China-US trade talks continued in Beijing on April 30 and concluded on May 1. The next round of negotiations will take place in Washington DC on May 8.
“Today ambassador Lighthizer and secretary Mnuchin concluded productive meetings with China’s vice premier Liu He,” Sarah Sanders, White House press secretary, said in a May 1 statement. “The discussions remain focused toward making substantial progress on important structural issues and rebalancing the U.S.-China trade relationship.”
The official announcement from the Chinese side gave little detail on this week’s meetings.
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China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released its April Purchasing Managers’ Index on Tuesday. The official PMI fell to 50.1%, after a stronger reading of 50.5% in March. Although both the production and new orders sub-indexes fell back, they remained in expansionary territory.
The new orders sub-index fell slightly to 51.4% from 51.6% in March. The employment sub-index fell by 0.4 percentage points to 47.2% from March’s reading.
By enterprise type, manufacturing PMI for small enterprises went up by 0.5 points in April while the index declined for large and medium enterprises by 0.3 points and 0.8 points respectively.
Non-manufacturing PMI declined to 54.3% from 54.8% in March.
“Beijing has been sounding less dovish in the past two weeks,” Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, said on Tuesday. “We believe today’s PMI will help convince Beijing to become a bit more dovish, especially in its monetary easing stance.”
Lu further predicted that onshore interest rates and bond yields will moderate in the next weeks.
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On Tuesday, Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, promised 12 measures that will further open up the Chinese banking and insurance industries. The promise was made during an interview with three state media outlets on Tuesday.
According to Guo, the regulator will scrap a rule that blocks Chinese or foreign banks owning more than 20% of domestic commercial lenders.
The regulator will also lift the $10bn total asset requirement for foreign banks to establish onshore subsidiaries and the $20bn total asset requirement for them to establish onshore branches.
The other measures include loosening the requirement for Chinese and foreign financial institutions to invest in and establish consumer finance companies onshore, removing the $1bn total asset requirement for foreign financial institutions to hold stocks of onshore trusts, and abolishing the approval process imposed on foreign-owned banks if they want to provide renminbi services.
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The Silk Road Fund, a Beijing-based investment fund dedicated to support the Belt and Road Initiative, signed a Framework Agreement with Surbana Jurong, a Singaporean urban and infrastructure consultancy, on Monday.
China and Singapore will jointly put in $500m to set up a China-Singapore Co-Investment Platform, which will invest in greenfield infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia region. Each partner will invest equal amounts in these projects.
Surbana Jurong Capital, the investment arm of the Group, will select the projects.
Chinese premier Li Keqiang and Singapore premier Lee Hsien Loong were present at the signing ceremony.
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On Tuesday, the Ministry of Finance urged local governments to accelerate the process of issuing local government bonds and finish the process by the third quarter.