MNI China Daily Summary: Thursday, Sept 25

POLICY: China has added three U.S. companies to its Unreliable Entity List, a mechanism used to sanction foreign entities, the Ministry of Commerce announced.

POLICY: The U.S. should remove unreasonable tariffs to help expand bilateral trade, including on soybean purchases, Ministry of Commerce spokesperson He Yadong said.

LIQUIDITY: The People's Bank of China (PBOC) conducted CNY483.5 billion via 7-day reverse repos, with the rate unchanged at 1.40%. The operation led to a net drain of CNY3.5 billion after offsetting maturities of CNY487 billion today, according to Wind Information

RATES: The seven-day weighted average interbank repo rate for depository institutions (DR007) rose to 1.6017% from 1.5864% previously, Wind Information showed. The overnight repo average increased to 1.4749% from the previous 1.4373%. 

YUAN: The currency strengthened to 7.1219 against the dollar from the previous 7.1253. The PBOC set the dollar-yuan central parity rate higher at 7.1118, compared with 7.1077 set on Wednesday. The fixing was estimated at 7.1320 by Bloomberg survey today.

BONDS: The yield on 10-year China Government Bonds was last at 1.8811%, up from the previous close of 1.8775%, according to Wind Information.

STOCKS: The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.01% to 3,853.30, while the CSI300 index increased 0.60% to 4,593.49. The Hang Seng Index decreased 0.13% to 26,484.68.

FROM THE PRESS: The People’s Bank of China is expected to cut the reserve requirement ratio in Q4, while resuming treasury bond trading in a timely manner to inject long-term liquidity into the banking system, Securities Daily reported citing Wang Qing, analyst with Golden Credit Rating. The PBOC will likely continue with medium-term liquidity injections by combining outright reverse repos and medium-term lending facility operations in the last quarter, said Wang, after the Bank net injected CNY300 billion via one-year MLF this week, marking the seventh consecutive month of net MLF injections. Wang expects liquidity to remain relatively ample before year-end, leaving little upside room for market interest rates.

Local governments are issuing consumption subsidies over CNY330 million, along with more than 25,000 cultural events to boost tourism during the upcoming Golden Week holiday, Yicai.com reported. It is expected that the number of tourist arrivals during the eight-day holiday, one day longer than last year’s, will exceed 800 million with tourism revenue reaching around CNY750 billion, compared to last year’s 765 million and CNY700 billion, the newspaper said.

Beijing’s move to forgo special, differential treatment from the World Trade Organization while keeping its developing country status demonstrated the country’s continued support for the multilateral trading system and expressed its determination to make greater contributions to global economic governance, Yicai.com reported citing Ji Wenhua, professor at the School of Law of the University of International Business and Economics. This will help promote progress in trade negotiations as some developed members have used China's special and differential treatment as an excuse to refuse to provide corresponding treatment to other developing members or have made SDT provisions a major sticking point in the negotiations, said Ji.