Brics nations’ development banks will also extend loans denominated in their respective currencies.

The Chinese economy, after nearly three decades of rapid, almost uninterrupted growth, seems to be settling down to a still strong but less blistering pace. But some sectors are struggling, including exports and luxury residential real estate construction, the International Herald Tribune reported. Premier Wen said in his annual report to the National People’s Congress on Monday morning in Beijing that the government had scaled its economic growth target back to 7.5 percent this year, down from the 8 percent that Beijing has set as a minimum growth target in recent years.

A major creditor of Proview Electronics, which is challenging Apple Inc.'s use of the iPad trademark, has moved to have the ailing computer monitor maker liquidated, reports said Monday, the Associated Press reported. Taiwan-based Fubon Insurance is seeking $8.68 million in debts and has filed an application to have Proview declared bankrupt, the reports by the Xinhua News Agency and other mainland media said.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said that China's economic growth model is "unsustainable" and urged deep reforms to avoid a sharp downturn on growth over the coming two decades, The Wall Street Journal reported. There are "stress points [in the economy] that will expand over time rather than [turn into] a crisis," he said at a conference in Beijing where the World Bank and the Development Research Center, an influential government think tank, jointly introduced a report, "China 2030," that recommended sharp reforms in China's economy.

China's two-year push to drive down property prices has punished many of the nation's once highflying property developers and stymied a number of upscale projects, The Wall Street Journal reported. Real estate was once one of the nation's most successful industries. Some stocks of mainland property developers in Hong Kong more than doubled in 2009, faster than the Hang Seng Index's 50% gain that year. As a result, developers plowed billions of dollars into huge developments—with apartments, commercial space, pools and golf courses—outside top-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

Chinese banks are wrestling with rising funding costs both inside and outside China's borders, at a time when these banks are expected to lend more to bolster China when its trade and real-estate sectors are sagging, The Wall Street Journal reported. In China's interbank market, state-owned banks have seen a jump in the interest rates charged amongst themselves in recent days, leading the country's central bank to cut its bank-reserve requirements on Saturday, its second such move in four months. The reduction in reserve-requirement ratio, effective Feb.

China took action to boost bank lending as it seeks to fine-tune economic policy to support growth, without giving up its recent gains in controlling inflation and property prices, The Wall Street Journal reported. The People's Bank of China said on Saturday that it will cut banks' reserve requirement ratio by 0.5 percentage point, effective Feb. 24, in a move to help boost liquidity and support the economy. The reserve requirement ratio is the percentage of deposits that banks must hold in reserve rather than lend out.

A mountain of debt is coming due and the principal is unpayable, so governments have agreed to extend maturities. This could be a description of a bail-out package for Greece. Instead, it is what China is doing to prevent scores of provinces and cities from defaulting on bank loans, the Financial Times reported. Does that mean China is another Greece? Far from it. For starters, China’s economy will expand more than 8 per cent this year, while the eurozone is confronting the likelihood of recession.

Officials will increase support for construction of affordable housing and ensure that “loan demand from first-home families” is met, the People’s Bank of China said on its website yesterday, Bloomberg reported. A government clampdown aimed at make housing affordable is cooling prices and driving down transactions as Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis caps export demand. Fitch Ratings said yesterday that a “hard landing” for China’s economy is a key global risk, after the International Monetary Fund cautioned Feb. 6 that a deterioration in Europe could cut the nation’s growth rate almost in half.