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
- Hidden Debt Plagues China’s Belt and Road Infrastructure Plan, Studies Find — Research on Chinese projects abroad points to other major problems like corruption, labor violations and environmental risks.
- China Evergrande to Sell Bank Stake to State-Owned Firm for $1.5 Billion — Developer will pare holding in Shengjing Bank to less than 15%.
The Financial Times
- US-China business: the necessary reinvention of Huawei — With sanctions derailing its traditional operations, the telecoms group is now rushing to boost areas such as cloud services.
- Evergrande sells $1.5bn bank stake to state-owned enterprise — Debt-laden Chinese property developer faces worsening liquidity crisis as second interest payment due.
- Can SenseTime become a Chinese AI champion? — Start-up is close to an IPO but remains heavily dependent on Beijing’s support.
- Taipei’s bid to join transpacific trade pact could be held hostage by Beijing — Taiwan’s application ticks more boxes but China has greater political sway over the bloc’s members.
- China’s tech job applicants seek interview tutors as competition heats up — Candidates pay up to $3,000 for tips on how to prepare for increasingly arduous recruitment process.
- China’s pet care spend set for dramatic increase, says Goldman — US bank predicts sixfold increase in pet food sales to meet demands of growing singles population.
The New York Times
- How the Huawei Case Raised Fears of ‘Hostage Diplomacy’ by China — Critics of the Justice Department deal to free the Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou say it could blunt tools like sanctions and prosecutions.
- Evergrande’s Struggles Offer a Glimpse of China’s New Financial Future — The property giant’s success mirrored the country’s transformation from an agrarian economy to one that embraced capitalism. Its struggles offer a glimpse of a new financial future.
Caixin
- In Depth: Evergrande Founder’s Poker Buddy Folds on Teetering Developer — Stalwart investor Chinese Estates unloads shares of world’s most indebted property developer as tumbling shares drive losses into the billions.
- U.S. Fleshes Out ‘Rip and Replace’ Plan for Banned Huawei and ZTE Tech — A $1.9 billion program to remove the two companies’ equipment from rural telecoms networks is set to start next month.
- Another China Banking Regulator Probed for Graft Linked to Inner Mongolia — Cai Jiangting is under investigation for suspected misconduct during her previous role overseeing banks, Caixin has learned.
South China Morning Post
- China power crisis hammers SMEs as firms upend production, workers ‘dozing off’ — Chinese media reported on Tuesday that at least 20 out of 31 provincial jurisdictions have rolled out electricity-rationing measures in recent weeks.
- Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei wants to hire more foreign talent to boost firm’s research initiatives — Huawei Technologies Co will double down on hiring foreign recruits, especially from the United States, as the Chinese telecommunications giant moves to vitalise its overseas research and development programmes.
- Alibaba.com bans overseas sale of crypto mining gear amid China crackdown — Alibaba Group Holding is banning the sale of cryptocurrency mining equipment on its global wholesale platform after the Chinese government intensified its crackdown on cryptocurrency-related activities.
- China hidden local government debt rises to over half of GDP at US$8.2 trillion, Goldman Sachs report says — China’s hidden local government debt has swollen to more than half the size of the economy, according to economists at Goldman Sachs, who said the government will need to be flexible in dealing with this as revenue is already under pressure due to a slowdown in land sales.
Bloomberg
- Hong Kong Passes Tougher Anti-Doxxing Bill That Spooked Big Tech — Hong Kong has strengthened its laws banning the publication of personal information to harass people, or “doxxing,” the latest move in a security campaign that has spooked tech giants in the Asian financial center.
- China Weighs Raising Industrial Power Prices to Ease Supply Woes — The Chinese government is considering raising power prices for industrial consumers to help ease a growing supply crunch.
- Evergrande Investors Say They’re Yet to Get Dollar Bond Coupon — Two holders of a China Evergrande Group dollar bond with a coupon due Wednesday said they hadn’t received payment as of 5 p.m. Hong Kong time.
- Blacklisted China AI Firm Says Just One Unit Subject to Sanction — SenseTime Group Inc., China’s largest artificial intelligence company, said in its filing for an initial public offering in Hong Kong that just one of its subsidiaries is subject to U.S. sanctions, a narrow interpretation of the blacklisting that could bolster its business.
Reuters
- China’s power crunch dwarfs Evergrande’s troubles in investors’ eyes — China’s power supply crunch, that has shut factories across the country, may pose a much bigger threat to the economy than the debt crisis at Evergrande Group, prompting investors to shun industries vulnerable to power shortages such as steelmaking and construction.
- U.S. says Chinese government blocking Boeing airplane purchases — U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Tuesday the Chinese government was preventing its domestic airlines from buying “tens of billions of dollars” of U.S.-manufactured Boeing Co. airplanes.
Other Publications
- Associated Press: Chinese switch to flashlights, generators amid power cuts — News reports blame high coal prices they say make power companies reluctant to meet booming demand, while economists say the real motive is political: Officials are under pressure to curtail energy use to meet official targets.
- Nikkei Asia: U.S. sanctions spur China and Russia to build up cross-border links — Beijing and Moscow aim to double trade by 2024.
- Nikkei Asia: Bombard the headquarters: Xi Jinping’s crackdown keeps growing — The new ‘common prosperity’ doctrine hearkens back to the Mao era.
- Quartz: China is combating crypto with a push for the digital yuan — It’s increasingly clear that the essence of cryptocurrencies is deeply at odds with the Chinese Communist Party’s governing approach to the digital economy under Xi.
- AidData: Banking on the Belt and Road: Insights from a new global dataset of 13,427 Chinese development projects — Our paper introduces a uniquely comprehensive and granular dataset of international development finance from China. It captures 13,427 projects worth $843 billion across 165 countries in every major world region over an 18-year period.