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
- Beijing Reins In China’s Central Bank — The PBOC was never independent but it has tried to establish good communication with markets. Xi Jinping’s financial shake-up is changing that.
- Market Can Weather Evergrande Crisis, China’s Top Central Banker Says — People’s Bank of China Gov. Yi Gang also talks up Hong Kong’s role as international financial hub.
- China Reopens a Funding Spigot for Property Developers — The move is enabling some companies to tap into an obscure form of debt financing that helps pay their suppliers.
- China’s Latest Challenge Is Engineering a Soft Landing for a Sputtering Economy — Policy makers want to stimulate growth, but they are constrained by policies designed to rein in debt and speculative behavior.
- Olympics Boycott Expands to Include Diplomatic Officials From U.K., Canada — Those governments staying away from the Winter Games in China also include the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Lithuania.
- Chinese Developer Kaisa Defaults, Fitch Says, as Industry’s Debt Challenges Mount — Nonpayment of maturing bond this week follows failed debt exchange.
The Financial Times
- China’s 20th anniversary as a WTO member triggers mixed emotions — Beijing’s birthday celebrations will contrast with distinct lack of party atmosphere in Washington.
- Evergrande rated ‘restricted default’ by Fitch after missed payment — Agency becomes first to downgrade Chinese developer as state-led restructuring gets under way.
- US to blacklist Chinese AI company SenseTime over Xinjiang ahead of IPO — Facial recognition software specialist targeted for allegedly enabling human rights abuses.
- Bitcoin mining nears record pace as industry shrugs off China clampdown — Companies creating new tokens scatter across the world after China’s crackdown in May.
- Emerging markets hit by abrupt slowdown in new foreign investment — Flows into asset class ‘dry up’ on worries over US monetary policy and Omicron.
- China set to make tech VIEs unviable, closing foreign ownership loophole — Apple’s data truce, AWS and Adele, Kanye and Kano’s Stem Player.
- China policy will test Germany’s coalition — Olaf Scholz will have to move beyond Angela Merkel’s faith in change through trade.
The New York Times
- China Evergrande Has Defaulted on Its Debt, Fitch Says — A ratings firm’s declaration confirmed what investors had already suspected, but they now must wait on a restructuring plan overseen by the firm hand of Beijing.
- The Diplomatic Boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Explained — American athletes will still compete at the Winter Games. Here’s a look at what the diplomatic boycott really means.
- Jailed Journalists Reach Record High for Sixth Year in 2021 — The Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom monitoring group, said 293 journalists were behind bars this year, more than a quarter of them in China.
- House Votes to Crack Down on Goods Made in Xinjiang Over Abuse of Uyghurs — The lopsided margin reflected growing bipartisan anger at China’s human rights abuses against Uyghurs in the northwestern region.
Caixin
- Director of Company That Prints China’s Money Turns Himself In — Chen Yaoming is under investigation by anti-corruption authorities for graft.
- Darkest Days of Car Chip Shortage Have Passed, Industry Group Proclaims — Improved supply allowed production to grow 14% month-on-month in November, the China Passenger Car Association says.
- Sunac Further Cuts Stake in Ke Holdings to Raise Funds — Chinese real estate developer sells $530 million of Ke shares, bringing disposals since June 1 to $1.08 billion as it scrapes up cash in the face of pressure on property industry.
South China Morning Post
- Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, 2 others found guilty over unauthorised Tiananmen Square vigil in 2020 — The trio were the last of the 24 opposition activists and former politicians charged over the banned Victoria Park gathering – all were convicted.
- Xi Jinping notably quick to greet Olaf Scholz as China seeks new German friend — Chinese President Xi Jinping moved quickly to congratulate Angela Merkel’s successor as German chancellor, doing so almost immediately after Olaf Scholz’s appointment was confirmed.
- Didi’s latest fines for unlicensed cars, drivers highlight compliance uncertainty ahead of Hong Kong listing — Didi Global, China’s leading ride-hailing company that will delist from the New York Stock Exchange due to Beijing’s data security concerns, has been fined by local authorities for operating with unlicensed cars and drivers, a compliance issue that has dogged the company since its inception.
Bloomberg
- China Evergrande Declared in Default for First Time — China Evergrande Group has been cut to restricted default by Fitch over its failure to make two coupon payments by the end of a grace period on Monday. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Damien Sassower explains.
- Alibaba-Led Bid for Unigroup Is Said to Hit Last-Minute Snag — An Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.-led effort to take over China’s troubled Tsinghua Unigroup Co. has hit a last-minute snag, according to people familiar with the matter, raising the prospect a rival bidder will close the deal for the semiconductor champion.
- China Steps Up Overseas Hunt for Ore Needed to Make Aluminum — China’s aluminum industry, the world’s biggest, is becoming increasingly dependent on overseas supplies of the ore needed to make the metal, another sign of the nation’s chronic reliance on raw-material imports.
- Hong Kong Court Hands Tycoon Jimmy Lai Another Guilty Ruling — A Hong Kong court found media tycoon Jimmy Lai guilty for his role in an unauthorized vigil last year for victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, adding to the jailed septuagenarian’s mounting convictions.
Reuters
- China’s PBOC showdown will force Xi to pick sides — President Xi Jinping may be forced to pick a side in the battle against bad debt. Anti-corruption inspectors are poking around the People’s Bank of China, according to a media report, as a concerted attack on the institution’s deleveraging campaign gains momentum.
- U.S. House passes measure clamping down on products from China’s Xinjiang region — The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation on Wednesday to ban imports from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labor, one of three measures backed overwhelmingly as Washington continues its pushback against Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority.
- Chinese sighting of ‘cube’ on moon rouses speculation, inspires memes — A photograph of a cube-like object captured by a Chinese rover on the far side of the moon has fanned speculation over what it could be and inspired a host of memes by Chinese internet users.
Other Publications
- The Economist: China courts global capital, on its own terms — It is looking to reduce its dependency on the West, while increasing the West’s dependency on it.
- The Washington Post: In need of a baby boom, China clamps down on vasectomies — For more than three decades, Chinese authorities forced men and women to undergo sterilization to control population growth. Now, as the government tries to reverse a plummeting birthrate that it fears could threaten social stability and the economy, hospitals are turning away men seeking vasectomies.
- Foreign Affairs: Xi Jinping’s New World Order — Can China Remake the International System? By Elizabeth Economy
- Quartz: China wants to redefine democracy — Over the weekend, the central government published a 55-page white paper extolling the virtues of its democracy, followed by a report the next day on the terminal malaise of US democracy.
- Recorded Future: Chinese State-Sponsored Cyber Espionage Activity Supports Expansion of Regional Power and Influence in Southeast Asia — The identified intrusion campaigns almost certainly support key strategic aims of the Chinese government, such as gathering intelligence on countries engaged in South China Sea territorial disputes or related to projects and countries strategically important to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
