Hi everyone. I’m Stephanie LI. Coming up on today’s program. - November sees steady expansion of China's financing; - Chinaissued this winter’s first orange alert for a cold wave. Here’s what you need to know about China in the past 24 hours China has issued more new yuan-denominated loans in January to November than in the whole of last year after the country stepped up efforts to support the real economy via credit delivery at the start of this year. China's banks extended 21.58 trillion yuan in new yuan-denominated loans in the first 11 months of this year, up 1.55 trillion yuan from a year earlier, according to data released by the People's Bank of China on Wednesday. The figure totaled 21.31 trillion yuan last year. But new yuan loans declined by 136.8 billion yuan to 1.09 trillion yuan last month from a year ago. Household loans, which refer to mortgages and other forms of credit extended to individuals, rose by 292.5 billion yuan, corporate borrowing jumped by 822.1 billion yuan, and loans to non-bank financial institutions decreased by 20.7 billion yuan. China's financing activity expanded steadily in November as the increment in aggregate social financing —the total amount of financing to the real economy —reached 2.45 trillion yuan in November, up by 455.6 billion yuan from a year earlier. The amount was also up from the 1.85 trillion yuan in October, with government bonds raising a net 1.15 trillion yuan in November, up 499.2 billion yuan year-on-year, being the main driver of the increase. China's outstanding aggregate social financing stood at 376.39 trillion yuan as of the end of November, the central bank said, marking a year-on-year growth of 9.4 percent, generally stable compared with 9.3 percent a month earlier. The broad money supply, or M2, stood at 291.2 trillion yuan as of the end of last month, up 10 percent year-on-year. The growth rate was 0.3 percentage points down from a month earlier and 2.4 percentage points lower than a year ago. The M1, which covers cash in circulation plus demand deposits, stood at 67.59 trillion yuan at the end of November, up 1.3 percent year on year. The M0, the amount of cash in circulation, went up 10.4 percent from a year ago to 11.02 trillion yuan at the end of last month. The central bank is expected to deliver more modest policy easing in the coming weeks, following a pledge this week by top leaders to step up policy adjustments to support the economic recovery in 2024, analysts said. "There is still some room for cutting the reserve requirement ratio and interest rates to help maintain stable liquidity in the banking system and promote reductions in financing costs," Wen Bin, chief economist at Minsheng Bank, said in a note. • The Word Bank has revised up its forecast for China's economic growth this year and next from its October estimates, expecting the world's second-largest economy to grow by 5.2 percent in 2023 and 4.5 percent in 2024.In its China Economic Update published on Thursday, the World Bank made such projections, which were both up by 0.1 percentage point from its previous forecasts. The bank said economic activity in China has picked up this year, driven by increased demand for services, resilient manufacturing investment and public infrastructure stimulus.However, China's economic outlook is clouded by continued weakness in the real estate sector and tepid global demand in the short term, as well as structural constraints to growth, including high debt levels and population aging. • China's meteorological authorities on Thursday issued this winter’s first orange alert for a cold wave, the highest level of warning.According to the National Meteorological Centre, temperatures are expected to drop by 8 to 12 degrees Celsius in most parts of the country from 2pm on Thursday to 8am on Sunday.Parts of Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Jilin and Liaoning could see the mercury plunge by more than 20 degrees Celsius.Around 4,330 passenger flig