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.
Paid subscribers automatically have this list emailed directly to their inboxes every day by 10 a.m. EST. Subscribe here.
The Wall Street Journal
- The China-Iran Axis — By The Editorial Board. Beijing gains influence and helps Tehran evade U.S. sanctions.
- Biden’s China Challenge: Counter Its Perception of American Decline — Effort to demonstrate continued U.S. clout is seen in the importance the administration has placed on the Quad group.
- China’s Big Banks Eked Out Higher Profits in Turbulent 2020 — The turnaround in their fortunes during the year mirrored China’s rapid economic rebound from the coronavirus pandemic.
- China Used Twitter, Facebook More Than Ever Last Year for Xinjiang Propaganda — Efforts to reshape online narratives around Uyghur Muslims come as Beijing faces pressure over policies, including calls to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics.
- China Rewrites Hong Kong Election Rules to Keep Opponents Out — Beijing slashes number of democratically elected seats and gives national-security police a veto over candidates.
- WHO Report Into Covid-19 Origins Leaves Key Questions Unanswered — Long-awaited report says data examined during China mission was insufficient to explain when, where and how virus began spreading.
The Financial Times
- Profit or principle is the hard choice for foreign companies in China — Beijing is applying pressure but corporate governance demands are rising at home.
- Xiaomi unveils plan to make electric cars — Chinese smartphone maker joins tech stampede to manufacture a battery-powered vehicle.
- Biden’s Taiwan shift, inflation hits companies, Archegos hurts banks — The Biden administration will make it easier for US diplomats to meet with Taiwanese officials.
- China’s housing crash exposes a growing regional economic divide — Struggle to sell homes in inland cities undermines country’s post-pandemic recovery.
- US to make it easier for diplomats to meet Taiwanese officials — Plan to loosen restrictions on contacts with Taipei threatens to provoke China.
- Lab leak ‘unlikely’ to have caused Covid-19 pandemic, says WHO report — Investigation suggests virus probably jumped from animals to humans in late 2019 in Chinese city of Wuhan.
- A second cold war is tracking the first — US-led western alliance is once again squaring up to Russia and China.
- China cut lending to Africa in 2019 as debt fears grew — Loans to public sector borrowers fell to $7bn in 2019, down from $28bn five years ago.
- Fashion brands/Xinjiang: cottoning on to an ethical dilemma — There is a price to pay for staying friends with China by using cotton or garments forced labour may have produced.
- China’s scattergun sanctions show the limits of EU engagement — Beijing has shown huge recklessness about whether CAI gets passed.
- The Fed’s new dance — Officials are facing a challenge from China which is racing ahead of America in many areas of fintech.
The New York Times
- How China Plans to Control Hong Kong’s Elections — New rules give Chinese security bodies power to investigate all potential candidates, meaning that opposition politicians face steep odds of even being allowed to run.
- How Will We Win the Second Cold War? — Biden has a chance to turn China’s strengths into weaknesses.
- Coronavirus Origins Remain Unclear in W.H.O.-China Inquiry — Far more work is needed to understand how the pandemic began, the report says, but it is not clear that Beijing will cooperate. “We may never find the true origins,” an expert said.
Caixin
- FTSE Russell Signs Off on Adding Chinese Government Bonds to Flagship Index — Global index provider will add the securities over 36 months, starting at the end of October.
- China Looks to Slow Growth of Money-Losing High-Speed Rail — New guidelines bar new railways to low-traffic cities, along already underused routes.
- Wanda Secures State Investment for New Property Management Unit — Zhuhai city government puts $457.34 million into restructured operation as the company prepares for a Hong Kong public offering.
- Didi Mulls New Funding for Its Autonomous Driving Arm: Report — Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing appears to be launching a fundraising spree for its autonomous driving subsidiary in the hope of earning a position in a red-hot industry where self-driving vehicle startups are scrambling for fresh capital to support their technological ambitions.
South China Morning Post
- Myanmar crisis requires Beijing to lead – and work with Washington — The situation in Myanmar took a drastic turn for the worse when more than 100 protesters were killed by security forces on Saturday, the deadliest day since the February 1 coup.
- China population: plan to lift retirement age stokes workers’ anxiety as demographic crisis looms — Speculation is running rampant among Chinese about how many years of pension income may be lost after the government announced plans to gradually increase the nation’s mandatory retirement age.
- Hong Kong retail slump finally turns around in February, with sales jumping 30 per cent year on year — Hong Kong’s protracted retail slump finally turned around in February, jumping 30 per cent from the same period last year, when sales hit a record low as the coronavirus pandemic began to hobble the global economy.
- Hong Kong IPO funds surge 822 per cent in record-breaking first quarter as US-listed Chinese tech giants opt for secondary flotations — Fundraising via new share listings in Hong Kong soared more than ninefold to a record in the first quarter, pushing the city’s main board to second place behind Nasdaq in the global rankings for initial public offerings (IPOs). The 822 per cent increase was largely thanks to a massive surge in the number of mainland Chinese technology giants listing their shares.
Bloomberg
- Xi’s Shifting China Is Compelling Investors to Run, Hide or Hire — For any company doing business in China, the choice is now clearer than ever: Avoid commenting on any controversial subjects or risk losing access to the world’s second-largest economy.
- Xiaomi Plans to Invest $10 Billion in Making Electric Cars — Xiaomi Corp. plans to invest about $10 billion over the next decade to manufacture electric cars, embarking on its biggest-ever overhaul to enter China’s booming EV market.
- Hong Kong Logistics Unicorn GogoX Said to Weigh $400 Million IPO — Hong Kong-based logistics unicorn GogoX is considering an initial public offering that could raise $400 million to $500 million as soon as this year, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Reuters
- With eyes on China, Japan and Indonesia bolster security ties — TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan and Indonesia pledged on Tuesday to tighten security ties and signed a deal to facilitate transfers of defence equipment and technology between two Asian nations, as China expands its economic and military might.
- China found using surveillance firms to help write ethnic-tracking specs — China enlisted surveillance firms to help draw up standards for mass facial recognition systems, researchers said on Tuesday, warning that an unusually heavy emphasis on tracking characteristics such as ethnicity created wide scope for abuse.
- Analysis: Ready to roll: China flat steelmakers set to cash in on manufacturing boom — China’s top flat steel producers are primed for profit from a post-COVID-19 recovery in global manufacturing and goods demand in 2021, as well as from an emissions-cutting drive that will likely knock out high-cost competitors, sector analysts said.
- China’s March factory activity growth expected to grow: Reuters poll — China’s factory activity was expected to have grown at a faster pace in March as factories that had closed for the Lunar New Year holiday ramped up production amid improving foreign demand, a Reuters poll showed on Monday.
Other Publications
- The Atlantic: Here’s How Russia and China Are Helping the U.S. — Beijing and Moscow are filling the vaccine gap that wealthy countries helped create.
- Foreign Policy: China’s Military Could Turn Small Clashes Into Major Conflicts — By Blake Herzinger. It’s not clear who’s in command when things go wrong.
- Nikkei Asian Review: Despite China feud, Australia resource exports to hit record by value — Soaring iron ore prices make up for friction in bilateral trade.
- The Diplomat: Beijing Is Getting Better at Disinformation on Global Social Media — Its networks are resisting takedown efforts and gaining traction among real users.
- The Diplomat: China’s Social Credit System: Speculation vs. Reality — How far along is China’s much-hyped social credit system – and where is it heading next?
- BU Global Development Policy Center: Twenty Years of Data on China’s Africa Lending — Summarizing 20 years of data, Kevin Acker and Deborah Brautigam discuss the changing landscape of Chinese lending to Africa in a new policy brief, jointly published with the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS-CARI).
- The China Spec: Douyin: Much More than Just China’s TikTok Product Teardown — By Rui Ma & Patricia Mou. Douyin’s origin story is as unlikely as it is inevitable. To understand the tailwinds that propelled it to the top requires us to go back in time to the early 2010s, when improving infrastructure and innovations in user behavior created an ideal environment for a wave of user-generated short video companies.
- Human Rights Watch: Why Are Some African Governments Shielding China Over Xinjiang? — By Carine Kaneza Nantulya. Turkic Muslims Need Africa’s Solidarity Too.
