Business briefs from the Chinese media — Thursday September 1

Terrible results for bellwether companies Sany and New Hope Group: Yesterday, construction machinery manufacturer Sany 三一重工 reported revenue for the first half of the year of 39.67 billion yuan ($5.75 billion), a year-on-year decrease of 40.9%, and net profit of 2.63 billion yuan ($381.83 million), a decrease of 73.85%. Agricultural company New Hope Group 新希望集团 reported revenue of 62.33 billion yuan ($9.03 billion) and a net loss of 4.14 billion yuan ($600.15 million).

China’s largest banks make profits of half a trillion yuan: China’s four largest banks, ICBC 中国工商银行, China Construction Bank 中国建设银行, Agricultural Bank of China 中国农业银行, and Bank of China 中国银行, made a combined net profit of 580 billion yuan ($84.07 billion) in the first half of the year (an increase of 5.28% year-on-year), which amounts to a daily average of 3.2 billion yuan ($463.88 million).

Growth in services trade: According to the Ministry of Commerce, China’s total trade in services from January to July was 3.39 trillion yuan ($491.75 billion), a year-on-year increase of 20.7%, including service exports of 1.64 trillion yuan ($238.06 billion), an increase of 22.8%, and imports of 1.74 billion yuan ($253.68 billion), an increase of 18.9%.