Hi everyone. I’m Stephanie LI.
大家好，我是主持人李莹亮。
Coming up on today’s program.
重点提要
China home prices in February rose for first time in 18 months;
Baidu unveils the highly anticipated Ernie Bot in a pre-recored demonstration.
Here’s what you need to know about China in the past 24 hours
中国经济要闻
China’s home prices rose in February for the first time in 18 months, a sign that government efforts to stabilize the property market are starting to pay off.
New home prices in 70 cities, excluding state-subsidized housing, gained 0.3 percent after being unchanged in January, the National Bureau of Statistics reported Thursday. Prices snapped an 18-month decline in the secondary market, rising 0.12 percent.
In February, 55 out of 70 large and medium-sized cities saw month-on-month increases in new home prices, up from 36 in January, according to NBS. Meanwhile, 40 cities witnessed higher resale home prices, up from 13 in the previous month.
Remarking on the data, Sheng Guoqing, the bureau's senior statistician, said the effect of government policies to stabilize the property market gradually appeared and the housing demand was also further unleashed.
New home prices in four first-tier cities edged up 0.2 percent, same with January, while those of the 31 second-tier cities gained 0.4 percent, picking up pace from the 0.1-percent increase a month earlier. New housing in 35 third-tier cities saw the prices up 0.3 percent, reversing a 0.1-percent drop registered in January.
Warming signs were also seen on the second-hand market as prices went up 0.7 percent and 0.1 percent month on month in first and second-tier cities, respectively, and ended a losing streak to stay flat in third-tier cities.
The official data came after figures from China Real Estate Information Corp showed home sales rose last month for the first time in 20 months, with that rise partly helped by a low comparison base last year when the Lunar New Year holiday fell in February.
Property investment and sales data from the NBS yesterday also indicate that a real estate recovery is taking shape. The amount of real estate space completing construction reached 131.8 million square meters, up 8 percent year-on-year, among which 97.8 million square meters of residential space was finished during the January-February period, up 9.7 percent from a year ago.
From January to February, commercial housing sales fell 3.6 percent year-on-year, edging down 0.1 percent to 1.55 trillion yuan in terms of value over the same period of the previous year, the NBS said. The figures for residential real estate are more encouraging as housing sales saw a year-on-year growth of 3.5 percent in terms of value.
3月16日，国家统计局最新发布70城房价数据显示，2月份，商品住宅销售价格环比总体上涨。
国家统计局城市司首席统计师绳国庆解读称：“2023年2月份，随着政策效果逐步显现及住房需求进一步释放，70个大中城市中商品住宅销售价格环比上涨城市个数继续增加，各线城市商品住宅销售价格环比总体上涨，一线城市商品住宅销售价格同比上涨、二三线城市同比降幅收窄。”
业内人士指出，2月70城新房价格指数持续下跌17个月后首次转涨，充分体现了房地产市场回暖的特征，这是政策效果逐步显现及住房需求进一步释放的结果。预计随着交易数据的继续转好，房价指数也将持续趋稳。
数据显示，2月份，70个大中城市中，新建商品住宅和二手住宅销售价格环比上涨城市分别有55个和40个，比上月分别增加19个和27个。
具体来看，2月份，一线城市新建商品住宅销售价格环比上涨0.2%，涨幅与上月相同；二手住宅销售价格环比上涨0.7%，涨幅比上月扩大0.3个百分点。二线城市新建商品住宅销售价格环比上涨0.4%，涨幅比上月扩大0.3个百分点；二手住宅销售价格环比由上月下降0.3%转为上涨0.1%。三线城市新建商品住宅销售价格环比由上月下降0.1%转为上涨0.3%；二手住宅销售价格环比由上月下降0.4%转为持平。
由此可见，2月份，一二三线城市无论是新房还是二手房房价都实现了环比上涨或持平，这也证明了楼市的整体回暖。易居研究院研究总监严跃进称：“根据简单算术平均计算，2月份全国70个城市新建商品住宅价格指数环比涨幅为0.3%，同比涨幅为-1.9%。2021年9月全国70城房价指数由正转负，随后房价指数下跌持续了17个月，属于历史罕见的大降温。而2023年2月份70城新房房价指数首次由负转正，带来了更大的市场信心，这充分说明中国房地产市场开始走出‘跌跌不休’的区间，重回复苏通道。”
Moving on to regional highlights
区域观察
Beijing has become one of the latest localities in China to adopt the China-Europe freight train platform. Beijing sends its first China-Europe freight train service on Thursday, which carries 55 40-foot containers worth of auto parts, apparel, home appliances and construction material. The train will enter Russia via Manzhouli Port in China's Inner Mongolia before arriving in Moscow with the 9,000-kilometer journey taking about 18 days to complete.
北京地区首趟中欧班列成功开行：3月16日9时许，一列满载汽车配件、建材、家电、铜版纸、布料、服装、家居等货物的中欧班列从北京平谷马坊站驶出。该班列是从北京地区首发的中欧班列，共55个40英尺集装箱，将经由满洲里铁路口岸出境，一路向西直达俄罗斯首都莫斯科，全程约9000公里，预计运行18天左右抵达。
Greater Bay Area, Greater future
新使命，大未来
Hong Kong and the mainland on Wednesday signed an agreement to work together to speed up the building of an international innovative technology hub in the SAR. Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang said Hong Kong plays an indispensable role in the nation’s self-reliance on high-value IT industry. Meanwhile, Chief Executive John Lee noted that the agreement will bring about more profound collaboration between the two sides in areas such as research and development, sharing of resources and exchange of personnel.
科技部与香港签署文件：3月15日，香港特区行政长官李家超与部长王志刚会面并共同见证特区政府和科技部签署《内地与香港关于加快建设香港国际创新科技中心的安排》。据悉，该文件将作为未来两地科技创新合作的政策指南和行动纲领，主要在共同深化科研合作、推动创新资源共享、助力科研成果转化、促进人员交流、发挥香港国际化优势等方面加强合作，加快建设香港国际创新科技中心。科技部部长王志刚表示，此次签署是进一步推动香港建设国际创新科技中心的重要一步，标志着内地与香港科技合作打开新篇章。
Guangdong government is supporting the Guangzhou Futures Exchange to develop weather futures, which help businesses such as farming and renewable energy hedge against losses caused by unexpected changes in the weather pattern. The local government will also help to set up research institutes for the investment and financing of weather derivatives, it said Tuesday.
广东支持广期所研发上市天气期货：3月14日，广东省人民政府印发《广东省加快推进气象高质量发展实施意见》提出，探索建设气候投融资研究机构，发展碳信用气象服务技术。支持广州期货交易所研发上市天气期货，开展新能源产业极端天气风险规避服务。
Next on industry and company news
产业及公司新闻
Chinese airlines are rapidly scaling up the number of overseas flights following the country's lifting of travel restrictions. Air China's flight capacity for international routes in February was up 167.4 percent year-on-year, following China Eastern Airlines' 425.9 percent increase and China Southern Airlines' 317 percent jump, according to operational data released by the carriers on Wednesday. Similar growth was also seen in two major private airlines, Spring Airlines and Juneyao Air. Data from information provider VariFlight showed that accumulated passenger flights as of Sunday was 25,900, an increase of 187 percent over the same period last year, but a decrease of 86 percent from the same period in 2019.
多家航司2月国际运力“狂飙”：截至3月15日晚间，中国国航、中国东航、南方航空、春秋航空、吉祥航空等五家航司陆续公布2023年2月运营数据。数据显示，国航、东航、南航、春秋、吉祥五大航司国际航线的客运运力投入同比分别增超1.6倍、4倍、3倍、27倍及近11倍。国际航线方面，据航旅纵横数据显示，2月国内航司的国际航线旅客运输量超83万人次，同比增长超五倍。票价方面，2月国际航线平均票价有下降趋势，环比下降近两成。尽管2月国际客运日均航班量、运力有较大提升，但国际航班量与2019年正常水平相比仍相差甚远。
Chinese search engine giant Baidu on Thursday unveiled its much-anticipated AI-powered chatbot known as Ernie Bot. Billionaire founder Robin Li took to the stage Thursday, showing Ernie Bot’s multimodal ability to generate text, images, audio, and videos in a series of pre-recorded demo videos. Baidu’s Ernie has all-around skills, Li said, as it can answer complicated questions, write poems, as well as generating images and videos based on prompts. Ernie Bot will be open to an initial group of users with invitation codes starting today, and companies can apply to embed the bot into their products via Baidu's cloud platform. The limited presentation of Ernie Bot failed to match market hopes and Baidu's shares in Hong Kong tumbled as much as 10 percent today before getting back some ground to end 6 percent down.
百度发布文心一言：3月16日14时，百度召开新闻发布会，百度CEO李彦宏宣布正式推出大语言模型生成式AI产品“文心一言”。李彦宏展示了文心一言在文学创作、商业文案创作、数理推算、中文理解、多模态生成五个使用场景中的综合能力。李彦宏表示，大模型将不仅仅影响搜索行业，而且能让各行各业的企业离客户更近。李彦宏表示，有机构预测，在人工智能的帮助下，到2030年，脑力劳动者的生产效率可以提升4倍。此外，3月16日起，首批用户即可通过邀请测试码体验文心一言，后续将陆续开放给更多用户。今天百度盘中股价跌幅一度扩大超10%，收盘跌幅收窄至6%。
Chinese AI pioneer SenseTime unveiled what it called the "largest multimodal open-source large-language model" on Tuesday. Named Intern 2.5, the model was jointly developed by SenseTime, Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Tsinghua University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The model's cross-modal open-task processing ability can provide efficient and accurate perception and understanding support for general scenarios such as autonomous driving and robots, SenseTime added.
商汤发布通用大模型“书生2.5”：商汤科技14日发布多模态多任务通用大模型“书生（INTERN）2.5”，其图文跨模态开放任务处理能力可为自动驾驶、机器人等通用场景任务提供感知和理解能力支持。据了解，“书生（INTERN）”最初版本由商汤科技、上海人工智能实验室、清华大学、上海交通大学在2021年11月首次共同发布。“书生2.5”拥有30亿参数，不仅是世界上开源模型中ImageNet准确度最高、规模最大的模型，也是物体检测标杆数据集COCO中唯一超过65.0 mAP的模型。目前，“书生2.5”多模态通用大模型已在通用视觉开源平台OpenGVLab开源。
Philips' air conditioner business operator in China was ruled to pay Chinese white goods giant Gree Electric Appliance 2.5 million yuan for two patent infringement charges. Nanjing Zhipu Supply Chain Management should immediately stop manufacturing five Philips-branded electrical products that infringed Gree's invention patent rights and pay the Chinese firm compensations of 2.5 million yuan for the two charges within 10 days, according to a ruling of the Xi'an Intermediate People's Court in Shaanxi province.
格力告赢“飞利浦空调”专利侵权：3月15日消息，格力电器与飞利浦空调之间的纷争有了新进展。今年3月，陕西省西安市中级人民法院（做出两项判决，要求南京智浦供应链管理有限公司立即停止制造、销售侵权产品，并合计赔偿格力电器250万元。此前，格力电器曾于2022年9月以南京智浦及西安华讯得贸易有限公司侵害其专利权发起两项起诉。其中，南京智浦是飞利浦空调商标持有者，并负责飞利浦空调中国运营业务；华讯得是飞利浦空调销售商。
Earnings reports express
财报速递
Shares of Ping An Insurance fell after net profit at the Chinese insurance giant shrank for the third straight year in 2022 because its investment income plunged amid fluctuations in the capital market. Net profit fell 17.6 percent to 83.8 billion yuan last year from 2021, while revenue fell 5.9 percent to 1.1 trillion yuan. Profit from life and health insurance remained Ping An Insurance’s primary source of income but slumped 18.5 percent to 48.5 billion yuan, while that from property insurance plunged over 45 percent to 8.8 billion yuan. The declines were mainly dragged down by the firm’s investment income, which fell 29.3 percent to 101.8 billion yuan in the period. Operating profit excluding short-term investment fluctuations and other non-operational factors edged up 0.3 percent to 148.4 billion yuan, the company noted. Meanwhile, Ping An Insurance’s profit from its banking unit Ping An Bank rose 25.3 percent to 26.4 billion yuan last year from 2021.
平安集团去年营运利润1484亿：3月15日，中国平安发布2022年度财报，成为首家披露正式业绩的A股上市险企。数据显示，中国平安实现归属于母公司股东的营运利润1483.65亿元，同比增长0.3%；净利润为837.74亿元，同比下降17.6%；拟每股派息2.42元。寿险及健康险业务，2022年运营利润1129.8亿元，同比增加16.4%；净利润为493.64亿元，同比下滑18.2%；在产险方面，2022年平安产险原保险保费收入2980.38亿元，同比增长10.4%，净利润为88.79亿元，同比下降45.2%。银行方面，2022年平安银行实现营业收入1798.95亿元，同比增长6.2%；净利润455.16亿元，同比增长25.3%。截至2022年底，平安银行不良贷款率1.05%，较年初微升0.03个百分点。
Switching gears to financial news
金融市场消息
China EximBank, a major policy bank in China, announced on Tuesday that it has achieved the first loan cooperation in yuan with Saudi National Bank, the largest bank in Saudi Arabia, facilitating financial cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The funds will be preferentially used to meet the demand of China-Saudi Arabia trade projects, China EximBank said.
进出口银行与沙特国家银行成功落地首笔人民币贷款合作：15日，进出口银行表示，与沙特阿拉伯国家银行成功落地首笔人民币贷款合作，贷款资金将优先满足中沙贸易项下的资金需求。进出口银行首次与阿拉伯国家地区金融机构开展的人民币贷款合作，有助于充分发挥政策性金融职能作用，促进“一带一路”沿线国家资金融通、贸易畅通，实现互利共赢。
China’s holdings of US treasury bonds fell for the sixth consecutive month in January to the lowest since June 2010. China, US’s second biggest creditor after Japan, cut its debt holdings by USD7.7 billion to USD859.4 billion in January from the previous month, data from the US Department of Treasury showed yesterday. The figure has stayed below the USD1 trillion threshold for 10 months in a row.
1月中国继续减持美债：美东时间3月15日，美国财政部公布了2023年1月的国际资本流动报告，日本和中国仍为美国国债的前两大海外“债主”。中国（大陆）1月持有美国国债8594亿美元，环比去年12月减少77亿美元，为连续第6个月减持美国国债，续创2010年6月以来新低。且自去年4月起，中国的持仓连续10个月低于1万亿美元。
Wrapping up with a quick look at the stock market
股市收盘情况
Chinese and Hong Kong stocks fell on Thursday, as troubles at top lender Credit Suisse stoked fears of a banking crisis. China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite lost 1.1 percent and the Shenzhen Component fell 1.5 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index also closed 1.7 percent lower, and the TECH index dropped 1.4 percent.
A股港股走低：周四A股大盘全天低开低走，截至收盘，沪指跌1.12%，深成指跌1.54%，创业板指跌1.51%，两市全天成交额8450亿元，北向资金净买入7.87亿元。港股恒生指数跌1.72％、恒生科技指数跌1.41％
Biz Word of the Day
财经词汇划重点
Weather future is a type of weather derivative where the payoffs are based on the aggregate difference in the measured weather variable, usually the recorded temperature, over a fixed period. Weather futures enable businesses to protect themselves against losses caused by unexpected shifts in weather conditions.
天气期货，是天气指数期货的简称。作为一种创新型衍生品，天气期货采用期货交易形式，以各类天气指数为交易标的。天气衍生品是指为了对冲天气事件造成的交易量风险，而开发出来的以温度、降雨、降雪、风等天气指标作为基础标的的期权、期货，有助于规避频发的天气灾害造成的经济损失，形成除保险之外的另一种更为行之有效的天气灾害保值手段。
Executive Editor: Sonia YU
Editor: LI Yanxia
Host: Stephanie LI
Writer: Stephanie LI
Sound Editor: Stephanie LI
Graphic Designer: ZHENG Wenjing, LIAO Yuanni
Produced by 21st Century Business Herald Dept. of Overseas News.
Presented by SFC
编委: 于晓娜
策划、编辑：李艳霞
播音：李莹亮
撰稿：李莹亮
音频制作：李莹亮
设计：郑文静、廖苑妮
21世纪经济报道海外部 制作
南方财经全媒体集团 出品
(作者：李莹亮 编辑：李艳霞）