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 Eastern Airlines Crash: One of Plane’s Black Boxes Is Found — Authorities are verifying whether the device is a flight-data recorder or a cockpit voice recorder.
- China Eastern Plane Crash Complicates Boeing’s China Relationship — Crash probe could take months, comes as Boeing works to resume MAX deliveries to China.
- Judge Frees China’s ZTE From Some U.S. Oversight — Ruling ends five-year probation for telecoms-gear company that stemmed from guilty plea to violating sanctions on Iran.
- Ukraine’s President Eyes Talks With China’s Xi Jinping — Volodymyr Zelensky plans to hold talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Ukrainian presidential spokesman Andriy Yermak said.
- China’s Ailing Developers Delay Results as Audits Drag — Property companies, including Evergrande and Kaisa, say they will miss end-March deadline.
- Evergrande Delays Results as Banks Seize $2 Billion at Unit — Developer, which is working to raise fresh funds, says ‘major incident’ will be investigated.
- China Grapples With How to Handle All the Mild Covid Cases — A strategy of quarantining anyone who tests positive for Covid-19 is straining medical resources.
- Hong Kong Data Show Benefit to Third Shot of Sinovac in Preventing Omicron Deaths — New study of the city’s continuing Covid-19 outbreak underscores the importance of booster shots for the Chinese vaccine.
- Tencent’s Revenue Grows at Slowest Pace in Nearly Two Decades — China’s restrictions on youth gaming and the internet industry impact advertising and videogame revenue.
The Financial Times
- Foreign businesses in China need to heed the lessons of Russian exodus — Consequences of action like the Ukraine invasion can play out at a speed and scale few have imagined possible
- Evergrande bondholders threaten to sue after being blindsided by $2bn claim — Restructuring of highly indebted Chinese developer comes as property sector suffers slowdown
- Hearing out the China bulls — And can an inverted yield curve cause a recession?
The New York Times
- China Takes a Back Seat in International Diplomacy Over Ukraine — Despite its economic and military might and close ties to Russia, China has balked at trying to press Vladimir Putin to stop the fighting.
- China Finds 1 Black Box From Plane Crash as Rain Hinders Search — Officials have revealed few details about the China Eastern Airlines flight that went down Monday, with the government moving quickly to control the information flow and emphasize the positive.
- China’s Divorce Rate Is Down, but So Are Marriages — While officials say a new law has helped save marriages, the bigger challenge in the country’s demographic crisis is that fewer people are getting married in the first place.
- Ukraine War and Pandemic Force Nations to Retreat From Globalization — Conflicts among the U.S., Russia and China — and endless Covid-19 outbreaks — strain the interdependent economy and Western ideas of post-Cold War stability.
Caixin
- China’s Securities Watchdog Mulls Move to Break Audit Deadlock With U.S. — Interpretation of the Securities Law would tell firms the conditions they need to meet prior to handing over papers to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
- DJI Tells Ukraine It Can’t Disable Drones Used by Russian Military — Although DJI markets its products for civilian applications such as film shooting, geographical mapping and crop protection, its gear — regarded as high-quality and well-priced —have grown popular with armed forces.
- ZTE Shares Jump as U.S. Court Ends Probation for Violating Sanctions — Decision marks a milestone in the telecoms giant’s journey to recover from a suite of punishments.
- Tencent Music’s Profit Cut in Half Amid Crackdown on Monopolies, Tax Evasion — The operator of China’s largest online music platform blames declining revenue on increasing competition and ‘changing macro environment’.
South China Morning Post
- Jack Ma’s Ant appoints Southeast Asia head, signalling focus is back on growth after restructuring — Ant Group has named its first regional head for the Southeast Asian market, sending a signal that the group is putting its focus back on growth as a restructuring process to meet tougher Chinese regulations nears completion.
- As China’s lower-tier markets slow down, Pinduoduo’s e-commerce growth hits record low — Pinduoduo reported just a 2.6 per cent revenue growth in fourth quarter last year, in a sign that consumer spending in the world’s second-largest economy is waning.
- Taiwan looks at extending compulsory military service beyond 4 months — Taiwan is considering extending compulsory military service beyond the current four months, Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said on Wednesday.
Nikkei Asia
- China’s Fosun in $1.5bn deal to sell Lanvin fashion unit to SPAC — Conglomerate indicates uncertainty about whether transaction will add to profits.
- Apple supplier Goertek’s sensor unit halts China IPO over COVID — Microelectronics developer cites impact of rising infections on application process.
Bloomberg
- Tencent Declares ‘Reckless’ Era for Tech Is Over as Growth Tanks — Tencent Holdings Ltd. pledged to embrace China’s new paradigm of stricter government oversight after reporting its slowest growth on record, declaring the end of an era that nurtured some of the world’s largest and most profitable corporations.
- China-Europe Rail Lines Become Supply Chain’s Latest Problem — More than a million containers set to ride 6,000-plus miles of railway linking Western Europe to Eastern China via Russia are now having to find new routes by sea, adding to costs and threatening to worsen the global supply chain chaos.
- Evergrande Investors Left Baffled by $2.1 Billion in Seized Cash — Investors in China Evergrande Group are still in the dark over just how $2.1 billion of deposits at its property-services unit came to be used as security for pledge guarantees and seized by banks.
- Smartphone Giant Xiaomi Jumps After Joining China Buyback Wave — Xiaomi Corp. jumped as much as 6.3% after posting better-than-expected results and declaring it will begin buying as much as HK$10 billion ($1.3 billion) of its own shares.
Reuters
- To counter China influence, U.S. names envoy to lead Pacific Island talks — The United States on Tuesday named former senior diplomat Joseph Yun to lead languishing talks with three tiny but strategically important Pacific Island countries.
- U.S. has not seen China providing military equipment to Russia – White House — U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday he has not seen any evidence of China providing military equipment to Russia.
- China sets green hydrogen target for 2025, eyes widespread use — The country aims to produce 100,000 tonnes to 200,000 tonnes of green hydrogen a year and have about 50,000 hydrogen-fuelled vehicles by 2025, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a statement.
Other Publications
- Quartz: China’s internet has coined a term to mock covid-zero fanatics — Some internet users have coined the term “pandemic prevention enthusiast” for people who are seen as expressing an irrational level of support for covid zero, perhaps in part because economic privilege protects them from the most severe consequences of the policy faced by daily wage workers.
- Protocol: A secretive US security program has its sights on DiDi — Experts say a U.S. security assessment of DiDi unveiled by Protocol is occurring under a secretive program sweeping in Chinese tech companies and considering bans.
- Rest of World: Chinese internet chatter on the Ukraine war is a warped lens — When social media censorship and clickbait combine, nationalism sells.
- ChinaFile: Will China Set Global Tech Standards? — A ChinaFile Conversation.
