China

Shares of China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle fell 7% in Monday morning trade after individual creditors of two of its units sought court approval for the units to go through bankruptcy proceedings and be reorganised, Reuters reported. The electric car maker said its units Evergrande New Energy Vehicle (Guangdong) and Evergrande Smart Automotive (Guangdong) had received notice from a local court about the July 25 application.

China's latest series of rate cuts show the central bank's monetary framework has changed, analysts said, with the short-term repo rate becoming the primary signal and a diminished role for its medium-term lending facility (MLF), Reuters reported. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) surprised markets this week by first cutting several key rates including loan prime rate (LPR) and reverse repo rate on Monday. It then conducted an unscheduled MLF lending operation on Thursday, at steeply lower rates.

A creditor of Jiangsu Delong Nickel Industry Co., one of the world’s largest stainless steel producers, has told a Chinese court the business controlled by legendary businessman Dai Guofang and his family needs to be restructured, Bloomberg News reported. A local court in Xiangshui County, Jiangsu province, is studying the application from the local state-owned builder, along with another three cases targeting the company’s affiliates, it said in a statement dated Wednesday.

China’s central bank took new steps to shore up the country’s sputtering economy, highlighting officials’ growing anxiety about growth only days after leader Xi Jinping set out his long-term vision to transform China into a technological powerhouse to rival the U.S. The People’s Bank of China said Thursday that it cut a key interest rate and pumped the equivalent of more than $25 billion into China’s banking system, the Wall Street Journal reported.

For years, high rollers from China have flouted their country’s ban on gambling by getting their fix online. Livestreamed games of baccarat, roulette, poker and more feature young women sitting behind tables, dealing cards and spinning wheels. While the players are in China, the croupiers on their screens are often far away in studios in the Philippine capital Manila, the Wall Street Journal reported. Filipino officials say many of these operations are also run and staffed by Chinese nationals.

A worrying run of data has dialed up calls for help to boost China’s economy. The central bank has answered with a flurry of rate cuts that analysts view as a welcome sign of action. But a number of restraints, from a weak currency to banks’ falling profitability, lead many to think that ultimately, it is fiscal policy that needs to come to the rescue, the Wall Street Journal reported. On Monday, the People’s Bank of China unexpectedly trimmed a key short-term policy rate for the first time since last summer, saying it aims to ramp up support for the economy.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other top Communist Party officials used 22,000 characters in laying out a blueprint for reviving the country’s flagging economy in the coming years and signaling an intention to rev up growth in the coming months. On some of the thorniest issues, however, the document had little new to say—fueling concern among some economists about the country’s longer-term prospects, the Wall Street Journal reported.

EU tariffs on electric vehicles built in China breach global trading rules and must be corrected, an industry body representing 12 Chinese automakers told the European Commission in a hearing this week, Reuters reported. The China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products (CCCME) presented its view at a hearing on Thursday that the EU's preliminary assessment is incompatible with EU and World Trade Organization rules. "We are very concerned.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and several hundred other top Communist Party officials huddled in Beijing this week to plot a path forward for their country’s sagging economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The outline they released after four days of meetings suggests a future that looks more or less like the present. That fidelity to China’s current course signals that Xi remains committed to his vision of state-led development, even as unease festers—among ordinary Chinese and foreign investors—over his stewardship of the world’s second-largest economy.

Chinese developer Hopson Development Holdings Ltd. has received a maturity extension of a loan from 2023 that backed the purchase of some commercial real estate space in a Hong Kong office building, Bloomberg News reported. Seatown Holdings Pte Ltd., a subsidiary of Singaporean sovereign fund Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd., has extended around $100 million to $115 million of a $165 million loan for Hopson. The developer had paid down a portion of the facility, originally due in May, to obtain a lower interest rate.