Interest rates rise as Spring Festival approaches

China's benchmark money-market rate surged the most in 19 months, with record central bank cash injections being overwhelmed by demand before the Lunar New Year holidays.

The People's Bank of China put in a net 410 billion yuan ($60 billion) through open-market operations on Wednesday, the biggest daily addition since Bloomberg began compiling the data in 2004. That brings the total injections so far this week to 845 billion yuan.

The interbank seven-day repurchase rate jumped 17 basis points, the most since June 2015, to 2.58 percent last week in Shanghai, according to weighted average prices.