China Press Digest: Thursday, August 31

     BEIJING (MNI) - The following are highlights from the China press for

Thursday, August 31:

     Twenty-five publicly traded banks had a collective daily profit of CNY4.3

billion in the first half of this year, after efforts to reduce the issuance

scale of negotiable certificates of deposit and improvements in asset quality

led to a rebound in earnings, the China Securities Journal reported Thursday.

Statements from the 25 listed banks, whose stocks trade as A shares, showed a

net profit of CNY774.6 billion collectively in the first half of the year,

CNY36.3 billion more than the same period last year, a 4.92% increase. The

newspaper cited analysts as saying that banks' revenue would improve further in

the third quarter. Because deleveraging in the financial sector is a continuous

process, several managers of listed banks told the newspaper they expected money

market rates in the second half to remain high, putting some pressure on profit

growth. (China Securities Journal)

     Bai Yingzi, head of the reform department at the State-owned Assets

Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, said Wednesday

there would be no set timetable or specific number target for the consolidation

of enterprises operated by the central government, the 21st Century Business

Herald reported Thursday. Bai said the commission would aim for a more

reasonable resource allocation, more precise development strategies and more

efficiency. He stressed that supply-side reform would be the main theme of the

next stage of restructuring. (21st Century Business Herald)

     Rental home prices in the Xiongan New Zone, the state-level district China

established as a new development hub for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, have

surged to twice or even four times what they were before the zone was created,

Caixin magazine reported Thursday. The government is placing controls on the

housing market to tackle the problem, the magazine said. Beijing has designated

the district to be the location of "non-core" functions of the capital, and

companies, universities and government agencies are expected to move in and

increase demand for housing, leading to a jump in prices. The local government

in Rongcheng Township, where prices for rentals were up two to four times and

office rental prices were up two to three times, said the main reason for the

rise was the arrival of 65 large companies to the area. (Caixin)

     More than 30 cities have issued new policies on developing the rental

housing market as China enters a "rental era" for property development, the

Economic Information Daily reported Thursday. With the addition of Hangzhou on

Wednesday, 11 of the 12 cities the central government designated as pilot cities

to develop the rental housing market have created new policies to support the

initiative. Analysts told the newspaper that the property market's increasing

focus on rentals will reduce unreasonable demand for home purchases. The

newspaper also cited an analyst who said that the expansion of rentals would be

a major change in the property market. In China's cities, 160 million

individuals, or 21% of the permanent population, are renting houses, according

to data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. Mao Daqing,

founder of UrWork, a work space sharing company, projects that China's rental

market volume will reach CNY3 trillion in the next decade, with 230 million

individuals renting houses, the newspaper said. (Economic Information Daily)

--MNI Beijing Bureau; +86 (10) 8532-5998; email: iris.ouyang@marketnews.com

--MNI Beijing Bureau; +86 (10) 8532-5998; email: rich.dirks@marketnews.com

--MNI BEIJING Bureau; +1 202-371-2121; email: john.carter@mni-news.com

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