Microsoft Corp chief executive Satya Nadella promised to cooperate fully with Chinese authorities in their antitrust investigation into his company during a meeting with a top regulator in Beijing, the Chinese government said.

When popular Chinese handset maker Xiaomi Inc admitted that its devices were sending users' personal information back to a server in China, it prompted howls of protest and an investigation by Taiwan's government.

China will more strictly police the expansion of cities to stop the spread of highly developed but sparsely populated cities or districts known as ghost towns, the state-backed Beijing News reported on Friday.

U.S. companies are increasingly less optimistic about the business outlook in China, and see growing competition from local rivals who get preferential treatment as a key challenge, a survey showed on Friday.

China boosted the quotas it gives foreign institutions to invest in domestic securities by the largest amount in the third quarter since the final quarter of 2012 and regulators may also raise the limit on a parallel yuan-denominated program.

Intel Corp is close to announcing an investment in Chinese-government affiliated mobile chipmakers Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics, its latest move to catch up in a smartphone chip industry led by Qualcomm Inc, according to two sources with knowledge of the plan.

China's steel consumption dropped this year for the first time since at least 2000 due to slower economic growth, leading to a surplus of iron ore in the country and a more than 40 percent plunge in prices of the steelmaking raw material.

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL], the world's largest telecommunications equipment maker, said it would invest more than $4 billion in fixed broadband technology research and development (R&D) in the next three years.

China and Spain are set to sign business deals worth a total of about 3 billion euros ($3.8 billion) in Beijing this week, an official said, as Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy visits the Asian giant to drum up support for his country's economy.

China, the world's top consumer of cotton, will slash its import quotas for 2015 to boost demand for domestic fiber, a senior official said on Monday, driving futures prices in both China and the United States lower.