P2P trading

    THE trading value of China’s booming Peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms hit 250 billion yuan (US$41 billion) for the whole of 2014, doubling 2013’s statistics, according to the Internet Society of China on Friday.

    P2P online lending uses the Internet to conduct daily transactions or finance businesses. P2P platforms of this kind exceeded 1,600 in 2014 in China. December 2014 alone saw 47 newly registered P2P platforms. It was estimated that 290,000 private lenders had invested via the P2P platforms.

    Huawei revenue

    CHINESE telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies expects advances in cloud computing and higher demand for smart devices to have lifted 2014 sales revenue by 15 percent to US$46 billion, CEO Ken Hu said in a new year’s message on the company’s website.

    The Shenzhen-based company had said last year that it would achieve sustainable growth in 2014. It also had a targeted revenue of US$70 billion by 2018, or annual growth of about 10 percent a year.

    Huawei’s smartphone shipments rose by more than 40 percent last year, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.

    Gambling revenue

    MACAO’S gambling revenue last year fell 2.6 percent to 351.5 billion patacas (US$44 billion) from 2013, official data showed Friday.

    It was the first calendar-year revenue decline for the Chinese city since 2002, which is as far back as public data go, widely regarded as a result of China’s anti-graft crusade. December gambling revenue plunged a record 30 percent to 23.29 billion patacas compared with the same period in 2013, extending a seven-month losing streak in the casino hub.

    Housing prices

    BEIJING’S housing prices hit their highest levels in history in 2014, although the annual transaction volumes fell to a three-year low, reports said Friday.

    The average sales price of private housing properties in the nation’s capital reached 25,286 yuan per square meters last year, up 7.6 percent from 2013, the Beijing News quoted a report by the Centaline Property Agency as saying. However, sales volumes appeared quite weak for the year, with only 66,078 units sold, the lowest level since 2012.