Investments and Business

Ultramodern factories churn out electric cars and solar panels in Hefei, an industrial center in the heart of central China. Broad avenues link office towers and landscaped parks. Subway lines open at a brisk pace.Yet at Hefei’s market for construction materials, which fills 10 city blocks, local merchants are gloomy. Wu Junlin, a vendor of doors, has closed two of his three stores and laid off all but one of his dozen employees.“I have been doing this for 20 years — after all these years, this year is the worst,” he said, sitting in his last store with no customers…

Toyota Motor said it had halted the global shipments of 10 vehicles after it discovered that an affiliate had mishandled the testing of diesel engines used in the automobiles, the latest embarrassing problem to hit the world’s biggest automaker in recent months.The Toyota affiliate used software to measure horsepower output that made “values appear smoother with less variation,” Toyota, the parent company, said in a statement on Monday. The vehicles “meet engine output standards,” and there is no need to stop using the engines or vehicles, the company said.Still, Toyota decided to stop shipping the 10 models that use three…

Months after China Evergrande ran out of cash and defaulted in 2021, investors around the world scooped up the property developer’s discounted i.o.u.’s, betting that the Chinese government would eventually step in to bail it out.On Monday it became clear just how misguided that bet was. After two years in limbo, and with over $300 billion in debt, Evergrande was ordered by a judge in Hong Kong to liquidate, a move that will set off a race by lawyers to try to find and grab anything belonging to Evergrande that can be sold.In a small courtroom on the 12th floor…