The number of fresh coronavirus cases in the Chinese capital of Beijing rose over the weekend. By Saturday afternoon, 46 people had tested positive, 45 of whom work at a food market in Fengtai district, called Beijing Xinfadi Market, according to the deputy director of the Beijing Center for Diseases Prevention and Control.
The market was temporarily shut from 3pm on Saturday. China has begun a wide-spread testing programme for residents in the area.
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China’s industrial production increased by 4.4% year-on-year in May, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday morning. The speed of the growth is 0.5 percentage point faster than the 3.9% yearly rise seen in April.
Retail sales growth, however, remained negative at minus 2.8% year-on-year in May, but slightly better than April’s 7.5% slump.
Year-to-date fixed asset investment reached Rmb19.9tr ($2.81tr) by the end of May, a 6.3% slump compared to a year ago. The jobless rate in urban areas reached 5.9%, 0.1 percentage point lower than that in April.
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The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) gave Rmb200bn of one-year medium term lending facility (MLF) loans to financial institutions on Monday, leaving the rate unchanged at 2.95%.
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The Shenzhen Stock Exchange has finalised rules for new listings on its ChiNext board, officially introducing a registration-based system for IPOs on the start-up focused board after taking public feedback earlier this year.
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The PBoC has granted a clearing licence to Express (Hangzhou) Technology Service, a joint venture between American Express and Hangzhou-based LianLian DigiTech, said a Sunday announcement from the central bank.
AmEx became the first foreign company to receive the bank card clearing license, which allows the US company to issue AmEx brand bank cards onshore. The JV should start bank card clearance and issuance operations within six months of receiving the license, the PBoC said.
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The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has received the application from Sequoia Capital Investment Management Co for a licence to invest in China through the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII) programme, according to an update on the regulator’s website.
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The National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors (Nafmii), one of the regulators of the interbank bond market, loosened the requirement for companies to issue bonds.
The regulator scrapped the condition that the total bonds outstanding of an issuer cannot exceed 40% of the company’s net assets. It follows in the footsteps of the other two bond regulators in China, the CSRC and the National Development and Reform Commission.
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The CSRC has waved through Suzhou HYC Technology Co’s acquisition of Suzhou Oulitong Automation Technology for Rmb1bn. This is the first major M&A deal in Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Star Market. HYC was the first company to have listed on the Nasdaq-style board last year. Its M&A plan was accepted by the SSE on March 27 and approved on May 25.
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The securities regulator is seeking public opinion on a set of new rules governing major shareholders of securities firms.
The main changes have to do with how major shareholders are defined. Previously, domestic securities firms could only call a shareholder a major shareholder if it held more than 25% of the company, or held more than 5% but was the biggest shareholder. With the new change, those holding more than a 5% stake can all be classified as major shareholders.
Additionally, major shareholders were required to have sustainable profitability and net assets of no less than Rmb200m. Under the new rules, they no longer need to satisfy the profitability requirement and are only required to have Rmb50m in net assets.
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China has seen the listing of the first French exchange traded fund (ETF) product, Huaan CAC 40 ETF, which tracks Euronext's flagship CAC 40 index, according to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
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The Beijing branch of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) published a notice to curb Beijing-based banks’ structured deposits business. Banks were told to reduce the size of their structured deposits products and impose stricter identification of the source of deposits.
Structured deposits products combine traditional deposits with higher return investment products.
Some Beijing-based banks have scaled up their structured deposits business since the beginning of this year. They have also engaged in “irrational competition” in the deposits market, the local regulator said in a Friday announcement.
Several domestic banks received verbal guidance from the national-level CBIRC to reduce the size of their high-yield structured deposits last week, local media Caixin reported.
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The CSRC has approved for the Shanghai Futures Exchange to launch aluminium and zinc futures contracts.
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Four staff at Shanghai Zhongyida Co, a textile machinery maker, were sentenced by a local court to detention and imprisonment. This marked the first sentenced case for violation of disclosure requirement for important information by a listed company in Shanghai, said the Shanghai Securities Regulatory Bureau. The CSRC accused the company of falsifying its financial record for the third quarter of 2015.
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Zoom, a US video conferencing company, said it would not comply with requests from the Chinese government to suspend or block accounts from its video meetings if those people are not located in mainland China.
The news came after the video call service provider suspended the account of Humanitarian China, a US-based civil rights group, in early June.