HONG KONG -- China's top insurance companies increased the size of their bond portfolios by a total of more than 1.2 trillion yuan ($169 billion) in the first half of the year, underscoring their strong appetite for safe assets, even as the central bank tries to cool a government bond buying frenzy.
On Friday, the PBOC said it carried out treasury bond trading in August, buying short-term bonds and selling long-term ones to primary dealers in the open market. Its first known foray into bond trading in decades resulted in a net purchase of 100 billion yuan in August, it said.
