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 Inflation Cools but Beijing Worries Economy Is Losing Heat — Price increases moderate in June, but authorities appear to be uneasy about the short-term cost pressures on manufacturers and the unbalanced nature of the longer-term recovery.
- Afghanistan’s Taliban, Now on China’s Border, Seek to Reassure Beijing — Despite past support for Uyghur militants in Xinjiang, Taliban say they won’t interfere in China’s internal affairs.
- Index of U.S.-Listed Chinese Companies Falls to Lowest Point in Over a Year — Chinese tech companies are being scrutinized by Beijing.
The Financial Times
- Xi and Washington’s China hawks unite against Chinese tech IPOs in US — Didi debacle signals end of steady stream of New York listings for Chinese companies.
- Senators call on US securities regulator to investigate Didi IPO — Two members of powerful banking committee say SEC must examine whether company misled investors.
- Beijing asked Didi to change mapping function over security fears — Ride-hailing group received multiple requests from regulator before its IPO to remove sensitive locations.
Caixin
- China Warns Stablecoins Are a Risk to Global Financial Systems — The digital currency is being used as payment for illegal transactions, central bank official says.
- China’s Banking Regulator Says Internet Fees Are Driving up Financing Costs — Platforms are charging banks high fees for referral traffic, CBIRC director says.
- In Depth: Tech Giants Combine to Thrive in Southeast Asia’s Rapidly Consolidating Market — Planned merger of Gojek and Tokopedia to form GoTo highlights the ferocious competition for customers among other sectors leaders.
South China Morning Post
- China’s regulators suspect Didi’s US listing was ‘deliberate act of deceit’, a portrayal that shows severity of mistrust, sources say — China’s government regulators suspect that the June 30 initial public offering by Didi-Chuxing in New York was a deliberate act of deceit, a characterisation that underscores the severity of the fundraising exercise and the potential storm to come, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
- China’s pig farmers suffer again as African swine fever surge hits Sichuan — Large numbers of pigs are dying from African swine fever in China’s top hog-producing province, say farmers and analysts, raising concerns it could spread further across the south and slow China’s pork production recovery.
- US-China relations: Joe Biden’s embrace of post-pandemic ‘industrial polices’ shows ‘bust of Washington Consensus’ — The Biden administration’s US$1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package and other interventionist fiscal measures are a pivot towards China’s economic model and signal a bust of Washington’s long-advocated neoliberal ideology, according to a new report by Renmin University of China.
- China’s Big Tech crackdown: How an obscure office in Beijing’s cybersecurity administration has struck fear into the country’s tech giants — An obscure bureaucratic office in Beijing has emerged as one of the most feared government institutions for China’s Big Tech as Beijing clamps down on what it sees as cybersecurity risks in the internet sector.
Bloomberg
- Boeing Max Edges Toward China Return as Test Flights Near — Chinese aviation officials have signaled they are open to conducting flight tests on Boeing Co.’s 737 Max, a step toward lifting the plane’s grounding in that nation after more than two years, according to people familiar with the matter.
- Taliban Resurgence Raises Terrorism Fears From Moscow to Beijing — The Taliban’s lightning-fast advance to control more territory in Afghanistan is raising alarms from Russia to China, as U.S. President Joe Biden’s move to withdraw troops disrupts a balance of power in South Asia that has held steady for about two decades.
- Elon Musk’s China Battery Partner Is Now Richer Than Jack Ma — Zeng Yuqun, the founder of the world’s biggest electric-vehicle battery maker, has overtaken Jack Ma in the wealth rankings, a symbolic moment in the rise of China’s green billionaires.
- Countries Using China, Astra Shots Increasingly Eye Boosters — Growing concern that Covid-19 vaccines being deployed across much of the developing world aren’t capable of thwarting the delta variant is prompting some countries to look at offering third doses to bolster immunity against more infectious virus strains.
Reuters
- Exclusive: U.S. set to add more Chinese companies to blacklist over Xinjiang — The Biden administration is set as early as Friday to add more than 10 Chinese companies to its economic blacklist over alleged human rights abuses and high-tech surveillance in Xinjiang, two sources told Reuters.
- TikTok owner ByteDance to end compulsory weekend overtime — TikTok owner ByteDance on Friday said that it would formally end its weekend overtime policy from Aug. 1, two weeks after its short-video rival Kuaishou announced a similar decision.
- China’s CNOOC dives into uncharted deep waters in bold gas pivot — When the first gas from CNOOC Ltd’s new ultra-deep field in the South China Sea started flowing in late June to the world’s largest customised floating platform 1,500 meters above the sea bed, it marked a key phase in China’s gas drive.
Other Publications
- The Economist: Deep in rural China, bitcoin miners are packing up — A government clampdown has forced most of them offline.
- The Economist: In China, patriotic nostalgia is big business — One of China’s odder sights is tourists in replica Red Army uniforms. A visit to the villages where they are made.
- The Economist: The Philippines’ secret weapon against Chinese incursions — Female radio operators appear to have greater success in driving away unwelcome boats.
- Nikkei Asia: Under pressure, Baidu and Tencent tout contributions to China — Jack Ma and Didi CEO Cheng Wei absent from this year’s AI expo in Shanghai.
- Associated Press: China evacuates nationals from Afghanistan amid US pullout — China sent a flight to bring home 210 of its nationals from Afghanistan, state media reported Friday.
