China’s credit growth hit a fresh record low in June, highlighting subdued borrowing demand and prompting a central bank-backed publication to downplay concerns about weakness in the economy, Bloomberg News reported. The stock of aggregate financing — a broad measure of credit — expanded 8.1% from a year ago, the slowest on record in data going back to 2017, official figures released on Friday show. The net increase in aggregate financing was 3.3 trillion yuan ($455 billion), according to Bloomberg calculations based on the data, below the 3.4 trillion yuan forecast in a Bloomberg survey.

China's exports grew at their fastest in fifteen months in June, suggesting manufacturers are front-loading orders ahead of tariffs expected from a growing number of trade partners, while imports unexpectedly shrank amid weak domestic demand, Reuters reported. The mixed trade data keeps alive calls for further government stimulus as the $18.6 trillion economy struggles to get back on its feet. Analysts warn that the jury is still out on whether strong export sales in recent months can be sustained given major trade partners are becoming more protective.

Just 19 of China’s 137 current electric car brands will be profitable by the end of the decade, leaving the rest to exit the industry, consolidate or battle for a minor market share, according to consultancy Alixpartners, Bloomberg News reported. A price war that has been running for almost two years has pressured margins at some Chinese EV makers, and could continue as dominate players like BYD Co. and Tesla Inc. seek to consolidate their dominant positions.

A company linked to the Chinese businessman who led the buyout of AC Milan in 2017 is being sued over unpaid debts by a group of investment firms, Bloomberg News reported. Five claims have been filed against British Virgin Islands-based Rossoneri Advance Co. Ltd. involving a combined $187 million in debt due and owed, according to court documents dated July 4. The five plaintiffs are suing for debt, damages, accrued interest and other claims.

China's Ministry of Finance is conducting more rigorous checks of work done by the Big Four auditing firms for local companies, three people with knowledge of the matter said, amid concerns auditors are not doing enough to uncover corporate wrongdoing, Reuters reported. The tighter scrutiny, which has not been previously reported, is mainly focused on Deloitte, EY, PwC, KPMG and their audits of some financial firms as well as highly leveraged companies, said the people.

China’s consumer inflation remained tepid last month while factory-gate prices continued to fall, pointing to persistently lackluster demand despite Beijing’s efforts to juice up consumption, the Wall Street Journal reported. The country’s consumer-price index rose for a fifth consecutive month in June, edging up 0.2% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday. That missed the 0.4% rise expected by economists in a Wall Street Journal poll and compared with May’s 0.3% increase.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission is tightening rules on short selling and high-frequency trades in a bid to crack down on improper arbitrage and maintain market stability, Bloomberg News reported. The market watchdog approved the mainland stock exchanges to boost margin requirements in short selling, starting July 22. Meanwhile, China Securities Finance Corp., the country’s biggest stocks lending provider, will suspend its business of lending securities to brokerages starting July 11, with outstanding contracts to be settled by the end of September, the CSRC added.

China Vanke Co. warned that losses grew substantially in the second quarter, with the big homebuilder saying that investment in some projects “has been over-optimistic,” Bloomberg News reported. The firm, whose woes this year have been emblematic of the ongoing slump in China’s property sector, said in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing that it expects to post a first-half loss of 7 billion yuan (US$962 million) to 9 billion yuan. That signals a sharp downturn from the first quarter, when it reported a 362 million yuan loss. “The company deeply apologises for the performance loss,” it said.

A solar panel maker in Georgia that has booked $230 million in federal tax credits stands to collect hundreds of millions more as it pursues plans to create the first end-to-end solar manufacturing chain in the US, easing reliance on China and related concerns about the use of forced labor, Bloomberg News reported. But at least through the end of this year, the Qcells solar plant, which South Korea’s Hanwha Solutions Corp. opened in Dalton, Georgia, in 2019 and almost doubled in capacity last year, is making panels with base components from China.

China’s central bank has signed agreements with major brokers to borrow “hundreds of billions” of yuan worth of government bonds, a move analysts say is likely aimed at stabilizing plummeting long-term bond yields, the Wall Street Journal reported. The People’s Bank of China has started to borrow medium and long-term notes from lenders, state media said Friday, now holds “hundreds of billions” of yuan worth of bonds. The central bank will borrow the bonds with no fixed term on an open-ended basis and sell them depending on market conditions, state media added.