Premier Li Keqiang made the remarks while chairing a symposium on stabilizing growth, held in Yunnan Province on 18 May. He highlighted efforts to stabilize the growth of market entities and shore up employment and people's basic livelihoods, underpinned by stable growth. Noting that the new wave of domestic COVID-19 resurgences and changes in the international situation have posed further downward pressure on the economy, Li stressed the importance of confidence, citing China's more than 150 million market entities, strong resilience and generally stable prices. He emphasized the importance of efforts to coordinate COVID-19 control with economic and social development in a more efficient way, and the importance of stepping up macro regulation.

Xi made the remarks when addressing the conference of the 70th anniversary of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) and the Global Trade and Investment Promotion Summit via video link. Xi stressed that with the world facing a pandemic and drastic changes both unseen in a century, economic globalization is experiencing headwinds, and the world is entering a new period of volatility and transformation. Now more than ever, business communities across the world yearn for peace and development, call for fairness and justice, and aspire for win-win cooperation. Xi also called for reinvigorating trade and investment, urging balancing pandemic response and economic development, and strengthening macroeconomic policy coordination across countries.

Commercial banks can reduce the lower limit of interest rates on first-home loans by 20 basis points off the benchmark loan prime rate, according to the People's Bank of China (PBC) and China's Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission on May 15. The cut aims to reinforce the principle that "housing is for living in, not for speculation," support better real estate policies based on local realities, and promote stable and healthy development of the property market. On top of the national housing policy change, local governments across the country also moved to roll out various policies, including relaxation of the restrictions on sales and personal housing provident fund loans and reduction of payment ratios.

The issuance of value-added tax (VAT) credit refunds to micro and small enterprises has been in place since April. Meanwhile, work towards refunding outstanding VAT credits to medium-sized and large companies will start ahead of schedule. The issuance of value-added tax (VAT) credit refunds to micro and small enterprises has been in place since April. Meanwhile, work towards refunding outstanding VAT credits to medium-sized and large companies will start ahead of schedule.

Chinese lenders bought 229.7 billion U.S. dollars worth of foreign currencies and sold 210.6 billion dollars' worth in April. That resulted in a net purchase of 19 billion dollars, said the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. China's development pattern of a stable forex market and balanced cross-border capital flows has remained unchanged. The tightening of monetary policies in major developed economies will have a spillover effect on the flows of international capital, but China's forex market has become more mature and resilient to allow it to adapt better to changes in the external environment.

Ever since the People's Bank of China announced in early April a list of 11 cities joining the trial use of the digital yuan, many first attempts have been made over the past month. Subsidies of up to 1 million yuan ($147,237) were granted in the form of e-CNY to new energy vehicle owners in Sanya, Hainan province on May 10, which was the first of its kind in the country. Another 4 million yuan in subsidies of the same type will be provided in the following months, according to the Bank of Communications Sanya branch. More than 200 companies in Shenzhen were linked to a new prepaid e-CNY platform on May 6, which was the first such application in China. The platform is first experimented in education and training institutions, gyms, and beauty and hair salons.

A handful of airlines are resuming flights between Shanghai and some domestic destinations as the financial hub has been making progress in preventing and containing the current COVID-19 outbreak, according to Shanghai-based carriers. Juneyao Air relaunched round-trip flights between Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Longyan of Fujian province on 16 May. At the initial recovery stage, flights are available every Monday, Wednesday and Sunday. Flights from Shanghai to Guiyang, Guizhou province; Shenyang, Liaoning province; Haikou, Hainan province; Sanming, Fujian province; Hohhot, Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, will gradually be offered

Under the re-organization proposal, the number of policy bureaus of the HKSAR government will increase from 13 to 15, while three new positions including a Deputy Chief Secretary for Administration, a Deputy Financial Secretary and a Deputy Secretary for Justice will be created. The re-organization included the setting up of a Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau, the splitting of the Transport and Housing Bureau into two policy bureaux, and expanding the Innovation and Technology Bureau into the Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau. The Home Affairs Bureau will also be restructured into the Home and Youth Affairs Bureau, while the Environment Bureau will be expanded and retitled as the Environment and Ecology Bureau, and the Food and Health Bureau will be revamped as the Health Bureau.

The country's fiscal revenue amounted to about 7.43 trillion yuan (about 1.1 trillion U.S. dollars) during the period, according to the Ministry of Finance. The central government and local governments collected 3.46 trillion yuan and 3.97 trillion yuan in fiscal revenue, down 5.7 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively. Tax revenue came in at 6.23 trillion yuan in the January-April period, down 7.6 percent year on year. Fiscal spending rose 5.9 percent year on year to 8.09 trillion yuan in the first four months.

The move came after the megacity has cut off the community transmission of COVID-19 in 15 out of its 16 districts. Commercial outlets such as shopping malls, department stores, supermarkets, convenience stores and pharmacies are among the first to gradually resume in-store operations in an orderly manner and with reduced capacity. Vegetable markets, restaurants, and hair salons will also gradually resume on-site business. At present, the number of people living in "closed management areas" has dropped to no more than 1 million, and the epidemic has been effectively brought under control, according to a press conference on COVID-19 prevention and control held on 16 May.

Telecom operators in several provinces have disabled the function of receiving text messages or phone calls from overseas by default to prevent cross-border telecom fraud and protect customer safety. The current method is not completely blocking overseas phone calls or messages, and people who need such services can apply to recover them. Operators must also inform their customers of the default settings and recovery application methods by text messages, effectively guaranteeing customers' right to know. About 60 percent of the fraud cases are the result of fake mobile apps, and fraud groups have widely capitalized on using virtual private networks, cloud voice calls, and foreign telecom operators to commit fraud, according to the criminal investigation bureau of the Ministry of Public Security.

China's strict COVID-19 controls will hamper foreign investment into the country for years to come as limits on travel block the pipeline for projects, the President of the American Chamber of Commerce warned. There are few signs that American companies are leaving the China market, but the years-long process of research and due diligence for projects has been delayed. The chamber's report cited market access restrictions, discriminatory regulations and intrusive cybersecurity requirements as among the main concerns of U.S. businesses. The restrictions are also leading foreign companies with supply chains in China to look for alternative sources to reduce disruption.

China's new economic development pattern of "dual circulation" is set to get a vital boost as authorities detailed an ambitious plan on how to build a national unified market to enable a more efficient and smooth flow of labor and goods across the country. Eyeing a comprehensive push for the country's market to evolve from being big to becoming powerful, authorities last month issued a guideline on accelerating the establishment of a unified domestic market that is efficient, rules-based, fair and open. The aim is to remove local protectionism, market segmentation and impediments restricting economic circulation to facilitate the smooth flow of products and resources on a larger scale.

China's top economic planner approved 38 fixed-asset investment projects with a combined investment totaling 533.3 billion yuan in the first four months of this year. In April, eight fixed-asset investment projects that primarily came from the information technology and energy industries were approved with the total investment reaching 18.8 billion yuan, according to the National Development and Reform Commission. Earlier data showed China's fixed-asset investment jumped 6.8 percent year on year to 15.35 trillion yuan in the first four months. Fixed-asset investment includes spending on infrastructure, property, machinery and other physical assets.

The country aims to spawn an array of small and medium-sized firms that focus on specialized high-end technologies and have superior supporting facilities by 2025, according to a circular jointly released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and 10 other government organs. A new ecology comprising enterprises of all sizes and featuring coordination, efficiency, integration and smoothness will be formed to shore up the industrial and supply chains. The circular proposed guiding large enterprises to share their design and development abilities and open their equipment and laboratory access to smaller counterparts.

The lower limit for interest rates on first-home loans at the national level used to be no less than the corresponding tenor of the loan prime rate, and it will be decreased by 20 basis points, according to a circular jointly released by the People's Bank of China (PBOC) and China's Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission. The move aims to reinforce the principle that "housing is for living in, not for speculation," support better real estate policies based on local realities, and promote the healthy development of the country's property market.

Retail sales of consumer goods, a significant indicator of China's consumption strength, went down 0.2 percent year on year to 13.81 trillion yuan (about 2 trillion U.S. dollars) in the January-April period, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed. In April alone, retail sales declined 11.1 percent from a year ago to 2.95 trillion yuan. Sales of non-daily necessities and the catering sector took a blow from the COVID-19 resurgence, dragging down the growth of China's overall retail sales. In April, catering revenues declined by 22.7 percent. Regions severely hit by COVID-19, such as the Yangtze River Delta and northeast China, saw retail sales plunge.

In April alone, China's surveyed urban unemployment rate was 6.1 percent, up 0.3 percentage points from March. The rate among those aged between 25 and 59, the majority of the labor market, stood at 5.3 percent. The surveyed unemployment rate in 31 major cities came in at 6.7 percent in April, according to the data. The surveyed urban unemployment rate is calculated based on the number of unemployed people who have participated in the employment survey in urban areas, including migrant workers in cities.