China’s real-estate crisis has dragged down the economy, caused massive layoffs and pushed multibillion-dollar companies to the point of collapse. Economists think it is about to get worse, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Sales of newly built homes in China fell 6% last year, returning to a level not seen since 2016, according to China’s statistics bureau. Secondhand home prices in its four wealthiest cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen—declined by between 11% and 14% in December from the year before, according to the broker Centaline Property.

China said it will cut the reserve requirement ratio for banks within two weeks and hinted at more support measures to come, an unusually early disclosure that shows mounting urgency across President Xi Jinping’s government to shore up the economy and halt a $6 trillion stock-market rout, Bloomberg News reported. The RRR — which determines the amount of cash banks have to keep in reserve — will be lowered by 0.5 percentage points on Feb.

China's plunging stock market is leading to losses on billions of dollars worth of derivatives linked to the country's equity indexes, forcing a vicious cycle of selling in stocks and futures contracts as market participants manage their risks, Reuters reported. Stock markets in Hong Kong, opens new tab and in mainland China plunged on Monday, extending a long spell of weakness driven by an exit of foreign investors alarmed by China's wobbly economy and a lack of stimulus measures.

Premier Li Qiang called for more effective measures to stabilize China’s slumping stock market after the mainland’s benchmark CSI 300 hit a five-year low on Monday, Bloomberg News reported. Chinese stocks have sold off for most of the past year. The factors behind the drop range from the protracted crisis in the housing market to persistent deflationary pressures in the wider economy. Beijing’s policy response, meanwhile, has failed to buttress sentiment among investors hoping for even easier monetary conditions or a big lift in fiscal stimulus.

The number of foreclosed homes in China rose 43% year-on-year in 2023, according to a private survey on Monday, highlighting a worrying trend of rising mortgage delinquencies amid a sustained property market slump and a patchy economic recovery, Reuters reported. The number of foreclosed homes up for auction stood at 389,000 units last year, said China Index Academy, a major independent real estate research firm. A total of 99,000 units worth a combined 150 billion yuan ($20.84 billion) were successfully sold at auctions, the firm said.

The rupture of one of the world's busiest shipping routes has exposed the vulnerability of China's export-reliant economy to supply snarls and external demand shocks, Reuters reported. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, Premier Li Qiang emphasised the need to keep global supply chains "stable and smooth", without referring specifically to the Red Sea.

China's troubled property market ended last year with the worst declines in new home prices in nearly nine years, despite government efforts to prop up the sector that was once a key driver of the world's second largest economy, Reuters reported. New home prices in December logged their steepest drop since February 2015, while property sales measured by floor area fell 23% in December from a year earlier, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Wednesday.

China’s economic growth rate finished at one of the lowest levels in decades last year, underscoring the heavy toll that a property-sector collapse and weak consumer confidence have taken on the world’s second-largest economy despite the lifting of all Covid-19 restrictions, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product in China expanded 5.2% in the fourth quarter and for the full year in 2023, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday.

China’s state-owned banks are tightening curbs on funding to Russian clients after the US authorized secondary sanctions on overseas financial firms that aid Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported. At least two banks ordered a review of their Russian business in recent weeks, focusing on cross-border deals, said the people, asking not to be identified discussing a private matter.

China’s economy grew around 5.2% in 2023, surpassing the government’s official growth target for the year without relying on “massive stimulus,” Chinese Premier Li Qiang said in Davos, Bloomberg News reported. “Last year in 2023, the Chinese economy rebounded and moved upward with an estimated growth of around 5.2%, higher than the ‘around 5%’ target set at the beginning of last year,” Li said on Tuesday in his first appearance as China’s No. 2 official at the annual World Economic Forum. “In promoting economic development, we did not resort to massive stimulus,” Li added.