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Coming up on today’s program

China launches a 1-percentage point personal consumer loan interest subsidy to boost spending;

Shanghai Composite Index recorded a near 4-year high on multiple boosts.

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

China has unveiled an interest subsidy for personal consumer loans to boost domestic consumption, with a CNY3,000 cumulative subsidy limit per borrower at designated lending institutions.

Residents can receive the subsidy if they use personal consumer loans (excluding credit cards) issued by designated institutions from Sept. 1 this year to Aug. 31 next year, but need to use the funds for consumption and transactions musts be traceable, according to a policy document jointly issued by the Ministry of Finance, the People's Bank of China, and the National Financial Regulatory Administration yesterday.

Eligible purchases include single transactions below CNY50,000, with single transactions of CNY50,000 or more allowed only if related to autos, elderly care and childbirth, education and training, sightseeing, home furnishing and decoration, electronic products, and healthcare, the document said.

Such subsidies can directly reduce residents' consumer credit, enhance their willingness and ability to use financial leverage to spend more, improve living standards, and stimulate effective financing demand from lenders and residents, industry experts noted.

According to the document, 1 percentage point of the annual interest on loans will be subsidized, not exceeding 50 percent of the contractual interest rate. The central government will cover 90 percent of subsidy funds, with provincial governments providing the rest.

Six big state-owned banks, 12 national joint-stock lenders, and five consumer lenders will serve as qualified lending institutions.

Meanwhile, eight categories of eligible service sector businesses, including catering and accommodation, health care, elderly care, childcare, housekeeping, culture and entertainment, tourism and sports, will also benefit from a similar subsidy plan that rebates loan interest of 1 percentage point for no more than a year, said the finance ministry.

To qualify for the subsidy, loans must be extended between March 16, 2025 and December 31, 2025, provided that the loans are used for improving consumption infrastructure or service supply capacity. The maximum loan amount eligible for subsidies per operator is CNY1 million.

GBA express

As the countdown ticks down for the 15th National Games, 400,000 tickets for the Hong Kong competition region are set to go on sale in phases beginning August 28 with a real-name registration system. The initial batch includes tickets for the beach volleyball, men's handball, men's under-22 basketball, and rugby sevens that will be held in the city, with remaining events released in phases starting at the end of September. There will be 5 million tickets on sale in batches for most of the competitive and mass participation events at the National Games and the National Special Olympic Games, including the events in Guangdong and Macao.

Hong Kong’s capital markets continue to demonstrate remarkable resilience, emerging as the world’s top destination for IPOs in the first seven months of 2025. Christopher Hui, Hong Kong’s secretary for financial services and the Treasury, said on Tuesday the number of IPOs in Hong Kong this year has already surpassed its annual fundraising totals for each of the past three years, with 53 new listings raising HK$127 billion, a staggering sixfold year-on-year increase. Hong Kong’s exceptional performance comes as global IPO markets saw only a modest 10 percent growth in capital raise in the first half of 2025, with deal numbers declining 5 percent worldwide, Hui noted.

Margin trading balance on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets, which is a key gauge of market sentiment and leverage levels, topped CNY2 trillion yesterday for the first time in a decade, official data show. Margin financing in Shanghai was about CNY1.021 trillion, while that in Shenzhen came in at roughly CNY983.9 billion.

Industry and company news

Chinese stocks extended winning streak on Wednesday with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closing up 0.48 percent, a record high since December 2021. The index has risen 10 percent so far this year. The Shenzhen Component Index also jumped 1.76 percent today, while the tech-focused ChiNext Index soared 3.64 percent. Total turnover of both the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses hit CNY2.15 trillion, surpassing the CNY2 trillion threshold again since February.

China's summer box office, including presales, topped CNY9 billion as of 15:06 today, led by Dead To Rights, Nobody, and The Lychee Road, according to film data tracker Beacon.

Tencent Music's shares soared over 15 percent today, after the music streaming arm of Tencent said its revenue climbed 18 percent to CNY8.4 billion and adjusted net profit widened 33 percent to CNY2.6 billion in the second quarter.

CATL, the world's biggest maker of electric vehicle batteries, has rolled out a repair service for its batteries using cell-to-pack technology to reduce expenses for car owners and seek a new growth driver. Replacing a battery typically costs around CNY100,000, while the new repair costs can be as low as CNY10,000.

China has announced its first batch of nine pilot projects for liquefied green fuels as part of efforts to meet its 30/60 environmental targets. The projects, which use renewable energy to produce e-fuels, include five for methanol, three for ammonia, and one for ethanol, according to the National Energy Administration's recent notice. Eight are located in northeastern China, known for abundant renewable resources, while one is in the country’s economically developed east.

Ingka Group, parent of Swedish retail giant Ikea, has invested in Shanghai-based Re-Mall Environmental Protection New Material, a Chinese recycler of consumer packaging waste. Ingka, which operates 39 Ikea stores and 10 shopping malls under the Livat brand on the Chinese mainland, said the investment is a commitment to tackle the global waste problem.

Nine Chinese mainland universities and research institutes, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Fudan University, together with five Hong Kong universities and one from Macao jointly initiated a life science open alliance today to promote the technological innovation and integrated development of the life science industry, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education.

Asia-Pacific highlights

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will chair the tenth Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Anning, Yunnan from August 14 to 15, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry announced on Wednesday. The Informal Discussion Between the Foreign Ministers of China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand will be held on the sidelines of the LMC Foreign Ministers' Meeting, the spokesperson said.

Agriculture ministers of China, South Korea and Japan held their fourth trilateral meeting in South Korea's western port city of Incheon on Monday, the first since its last edition in China in 2018. The meeting focused on issues including food security, animal diseases, and sustainable agriculture, according to a joint statement.

U.S. tariff rhetorics won't significantly alter global trade, as America's expanding fiscal deficit will sustain its import demand, David E. Sumual, chief economist at Bank Central Asia, Indonesia's largest private bank, said in a recent interview with the 21st Century Business Herald. Sumual said lower production costs in Southeast Asia, coupled with exchange rate factors, will prompt the U.S. to increase consumer goods imports from the region. Sumual noted ASEAN's local currency settlement (LCS) has expanded, with intra-ASEAN trade settled in local currencies reaching 25 percent in 2024, up from 10 percent in 2019, reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar. He believes with growing China-ASEAN trade, LCS may advance faster in ASEAN+3, and the Chinese yuan will be the best choice for regional currency diversification.

China to provide loan interest subsidy plans for personal consumption