Finance Minister Lan Foan said the central government would accelerate fiscal spending, including the issuance and use of ultra-long-term bonds and local government special-purpose bonds, in an article published on Wednesday in Study Times – a newspaper run by the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China.
Lan’s article echoed Wednesday’s meeting of the ruling party’s Politburo, a major decision-making body, which called for the thorough implementation of a “more proactive fiscal policy” and a “moderately loose” monetary policy to maximise their impact.
By the end of June, 1.8 trillion yuan (US$251 billion) of the 2 trillion yuan in debt-swap bonds allocated for 2025 had been issued, with 1.44 trillion yuan already used, the ministry said at a press conference last Friday.
In the first six months of 2025, China issued 7.88 trillion yuan worth of government bonds – a record high that marked a 35.28 per cent year-on-year increase, according to official data.
The average interest rate on these bonds fell by 43 basis points year-on-year, dropping to 1.52 per cent.