PANews reported on May 11 that the People's Bank of China (PBOC) released its "China Monetary Policy Implementation Report for the First Quarter of 2026" today, stating that GDP grew by 5% year-on-year in the first quarter, and monetary policy continued to be moderately loose to support the economy. The PBOC maintained ample liquidity through tools such as reverse repos, medium-term lending facilities, and treasury bond trading. At the end of March, the outstanding amount of total social financing and M2 grew by 7.9% and 8.5% year-on-year, respectively. The interest rate on structural tools was lowered by 0.25 percentage points, and the interest rates on newly issued corporate loans and personal housing loans in March were approximately 3.1%. The PBOC increased relending for agriculture and small businesses by 500 billion yuan, established a 1 trillion yuan relending facility for private enterprises, and expanded credit support for areas such as technological innovation, green development, elderly care, and the digital economy. At the same time, it emphasized maintaining the basic stability of the RMB exchange rate at a reasonable and balanced level.
Looking to the future, the report highlights that the artificial intelligence (AI) industry will inject more momentum into high-quality economic development. First, technological iteration will continue to accelerate. With breakthroughs in key technologies such as multimodal and strong logic reasoning, the performance of domestically produced large-scale AI models is expected to further improve. Second, industrial integration will deepen. AI will be deeply integrated into key areas such as intelligent manufacturing, finance, healthcare, and transportation, driving the intelligent restructuring of traditional industries across their entire processes. Third, the international market will continue to expand. Domestic AI companies are implementing projects in emerging markets such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East, further accelerating the export of their products and services and steadily enhancing their international competitiveness.
