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
- The Floundering Town-Builder of the Future Shows China’s Real-Estate Risks — China Fortune Land’s struggles show that no corner of the country’s financial markets can escape the heavily leveraged real-estate sector.
- Chinese Video IPO Goes Viral With Investors — Kuaishou is latest in a series of hot Hong Kong initial public offerings.
- Beijing Won’t Let America ‘Compartmentalize’ Climate Change — By John Bolton. Biden officials’ urgency about emissions makes them likely to sacrifice more-important goals.
The Financial Times
- Chinese bonds: default setting — Buckle up bondholders, you could be in for a bumpy ride.
- China’s struggle to control stock bubble offers lessons in investor mania — GameStop trading frenzy has echoes of 2015 boom and bust in Chinese shares.
- Volvo posts record 6-month profit on US and China demand — Swedish carmaker hits margins comparable to German rivals as Chinese sales rise to pre-pandemic levels.
- Chinese IPOs underpriced by up to $200bn due to valuation limits — Research underscores struggle for competitive listings in country’s vast equity market.
- US-China investment flows belie geopolitical tensions — Data show efforts by Trump administration to decouple economies has fallen short.
The New York Times
- U.K. Regulator Revokes License for China-Backed Broadcaster — The British regulator, Ofcom, said it would no longer allow China Global Television Network to operate, in part because of its affiliation with China’s Communist Party.
- Hunting Rats, Defending Democracy: Hong Kong’s Local Leaders Under Fire — District councilors typically tended to mundane matters like pest control and new bus stops. Now, they’re the last line of defense in keeping the city’s pro-democracy opposition alive.
Caixin
- Investment in Developer Leaves $8.4 Billion Question Mark on Ping An’s Books — Insurer’s President Xie Yonglin warned about the exposure to China Fortune Land while releasing the company’s 2020 financial results.
- KFC Operator Yum China Posts Profit, Revenue Gains on New Store Openings — The nation’s largest fast-food operator saw revenue and profits rise 11% and 68% in the fourth quarter, respectively, even as same-store sales fell 4%.
- Apple Supplier Luxshare’s Controlling Shareholder and Vice Chairman Sell $1.11 Billion of Shares — Shenzhen-listed Luxshare Precision Industry Co. Ltd.’s controlling shareholder and vice chairman sold about 140 million shares in the company, capitalizing on a recent stock rally triggered by its break into Apple’s iPhone supply chain.
South China Morning Post
- Clarity for Beijing and Taipei as Biden team says US will stay with one-China policy — The US State Department has reaffirmed Washington’s one-China policy on Taiwan as the island tries to further raise its international profile by setting up an office in Guyana.
- China debt: foreign holdings of government bonds topped 10 per cent for first time in January — Foreign investors held more than a tenth of all outstanding Chinese government bonds for the first time in January, official data showed, as demand surged on a combination of higher yields and a stronger yuan.
- Hong Kong’s banks are having their worst time since 2008 as profits plunge while bad loans soar amid city’s recession — Hong Kong’s banks are having their worst time since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, as profits plunged while bad debt soared amid the city’s worst recession in decades.
Bloomberg
- Nio Partners With Local Hefei Government for EV Industrial Park — Electric-vehicle maker Nio Inc. is partnering with the local government of Hefei in China’s central Anhui province to set up a new energy vehicle industrial park, adding momentum to the city’s ambition of becoming a hub for EV production.
- Tsinghua Unigroup Defaults Push Up China’s 2021 Offshore Sum — A series of bond defaults by Tsinghua Unigroup Co. has pushed up the total value of defaults in China’s offshore market this year to almost a third of 2020’s total.
- China Solar Industry Sets Sights on Record 2021 After Green Push — China is expected to install a record amount of solar power this year, as the industry continues to benefit from green policies in the country home to the world’s largest fleet of panels.
- China Heads for Record GDP Growth in Months of Wild Data Swings — China watchers are in for a wild ride of economic data in the early months of 2021, giving a largely distorted picture of the recovery from coronavirus shutdowns a year ago.
Reuters
- Exclusive: China’s Ant to hive off credit data in revamp; sees IPO in 2 years – sources — Ant Group Co plans to spin off its consumer-credit data operations, people with knowledge of the matter said, a concession to aggressive regulators that should help the Chinese fintech giant get its massive public share sale back on track.
- Taiwan opens office in Guyana in push against China influence — Taiwan has opened a representative office in Guyana, the island’s foreign ministry said on Thursday, drawing praise from the United States, worried about deepening Chinese influence in Latin America, and a rebuke from Beijing.
- Ford Motor terminates electric vehicle plans with China’s Zotye — Ford Motor has decided to terminate plans to launch electric vehicle joint ventures with China’s Zotye Automobile, the U.S. auto giant said on Thursday.
Other Publications
- SupChina: Why are Chinese officials in Africa so active in messaging on Xinjiang? — A new wave of Chinese propaganda, pushing back on claims of genocide and human rights abuses in Xinjiang, is being promoted widely in Africa. Here are a few reasons why Africa might be a focus of this messaging campaign.
- Washington Post: China’s defense lawyers run into a brick wall: ‘The order came from high up’ — When the Chinese lawyer Ren Quanniu sought in September to pay a jailhouse visit to his client, a Hong Kong protester who was arrested while fleeing the city, Ren was told the letter from the defendant’s family appointing him didn’t bear the right stamp.
