UPDATE 1-PRESS DIGEST - China - March 25

(Adds new items)

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, March 25 (Reuters) - Chinese newspapers available in Beijing and Shanghai carried the following stories on Wednesday. Reuters has not checked the stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

CHINA SECURITIES JOURNAL

-- Chinese economists hope that a weakening U.S. dollar, the world's primary reserve currency, could lead to a diversification of the system in global trade and reserve currencies, echoing the recent views of Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan.

-- Hit by the global financial crisis, Chinese banks are increasingly faced with the prospect of falling earnings, rising ratios of non-performing loans and potential losses from overseas investments, Bank of China (601988.SS)(3988.HK) said in its 2008 annual results report.

-- Trading volume in copper futures on the Shanghai Commodity Exchange reached a record high of nearly 1 million lots on Tuesday, indicating the market was increasingly divided over the near-term trend of non-ferrous metals prices.

-- The Agricultural Bank of China extended new loans of 278 billion yuan ($41 billion) in the first two months of this year, more than double the new loans it offered in the same period of last year.

SHANGHAI SECURITIES NEWS

-- China will implement a new railway transportation scheme starting April 1, increasing its passenger transport capacity by 10.6 percent from the existing programme.

-- Kweichow Moutai Co (600519.SS), one of China's top makers of traditional Chinese liquor, said its 2008 net profit rose 34.22 percent to 3.8 billion yuan.

-- A recent rebound in property transaction volumes in some Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen has not been accompanied by a recovery in prices and does not indicate that China's property market has emerged from a downtrend which began early last year.

SECURITIES TIMES

-- Commercial banks in Shanghai booked combined operational income of 134.24 billion yuan last year, up 32.27 billion yuan from a year earlier, data provided by the city's banking regulator showed.

CHINA BUSINESS NEWS

-- China should not use currency depreciation to stimulate its economy, and the yuan CNY=CFXS should have the potential to appreciate if China's economy can recover earlier than global counterparts, said Fan Gang, an adviser to Chinese central bank.

FINANCIAL NEWS