Hi everyone. I’m Stephanie LI.
Coming up on today’s program
Beijing’s home viewing jumps after lifting curbs on suburban house buying;
China will extend tariff suspension on imported U.S. products.
Here’s what you need to know about China in the past 24 hours
Recent policy adjustments in major Chinese cities are fueling expectations that more policy fine-tuning and easing measures are likely in the coming months to support the real estate sector's steady recovery.
Sales offices of property projects under development in Beijing outside the Fifth Ring saw a significant increase in traffic over the past weekend. Even during the hottest hours, many homebuyers went out to view properties.
Beijing on Friday announced it would lift the limits on the number of home purchases outside the Fifth Ring for local residents to boost the local property market, effective Aug. 9. The Fifth Ring road is a ring-shaped expressway surrounding the city’s central urban area. The ring has a radius of around 16 kilometers, with the center being Tiananmen Square. The home purchase restriction on non-residents is still valid though.
Suburban areas are the main focus of homebuyers in Beijing. In terms of transaction volume, apartments outside the Fifth Ring accounted for 80 percent of the city’s new home sales and over 50 percent of second-hand house sales in the first seven months of the year, according to data from the China Index Academy.
Easing home-buying curbs will certainly have positive effects on Beijing’s property market, said Yan Yuejin, deputy director of the Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Institute. However, if the number of second-hand home listings in the city is not reduced, the recovery in new house demand would still be constrained, he added.
Official data showed that Beijing’s property market experienced a recovery in sales in the first half of the year, but the market slid again in July. New home sales plunged 30 percent from a year earlier and 28 percent from June last month, while pre-owned house sales dropped 16 percent and 18 percent, respectively.
Shanghai's housing market showed signs of recovery in July. Newly-built home prices averaged CNY71,353 per square meter, up 7.2 percent year-on-year, albeit with a soft decline month-on-month, according to property consultancy Centaline Shanghai.
Among China’s four first-tier cities, Guangzhou is the only one that has fully lifted home purchase restrictions. Meanwhile, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen still retain curbs for their core urban areas, with conditional relaxations in suburban areas.
While China's real estate sector is undergoing structural transformation, there are policy tools available to manage the transition, experts noted. The central government has emphasized the importance of meeting housing demand and preventing systemic risks — a dual focus that is likely to shape upcoming policy moves across major cities.
They added that the latest development may point to a trend of calibrated policy easing, especially in top-tier cities, and demonstrate stronger policy objective to stabilize the country's property market.
China will continue to suspend 24 percentage points of additional duty rate on imports from the United States within 90 days starting from 12:01 p.m. Tuesday, while retaining the remaining additional tariffs of 10 percent on those articles, Xinhua reported today, citing the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council. Also, China’s commerce ministry announced Tuesday that it has continued to suspend or removed export-control measures on some U.S. entities from Tuesday, in line with the consensus reached during the high-level China-U.S. economic and trade meeting in Stockholm, per another Xinhua report.
GBA express
China Resources Longdation plans to establish a center at its Wan Chai headquarters to source high-quality gerontechnology as well as elderly-friendly products from the mainland. Hong Kong Lawmaker Peter Douglas Koon Ho-ming, also the chairman of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, said the center could handle maintenance and after-sales services for mainland age-tech products, which are significantly more affordable than those in Hong Kong.
The Greater Bay Area Cultural and Sports Center in Guangzhou, marked its debut operation with a men's basketball competition on Sunday. The center includes a stadium with 60,000 seats, an indoor arena that can accommodate 20,000 people, and a water sports center equipped with a 50-meter standard swimming pool and diving pool, which can accommodate 4,000 people, along with related supporting facilities.
Industry and company news
China sees 13.278 million new market entities set up in the first half of 2025, led by culture, sports, and entertainment companies, which posted an impressive 17.5 percent year-on-year increase, latest data from the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) revealed on Tuesday. A total of 4.346 million new private enterprises were established, up 4.6 percent year-on-year, while foreign-funded entities grew by 4.1 percent to 33,000.
Car production in China jumped 13.3 percent in July from the year before to 2.591 million units, while vehicle sales soared 14.7 percent to 2.593 million autos, according to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. New energy vehicle production in China surged 26.3 percent in July from a year earlier to 1.243 million units, while electric car sales soared 27.4 percent to 1.262 million autos. NEV sales accounted for almost half of all new car sales at 48.7 percent.
China Earth Group denied the online rumor that the Chinese company will co-develop the world's first rare earth-backed Chinese yuan stablecoin with the People's Bank of China and Ant Group, reminding investors of potential risks. Ant Group denied the news yesterday.
Shanghai Clearing House yesterday announced it has dropped the requirements for agreement commitment documents for overseas central banks and similar institutions to open accounts to further optimize China’s bond market.
Asia-Pacific highlights
UnionPay is scheduled to debut in Brazil in 2025, local media reported. On Brazilian soil, the Asian country's institution intends to operate credit cards and integrate with PIX. The operation will be enabled by fintech Left, which is working to connect the Chinese company to banking networks, vending machines and ATMs in the country.
Singapore's economy grew slightly faster than initially estimated, prompting the government to upgrade the city state's growth forecast for this year. Singapore’s GDP rose by 4.4 percent year-on-year in the April-June quarter, government data showed on Tuesday, ahead of an advance estimate of a 4.3 percent gain released last month. The trade ministry raised its GDP growth forecast for 2025 to 1.5-2.5 percent from 0-2 percent, saying it largely reflected a better-than-expected first half performance.
Cambodia's trade with the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) member countries reached nearly USD23 billion in the first seven months of 2025, up 15.7 percent over the same period last year, said an official report on Monday.