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 Creates Its Own Digital Currency, a First for Major Economy — A cyber yuan stands to give Beijing power to track spending in real time, plus money that isn’t linked to the dollar-dominated global financial system.
- China Looms Large in Biden Infrastructure Plan — Latest example of how a long competition with China is beginning to color all manner of American policy moves.
- Japan Calls on China to Improve Conditions for Uyghurs, Hong Kong — Unusually strong criticism from Tokyo comes ahead of Japanese prime minister’s trip to Washington.
- With Recent Covid-19 Wave Under Control, Chinese Consumers Spend on Travel — Over three-day tomb-sweeping holiday, travel was back up to pre-coronavirus levels by some metrics.
- Detente May Be an Option With North Korea — By Walter Russell Mead. Sanctions won’t break Pyongyang, but it does want some distance from China.
The Financial Times
- A playbook for navigating Asia’s culture wars — Multinationals have long been caught short on understanding markets in the region.
- English pork processors seek help after China ban — Beijing slow to reinstate imports from meat plants that have suffered Covid outbreaks.
- Race is also a geopolitical issue — Some of the world’s most important political institutions reflect antiquated structures of power.
- China stand-up comics find authorities no longer get the joke — Performers increasingly draw ire of officials and socially conservative commentators.
The New York Times
- China’s Covid-19 Vaccination Drive Includes Free Ice Cream — China’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign got off to a slow start. It is now trying to catch up, through a mixture of freebies and the occasional threat.
- China’s Anger at Foreign Brands Helps Local Rivals — Chinese rivals to Western names have improved quality and marketing. Now the country’s defiance could give them an edge with young patriots.
- Global Brands Find It Hard to Untangle Themselves From Xinjiang Cotton — Under pressure to renounce cotton harvested in a Chinese region marked by gruesome repression, they face a backlash from nationalist Chinese consumers.
Caixin
- China Raises the Bar for Financial Holding Firms’ Top Brass — Senior executives, board members will need to have at least eight years of financial experience, or a decade working in relevant economic fields.
- Huawei Deactivates AI and Cloud Business Group in Restructuring — Telecom giant plans to split the business across separate units as it struggles to transition from making devices to providing services.
- Solar Panel Giant Looks to Hydrogen to Solve Sector’s Daily Feast-Famine Cycle — New Longi venture will use excess power created during the day to make fuel that can be used round-the-clock.
- Nio and Xpeng Both Set Quarterly Records But Still Lag Behind Tesla — Nio and Xpeng, the two Chinese electric vehicle startups listed in the U.S., reported strong gains in deliveries for March, with both companies setting new quarterly sales records.
- Call of Duty Mobile Developer Outplays Games Publisher as Timi Studio Earns More Than Activision Blizzard — Timi Studio, a Tencent-owned gaming unit responsible for developing the popular mobile games Honor of Kings and Call of Duty Mobile, raked in $10 billion in revenue in 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic led to a dramatic surge in demand for digital entertainment, according to Reuters.
South China Morning Post
- China’s domestic tourism industry on course for ‘orderly recovery’ as Ching Ming Festival boosts travel, box office revenues — A three figure percentage increase in the number of trips undertaken in China during the recent three-day weekend points towards an “orderly recovery” of the domestics tourism industry, further underlining post-coronavirus recovery in the world’s second largest economy.
- Taiwan’s tough drought measures cut home water supply two days a week, curb industry use — Taiwan has started water supply restrictions as it struggles to cope with the worst drought in 56 years.
- What Bilibili is, how it makes money and what’s next for ‘China’s YouTube’ — Bilibili, the Shanghai-based online entertainment company, debuted on the Hong Kong stock exchange on March 26.
Bloomberg
- Beating China Means the U.S. Must Keep its Research Lead — Nobody is better at research and innovation than the U.S., but it could lose its lead if attacks continue against immigration and universities.
- World’s Biggest Solar Company Joins the Hydrogen Game — China’s Longi Green Energy Technology Co., the world’s biggest solar company, is entering the hydrogen market, industry publication Solarzoom reported.
- China’s Smartphone Brands Get a New Opportunity for U.S. Growth — LG’s exit provides a new impetus for cheaper brands to make a push into America.
- Florida Toxic Waste Emergency Could Help Biden Win Rare Earths Fight With China — Cleaning up radioactive tailings from old phosphate mines could be an opportunity for the U.S. to counter Beijing’s hold on strategic resources.
- China’s Five Year Plans Used to be Grandiose. The Latest Is More Down to Earth. — The country’s latest five-year plan has humbler ambitions like building 5G network stations and investing in basic science research. It’s a better strategy.
Reuters
- Mexico foreign minister to visit Russia, China to ensure vaccine supply — Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Tuesday he planned to visit Moscow and China as part of his government’s efforts to ensure that its supply agreements for vaccines against COVID-19 are honored.
- China’s services sector recovery accelerates in March — A recovery in China’s services sector picked up speed in March as firms hired more workers and business optimism surged, although inflationary pressures remained, a private sector survey showed on Tuesday.
Other Publications
- Nikkei Asian Review: US and Japan plan ‘Belt and Road’ alternative for Indo-Pacific — Biden and Suga to set framework for collaboration on 5G and smart cities.
- Nikkei Asian Review: China and US to power 6% global growth in 2021, IMF says — Vaccines and fiscal aid brighten outlook but worldwide recovery speeds diverge.
- Foreign Policy: Taiwan’s COVID-19 Success Is Worryingly Smug — Beating the pandemic has made the government and people overly complacent about China.
- Axios: Global capitalism abets China’s repression — By incentivizing companies to go along with the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang and imposing punishments on those that don’t, the Chinese Communist Party has made complicity in repression profitable for some companies — and for others, even mandatory.
- The Diplomat: How Will China’s Sovereign Digital Currency Affect Fintech? — China’s sovereign digital currency is likely to have a mainly positive impact on the fintech sector.
- The Diplomat: China-Iran Relations: The Myth of Massive Investment — Why the 25-Year China-Iran Strategic Cooperation Agreement isn’t a “big deal,” literally or figuratively.
- The Diplomat: The Challenges of US China Policy — Trying to deal with individual issues on their merits will be tricky.
