The PBOC made a 1.25% overnight reverse repo its main policy rate, lifted the FX reserve requirement to 6% to slow the yuan and added CNY100bn of stock support, with the official manufacturing PMI down at 49.3.
September's brief return above 50 lasted only a month, leaving both official gauges in contraction as Beijing reset policy rates and moved to slow the yuan. Source
The week's most telling move carried no headline rate cut. On 2 November the People's Bank of China (PBOC) made the overnight reverse repo its main policy rate, conducting CNY541bn at 1.25%, 15 basis points below the 1.40% seven-day rate that had anchored policy since May 2025. CNY1.056tn matured the same day, so the operation drained a net CNY515bn. The floor for bank funding costs fell while liquidity on the day tightened, and the PBOC avoided the signal a formal cut would send.
