Hi everyone. I’m Stephanie LI.

Coming up on today’s program

China’s lending benchmark LPRs remain unchanged in November;

China’s financial regulators issue MasterCard bank card clearing license.

Here’s what you need to know about China in the past 24 hours

China left benchmark lending rates(LPR) unchanged at a monthly fixing on Monday, matching expectations, as it continued to skirt the balance between fostering an economic recovery and preventing more weakness in the yuan.

The over-five-year LPR, on which home buyers base their mortgage rates, also remains the same from the previous month's reading of 4.2 percent, according to the National Interbank Funding Center.

The interest rate of the medium-term lending facility (MLF) - which the one-year LPR is loosely pegged off - remains steady. Meanwhile, the amount of new yuan loans and gross social financing beat market expectations in October, experts noted.

According to latest data released by the People's Bank of China, the country's yuan-denominated loans rose by 738.4 billion yuan in October, far exceeding market forecast of between 600 - 650 billion yuan.

The PBOC also injected about 600 billion yuan of liquidity into the economy last week through seven-day reverse repos, together with 1.45 trillion yuan through one-year MLF, both at the same rates as the previous operations.

As a series of targeted policies rolled out since July continue to produce effects, the country's economic activity has maintained upward momentum, with both enterprise and consumer confidence in further improvement.

Meanwhile, the offshore Chinese yuan reaches a three-month high against the US dollar today, boosted by a prospect of falling dollar. The yuan strengthens 400 pips to below 7.18 per US dollar, as the central bank’s efforts to maintain the yuan’s close value to the dollar are seemingly paying off, with the onshore yuan’s appreciation bringing it nearer to the central bank’s daily reference rate. Earlier in the day, the central parity rate of the yuan strengthened 116 pips to 7.1612 against the greenback, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System.

People working in Beijing and Shanghai for non-private companies, which includes government bodies, collectively owned firms, joint-stock companies, joint ventures, enterprises funded by foreign investors and by investors from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, were paid the highest average wage in the country last year, according to the China Statistical Yearbook 2023 published by the National Bureau of Statistics. People working in the urban non-private sector in Beijing and Shanghai received an average annual salary of 200,000 yuan in 2022, and those employed in the private sector in these two mega cities also earned the most nationwide at over 100,000 yuan per year. In the non-private sector, employees in 18 provincial-level regions, including Beijing, Shanghai, Xizang, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces, had an average yearly pay of more than 100,000 yuan.

Moving on to regional highlights

A newly built high-speed railway (HSR) with a top speed of 350 kilometers per hour connecting Chengdu and Yibin, two cities in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, finished joint debugging and testing, and entered trial operation on Sunday. The railway has a total length of 264 kilometers with 12 stops serving major cities of Sichuan Province such as Ziyang, Neijiang and ZigongJaipur Wealth Management. It will cut the travel time between Chengdu and Zigong to 40 minutes and about one hour between Chengdu and Yibin, and it will be a major transport channel connecting downtown Chengdu and Chengdu Tianfu International Airport.

Serene Air, a private carrier from Pakistan, launched a route from Karachi to Beijing Daxing International Airport on Sunday, a further move to increase personnel exchanges between China and Pakistan. With a stop at Islamabad, the service will be offered with an A330 on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Greater Bay Area, Greater future

The 25th China Hi-Tech Fair concluded in the southern Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen on Sunday, with an attendance of 248,000 visitors and a cumulative transaction volume, including the intended transaction amount, totaling 37.28 billion yuan. Featuring participation from 105 countries and regions, the fair attracted over 4,000 exhibitors, with the exhibition area reaching 500,000 square meters. A total of 132 events were held, 681 new products and achievements were unveiled and contracts for 17 cooperation projects between central enterprises and local governments were signed onsite.

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee on Monday said the government will publish a detailed action plan on maritime and port development strategy in the coming weeks, to help develop the SAR into a leading international maritime centre. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the World Maritime Merchants Forum, Lee said the plan "will enhance high-end maritime services, facilitate transformation towards zero emission, promote smart and digital initiatives in the industry, and promote global exchanges."

Hong Kong Disneyland officially opened up the gates to the world's first "Frozen" themed land on Monday. Michael Moriarty, the theme park's managing director, said the new cinematic land of Arendelle – home of Queen Elsa and Princess Anna – would be a huge asset in reviving the SAR's tourism sector.

Next on industry and company news

China's railway passenger flow went up in October, with a total of 336 million railway passenger trips made nationwide, data from China Railway shows. That represents an increase of 25.44 million, or 8.2 percent, over the same period in 2019. Air travel-wise, over 56.05 million air passenger trips were handled in October, soaring 252 percent year on year, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC). The total transport turnover of the sector was 11.01 billion ton-kilometers last month, surging 158.6 percent from a year ago. In October, the cargo and mail volume of China's civil aviation sector totaled 675,000 tons, up 37.7 percent year on year.

China's commercial vehicle sales soared 19.8 percent year on year to about 3.3 million units in the first 10 months of this year, industry data showed. Specifically, sales of trucks rose 19.5 percent year on year to 2.91 million units, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Some 389,000 buses were sold in the same period, surging 22.2 percent from the same period last year. During the January-October period, China exported 616,000 commercial vehicles, jumping 28.3 percent over one year earlier.

China's exports of smartphones fell 6.4 percent in the first 10 months from a year ago because of the shrinking global market and manufacturers relocating their production facilities. Phone exports totaled 642 million units in the first 10 months, data from China's General Administration of Customs showed on Saturday. Exports jumped 10 percent to 81.1 million handsets last month from a year earlier.

Revenue at China's large theme parks rose 15.3 percent last year despite having fewer visitors because of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report. The 80 large theme parks' revenue was 15.4 billion yuan in 2022, per a study from the Institute for Theme Parks Studies in China released on Saturday. The number of visitors fell 0.3 percent to 75.7 million from a year earlier. Shanghai Disneyland and Universal Studios Beijing were the most attractive and profitable theme parks, with Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park, Zhuhai's Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, and Beijing Happy Valley making up the top 5.

Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma is "very positive" about the company and will continue to hold its shares, media reported on Friday, citing a communiqué from his office. The comments from Ma's office came a day after a regulatory filing showed that his family trust was set to sell 10 million, or 5 percent of Alibaba’s US-listed shares with a value of about USD800 million on Nov. 21. The phased sale is part of a long-standing "preset conditional plan to do a partial sell-down for the future" that was adopted in August, but "not a single share has been sold," the publication quoted Ma's office as saying. On a different note, Alibaba denied online rumor of laying off 25,000 employees on Sunday, adding that it has made a police report regarding the matter.

Volvo’s shares plunged to a record low after its majority shareholder Zhejiang Geely Holding Group announced it would cut its stake in the Swedish automaker to fund its overseas expansion. Geely will sell about 3.3 percent of Volvo’s shares for about USD350 million to support the globalized development of its affiliated brands, the Chinese carmaker announced on Friday. After the sale, Geely will still hold 78.7 percent of Volvo.

Li Auto has launched a new luxury car, the Chinese new energy vehicle startup’s fourth pure-electric one, at the ongoing Guangzhou Auto Show. Li Mega is a 5.3-meter-long pure-electric multi-purpose vehicle that aims to become the best-seller in the market segment of cars priced at over 500,000 yuan, according to Li Auto’s VP Liu Jie, adding that deliveries will begin in February.

The Hangzhou branch of New Oriental, one of China's largest private tutoring firms, was slapped with a fine of 150,000 yuan for illegally providing discipline-based tutoring programs for students, media reported Monday. A notice posted on the government website of Zhejiang Province shows that Hangzhou’s law enforcement has ordered New Oriental to cease operation of the after-schools and refund all fees, as well as to pay for a penalty of more than 150,000 yuan. The punishment came after authorities looked into a claim by a social media influencer that the firm was breaking the double reduction policy in August for offering junior and senior high school tutoring programs.

Switching gears to financial news

MasterCard has become the second overseas bank card clearing institution to enter the Chinese market after American Express in 2020. The People's Bank of China issued a bank card clearing business license to MasterCard's Chinese unit Wanshi Wanglian Information Technology on Friday, as announced by the PBOC on Sunday. Wanshi Wanglian is a joint venture between US' MasterCard and China's NetsUnion Clearing. With the license, the JV's member institutions can issue and process MasterCard-branded yuan-oriented bank cards in China.

Wrapping up with a quick look at the stock market

Chinese stocks rallied on Monday on renewed optimism the US Federal Reserve will not hike interest rates again in the near term. The benchmark Shanghai Composite gained 0.46 percent and the Shenzhen Component rose 0.43 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index also closed 1.86 percent higher, and the TECH index jumped 2.45 percent.

Biz Word of the Day

Based on the quotes made by quoting banks by adding a few basis points to the interest rate of open-market operations, the LPR is calculated by the National Interbank Funding Center, serving as the pricing reference for bank lending.

Executive Editor: Sonia YU

Editor: LI Yanxia

Host: Stephanie LI

Writer: Stephanie LI

Sound Editor: Stephanie LI

Graphic Designer: ZHENG Wenjing, LIAO Yuanni

Produced by 21st Century Business Herald Dept. of Overseas News.

Presented by SFC

编委: 于晓娜

策划、编辑：李艳霞

播音：李莹亮Hyderabad Investment

撰稿：李莹亮

音频制作：李莹亮

设计：郑文静、廖苑妮

21世纪经济报道海外部 制作

南方财经全媒体集团 出品

更多内容请下载21财经APP