China's producer deflation deepened to its worst level in almost two years in May while consumer prices extended declines, as the economy grappled with trade tensions and a prolonged housing downturn, Reuters reported. Uncertainties from a tariff war with the United States and weak consumption at home have rattled sentiment and fuelled expectations of more policy stimulus to combat deflationary pressures.

China’s central bank injected around $139 billion of medium-term liquidity into markets on Friday, a move likely aimed at cushioning against an emerging cash crunch as trade tensions simmer, the Wall Street Journal reported. The People’s Bank of China announced the move a day earlier in an unusually timed disclosure, saying that it will conduct 1 trillion yuan of outright reverse repurchase agreements with a three-month tenor, equivalent to $139.35 billion.

China’s electric vehicle (EV) makers have had a lot to contend with over the past week: slumping shares for market leader BYD, cooling sales and margins and a warning from authorities in Beijing amid a punishing price war, the South China Morning Post reported. BYD’s Hong Kong-listed shares lost as much as 17 per cent of their market value, or HK$122.3 billion (US$15.6 billion), on Monday after falling to HK$378.20 from an all-time high of HK$477.80 on May 23. The company’s shares recovered 4 per cent on Tuesday.

Chinese auto dealers on Tuesday called on automakers to stop offloading too many cars on dealerships, as intense price wars are pressuring their cash flow, driving down their profitability and forcing some to shut, Reuters reported. The proposal came on the heels of an official call over the weekend for the auto industry to halt bruising price wars. Conditions facing car dealers have become "even more severe" amid a new round of hefty discounting since the second quarter, the China Auto Dealers Chamber of Commerce said in a statement.

After stepping back this month from an escalating and dangerous war of tariffs, the United States and China are now threatening to undermine their uneasy truce, the New York Times reported. On May 12, the countries announced after weekend meetings in Geneva that they would suspend most of their recently imposed tariffs. Since then, however, both governments have shown that they are still prepared to wield controls over critical exports as weapons against one another, with moves that are potentially even more damaging to trade and global supply chains.

Chinese developer Country Garden Holdings Co.’s efforts to win backing for a $14.1 billion offshore restructuring are running into resistance as key bank creditors say failure to accept some of their demands would be a “deal breaker,” Bloomberg Law reported. The company, once China’s largest property developer by contracted sales, got a few months’ reprieve from its liquidation petition hearing on Monday, as High Court Judge Linda Chan decided to adjourn the case to Aug. 11.

The world's poorest nations face a "tidal wave of debt" as repayments to China hit record highs in 2025, an Australian think tank warned in a new report Tuesday, the Japan Times reported. China's Belt and Road initiative lending spree of the 2010s has paid for shipping ports, railways, roads and more from the deserts of Africa to the tropical South Pacific. But new lending is drying up, according to Australia's Lowy Institute, and is now outweighed by the debts that developing countries must pay back.

China's central bank eased monetary policy last week to limit damage from the trade war with Washington. On Friday, it lowered the ceiling for deposit rates to offset margin pressure on banks and prompt savers to spend or invest more. But successive cuts to deposit rates in recent years have failed to curb explosive growth in Chinese household savings, intensifying concerns over the side-effects that lower returns have on the country's consumers, who tend to build their own safety net, Reuters reported.