Finance Morning | China August Inflation, Oil Tops $100, Financial Power Plan Unveiled

📊 Today's Asian Markets

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China August Inflation: Mild CPI Gains, PPI Up for Sixth Month

Source: Sina Finance

China's August price data is out. Core CPI growth held steady around 1% year-on-year, with notable gains in some industrial consumer goods and service prices. Over the first eight months, CPI rose 0.9% and core CPI rose 1.1%, a clear pickup from last year and the same period a year earlier.

Xu Guangjian, vice president of the China Price Association, said the trend of moderate consumer price growth remains unchanged despite occasional external shocks.

The producer price index (PPI) swung to a 0.4% month-on-month gain in August from a 0.7% decline in July, and rose 3.8% year-on-year, its sixth straight monthly increase since emerging from the downturn in March. Driven by higher international crude oil and nonferrous metal prices, producer prices for oil extraction, refined petroleum products and organic chemical raw materials rose 10.4%, 4.1% and 0.9% month-on-month respectively. Liu Fang, a researcher at the NDRC's market and price research institute, expects CPI to keep rising moderately and PPI gains to stabilize.

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CSRC Sets Capital-Market Goals for the 15th Five-Year Plan

Source: Sina Finance

CSRC Vice Chairman Li Chao said on September 10 that China will accelerate a new round of capital-market reform and opening-up, aiming to basically form a new pattern of high-quality development by 2030, the market's 40th anniversary, with markedly stronger overall strength and global competitiveness.

Li said the CSRC will further optimize listing rules to support quality companies in emerging and future industries, traditional-industry upgrading, modern services and new consumption, while broadening channels for long-term funds and strengthening the "long-term money for long-term investment" ecosystem. It will also step up enforcement against fraud, financial falsification, market manipulation and insider trading.

Li also disclosed that the average IPO review cycle on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges has been shortened to just over six months this year, with some quality companies' refinancing reviewed in under a month.

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Financial Regulator Vows to Crack Down on "Price Wars"

Source: 21jingji

Financial regulator deputy head Cong Lin said on September 10 that the authority will foster a healthier industry environment, guiding institutions to abandon the obsession with scale and shift from pursuing speed and size to quality and efficiency.

Cong said the regulator will vigorously crack down on "price wars," illegal rebates and "high-interest, high-return" practices.

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HSBC CFO to Step Down Next Year

Source: Sina Finance

HSBC Holdings said on September 10 that its group chief financial officer Guo Peiying has notified the board of her plan to leave in 2027 and will not seek re-election as a director at the 2027 annual general meeting. Her formal departure date will be confirmed in due course, but no later than the company's 2027 AGM.

After stepping down from her full-time role, she will serve as an adviser, assisting the group chief executive with ongoing strategic projects and ensuring a smooth handover to her successor. The board has begun the process of selecting her successor, considering both internal and external candidates.

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Japan and South Korea Open Lower; SK Hynix Rises About 1%

Source: Sina Finance

The Nikkei 225 opened down 0.59% on Thursday, while the KOSPI opened down 0.09%.

SK Hynix rose about 1%, after its US-listed ADR jumped more than 7% overnight to a record high.

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South Korea Weighs Suing Google Over Victim Data Leak

Source: Xinhua

South Korea's Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said on September 9 that it is considering criminal prosecution against Google over the leak of personal information of "digital sex crime" victims, which caused secondary harm.

Victims and supporting organizations had asked Google to remove illegally filmed videos from search results. Google shared the requests with a US-based research database without hiding victims' private information, leaving names, workplaces, schools and phone numbers publicly searchable. The ministry learned of the matter on August 25 and immediately demanded deletion, with about 200 items since removed or blocked. Google apologized to the victims.

Ministry data shows South Korea reported more than 17,000 "digital sex crimes" in 2025, up 4.7% from 2024, and has deleted over 1.5 million pieces of exploitative imagery while helping more than 53,000 victims.

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US DOJ Probes Nvidia Over Antitrust Avoidance

Source: CCTV Finance

The US Department of Justice is investigating whether Nvidia sought to avoid antitrust review in its deal last year with AI chip startup Groq, CCTV Finance reported, citing The New York Times.

Last December, Nvidia announced a $17 billion deal with Groq, gaining a non-exclusive license to Groq's chip technology and absorbing several executives including Groq founder Jonathan Ross. US regulators say such "disguised acquisitions" can stifle competition in the AI chip sector and entrench Nvidia's dominance.

If the probe finds problems with the transaction, the DOJ could impose fines but likely would not require the deal to be unwound. Nvidia, Groq and the DOJ have not commented.

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PBOC Unveils Financial Power-Building Plan

Source: Cnfol

The State Council Information Office held a press conference on the afternoon of September 10. PBOC Deputy Governor Lu Lei said the Financial Power-Building "15th Five-Year Plan" has been officially released.

Lu said the plan targets coordinated and effective financial regulation, precise risk prevention and rising international influence by 2030, and the basic completion of a modern financial system with Chinese characteristics by 2035. The PBOC has issued its own reform and development plan and nine supporting action plans.

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Oil Tops $100 as US Stocks Fall

Source: Xinhua Finance

International oil prices broke above $100 a barrel, and the three major US stock indexes opened lower on September 9 and closed clearly down.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 405.41 points, or 0.77%, to 52,380.66; the S&P 500 fell 37.16 points, or 0.48%, to 7,636.36; and the Nasdaq Composite fell 168.07 points, or 0.64%, to 26,253.34. Ten of the S&P 500's eleven sectors fell, while energy bucked the trend with a 1.09% gain.

Investors are also watching upcoming US inflation data, with August PPI due on the 10th and CPI on the 11th. The CME FedWatch Tool showed a roughly 60% probability of a 25-basis-point rate hike at the Fed's meeting next week.

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DeepSeek Launches V4.1 Flash Model

Source: Sina Finance

DeepSeek officially released the V4.1 Flash model on September 10, the smallest model in its new architecture series, with native multimodal visual understanding.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is a 552B-parameter MoE model with a new Causal-Encoder-Decoder structure, with just 8B input activations and 16B output activations, making it significantly cheaper than known models of similar size. The company said it outperforms flagship models including DeepSeek V4 Pro on benchmarks.

The new model drastically shrinks KV Cache, cutting HBM demand to 1/4 and SSD demand to 1/8, sharply lowering costs for agent tasks. It is already live on the DeepSeek API, and V4 Pro will be phased out from September 14, with related requests routed to V4.1 Flash. New pricing took effect at 12:00 on September 10.

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