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
- Pentagon’s China Warning Prompts Calls to Vet U.S. Funding of Startups — Defense Department report cites examples of U.S. government financing of small businesses it says benefited Chinese interests.
- Apple’s China Engineers Keep Products Flowing as Covid Shuts Out U.S. Staff — Tech giant passes more authority to local workers, uses live streaming and augmented reality to ensure products made in China come out on time.
- War in Europe and China’s Battle With Covid Boost U.S.’s Business Appeal — For European companies, America offers political stability and sustained growth in an increasingly risky and turbulent world.
- China Remains an Outlier in a World of Surging Inflation — Consumer prices in the world’s second-largest economy have held relatively steady, but China’s experience will be hard to replicate elsewhere.
- Chinese Companies Boost Returns to Shareholders — Alibaba and Yum China are among companies earmarking large sums for share repurchases.
- China’s Trade Slows as Demand Drops and Covid Lockdowns Hit Supply Chains — The weakest export growth in almost two years reflects the impact of inflation on foreign consumers.
- Hong Kong Committee Confirms Ex-Policeman John Lee as Next Chief Executive — The city’s security chief, who has led a crackdown on dissent, was the sole candidate in a vote by a group of Beijing loyalists.
The Financial Times
- Buffett-backed BYD’s shares drop after launch of pollution probe — China’s second-biggest automaker is being investigated over claims of harmful emissions.
- China’s exporters battered by lockdowns and global inflation — Premier Li Keqiang sounds alarm over jobs despite Beijing’s zero-Covid drive.
- Lex in depth: why the luxury market needs to hedge against China — A shift in spending habits in Asia and a crackdown on wealth by Beijing threaten a profit squeeze for high-end brands.
- Shanghai lockdown tests Xi’s loyalties in China’s Communist party — Tough conditions and botched management cause erosion of faith in regime’s ability to govern.
- Beijing-backed hardliner John Lee chosen as Hong Kong’s next leader — Critics say uncontested election won by former security minister was a ‘facade.’
- CIA director says China ‘unsettled’ by Ukraine war — Bill Burns tells FT conference that invasion may have affected Xi Jinping’s calculations over Taiwan.
- US and Chinese accounting regulators discuss potential audit deal — On-site inspections being considered to prevent 270 companies from being delisted.
- Peter Ma: China’s shy insurance tycoon bursts into the limelight — The Ping An chair engineered an activist attack on HSBC, demanding the lender split its Asian and western operations.
- Arm China’s renegade chief makes his last stand — Allen Wu refuses to surrender control in extraordinary corporate battle at UK chip designer.
The New York Times
- Taiwan Pivots From ‘Zero Covid’ as Beijing Doubles Down — The government’s shift reflects a recognition that stringent pandemic measures were stifling economic activity and eroding the island’s international competitiveness.
- Taiwan and U.S. Consider Weapons Suited to Defend Against China — The Biden administration’s push for Taiwan to order missiles and smaller arms for asymmetric warfare has gained urgency since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- John Lee Wins Hong Kong’s Rubber-Stamp Election — John Lee, who won a rubber-stamp leadership election on Sunday, will implement the next stage of China’s agenda for the former British colony.
Caixin
- Cover Story: Why Is China’s Powerful Export Engine Losing Steam? — March and April are usually the busiest months for Chinese exporters to sign up orders and ramp up production.
- Indian Court Pauses Takeover of Xiaomi’s Assets — An Indian court has put a hold on a government seizure of 55.5 billion rupees ($725 million) in assets belonging to Xiaomi Corp.’s India unit.
- Advanced Placement Exams Canceled in Eight Cities, Leaving Chinese Students in the Lurch — Many Chinese high school students are at risk of losing out on overseas college places, after the internationally recognized Advanced Placement (AP) exams were cancelled in eight Chinese cities.
South China Morning Post
- Another delay to BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine study in China — Phase 2 trial now not expected to end until October, according to clinical trial database.
- Luckin Coffee plans to list in Hong Kong as the Chinese Starbucks wannabe plans a comeback from its Nasdaq expulsion after restructuring — Luckin’s comeback is a remarkable turnaround for a company built on speed, going from its first kiosk to a Nasdaq listing, and its subsequent expulsion in less than three years.
- China’s LGFV bonds to top offshore dollar debt issuers in 2022 as market grows tired of defaults and delayed payments by developers — LGFV issuance soared 184 per cent as of the end of April from a year earlier, according to Pengyuan International.
- TikTok owner ByteDance renames some subsidiaries, reviving speculation of Hong Kong IPO — ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, has renamed several subsidiaries as ‘Douyin’, including one based in Hong Kong where the unicorn was reportedly considering a stock offering.
Bloomberg
- Britain’s Biggest Bank Is Caught in the U.S.-China Crossfire — Insurer Ping An wants to break up HSBC, 20 years after the ‘global bank’ invested in its future. The tussle points to the difficulty of doing business in China.
- More Than Half U.S. Firms in China See Lockdowns Hitting Revenue — China’s stringent Covid Zero strategy has damaged foreign businesses’ confidence, with U.S. firms in the country slashing investments and lowering revenue projections as lockdowns hit operations and supply chains.
- New York Hospitals Battle Supply Shortages on Shanghai Lockdown — Shanghai’s strict Covid-19 curbs are disrupting health care services halfway across the world, with hospitals in New York suffering a shortage of chemicals used in imaging tests — the latest example of how the Chinese city’s five-week-long lockdown is snarling global supply chains.
Reuters
- ‘Like a prison’: Shanghai, Beijing ratchet up COVID curbs — China’s two largest cities tightened COVID-19 curbs on Monday, fuelling public angst and even questions about the legality of its uncompromising battle with the virus that has battered the world’s second-largest economy.
- Chinese city probing BYD factory emissions over allegations of children’s nosebleeds — A Chinese city has opened an investigation into a factory owned by automaker BYD over allegations that emissions from the plant were causing nosebleeds among children living nearby.
- Analysis-Shanghai COVID crisis puts political spotlight on key Xi ally — If Shanghai Communist Party chief Li Qiang has been politically bruised by the city’s struggle to tame a COVID-19 outbreak that has infuriated residents and caused severe economic damage, there is little sign of it.
Other Publications
- The New Yorker: A Teacher in China Learns the Limits of Free Expression — How had the country experienced so much social, economic, and educational change while its politics remained stagnant? By Peter Hessler
- The Atlantic: Where the Language of Democracy Is a Cover — To choose its next leader, Hong Kong uses words such as election, campaign, and vote to present the facade of freedom.
- The Washington Post: White House alarmed that Commerce probe is ‘smothering’ solar industry — The investigation is examining allegations that China is illegally circumventing U.S. tariffs.
