Last year, Chinese policymakers shook up the world’s second-largest economy just as its rebound from the pandemic was starting to wear off, unleashing a flurry of measures to address longer-term economic imbalances—and delivering a short-term hit to business activity. Now, China’s leaders are hoping that they can put a floor under the economy, which officials said Monday expanded by just 4% in the fourth quarter of last year, the slowest pace since the beginning of the Covid-19 recovery in the second quarter of 2020. To do so, they are easing some of their earlier tightening policies, for example by increasing mortgage lending to home buyers. The country’s central bank on Monday cut two key interest rates that could pave the way for further cuts to the benchmark lending rate. But they face rising uncertainty around the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as a continued […]