China c.bank to look at broader gauge of financing

BEIJING Feb 17 (Reuters) - Chinese regulators are changing their focus to a broader concept of "social financing" because it is too narrow to look at bank lending alone as the economy evolves, the central bank's statistics chief said on Thursday.

In a statement posted on the People's Bank of China website, Sheng Songcheng said that it was necessary to consider the stock and bond markets, among other non-bank sources of financing, to get a handle on the country's true monetary conditions.

He added that overall "social financing" growth had been much faster than lending growth over much of the past decade. (Reporting by Aileen Wang and Simon Rabinovitch; Editing by Don Durfee)