By any measure, Tom Hu should be in default on a $730,000 bank loan for his plastics business in China. He barely brings in enough revenue to pay expenses and can’t cover the debt costs. Yet rather than calling in the loan, his bank lets him defer payments — keeping him afloat, while avoiding another past-due loan on its books. Stories like Hu’s are playing out across China as banks grapple with a growing pile of bad debt. It’s impossible to quantify the true extent of the problem, though most economists say the ratio of bad loans is significantly higher than the 1.5% official rate.

China’s exports and imports each set monthly records in April, further cementing the country as the world’s leading trading nation as Beijing prepares to welcome President Trump for a summit this week with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, the New York Times reported. China also ran a trade surplus — the excess of exports over imports — of $84.8 billion last month, according to data released on Saturday by the General Administration of Customs. However, that surplus did not set a record.

China's financial regulator advised the country’s largest lenders to temporarily suspend new loans to five refineries recently sanctioned by the US over their ties to Iranian oil, Bloomberg News reported. The National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA) asked banks to review their exposure and business dealings with firms, including Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) Refinery, one of China’s largest private refiners, while awaiting further guidance. For now, banks have been guided not to extend new yuan-denominated credit, though they have also been told not to call in existing loans.

Saddled by billions in crushing debt owed to Beijing, the Zambian government helped a Chinese-owned mining giant cover up one of the worst mining pollution incidents in the country’s history, according to an investigation by a U.S. House Select Committee on China, the Wall Street Journal reported.

China’s top market regulator is intensifying its crackdown on debt-laden “zombie companies” – rolling out a pilot programme in seven economic hubs to facilitate the forced exit of unprofitable firms often propped up by government subsidies or bank loans, the South China Morning Post reported. The move signals a broadening of Beijing’s campaign against local protectionism and the low-quality vicious competition that officials say results in neijuan, or “involution”.

Rising oil and natural gas prices from the war in Iran are beginning to weigh on the Chinese economy, further slowing already anemic consumer spending and hurting critical export sectors, the New York Times reported. Car sales fell in March and plunged further in April. Restaurants and hotels are seeing fewer customers as households turn cautious. In southern China, thousands of toy factory workers protested last week after their employer collapsed under rising plastic costs and ongoing tariffs in the United States.

Profits at China's industrial firms grew ​at their quickest pace in half a year last month, adding to broader signs of ‌an uneven economic recovery in the first quarter as policymakers brace for the impact of the Middle East war, Reuters reported. The country's export engine stuttered last month while retail sales and industrial output cooled, although producer prices emerged from a years-long deflationary stretch, ​a shift that analysts warn could leave companies boxed in by rising costs but limited ​pricing power as demand remains fragile.