Chinese banks issued 857.2 billion yuan ($138.3 billion) of new yuan loans in September, up from 702.5 billion yuan in August and above economists' expectations, data from People's Bank of China showed Thursday. Newly-extended loans in September were higher than the 745 billion yuan forecast by a Wall Street Journal poll of 15 economists. Total social financing, a broader measurement of credit in the economy, came in at 1.05 trillion yuan in September, up from 957.4 billion yuan in August. China's broadest measure of money supply, M2, was up 12.9% at the end of September compared with a year earlier, higher than the 12.8% increase at the end of August, according to the central bank. The figure was also above the median 12.8% increase forecast by the poll of economists. China's foreign exchange reserves stood at $3.89 trillion at the end of September, said the central bank, down from $3.99 trillion at the end of June. By http://www.twitter.com/marketwatch!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); MARKETWATCH