President Donald Trump declared China the "grand champions" of currency manipulation on Thursday, just hours after his new Treasury secretary pledged a more methodical approach to analyzing Beijing's foreign exchange practices. In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Trump said he has not "held back" in his assessment that China manipulates its yuan currency, despite not acting on a campaign promise to declare it a currency manipulator on his first day in office. "Well they, I think they're grand champions at manipulation of currency. So I haven't held back," Trump said. "We'll see what happens." During his presidential campaign Trump frequently accused China of keeping its currency artificially low against the dollar to make Chinese exports cheaper, "stealing" American manufacturing jobs. But Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin told CNBC on Thursday he was not ready to pass judgment on China's currency practices.

The increasingly rapid adoption of industrial robots on Chinese production lines is set to hasten the fall in manufacturing employment. Among companies that intend to purchase robots in the coming 12 months, 72.7% said this would mean job losses, according to a Financial Times Confidential Research survey conducted across manufacturing centers in Guangdong. Industrial automation is seen as both an answer to China's falling working age population and a path to greater efficiency. The government is aiming for a "robot density" of 150 units per 10,000 workers by 2020, up from 49 in 2015. Of the 30 companies surveyed, 77.4% said the costs associated with installing robots on production lines were recouped within three years. 41.9% estimated they had spent more than Rmb10m ($1.5m) on robots for their factories, while 38.7% said their purchases were subsidized by the government. 

Beijing's "cautious tightening signals" for credit are largely being ignored by banks and at the local level, where attention is focused on maintaining steady economic growth, especially with key Communist Party meetings looming this year, according to Gene Frieda, executive vice president and global strategist for emerging markets at Pacific Investment Management Co. "The cautious type of tightening usually doesn't work that well for China" as it turns into a "cat-and-mouse game" between regulators and lenders, London-based Frieda told Bloomberg. The People's Bank of China has been relying on more targeted tightening measures. In early February it raised the interest rates charged on open-market operations and on funds lent via its Standing Lending Facility. The central bank hasn't altered its benchmark rate since October 2015, when one-year lending and deposit rates were cut to record lows.

Beijing on Thursday published a new edition of a catalog of drugs eligible for reimbursement under government-backed insurance plans, boosting the number of approved medicines by 15.4% as it updated the list for the first time in seven years, Caixin reports. The new catalog lists 2,535 drugs, up from 2,196 in the previous version, published in 2009, according to a statement on the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the People's Republic of China website. Among the drugs in the updated catalog, 1,297 are Western and the other 1,238 are Chinese. Inclusion on the list can mean big profits for drug companies since their products become available for reimbursement under the government health insurance plans that cover most Chinese citizens. The big news could affect many pharma stocks. 

A Chinese regulatory crackdown on online search and advertising drove a sharp drop in Baidu's quarterly profit and a second consecutive revenue decline, according to The Wall Street Journal. The internet giant expects revenue of 16.48 billion yuan to 17.03 billion yuan ($2.37 billion to $2.45 billion). Over all, fourth-quarter profit dropped 83% to 4.13 billion yuan, or 11.40 yuan ($1.64) an ADR. Baidu's American depositary receipts, up 15% over the past 12 months, rose 2.7% to $189.11 in after-hours trading. Tougher ad requirements following the death of a student who took fake cancer treatment he found on Baidu ad have forced Baidu to drop advertisers, including an 18.6% drop in advertisers and an 8.2% decline in online marketing revenue in the most recent period.