China state planner lays out further actions to boost economy but no new plans for major stimulus

Zheng Shanjie, chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, on Tuesday pledged a raft of actions to bolster the country’s economy during a highly-anticipated press conference.

But he stopped short of announcing any new major stimulus plans, underwhelming investors and weakening the rally in the mainland Chinese markets.

China will speed up special purpose bond issuance to local governments to support regional economic growth, the senior NDRC official said.

Zheng said ultra-long special sovereign bonds, totaling 1 trillion yuan, have been fully deployed to fund local projects, and he vowed that China will continue to issue ultra-long special treasury bonds next year.

The central government will release a 100 billion yuan investment plan for next year by the end of this month, ahead of schedule, a senior official added.

The NDRC head was speaking at a press briefing with four other key officials of the country’s economic planning agency. The briefing came as markets in mainland China returned from Golden Week, a weeklong holiday that started Sept. 30.

The rally in Chinese market lost steam as policymakers held back from delivering more stimulus measures. The CSI 300 blue chip index pared gains to a 5% rise, after skyrocketing over 10% on open. The Shanghai Composite Index and SZSE Component Index similarly dialed back gains to around 5% and 8%, respectively.

China is “fully confident” to achieve the full-year economic growth target this year, Zheng said, while pledging some measures to support the property market and boost domestic spending.

“The absence of specific figures may not be a negative sign”, Yue Su, principal economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said in a note. China’s “pro-growth policy stance remains unchanged.”

The economist kept her growth forecast for China unchanged at 4.7% this year and 4.8% in 2025, while anticipating that Beijing could arrange another 1 trillion to 3 trillion yuan of additional fiscal support to boost the real economy.

“Many western investors will take profits off the table today and wait to see if more money comes in,” Shaun Rein, partner and managing director at China Market Research Group told CNBC. They have had “too much froth as they hoped the government would launch a massive stimulus”.

“If there’s no fiscal stimulus with real meat and details, the rally will fade,” he added.

Last month, China’s top leaders had signaled a sense of urgency in confronting a long and painful economic downturn that has thrown into doubt the country’s ability to hit an annual growth target of “around 5%.”

Before the holiday, Chinese authorities had called for strengthening fiscal and monetary policy support at a monthly meeting of top Communist Party officials, and unveiled a flurry of stimulus measures aimed to put an end to the sliding property prices.

The stimulus blitz came as growth in the world’s second largest economy had slowed after a disappointing recovery from Covid-19 lockdowns, weighed down by lackluster domestic demand and a protracted property downturn.

In the first half of the year, China’s economy grew by 5.0% from a year earlier, meeting the central government’s target, while in the April-June quarter, its GDP growth missed expectations and grew by 4.7%, marking its slowest growth since the first quarter in 2023.

China’s latest consumer price index rose by 0.6% year on year in August, missing expectations of 0.7%, while the core-CPI, which strips out food and energy prices, climbed by 0.3%, a slower rise for a second-straight month.

Among a barrage of disappointing economic data, China’s factory activity also contracted for the fifth consecutive month in September, with the official PMI coming in at 49.8 in September. A PMI reading above 50 indicates expansion in activity, while a reading below that level points to contraction.

The Caixin PMI was 49.3 in the same period, the sharpest contraction in 14 months, driven by declining demand and a weakening labor market.

In March, Zheng said at a high-level press conference that China will “continue to strengthen macroeconomic policies.” It would involve coordination of fiscal, monetary, employment, industrial and regional policies, he said, as China continues to step up macro economic policy adjustment.

The NDRC chief also acknowledged that “there are still many difficulties and problems” in the process of achieving the country’s expected growth targets, according to CNBC’s translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.