China's property, stock markets see prominent improvement, transactions: official

China's property and stock markets made positive progresses in November, driven by the sustained effects of a series of incremental measures, said an official with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) at a press conference in Beijing on Monday.

Chinese authorities pledged in late September to reverse the property market downturn and stabilize the sector. Since then, the country has rolled out a slew of measures to prop up the market, including cutting mortgage rates, lowering down payment ratios and relaxing purchase restrictions.

In terms of the capital market, China has made headway in the utilization of its first monetary policy tool -- the Securities, Funds and Insurance companies Swap Facility (SFISF) program, to support market development.

With an initial scale of 500 billion yuan (about 70.04 billion U.S. dollars), the SFISF program allows eligible companies to use their less liquid assets as collateral in exchange for highly liquid assets such as treasury bonds and central bank bills. Through this tool, they can secure funds from the market for investment in the stock market.

"Driven by policies aimed at stabilizing the property market and boosting the capital market, notable improvements were observed in these sectors in October. Positive factors continued to accumulate in November, posting upbeat market transactions. In November, both the sales area and sales revenue of newly built commercial housing showed positive growth. Major cities have seen prominent improvement in housing sales. Meanwhile, stock trading activities became more active, with the trading volume and turnover value on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges both increasing by approximately 1.1 times year on year," said Fu Linghui, spokesman of the NBS.

The decline in the prices of commercial residential homes in China's 70 large and medium-sized cities narrowed on a year-on-year basis in November, data from the NBS showed on Monday.

In the four first-tier cities -- Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen -- new home prices dropped 4.3 percent year on year, a decline narrowing 0.3 percentage points from October.

Notably, Shanghai, China's economic hub, saw a 5 percent increase in new home prices last month, the NBS said.

China's property, stock markets see prominent improvement, transactions: official

China's property, stock markets see prominent improvement, transactions: official

China's property, stock markets see prominent improvement, transactions: official

China's property, stock markets see prominent improvement, transactions: official

The Republic of Korea (ROK) and China should cherish the historical experience of jointly resisting aggression and continue to work together for a prosperous future, said ROK President Lee Jae Myung.

At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Lee will pay a state visit to China from Jan 4 to 7. It will be Lee's first visit to China since he took office last year.

In an interview with China Media Group (CMG) in Seoul on Wednesday, Lee said that humanity must learn from the past to prevent the tragedy of war from repeating itself.

"While pursuing their own national interests to the fullest extent, countries must not harm the national interests of others, but should coexist peacefully. The act of invading other countries and massacring their people for one's own benefit must never be repeated. History of humanity often repeats itself, therefore we must learn from the past. In this regard, I believe the historical experience of ROK and China in resisting aggression and fighting together is invaluable. Of course, while historical experience is important, we cannot remain stuck in the past. For a better future for the people of both countries, we need to continuously explore possibilities for working together towards the future," said the president.

ROK president calls for learning lesson from anti-aggression history