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
- Decoupling With China Would Hurt U.S. Businesses, Chamber of Commerce Says — The group’s worst-case scenario envisions a crippling of major industries such as aviation and semiconductors.
- Cisco Systems Discloses Possible Embezzlement Scheme at Its China Operations — The company is also investigating alleged payments to employees of Chinese state-owned enterprises, it said. Cisco has disclosed the matter to the U.S. Justice Department and the SEC.
- Chinese Consumers Were Big Spenders During the Lunar New Year Holiday — Consumption at major retailers and restaurants over the seven-day holiday hit $127 billion.
- An American Belt and Road Initiative? — China is funding massive projects all over the world, and gaining influence. The U.S. can do the same.
- Baidu Hops Aboard the Electric-Vehicle Express — The company has hit all the right tones by announcing a foray into EVs—one of the hottest investment themes right now.
The Financial Times
- Chinese stocks touch record as traders return after lunar new year — CSI 300 briefly surpasses 2007 peak on positivity surrounding economic recovery.
- Facebook news ban, Texas oil, China’s digital currency — Site defies Australia’s push to make Big Tech pay for news; bans sharing content in the country.
- Taiwan accuses China of blocking efforts to buy Covid vaccines — Health minister says German group BioNTech was put under ‘political pressure’.
The New York Times
- Biden and China: Administration Rethinks Relations — The Biden administration is under intense pressure to maintain former President Donald J. Trump’s curbs on China, even as it tries to develop a more comprehensive and effective strategy.
Caixin
- Profit-Challenged JD Logistics Sets Sights on Hong Kong IPO — Bleeding cash for 13 years, e-commerce giant JD.com’s subsidiary seeks listing after several rounds of financing valued it at $13.9 billion.
- Money-Losing Cancer Screener Triples in Hong Kong Trading Debut — New Horizon Health has become the latest Chinese company to post meteoric first-day gains in the last two weeks through an offshore IPO.
- Cloud Specialist Cloopen Floats Up in New York IPO — Company raises $320 million in one of largest Wall Street listings this year by a Chinese firm despite recent headwinds from Washington.
South China Morning Post
- Ex-officials, academics call for US to work with Europe to counter China — A group of academics, former US officials and advisers have called on the United States government to work with Europe to counter China, including through joint investment screening and intelligence sharing.
- China unveils plan to transform manufacturing sector with internet of things — Beijing is looking to sharpen the global competitiveness of “Made-in-China” products with a new plan to accelerate the use of information technology in traditional manufacturing sectors.
- US and China on path to ‘inevitable’ economic decoupling: report — The world’s biggest two economies are headed towards an inevitable divorce, but the US needs to manage it in a targeted way, according to an American study on economic ties with China.
- Huawei turns to AI pig farming as the Chinese tech giant explores new growth areas outside smartphones — Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co launched an artificial intelligence pig farming project on Monday as the company pushes into new growth areas while its smartphone business struggles under continued US trade sanctions.
Bloomberg
- China’s Twitter-Like Weibo Said to Plan Hong Kong Listing — Weibo Corp., China’s largest micro-blogging service, is planning a second listing in Hong Kong as soon as this year, people familiar with the matter said, joining a growing cohort of U.S.-traded Chinese firms in seeking a trading foothold in the financial hub.
- China Rolls Over $31 Billion in Medium-Term Loans to Banks — China provided medium-term funds to lenders on Thursday, giving banks some relief after its cash drainage last month triggered the country’s worst liquidity squeeze since 2015.
- Robinhood Rival Webull Raises New Funds at $1 Billion Valuation — Webull, the Chinese-owned brokerage that runs one of the fastest-growing retail trading platforms in the U.S., raised $150 million in a new financing round that gives the startup more firepower to compete with Robinhood Markets.
- Rahm Emanuel, Nicholas Burns Seen as Potential China Envoy — Ex-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns are among the leading candidates for U.S. ambassador to China, a person familiar with the matter said.
Reuters
- Exclusive: Half London councils found using Chinese surveillance tech linked to Uighur abuses — (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – At least half of London’s boroughs have bought and deployed China-made surveillance systems linked to the abuse of Uighurs, according to data exclusively given to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, raising alarm among privacy advocates and lawmakers.
- China’s Baidu beats revenue estimates on strong cloud, AI demand — China’s Baidu Inc reported quarterly revenue above Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, helped by a recovery in advertising and an uptick in demand for its cloud services and artificial intelligence platforms.
Other Publications
- The Intercept: How Oracle Sells Repression in China — In its bid for TikTok, Oracle was supposed to prevent data from being passed to Chinese police. Instead, it’s been marketing its own software for their surveillance work.
- Axios: House Republicans push Biden to adopt Trump Confucius Institute rule — Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other top House Republicans sent a letter to President Biden Wednesday urging him to take up a Trump-era proposal that would increase scrutiny of China’s state-funded Confucius Institutes in the U.S., according to a draft first obtained by Axios.
- Beijing Review: Dynamic China-EU trade sheds light on promising economic partnership — According to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical service, China has surpassed the United States and become the EU’s top trading partner last year while both sides have also seen a substantial increase in exports to each other’s marketplaces.
- China Research Group’s Talks on China (Podcast): China’s Foreign Policy with Rana Mitter — In this conversation, Rana Mitter joins Tom Tugendhat MP, chair of the China Research Group, for a discussion on the UK’s relationship with China and China’s wider foreign policy.
