More Chinese are choosing to travel during the Spring Festival holiday rather than return to their hometowns for family reunions. This year, 2.98 billion journeys are expected to be made during Spring Festival. But the number of trips made from a smaller city to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or even overseas – called reverse Spring Festival trips – are also increasing. Ctrip said it has seen an 80% increase in such trip bookings compared with last year’s holiday. Family travel packages account for more than 60% of all bookings. Reasons behind the shift are complicated. Besides the difficulty to book tickets back to a person’s hometown, many complained about new challenges brought by air pollution and even family pressure to marry. Many families opt for warmer destinations away from polluted Chinese cities. Many residents from Beijing, Tianjin and Shijiazhuang in Hebei province chose Sanya as their top travel destination to escape the cold and smoggy weather.

Finance

• Banks in Shanghai saw their outstanding bad loans and non-performing loan (NPL) ratio drop last year as lenders curtailed their loans to certain sectors such as property. The NPL ratio dropped by 0.23 percentage points from the beginning of last year to 0.68% at the end of December, when outstanding bad loans shrank CNY7.6 billion to CNY40.4 billion, the Shanghai Office of China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) said.
• China’s three largest Bitcoin exchanges BTCC, Huobi and OkCoin have started charging trading fees of 0.2% per transaction to “further curb market manipulation and extreme volatility.” The Bitcoin price soared to near-record highs in the first week of this year, drawing attention from Chinese regulators. On January 11, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) launched spot checks on the Bitcoin exchanges to look at a range of possible rule violations.
• China’s interbank bond market will be included in a new index under Bloomberg Barclays indexes to reflect the growing importance of the country’s financial markets, Bloomberg said. The newly created China aggregate index will be launched on March 1. The index will track government securities valued at more than CNY5 billion and corporate securities worth above CNY1.5 billion.
• The value of international yuan payments fell 29.5% in 2016, while the yuan’s share as an international payments currency dropped by 0.63 percentage points to 1.68% at the year’s end, according to SWIFT. The Chinese yuan, which was the fifth-most-used currency worldwide in 2015, was overtaken by the Canadian dollar last year. SWIFT’s Michael Moon attributed the fall in yuan use to the slowdown of the Chinese economy, the volatility of the yuan exchange rate and regulatory measures on capital outflows.
• Chinese authorities plan to keep their budget deficit target for 2017 at the same level as last year at 3% of gross domestic product (GDP), although there would be room for a small increase if needed.
• China doesn’t meet the U.S. criteria to be designated a currency manipulator, according to People’s Bank of China Vice Governor Yi Gang. U.S. President Donald Trump has not yet acted on his campaign promise to label China a currency manipulator. Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he would not name China a manipulator on his first day in office, but would “talk to them first”. U.S. legislation in 2015 set three criteria for labelling a nation a currency manipulator: it had to have a significant trade surplus with the U.S., a current account surplus, and engage in persistent one-sided intervention in the foreign exchange market. Yi said China met only the first of these criteria.
• The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has raised the interest it charges on medium-term loans to banks from 3% to 3.1% and the six-month rate from 2.85% to 2.95%, marking the first money market rate increase since 2014. The PBOC faces a delicate balancing act: on the one hand, it has to keep sufficient liquidity in the banking system to ensure banks have enough money to lend out; but on the other, it needs to avoid excessive easing to manage asset bubbles and yuan depreciation pressure. The interest rate rise shows that China’s central bank is leaning towards tightening.

Foreign trade

• Beijing said it will support ongoing deliberation of two free trade arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region after the United States quit the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The Chinese government is promoting the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Free-Trade Agreement of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP).
• The Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said that the EU extension of anti-dumping measures on imports of Chinese aluminum wheels is confusing and disappointing. The European Commission is extending anti-dumping measures for another five years with duty remaining at 22.3%. Wang Hejun, Director of the Ministry’s Trade Remedy and Investigation Bureau, said it is “unfair” to blame the weak performance of European Union aluminum wheel makers on Chinese enterprises, since the true reason is the global economic downturn.

Macro-economy

• The number of internet users in China – already the world’s highest – reached 731 million in December, up 6.2% from the end of December 2015. 695 million, or 95.1% of the total, are going online using their cellphones. As of December 12, the number of people in China who used online payments had reached 475 million, up 14.0% year-on-year.
• Shanghai consumers lost confidence in the fourth quarter amid global political worries and a yuan depreciation. The index of Consumer Confidence in Shanghai, a quarterly gauge compiled by the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, fell 4.3 points from the third quarter to 111.9 in the October-December quarter.
• China’s population is expected to peak at about 1.45 billion by 2030, according to the national population development plan for 2016-2030. In the period between 2021 and 2030, China will witness a decrease in the number of people of working age, more elderly people, still active population migration and diversified family patterns. The tensions between population, and resources and environment, will not fundamentally change, according to the plan.
• A Central Commission for Integrated Military and Civilian Development, headed by President Xi Jinping, has been set up to increase integration between China’s military and civilian industries and create major defense manufacturers able to compete with companies such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing in the United States. It may also end the monopoly of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the defense industry.
• Profits for China’s industrial firms rose the most in three years in 2016 at 8.5% as a construction boom fueled a rally in prices of building materials from steel to cement, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. Profits in December rose 2.3% year-on-year to CNY844.4 billion, down from 14.5% in November. The NBS said the slower profit growth in December was due to volatility in oil prices and adjustments by some firms to their product structure.
• China’s central government plans steps that will reduce the influence that local governments have on economic statistics. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) will move its teams out of joint offices they share with regional counterparts around the country and move to separate facilities.

Mergers & acquisitions

• China’s State Grid has concluded the purchase of a majority stake in Brazil’s electricity firm CPFl for USD4.5 billion. State Grid operates 10,000 kilometers of power transmission lines in Brazil. CPFl is Brazil’s largest private power firm and the country’s third-largest utility provider overall. It supplies power to 24 million people and is a leading supplier of renewable energy.

Real estate

• Yeung Kin-man and his wife, whose private company Biel Crystal Manufactory is involved in making iPhones, has paid HKD2.8 billion for a luxury home on The Peak at No. 1 & 3 Pollock’s Path, Hong Kong, measuring 51,000 square feet. The couple are ranked eighth among Hong Kong’s 50 wealthiest people, with a combined net worth estimated at USD8.4 billion as of January, according to Forbes’ latest list.
• HNA Group, the parent of Hainan Airlines, has bought its third parcel of development land at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak, bringing its total expenditure there to HKD20 billion in three months. The company’s unit Top Genius Holdings paid HKD5.53 billion for Kai Tak Area 1L Site 1. HNA’s winning bid translates into HKD13,000 per square foot, about 27% higher than the price struck in December by K Wah International, which paid HKD5.87 billion, or HKD10,220 per sq ft, for its second parcel at Kai Tak.
• China’s overseas real estate investment will likely drop this year after reporting growth in 2016 in the wake of Beijing’s tightened foreign-exchange control. According to global property service firm JLL, outbound real estate investment jumped 53% to USD33 billion last year. China surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest outbound property investor in 2016. The USD33 billion figure does not include overseas home purchases by Chinese residents.

Stock markets

• Hong Kong lost out to both New York’s Nasdaq and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in terms of attracting new tech listings by value, according to a new study of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which suggested that Hong Kong should set up a third board for tech listings. The Nasdaq ranked as the top tech listing venue worldwide last year with 21 firms raising HKD15.9 billion.
• Shares in Yanzhou Coal Mining, the listed unit of China’s fourth largest coal miner Yankuang Group, surged as much as 3.2% after it announced plans to buy coal mining assets in Australia for USD2.45 billion from Rio Tinto. The deal comes after the price of power station coal delivered at Newcastle port in Australia almost doubled in November from June to a four-year high of USD100 a ton after China, the world’s largest coal producer, slashed output last year. Yancoal will become Australia’s fourth largest coal producer with projected 2017 output of 32 million tons, up from 13 million tons in 2016.

Travel

• More “secret” courtyards in Beijing’s Forbidden City are to be opened to the public, bringing the open area to 85% of the total by 2025. At present, about one third of the ancient Imperial Palace remains closed to the public.
• Hong Kong airport will soon open e-channels to check passports on departure. People aged 11 or older with electronic passports will be able to use the system, which is expected to cut the average processing time from 50 seconds per person to 20 seconds. The service will not be available for arriving passengers. The number of foreign visitors to Hong Kong last year climbed 3% to 14.09 million.
• Holiday company Club Med, owned by Chinese group Fosun, plans to open 15 new resorts worldwide in the next three years, including one in China and one in Japan in 2017, and to upgrade nine of its existing sites. In France, still Club Med’s biggest market, the group plans to open one new mountain village resort each year until 2019. Club Med has five resorts in China.

• Su Rong, 66, former Vice Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top parliamentary advisory body, was sentenced to life in prison for corruption involving CNY116 million. Su’s property and expenditure exceeded his legal income and he could not explain how he obtained assets worth more than CNY80 million.
• Border-control police in Guangdong province detained 1,879 foreigners for entering the country illegally last year, a 190% increase compared with 2015. The total number of people detained for illegally entering or exiting the country was 2,571, an increase of 99.3% year-on-year.
• Ma Xingrui was elected Governor of Guangdong province at the fifth session of the 12th Guangdong Provincial People’s Congress. Ma highlighted developing an innovation-driven economy and the revitalization of eastern, western and northern Guangdong as important tasks this year. Guangdong’s GDP in 2016 surpassed CNY7.9 trillion, up 7.5% year-on-year.
• Wang Tianpu, former General Manager of China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec), China’s largest oil refining and petrochemical enterprise, has been sentenced to 15 and a half years in prison and fined CNY3.2 million for corruption and accepting bribes, in a verdict by the Nanchang Intermediate People’s Court in Jiangxi province. Between 2003 and 2014, Wang accepted bribes totaling CNY33.48 million.

Bank of China (BOC) has become a new Structural Partner of the Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCCC).

Bank of China was formally established in February 1912 following the approval of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. From 1912 to 1949, the Bank served consecutively as the country’s central bank, international exchange bank and specialised international trade bank. Fulfilling its commitment to serving the public and developing China’s financial services sector, the Bank rose to a leading position in the Chinese financial industry and developed a good standing in the international financial community, despite many hardships and setbacks. After 1949, drawing on its long history as the state-designated specialised foreign exchange and trade bank, the Bank became responsible for managing China’s foreign exchange operations and provided vital support to the nation’s foreign trade development and economic infrastructure by its offering of international trade settlement, overseas fund transfer and other non-trade foreign exchange services.

During China’s reform and opening up period, the Bank seized the historic opportunity presented by the government’s strategy of capitalising on foreign funds and advanced technologies to boost economic development, and became the country’s key foreign financing channel by building up its competitive advantages in foreign exchange business. In 1994, the Bank was transformed into a wholly state-owned commercial bank. In August 2004, Bank of China Limited was incorporated. The Bank was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Stock Exchange in June and July 2006 respectively, becoming the first Chinese commercial bank to launch an A-Share and H-Share initial public offering and achieve a dual listing in both markets. In 2014, Bank of China was designated again as a Global Systemically Important Bank, becoming the sole financial institution from emerging economies to be designated as a Global Systemically Important Bank for four consecutive years.

More information about the BOC is available at its global website website and Belgian website.