Chinese Premier Li Qiang rallied a group of Southeast Asian and Gulf states to deepen cooperation and touted his country’s economic strength, as Beijing ramps up its charm offensive abroad to counter US efforts to isolate the economy, Bloomberg News reported. “We should firmly expand regional opening up and develop a big market,” Li said at a meeting with leaders from Southeast Asia and the Middle East in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.

The storm clouds for China were gathering when leader Xi Jinping convened the country’s top scientists at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in May 2018. The U.S. was beginning to clamp down on selling technology to China, with more restrictions on the way, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. China must not be forced to beg others for technology, Xi said. Only through self-reliance “can we fundamentally safeguard national economic security,” he said. Since then, China has raced ahead in many strategic sectors—and in some cases is catching up with the U.S.

China’s Hozon New Energy Automobile, the manufacturer of Neta-branded battery electric vehicles (BEVs), is the subject of a bankruptcy review case filed by a local advertising company, according to a notification on the country’s National Enterprise Bankruptcy Information Disclosure Platform, GlobalData.com reported. As the news spread rapidly across the local media, the struggling automaker has been forced to deny growing speculation that it had itself filed for bankruptcy.

China cut benchmark lending rates for the first time since October on Tuesday, while major state banks lowered deposit rates as authorities work to ease monetary policy to help buffer the economy from the impact of the Sino-U.S. trade war, Reuters reported. The widely expected rate cuts are aimed at stimulating consumption and loan growth as the world's No. 2 economy softens, while still protecting commercial lenders' shrinking profit margins.

The rapid de-escalation in the U.S.-China trade war after the Geneva talks has helped Beijing avoid a nightmare scenario: mass job losses that could have endangered social stability - what the ruling Communist Party sees as its top-most priority, Reuters reported. But this year's U.S. tariff hikes of 145% left lasting economic damage and even after the Geneva talks remain high enough to continue to hurt the job market and slow Chinese growth, say economists and policy advisers.

Chinese worker Liu Shengzun lost two jobs in just one month as U.S. import tariffs shot up to triple digits in April, forcing a Guangdong lighting products factory, and then a footwear maker, to reduce output, Reuters reported. Tariffs came down dramatically this week, but Liu has given up on factory jobs and is now back farming in his hometown in southern China. "It's been extremely difficult this year to find steady employment," said the 42-year-old, who used to earn 5,000 - 6,000 yuan ($693-$832) a month as a factory worker and now doesn't have a steady source of income.

Ratings agency Fitch on Wednesday downgraded ratings for Chinese property company China Vanke citing liquidity concerns amidst an ailing property sector in the world's second largest economy, Reuters reported. Fitch downgraded long-term foreign- and local-currency issuer default ratings (IDRs) for the embattled property developer to 'CCC+' from 'B-'. The agency also downgraded the long-term IDR for the company's unit, Vanke Real Estate (Hong Kong), to 'CCC' from 'CCC+', and its senior unsecured rating and the rating on its outstanding senior notes to 'CCC', from 'CCC+'.

China's new bank loans tumbled more than expected in April as a protracted trade war with the United States further eroded the market's appetite during a typically slow month for loan demand, Reuters reported. Chinese banks extended 280 billion yuan ($38.87 billion) in new yuan loans in April, below analysts' forecasts and plummeting from March's 3.64 trillion yuan, according to Reuters calculations based on data released by the People's Bank of China. Total outstanding yuan loans rose at a record-low annual pace of 7.2% in April.

The temporary reduction in tariffs that the United States and China announced in Geneva on Monday will lift, at least for now, the de facto trade embargo that had been in place between the two countries for the past month, the New York Times reported. It will reduce the chances that American shoppers will face empty shelves during the holiday season and perhaps limit the price increases they will have to endure. It sent stock prices soaring around the world. But the deal does little to clear the cloud of uncertainty that has hung over the U.S.

A struggling technology company that has ties to China and relies on TikTok made an unusual announcement this week. It had secured funding to buy as much as $300 million of $TRUMP, the so-called memecoin marketed by President Trump, the New York Times reported. GD Culture Group, a publicly traded firm with a Chinese subsidiary, has only eight employees, its public filings show, and recorded zero revenue last year from an e-commerce business it operates on TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing app.