BANK OF JAPAN Governor UEDA said current bottlenecks to capital expenditure stem mainly from labor shortages and rising material costs, not higher interest rates.

On July 31 the China State Planner said it will accelerate legislation of an AI law. It reported faster domestic AI innovation in 1H, noting local firms, including Moonshot AI, have released open-source large models at roughly trillion-parameter scale and Chinese models have surpassed 10 bln global downloads. Policy priorities: speed up independent innovation (basic theory, training and inference efficiency, multimodal models, intelligent agents), accelerate construction of national AI application pilot bases, and deepen the AI ecosystem by fostering downstream intelligent firms while managing the dynamic balance between development and security.

China's National Bureau of Statistics said the manufacturing production index and new orders index stood at 49.9 and 48.5, down 1.5 and 2.7 points MoM, indicating production and market demand eased. By sector, general equipment and computer, communications and electronic-equipment industries recorded both production and new-orders indices above 53.0, signalling brisk activity and faster output-demand growth. Non-metallic mineral products, ferrous-metal smelting and rolling, and autos posted both indices below the 50 threshold, reflecting weak supply-demand conditions.