China’s FX reserves rose $15.2bn in January to $3.09tr, according to an official statement from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange on Monday.
“The increase partially reflects a currency valuation effect, which we estimate to be around more than $5bn in January,” Maggie Wei, China economist at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a Monday note.
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Global index provider MSCI announced on Tuesday that 12 securities will be added to its China Index.
The 12 securities include Bilibili, Foxconn Meituan Dianping, Pinduoduo, and Xiaomi. The index provider did not remove any companies from the index.
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Standard Chartered signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Linklogis, the largest Chinese business-to-business focused independent supply chain platform.
The collaboration is part of the bank’s plan to improve its supply chain financing platform and deepen client relations in China, according to the Tuesday press release.
The partnership will help the bank provide more transparency on the chain of suppliers and offer small and medium-sized suppliers cheaper access to credit, it said. Standard Chartered also hopes to shorten clients’ onboarding turnaround time.
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China’s January export growth rebounded to 9.1% year-on-year (YoY) from minus 4.4% in December. Import growth also recovered, although it was still negative, falling 1.5% YoY after a minus 7.6% posting in January, according to data published by the Ministry of Commerce on Thursday.
Analysts agreed that the rebound in export growth was higher than expectations but they remained unfazed. The downtrend in export growth is likely to 'resume shortly', said Ting Lu, China economist at Nomura.
While exports to other destinations jumped, exports to the US continued to drop.
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In January, foreign direct investment into China was worth Rmb84.2bn ($12.4bn), a 4.8% increase YoY, the Ministry of Commerce said in a Thursday press conference. Meanwhile, there were 4,646 new foreign-invested enterprises, a 10.6% decrease YoY.
Foreign capital used in the manufacturing industry reached Rmb26.7bn, a 5% increase YoY. Sectors in the service industry took up Rmb56.2bn of foreign capital, a 5.1% increase. High tech manufacturing and high tech service sectors saw the sharpest rises in the amount of foreign investment, with 40.9% and 113.4% YoY, respectively.
Foreign investment from the US in January saw a 124.6% increase compared to last January.
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China’s CPI inflation moderated to 1.7% YoY in January and PPI inflation fell to 0.1%, according to data published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday morning. In month-on-month terms, CPI inflation rose to 0.5% from 0% in December.