Bloomberg China omitted a key defense spending figure from its budget for the first time in almost four decades — before an official disclosed the number — highlighting concerns about transparency in the world’s largest military. While authorities said defense expenditures would rise “about 7 percent” this year, the budget report published by the Ministry of Finance on Sunday …

  Bloomberg China’s credit engine will keep humming this year, adding the rough equivalent of Germany’s annual economic output to its already massive stock of total social financing, according to estimates derived from the nation’s 2017 targets. Adding higher equity market financing and about 5 trillion yuan ($725 billion) worth of local government bond swaps to the official credit growth …

  A major factor behind the soaring growth of risky wealth-management products in China is that investors typically think the government stands behind them. Lately, nervous regulators have been emphasizing that this isn’t so. But they’ll have to do a lot more to change expectations in a state-dominated economy. Wealth management products are short-term, high-yielding investments that are issued by …