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
- China Is Now Sending Twitter Users to Prison for Posts Most Chinese Can’t See — More than 50 people have been jailed in past three years in an escalation of Communist Party assault on use of foreign social media.
- China’s New Covid-19 Outbreaks Trip Up Economic Momentum — Demand has taken a hit ahead of the Lunar New Year festival, with people being urged not to travel.
- At Least One Central Bank Is Worried About Speculation: China’s — China’s short-term lending rates shot up to their highest levels in two years last week.
- Government ‘SWAT Team’ Is Reviewing Past Startup Deals Tied to Chinese Investors — National-security panel that gained powers under Trump to become even sharper weapon under Biden.
- Exiled Uighurs Fear China’s Reach Will Erode Turkish Haven — More arrests, looming extradition treaty and tighter diplomatic ties with Beijing are diminishing the community’s trust.
The Financial Times
- Shares in HNA subsidiaries tumble after misuse of funds revealed — Fresh disclosures represent latest setback to befall China’s embattled conglomerate.
- The EU’s quixotic plan to shame China over labour rights — The idea that tougher demands by themselves will force substantive about-turn from Beijing is fanciful.
- Hong Kong acquits former JPMorgan banker over ‘princeling’ hire — Court finds Catherine Leung not guilty of offering businessman’s son a job to secure work on IPO.
- Kuaishou IPO boosts biggest rival to China’s TikTok — Video sharing app is pivoting business model to advertising and ecommerce.
- China oil futures hit record levels — Beijing eyes Rmb-denominated markets that seek to challenge dollar’s dominance.
- Biden shows his hawkish side on China — New US administration signals it will act tougher against Beijing than Republicans claim.
- Bubble fears grow as China fund launches attract huge inflows — Growth opportunities leave asset managers struggling to satisfy demand for new products.
- Xiaomi sues US government over inclusion on Pentagon blacklist — Move instituted by Trump administration would bar Americans from investing in Chinese smartphone maker.
The New York Times
- Pinduoduo Employee Deaths Ignites China Debate Over Work — The deaths of two young employees of Pinduoduo, an e-commerce platform, have reignited longstanding concerns about working conditions at internet giants.
- Biden’s Nightmare May Be China — Think dealing with Mitch McConnell will be tough? Managing a reckless Xi Jinping will be even harder.
- G.M. Wants to Make Electric Cars. China Dominates the Market. — With government support and lavish subsidies, Chinese companies have come to dominate the market for batteries, motors and other essentials Detroit may need for its new fleets.
Caixin
- Big Chinese Cities Clamp Down on Illicit Loans Used to Buy Property — Banking supervisors in Beijing and Shanghai will investigate whether borrowers used consumer or business loans to purchase real estate.
- In Depth: Chinese Firms Take U.S. Government to Court to Undo Trump-Era Bans — Xiaomi joins Chinese peers including Huawei, WeChat and TikTok in filing lawsuits saying actions targeting them are illegal.
- Exclusive: Hundreds of HNA-Linked Companies Expected to Restructure, Sources Say — A government-appointed working team sees bankruptcy restructuring in the future of as many as 500 companies linked to the once high-flying Chinese conglomerate.
South China Morning Post
- China’s energy watchdog under fire over pollution failures — China’s energy regulator has come under rare fire from a team of central government inspectors over the agency’s lax enforcement of environmental standards.
- Kuaishou IPO: live-streaming e-commerce holds promise for future profitability but remains clouded by regulatory uncertainty — One selling point for Kuaishou, the Chinese video-sharing app that has turned into Hong Kong’s hottest initial public offering ever, is its eye-popping growth in “live-streaming e-commerce”, a newly popular form of shopping online in China.
- China’s economic recovery continued in January at slower pace as virus outbreak takes toll — China’s economy recovery continued in January but at a slower pace, as the resurgence of coronavirus in parts of the country took a toll on business sentiment, led by a sharp drop in service sector morale.
- China-Australia relations: Beijing may feel pressure to lift coal bans amid dearth of steel materials — China may come under pressure to lift its ban on Australian coking coal and copper concentrates amid dwindling supplies of high quality raw materials, analysts said, although there are few signs that Chinese authorities are willing to relent just yet.
Bloomberg
- Virus Controls Put Damper on China’s Holidays, Economic Recovery — China’s efforts to control the recent resurgence of Covid-19 are undercutting a recovery which has been one of the bright spots in the global economy.
- U.K. Passports for Hong Kong Bankers Will Disrupt Property Markets — Capital flight will barely register if Hong Kong financial workers move to the U.K. but the home property market is another matter.
- China Set to Exceed WTO Quota in Biggest U.S. Corn Purchase — China is set to exceed for a second year a corn-buying quota set by the World Trade Organization as the Asian nation embarks on its biggest-ever American buying spree, according to people familiar with the matter.
Reuters
- Buying into ‘poor man’s gold’, Chinese investors jump on silver — Chinese investors rushed into silver investments on Monday, pushing up Shanghai silver prices while boosting performances of related stocks and funds, matching calls by global retail investors to boost prices of the precious metal.
- Factbox: China’s troubled HNA Group owns stakes in more than a dozen airlines — Creditors of China’s HNA Group on Friday applied to a Chinese court for the company to be placed in bankruptcy and restructured.
- Exclusive: China gene firm providing worldwide COVID tests worked with Chinese military — BGI Group, the world’s largest genomics company, has worked with China’s military on research that ranges from mass testing for respiratory pathogens to brain science, a Reuters review of research, patent filings and other documents has found.
- China’s first Hualong One nuclear reactor starts commercial operation — China National Nuclear Corp said the first of its Hualong One units, third-generation pressurised water nuclear reactors, began commercial operations on Saturday.
Other Publications
- TechCrunch: New rule reins in China’s flourishing self-publishing space — Despite China’s history of stringent media control, an industry of uninstitutionalized, individual publishers has managed to flourish on social media platforms like Tencent’s WeChat and ByteDance’s Toutiao. These self-publishers are called “We Media” in the Chinese internet lexicon, denoting the independent power of citizen journalists and content creators.
- Barron’s: China Looks to Tame Its Booming Property Market. Real-Estate Stocks Took a Hit. — Last week it was Shanghai, now it’s most major Chinese cities. China’s government housing authorities have told local officials to immediately crack down on real estate speculation.
- Variety: China Box Office Earns $33 Million in Weekend Without new Releases — That indicates that cinemas are largely operating normally in China, as they have been since social distancing and capacity restrictions were lowered (to 75%) in October last year, and that localized shutdowns due to a revival of the coronavirus are having little impact on the industry’s overall revenues.
