RPT-WRAPUP 3-China eases policy as Asia battles to shield mkts

(Repeats to additional subscribers)

* China lets bill rate fall in policy easing signal

* South Korea supplies dollars to stop bond rout

* Philippines props up peso, Taiwan says may buy stocks

* Global central bank move may not stop Asia market rout (Recasts, updates with central banks' concerted action)

By Karen Yeung and Yoo Choonsik

SHANGHAI/SEOUL Sept 18 (Reuters) - China signalled another policy easing on Thursday as Asian authorities sprang to the defence of tumbling currencies, stocks and bonds to prevent the upheaval on Wall Street from shattering regional confidence.

China let the yield on three-month bills drop for the first time in six months, South Korea tried to halt its biggest bond rout in over five years, the Philippines intervened to support the peso and Taiwan threatened to buy stocks with state funds.

From Hong Kong to India central banks pumped more than $31 billion in local currency into the banking system and markets whipsawed as bankruptcies and bailouts on Wall Street drove investors away from risky assets and squeezed funding.

The world's top central banks announced an offer to pump billions of dollars into global money markets to ease the dollar funding crunch at the end of the Asian day, but analysts said emerging markets would get relatively little relief.

"It's a much needed action and should help to relieve some of the intense stress within the financial markets. But in this panicky market, it will be quite impossible to quantify what will be sufficient," said Christy Tan, currency strategist at Bank of America in Singapore.

"Asian currencies are still very driven by equity markets movements. This appears to be a major influence over dollar price actions."

The move by the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank the Bank of Japan and other central banks brought some relief to money markets, driving overnight dollar funding costs to 2 percent from as high as 8.5 percent in Asian trading on Thursday.

LOSSES

Money markets nearly seized up this week after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch lost its independence and U.S. insurance giant AIG was nationalised in an $85 billion government bailout.

The Asian Development Bank urged the region's policy makers and regulators to get down to business now to shield the banks from the turmoil triggered by U.S. mortgage defaults that have inflicted more than $400 billion in losses on Western lenders.