China backed off its giant stimulus effort Tuesday by reducing the amount of cash banks have available to lend, in the clearest signal yet that the government is worried that the nation's credit binge now risks igniting inflation, The Wall Street Journal reported. China's stimulus program, led by a government order to banks in late 2008 to flood the economy with cash, helped to carry China through global financial turmoil. The economy is now poised to surge past Japan this year as the world's second-largest economy after the U.S.

As much of the world struggles to clamber out of a serious recession, a gradual flow of economic power from West to East has turned into a flood, The New York Times reported. Beijing’s state-run news media, indulging in a moment of self-congratulation, have hailed China’s new economic prominence as proof of national superiority. The country’s economic miracle, the newspaper People’s Daily boasted last week, exists because its leaders — unlike those in other, unnamed nations — can make quick decisions and ensure underlings carry them out.

With property prices soaring in key cities, many investors and bankers worry that China has the next great real estate bubble waiting to be popped, The Washington Post reported. The Chinese government is worried, too. On Sunday, the nation's cabinet, citing "excessively rising house prices" in some cities, said it will monitor capital flows to "stop overseas speculative funds from jeopardizing China's property market." It also said that any Chinese family buying a second home must make a down payment of at least 40 percent.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned of growing inflation expectations in a rare domestic media interview, expressing concerns about the nation's fast-rising real-estate prices and acknowledging that Beijing may be paying a price for its aggressive response to the global financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported. Speaking to the state-run Xinhua news agency on Sunday, Mr. Wen also flatly rejected foreign criticism of China's exchange-rate policy, saying that stability in the yuan's value helps the global economy and that China won't bow to pressure to let it appreciate.

When a Seattle-based Chinese language program in Beijing suddenly canceled classes and shut down, more than a dozen students were left stranded, though they had prepaid their tuition and housing, The Seattle Times reported. Now, the company's Seattle headquarters is closed, its phones disconnected and its Web site claims it has filed bankruptcy. The owners have moved to Sweden. Most of the 67 students — from all over the world — have either gone home or arranged for classes at other schools in Beijing, at additional expense.

Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman Sheldon Adelson Monday said he expects to restart construction on the casino operator's delayed resort projects in Macau in about five months, with the first two phases of the project to be completed by the end of 2011, The Wall Street Journal reported. Construction of the project was halted in November last year due to a lack of funding during the credit crunch. The new target underscores Sands' renewed ambitions in Macau, the world's biggest casino growth market and the only place in China where gambling is legal.

It was a year of massive stimulus packages, rising unemployment and the bankruptcy of General Motors and other big names; but 2009 ended with America’s big banks beginning to repay their huge bail-outs and China leading an incipient world recovery. Read The Economist’s review of The world this year. Read more.

Chinese lenders are using a little-understood financial transaction to move loans off their balance sheets, a trend that raises questions about transparency in one of the world's biggest banking industries, according to analysts in China who have studied the deals, The Wall Street Journal reported. The transactions, which increased sharply last month, involve banks temporarily selling loans to Chinese trust companies, promising to repurchase the loans any time between a few weeks and a few years later. The trusts repackage the loans into financial instruments for clients.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC's ABN Amro operations in China said it has uncovered potential irregularities within its small and medium-size enterprise banking business in response to a Wall Street Journal inquiry. The scale and nature of the potential problems at ABN Amro China still remain unclear. ABN Amro has one of the biggest foreign banking franchises in China, operating 18 retail banking outlets in the country. The ABN Amro China spokeswoman declined to give further details about the potential irregularities, citing the bank's ongoing investigation.

The International Banking Corp., a Bahrain-based provider of commercial loans, filed a Chapter 15 bankruptcy petition, seeking protection from U.S. creditors, The China Post reported. TIBC had assets of US$4 billion and liabilities of US$2.6 billion as of July 31, according to documents filed in Manhattan court Monday. TIBC is under administration proceedings in Bahrain, with Trowers & Hamlins Services Ltd. acting as administrator, and Zolfo Cooper hired for restructuring work.