Evergrande's liquidity problems worsened, forcing it to start paying some of its suppliers and contractors with flats it hadn't sold. In mid-August, financial regulators summoned Evergrande's top executives and told them to fix the company's problems without disrupting the financial and property markets. The company is trying to offload other assets to raise cash, and is in talks to sell part of its electric-vehicle business, whose market value has declined by more than $80 billion from a recent peak. Stephen Sum, who runs a real-estate agency focusing on China's Greater Bay Area, said Evergrande's troubles have hurt the wider property sector. "It's like the game of Monopoly," he said of the developer's survival strategy. In the real-estate board game, players that are short on cash have to sell their properties to avoid becoming bankrupt.