President Xi Jinping said Friday that Xinjiang, the northwestern province that’s home to a large Muslim Uyghur minority group population, should strengthen its “great wall of iron” to safeguard social stability and national unity, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Senior officials from the region pledged Sunday to fight terrorism as they convened for the National People’s Congress, according to a separate Xinhua report. Xi has vowed a hard line against what the Communist Party sees as separatist behavior in the frontier region.
  • China is considering attending talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Chile this week, the English-language China Daily reported, citing foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang. The paper said the U.S. withdrawal from the trade pact has made other members adjust their stance to welcome China into the group, and that China should integrate TPP with other regional trade pacts.
  • National Bureau of Statistics chief Ning Jizhe said there’s zero tolerance for data fraud, and that officials probed 15 statistics fraud cases in nine provinces last year, according to English-language state broadcaster CGTN. Xi last week called for data transparency at a group meeting of leaders from Liaoning province, which has admitted faking data.
  • China could consider cutting the reserve requirement ratio for banks at an appropriate time to inject more funding into the financial system that way instead of by other tools such as mid-term lending facilities and pledged supplementary lending, Securities Daily reported, citing Yu Xuejun, an official at the China Banking Regulatory Commission. This will also help stabilize the yuan, Yu said. People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said at a briefing Friday that China has many monetary policy tools, and policy in general will be prudent and neutral.