Guarantors have become the lenders of last resort to small manufacturers who increasingly are getting squeezed by tight credit as well as soaring wages and other production costs, The Wall Street Journal reported. These private operators, using money raised from property developers, coal miners or other cash-rich individuals, aim to fill the funding void left by state banks that many say have all but stopped lending to small businesses. In return, they charge their clients a fee on top of high interest rates imposed on the loans.

As policy makers from the U.S. and Europe gathered in Jackson Hole, Wyo., to discuss ways to revive a fragile global recovery, China's central bank was issuing a secret memo to further rein in lending in the world's second-largest economy, The Wall Street Journal reported.

China broadened the base of reserves it requires commercial lenders to deposit with the central bank to control liquidity and limit inflation, economists said, Bloomberg reported. Reserve requirements are being extended to customers’ margin deposits, a move that may drain 900 billion yuan ($140 billion) from the banking system over six months, Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Lu Ting said in an e-mailed note on Aug. 26. Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. cited similar information.

China's big banks reported hefty profits in the first half of this year, but signs of strain are showing from their massive lending binges and as they struggle to meet tougher capital requirements, The Wall Street Journal reported. Profits of the nation's five biggest banks by assets, led by Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., were buoyed in part by a greater focus on business that generates fee income, such as credit cards and wealth-management products.

Bad loans at Chinese banks will rise to “shockingly high” levels, eroding profits and slowing growth in the world’s second-biggest economy, said Vontobel Asset Management Inc.’s Rajiv Jain, who runs some of this year’s best-performing mutual funds, Bloomberg reported. China’s local governments are struggling to repay their debt and “frothy” real-estate markets may leave banks exposed to falling prices, Jain said in an Aug. 16 phone interview.

China Petrochemical Corp.'s partner in its only oil production venture in Australia appointed administrators Monday, a move that underscores how some of China's earliest investments in the resource-rich country have struggled to meet expectations, The Wall Street Journal reported. AED Oil Ltd. raised US$561 million in 2008 when it sold 60% of its underperforming Puffin oil field in the Timor Sea to China Petrochemical Corp., also known as Sinopec.

Chinese state media and government officials have declared an initial victory in dealing with piles of local government debt, but analysts warn debt risks remain a big threat to the Chinese banking system and the world's second-largest economy, Reuters reported. In an attempt to quell investor jitters, China's state auditor in June laid the groundwork for a debt clean-up by releasing a review that said local governments had borrowed 10.7 trillion yuan ($1.67 trillion) by the end of 2010.

China signaled that it intends to take a more active role in trying to calm chaotic global and domestic markets, pumping cash into its banking system and allowing its tightly controlled currency to climb higher for a fourth straight day, The Wall Street Journal reported. There was a widespread belief among domestic investors that the country's state pension fund had started heavily buying shares. That perception reversed a sharp fall in the Shanghai stock market and helped it to close higher in a tumultuous trading session. As the U.S.

The U.S. credit-rating downgrade is piling more pressure on China to move away from an export-reliant economy that has produced mountains of currency reserves in declining dollars, though Chinese politicians, like those in Washington, often struggle to confront tough policy decisions needed to drive change, The Wall Street Journal reported. Some analysts say that harsh Chinese rhetoric aimed at the U.S. following the downgrade of U.S.

Chinese firms must get approval from bond investors before they restructure their assets, China's top economic planning agency said, in a move aimed at containing default risks from its pile of local government debt. The order by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) confirms a Reuters report last week and thwarts any plan by indebted local governments to move assets out of their affiliated firms when they struggle to repay loans.