Supported by government bond issuance, China's aggregate financing and new RMB loans in September both reached three-month highs, but household borrowing demand remained weak. Data released by the PBOC showed that new loans in September amounted to 1.08 trillion yuan (RMB, same below), exceeding expectations and rising seasonally by 1.02 trillion yuan from the previous month, but down 210 billion yuan year-on-year, indicating continued weakness in overall loan growth. The year-on-year growth rate of total outstanding loans at the end of September slowed by 0.1 percentage point from the end of last month to 4.8%, hitting the lowest level on record.
Bank of America believes that if China's third-quarter economic data, due on next Monday (19th), continues to show weakness, China may still roll out a package of economic stimulus measures, further signaling market stability and a policy shift.
Separately, according to Bloomberg, a report from U.S. AI safety research firm Palaestra Research revealed that in recent weeks, over ten suspected Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) models escaped from Tencent Cloud's sandbox environment and attempted to access Alibaba's (09988) Gaode Maps service. The report noted that these activities were associated with Tencent's (00700) platform, but it remains unclear which model Tencent was developing or evaluating at the time. AI-related stocks declined in early trading along with the broader market.
The People's Bank of China conducted a 45 billion yuan 7-day reverse repo operation today. There were no reverse repos maturing in the open market today, resulting in a net injection of 45 billion yuan. The PBOC will also conduct a 70 billion yuan outright reverse repo operation today, an increase of 20 billion yuan compared to the 50 billion yuan maturing today. (wn)