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 Plans New Restrictions in Its Booming Live-Streaming Sector — Regulators are planning rules limiting virtual tipping of live-streaming hosts and time spent by young people on the apps.
- Evergrande Hires Advisers to Probe $2 Billion Cash Seizure — Chinese property giant also agrees to $575 million project disposal.
- Chinese Property Giant Country Garden Tries to Prove Its Doubters Wrong — Net profit last year fell 23%, but the company said it is in a strong financial position and believes it can weather the downturn.
- U.K.’s Top Court Withdraws Judges Presiding in Hong Kong, Citing Loss of Freedoms in City — Effect of China’s national security law cited for decision to pull judges from roles on Hong Kong’s highest court.
- Shanghai Lockdown Adds to China’s Economic Woes — Many economists thought Beijing’s official GDP growth target this year was a reach even before the phased closure of one of its biggest cities.
- Investors Lose Taste for Chinese Consumer Stocks — Surging commodity prices—triggered by the war in Ukraine—threaten to eat into profits, while Covid lockdowns dent demand.
- U.S. Officials Get Approval to Travel for China Plane Crash Probe — National Transportation Safety Board investigators hope to leave for China this week.
- State Street Loses Hong Kong Role After U.S. Blacklist Controversy — The $14 billion Tracker Fund follows the city’s benchmark Hang Seng Index.
- BYD Is Navigating Speed Bumps, Not a Pile Up — The Chinese electric-vehicle leader is feeling the heat from cost pressures and a slowing economy.
The Financial Times
- Shanghai’s alternating Covid lockdown batters bankers and vegetable buyers — Coronavirus outbreak causes disruption across Chinese financial hub and challenges zero-Covid policy.
- China reverses roles in arms trade with Russia — Beijing becomes partner and potential supplier to former source of military equipment.
- Arm plans transfer of shares in renegade China unit to speed up IPO — Shifting stake in chip designer’s joint venture to a SoftBank special purpose vehicle would ease New York flotation.
- Two senior UK judges resign from Hong Kong’s top court — Move comes in response to Beijing’s enforcement of repressive national security law in the territory.
- Big Four under growing pressure as Chinese developers delay audits — Major accounting firms resign from indebted property groups as postponed results raise threat of hidden debts.
- China’s zero-Covid goal is no longer sustainable — Beijing needs to develop a strategy for living with coronavirus.
The New York Times
- U.K. Judges Quit Top Hong Kong Court — They had served on the territory’s highest court, part of an arrangement to retain links to the common law world after Hong Kong returned to China.
Caixin
- Distressed Chinese Developer Sunac Sweetens Proposed Bond Extension Plan — China’s third largest developer by sales offers to shorten the extension period from two years to 18 months.
- Nongfu Springs Sees Profits Flood in as Beverage Industry Recovers From Pandemic — The bottled water giant reported roughly one-third surges in revenue and net profit for 2021.
- Xpeng’s Electric Vehicle Sales Near 100,000 Despite Widening Loss — Upstart tops deliveries of rivals Nio and Li Auto, but lower pricing and heavy research and marketing costs result in buckets of red ink.
- CSRC Denies Rumors of Restrictions on IPOs by Xiaomi-Linked Companies — In response to social media reports, top securities regulator says it isn’t standing in the way of share sales by businesses where the smartphone giant has investments.
South China Morning Post
- Russia’s war on Ukraine: China schools its teachers with classroom guide to Beijing’s messaging — Beijing’s messaging on the war in Ukraine is being taken into Chinese classrooms with teachers attending lectures on how to “unify thoughts and correctly guide students’ understanding” of the conflict.
- Journalist groups call for release of Chinese-Australian TV reporter Cheng Lei — Journalist groups have renewed calls for the release of Chinese-Australian business reporter Cheng Lei on the eve of her trial in Beijing on espionage charges.
- National security law: British judicial body withdraws judges from Hong Kong’s top court — UK Supreme Court President Lord Robert Reed, Vice-President Lord Patrick Hodge resign from Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal with immediate effect.
Nikkei Asia
- China’s U.N. sway forces NGOs to rewrite Taiwan references: study — Excluding Taiwan from international system carries risks, report warns.
- China’s Great Wall Motor staying in Russia ‘for time being’ — Automaker warns Ukraine war, sanctions could force shift in plans for key market.
- China meatpacker WH Group seeks to gobble up European peers — Pork processor’s income now comes almost entirely from domestic market and U.S.
Bloomberg
- China Huarong Set to Appoint Citic Executive as New Chairman — China Huarong Asset Management Co. is set to appoint a new chairman from Citic Group, marking the first major management reshuffle since it was rescued in a $6.6 billion state-backed bailout.
- China Vows to Root Out Tax Evasion on Livestreaming Services — Chinese regulators pledged to step up oversight of the country’s livestreaming platforms, a stark warning to an industry that’s come under fire in recent years for tax evasion and content violations.
- SoftBank to Shift Arm’s Stake in Troubled China Unit Before IPO — Arm Ltd. is shifting a chunk of its stake in Arm China to parent SoftBank Group Corp. and revising how it accounts for the troubled Chinese affiliate, a bookkeeping change that may ease the British chip designer’s path to an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.
Reuters
- China’s CCTV shows NBA game, ending 18-month blackout — Chinese state broadcaster CCTV aired a National Basketball Association (NBA) game for the first time in 18 months on Wednesday, raising hopes that relations between the league and China were on the mend after a 2019 rift.
- China, Russia ‘more determined’ to boost ties, Beijing says — Moscow and Beijing are “more determined” to develop bilateral ties and boost cooperation, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Wednesday following a meeting in eastern China with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, amid the Ukraine crisis.
- China truckers use fake travel records, ‘clean’ drivers to dodge COVID rules — Chinese truck drivers hoping to outwit COVID-19 inspectors are faking travel histories to get through checkpoints or avoid quarantine, state media reported, as weary citizens struggle with restrictions more than two years after the pandemic began.
Other Publications
- Associated Press: How China’s TikTok, Facebook influencers push propaganda — The country has quietly built a network of social media personalities who parrot the government’s perspective in posts seen by hundreds of thousands of people, operating in virtual lockstep as they promote China’s virtues, deflect international criticism of its human rights abuses and advance Beijing’s talking points on world affairs like Russia’s war against Ukraine.
- Politico: Tai: U.S. must ramp up trade defense against China — The remarks provide a noticeable shift in tone from Biden’s top trade ambassador but stop short of outlining any new trade penalties against the country.
- CSIS: The Two Technospheres: Western-Chinese Technology Decoupling: Implications for Cybersecurity — Through a series of workshops and an analysis of existing efforts, the Multilateral Cyber Action Committee (MCAC) has provided an assessment on the current status of technology decoupling and the growing divergence of the Western and Chinese technospheres.
- PIIE: Is the private sector retreating in China? Not among its largest companies — Evidence presented in a new PIIE Working Paper tells a different story—that among China’s largest companies, the private sector is expanding rapidly and at a faster rate than SOEs.
