1st LD-Writethru: Chinese shares close higher, real estate leads

Chinese stocks kept up their winning streak on Friday, ending the last complete trading week before Spring Festival holiday with a handsome performance.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.96 percent to end at 3,203.83 points, and the Shenzhen Component Index gained 1.24 percent to end at 11,443.05 points.

Combined turnover on the two bourses expanded to 563.82 billion yuan (92.13 billion U.S. dollars) from 438.21 billion yuan the previous trading day.

Shares related to real estate led the rises on Friday. Poly Real Estate Group Co., one of China's property heavyweights, went up 3.69 percent to 10.11 yuan per share. Beijing HOMYEAR Real Estate Co., a privately-owned property enterprise, gained 9.97 percent, close to the daily limit of 10 percent, to end at 10.15 yuan per share.

Sun Xiwei, an analyst with CITIC Securities, said the surge in the property sector is a result of market expectation that the central bank will cut interest rates before the week-long Spring Festival holiday.

The central bank's money injection earlier this week contributed to the surge in the stock market, Sun added.

Stocks related to securities and insurance were among the day's biggest losers. Southwest Securities slumped by 0.31 percent to 19.35 yuan per share. China Life Insurance Co., the country's largest insurance company, lost 1.63 percent to end at 38.13.

China's central bank pumped 80 billion yuan (13.05 billion U.S. dollars) into the money markets through reverse repurchase agreements (repos) earlier this week, in an effort to satisfy the growing demand for cash before the week-long Spring Festival holiday.

The ChiNext Index, China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, gained 2.05 percent to end at 1,825.49 points. Endi