SHANGHAI, Jan 17 (Reuters) - China stocks closed up on Monday after the country's economy grew faster than expected in the final quarter of 2021 but the growth was still at its weakest pace in one-and-half years, prompting the central bank to unexpectedly cut loan rates.
The blue-chip CSI300 index ended 0.9% higher at 4,767.28, while the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.6% to 3,541.67 points.
** China's gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 4.0% in the October-December period from a year earlier, and the economy grew 8.1% in 2021, faster than a forecast 8.0%.
** "We expect front-loaded policy support to prevent growth from falling significantly below 5% in 2022. This includes the MLF rate cut today. More generally, we expect strong infrastructure spending, robust credit growth, and support for the real estate sector this year." said Louis Kuijs, Head of Asia Economics at Oxford Economics.
** Real estate developers gained 1.8%, after China expected the operation of its property market to keep pace with steady growth of investment in the sector this year.
** Information technology firms and semiconductors added more than 2% each, after President Xi Jinping's essay on strengthening regulation and governance to boost China's "digital economy".
** That also helped the computer index and the artificial intelligence index to finish up more than 4% each.
** New energy shares, machinery firms and automobiles rose between 1.4% and 1.8%.
(Reporting by Shanghai Newsroom; editing by Uttaresh.V)
