Business briefs from the Chinese media — Thursday August 25

More stimulus! The State Council yesterday released 19 new measures to promote consumption and liquidity, including 300 billion yuan ($43.72 billion) for the development of financial instruments, approval for power generation firms to issue new bonds of 500 billion yuan ($72.87 billion), and more support for the real estate market and drought-stricken areas.

Drop in trading at Shanghai exchange: According to the People’s Bank of China, the average daily trading volume on the Shanghai Stock Exchange was 418.82 billion yuan ($61.04 billion) in July, a month-on-month decrease of 16.6%. On the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, trading volume decreased month-on-month by only 2.4% to 588.13 billion yuan ($85.71 billion).

Oil and gas billions from surging oil prices: PetroChina 中国石油 today released its results for the first half of the year, reporting revenue of 1.6 trillion yuan ($233.19 billion) and net profit of 82.39 billion yuan ($12 billion). The company’s board of directors has proposed to distribute an interim dividend of 37.08 billion yuan ($5.40 billion).