Good Morning. Welcome to The Wire’s daily news roundup. Each day, our staff gathers the top China business, finance, and economics headlines from a selection of the world’s leading news organizations.
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The Wall Street Journal
- Is Decoupling from China Worth $1 Trillion? — Moving supply chains out of China is no simple task, especially when the country’s economy is a global bright spot. Big carrots, and not just big sticks, will be needed.
- Investors Have a Local Route into China’s Hydrogen Plans — China is further along the road to adopting hydrogen as a potentially green transport fuel than most of its peers. Investors don’t need to buy Chinese stocks to gain exposure.
- Rio Tinto’s Next CEO Will Be Tested by Awkward Africa Decision — Rio Tinto’s next leader will inherit a decision that could define the miner’s next decade: whether to partner with China on a potentially lucrative but costly African project that could reshape the iron-ore market.
- Secretive High-Speed Trading Firm Hits Jackpot With TikTok — Susquehanna International Group is sitting on a stake in the app’s owner, Beijing-based ByteDance, that could be worth more than $15 billion.
- Pompeo and the Pope — The secretary calls for ‘bold moral witness’ in dealing with China.
- Copper Rises After Upbeat Chinese Economic Data — The industrial metal has risen about 8% for the year and recovered roughly 40% in the past six months following an early-year selloff.
The Financial Times
- China’s net-zero target is a giant step in fight against climate change — All countries can now build zero-carbon systems at costs no higher than for fossil fuels.
- China AI start-ups surge forward with $30bn funding since 2016 — Investment has jumped since Beijing added AI drive to five-year plan, says 36Kr report.
- Amundi boss targets China’s wealth management boom — Europe’s largest asset manager has received regulatory permission to begin operating a joint venture.
The New York Times
- China’s ‘Golden Week’ Kicks Off in Boost to Battered Tourism Industry — Chinese travelers are expected to fan out across the country in droves, even as anxiety about the virus and the economy lingers.
- In U.S.-China Tech Feud, Taiwan Feels Heat From Both Sides — The island’s biggest chip maker has been a coveted partner to both battling giants. But rising nationalism is making it harder to keep the middle ground.
- Hong Kong Is China, Like It or Not — After months of chaos in the city, something had to be done, and the Chinese government did it.
- House Reports Push for More Focus on China by Intelligence Agencies — Separate studies by Democrats and Republicans reached a similar conclusion: More resources are needed to compete with Beijing.
Caixin
- Baidu Raises $293 Million for Smart Living Unit in Step Toward Listing — Fundraising values unit at $2.9 billion as search engine giant moves to spin off No. 2 player in China’s burgeoning smart-speaker market.
- Millions Fly With China’s Airlines as Pandemic Drags Down Competitors — For Golden Week, air travel in China is set to jump 10% from a year ago as tourists flock to Shanghai, Beijing and Hainan’s Sanya.
- Ping An Good Doctor to Raise $1 Billion for Recruiting Physicians — China’s biggest online health-care platform needs to expand staff as it adds family-care services amid fierce competition from JD Health and 2 Tencent-backed operations.
South China Morning Post
- US tariffs didn’t change China but rejoining Pacific trade pact could: Obama aide — A former US trade official is calling for the next US president to rejoin a trans-Pacific trade agreement as a means to working with like-minded countries and offering an alternative to China’s state capitalism.
- Will Chinese consumer spending catch up to support a broad economic recovery from coronavirus? — Shoppers and diners have returned en masse to Chunxi Road, the busiest commercial pedestrian street in Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan.
Bloomberg
- China Tech to Face Even Closer Scrutiny From Global Governments — China’s tech companies will face a tougher time globally as digital decoupling accelerates and countries with shared values join forces to promote their technology standards and ethics, according to a report from the Hinrich Foundation.
- Trump Moves to Expand Rare Earths Mining, Cites China Threat — President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at expanding domestic production of rare-earth minerals that are vital to many critical manufacturing sectors, reducing dependence on China.
- U.S. Pressuring Chinese Companies for More Transparency on Finances — Investor advocates doubt that the political momentum is enough to overturn years of government inaction.
- Macau Sees Little Sign of Recovery as Gaming Revenue Falls 90% — Macau gaming revenue showed little sign of improvement, notching a sixth straight month of declines of at least 90%, as a gradual relaxation of travel and visa curbs by China has so far brought few visitors.
- Evergrande Billionaire’s Supporters Rewarded for Buying Low — Doubling down on China Evergrande Group is proving a lucrative strategy for some of the embattled property giant’s most loyal backers.
- China, Pakistan Lead Asia in Virus-Related Surveillance Risk — The risk of Chinese-style state surveillance is likely to rise across Asia, a new report found, if countries continue to use technology being used to control the coronavirus even after the health crisis recedes.
Reuters
- Russian scientist detained for allegedly passing technology to China: reports — A Russian scientist has been detained in Siberia for allegedly passing technology to China, Russian media reported on Thursday.
- UK to exclude Chinese students from sensitive subjects: Times — Britain is to tighten rules about which subjects foreign students can study at its universities in a move to prevent the theft of intellectual property by Chinese students, the Times newspaper reported on Thursday.
- EU leaders to tell China to meet 2019-2020 trade deadlines — European Union leaders will call on China to finalise a stalled investment agreement by the end of the year and again criticise Beijing over its security crackdown in Hong Kong, according to a draft summit statement seen by Reuters.
- Tesla cuts starting price for China-made Model 3 cars by 8% — U.S. electric car maker Tesla cut the starting price of its Chinese-made Model 3 sedans on Thursday by about 8% to 249,900 yuan ($36,805), once Chinese subsidies for electric vehicles are taken into account, according to its China website.
- BP sacks crude oil staff amid probe into China dealings — BP has terminated four trading and operations staff responsible for Chinese crude oil sales as a result of an internal investigation into trades with Singapore’s Hontop Energy, three people familiar with the matter said.
- China temporarily suspends beef imports from Minerva Brazil plant — China on Wednesday said it would temporarily suspend imports from a beef plant owned by Brazilian meatpacker Minerva SA for a week, in the latest suspension amid concerns over coronavirus contamination in Brazilian meat plants.
- U.S. targets only one percent of Chinese students over security: White House official — The United States is targeting only about one percent of the 400,000 Chinese students in the United States over China’s bid to gather U.S. technology and other information, a top White House said official said on Wednesday.
- U.S. puts China at top of forced labor list — The United States on Wednesday identified China as the global hotspot for goods made with forced labor, highlighting growing concern over treatment of Uighur Muslims in the country’s Xinjiang region.
- Energy security and economic fears drive China’s return to coal — Red coal trucks zip up and down narrow dirt tracks, churning up clouds of dust in China’s remote Gansu province. Nearby, the towering stanchions of a new railway bridge rise out of a muddy river winding through the hills.
- Argentina’s beef exports to China this year seen at pre-pandemic pace — Argentina is expected to export about 870,000 tonnes of beef to China this year, the main destination for the South American country’s renowned red meat, matching last year’s exports despite the global pandemic, a local meat chamber said on Wednesday.
- Ginseng piles up in Canada during pandemic despite Chinese demand — The pandemic’s crushing effect on international travel has grounded Canadian exports of ginseng, a root widely used in Asia to treat everything from the common cold to impotency, at a time when health is top of consumers’ minds.
- Exclusive: China preparing an antitrust investigation into Google – sources — China is preparing to launch an antitrust probe into Alphabet Inc’s Google, looking into allegations it has leveraged the dominance of its Android mobile operating system to stifle competition, two people familiar with the matter said.
- Luxury brands bank on a raring China market as pandemic lays waste to global demand — On the southern Chinese island of Hainan, a duty-free shopping paradise, mainland tourists keen to splurge will often patiently line up for an hour or more to enter a Gucci, Tiffany or other luxury brand store.
Xinhua
- China’s service trade deficit narrows in Jan.-Aug. — China’s trade structure has further improved as the country’s service trade deficit continued to narrow in the first eight months of this year, data from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) showed Thursday.
- Roundup: Italy’s exports to China grow amid global downturn — Italy’s exports to China grew by 4.8 percent in August this year compared to the same month last year, even as Italian exports towards non-European Union (EU) countries overall dropped by 11.7 percent in the same period, according to the latest data issued by Italy’s National Statistics Institute (ISTAT).
Other Publications
- AP: House approves second bill aimed at forced labor in China — Its passage follows approval last week of a bill aimed at barring U.S. imports of goods produced in the vast Xinjiang region of northwestern China.
- Foreign Policy: Why is China Sabotaging its Own Athletes? — A new set of qualifications focused on strength rather than skill could actually harm Beijing’s efforts at the next Olympics.
- Business Insider: China Is Ready To Give Iran’s Oil Industry A Major Boost — With the 25-year deal with China now moving ahead at pace, Iran has a buyer for all of the crude oil it can produce, albeit at discounted levels, so Tehran is pushing oil field development across the board.
- The Diplomat: Are Private Chinese Companies Really Private? — Beijing has been very transparent about its intentions and ambitions when it comes to “private” sector businesses.
- Nikkei Asian Review: Analysis: With eye on ‘Quad,’ China steps up Japan courtship — “China is stepping up efforts to foster a new, dual-cycle development architecture,” Xi told Suga, “with the domestic cycle as the mainstay and with domestic and international development reinforcing each other.”
- Foreign Affairs: The U.S. Intelligence Community Is Not Prepared for the China Threat — By Adam Schiff. The House Intelligence Committee has spent the last two years looking at whether our nation’s intelligence apparatus is properly focused, postured, and resourced to understand the many dimensions of the China threat and preparing to advise policymakers on how to respond. What we found was unsettling. Our nation’s intelligence agencies are not ready—not by a long shot.
