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News from China

RMB assets show growing appeal for global investors

8th June 2022

Renminbi-denominated assets remained a strong magnet for international investors amid sound long-term prospects and China's continuous efforts to open its financial market.

More than 60 percent of surveyed overseas financial institutions will increase their holdings of RMB-denominated assets, a recent white paper from the Bank of China said, citing a survey covering over 3,400 enterprises and institutions globally last year.

The proportion increased by 9 percentage points compared with the 2020 survey, the white paper said.

Echoing the white paper, official data has revealed that global investors showed increasing interest in pursuing RMB-denominated assets to diversify their investment portfolios over the past few years.

From 2018 to 2021, the total net increase in the holdings of domestic stocks and bonds by global investors exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, with an annual growth rate of 34 percent, data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed.

"Global investors' allocation in China's A-share market in 2022 is expected to continue the momentum in recent years," said Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, noting the resilience of foreign investment in the country's capital market.

The accessibility of China's equity market has greatly improved recently, as the country ramped up efforts to upgrade the Shanghai-Hong Kong and Shenzhen-Hong Kong stock connect schemes and promote the steady increase of A-shares' proportion in global equity indexes, among other measures.

To date, the net inflows of foreign investment into the A-share market via the two stock connect schemes have topped 1.6 trillion yuan (about 240 billion U.S. dollars).

China has also made remarkable progress in opening up its bond market.

As the world's second largest bond market, China's bond market saw 1,035 overseas institutional investors hold a total of 3.9 trillion yuan in bonds by the end of April, surging 225 percent from the end of 2017, central bank data showed.

Last month, Chinese authorities announced measures to support qualified overseas institutional investors that were investing directly or through connectivity in the exchange bond market, and independently choosing trading venues, marking the latest move to open bond market.

"Extending the market access for qualified overseas institutional investors to the exchange bond market will help drive overseas investors to increase holdings of China's bond products," said Qiu Yilin, a researcher with the Bank of China Research Institute.

There is still much room for foreign investors to further increase their holdings of RMB assets, Wang Chunying, deputy head of China's forex regulator, has said.

RMB accounts for only 2.79 percent of global forex reserves and foreign investors' holdings in China's stock and bond markets stand at a relatively low level of 3 percent to 5 percent.

The global community continued to show recognition and confidence in the Chinese financial market, as the International Monetary Fund lifted the weighting of RMB in Special Drawing Rights currency basket from 10.92 percent to 12.28 percent in May.

The rise of RMB's weighting indicates that RMB is playing an increasingly important role in international payment and settlement, reserves, investment and financing, Zhou Maohua, an analyst with the China Everbright Bank, noting that RMB internationalization is accelerating.

Source: Xinhua

Xi urges efforts to build beautiful China

6th June 2022

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday urged efforts to build a beautiful China in which humanity and nature coexist in harmony and contribute more to jointly constructing a clean and beautiful world.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks in a congratulatory letter to the National Event on the Environment Day held in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province.

The ecological environment is the foundation for the survival and development of human beings, and maintaining a sound environment is the common aspiration of people of all countries, Xi said.

China has attached fundamental importance to ecological progress and has carried out fundamental, pioneering and long-term work since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, Xi said, stressing that historic, transformative and comprehensive changes have been achieved.

On a new journey of building a modern socialist country, China will maintain the strategic resolve on facilitating ecological progress, promote a comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development, and coordinate efforts on pollution control, ecological protection and climate-change response, Xi said.

Xi called for joint and solid action from the whole of society to protect the environment and leave a beautiful homeland with a blue sky, green land and clear water for future generations.

Han Zheng, Chinese Vice Premier and a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, attended the opening ceremony of the Environment Day event and made a speech.

Han urged efforts to deepen the overall green transformation and promote coordinated progress on environmental protection and economic development.

China will push for carbon peaking and carbon neutrality in a prudent and orderly way and in the process, guarantee the security of energy, industrial and supply chains, and food, as well as people's normal lives, he said.

Han also stressed joint efforts on global ecological progress and sustainable development to benefit people all over the world.

China has held the national event to celebrate the Environment Day each year since 2017, with this year's event themed "Work Together to Build a Clean and Beautiful World."

Source: Xinhua

China launches nine Geely-01 satellites

3rd June 2022

China on Thursday launched a Long March-2C carrier rocket to place a group of nine commercial satellites in space.

The Geely-01 constellation consisting of nine satellites were lifted at 12:00 p.m. (Beijing Time) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province and entered the preset orbit.

Owned by GeeSpace, a subsidiary of Geely Technology Group, the satellite constellation will be mainly used to research and validate technologies, such as travel services of intelligent connected vehicles, and vehicle/mobile phone and satellite interaction. It will also provide data support for marine environmental protection.

This was the 422nd flight mission of the Long March rocket series.

Source: Xinhua Global Service

China looks to prop up retail spending with consumption vouchers

2nd June 2022

With the latest COVID-19 resurgences abating and a weeks-long shopping festival just beginning, the Chinese government is handing out billions of yuan in shopping vouchers and subsidies to shore up domestic consumption.

In one of the latest such moves, the central city of Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province, announced to issue vouchers worth 240 million yuan (about 36 million U.S. dollars) from late May to August to encourage local spending.

Meanwhile, south China's economic powerhouse of Shenzhen began distributing the third batch of its 400 million yuan shopping vouchers over the weekend, which could be spent on deals for the June 18 shopping festival held by the Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com.

The massive voucher giveaway came at a time when the Omicron outbreak weighed heavily on China's domestic consumption, particularly the sales of non-daily necessities and the catering sector, in the first four months of 2022.

Retail sales of consumer goods, a significant indicator of China's consumption strength, went down 0.2 percent year on year in the January-April period, official data showed.

Shopping vouchers proved to be a powerful leverage to boost spending when the COVID-19 epidemic hit the country in 2020. The 500 million yuan worth of vouchers issued by the local government in Wuhan, the hardest-hit Chinese city by the epidemic, stimulated consumption of more than 5 billion yuan.

"Shopping vouchers spur consumption instantly," said Pan Helin, a researcher at Zhejiang University, noting that with certain spending rules in place, vouchers can drive up demand and amplify the effect of fiscal funds.

A 2020 Peking University study showed that in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, every 1 yuan worth of government voucher issued can generate 3.5 yuan of extra spending, while in less developed regions like Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the extra amount could reach up to 7.7 yuan.

Voucher distribution mainly targets large purchases like automobiles, home appliances and furniture, as well as epidemic-hit sectors such as catering, hospitality and cultural activities. In Shanghai, the local government has offered a 10,000-yuan subsidy to consumers who replace old cars with electric ones.

Xu Yongjun, general manager of an automobile dealer in Zhejiang's Tongxiang City, said his store witnessed a nearly 40 percent jump in sales after the local government issued 8 million yuan of auto vouchers.

"The pent-up consumption will be gradually released with the containment of the epidemic and production and people's lives returning to normal," said Fu Linghui, a spokesperson with the National Bureau of Statistics.

Zhong Zhengsheng, an economist with Pingan Securities, said that he anticipates the distribution of more vouchers in more cities to further facilitate consumption recovery.

Zhong also emphasized efforts to help market entities tide over difficulties, which would boost employment and in turn increase people's willingness and capabilities to spend.

China's commerce ministry pledged last month to promote consumption by upgrading traditional consumption, speeding up the development of new consumption patterns and improving consumption platforms, so as to enhance the catalytic role of consumption in economic circulation.

The impact of the virus on consumption is "temporary" as the strong resilience, great potential and sound long-term development fundamentals of China's consumption remain unchanged, the ministry's spokesperson Shu Jueting has said.

Source: Xinhua

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