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
- White House Weighs Order to Screen U.S. Investment in Tech in China, Other Countries — The initiative follows a failed attempt to pass legislation with similar restrictions.
- Global Coal-Fired Power Generation Falls as Prices Soar and China Slows — Emissions drop in first half of 2022, report finds, driven largely by developments in China.
- Chinese Banks Lose a Mortgage Safety Net as Developers Slide Into Distress — Real-estate firms have written at least $300 billion in mortgage guarantees on uncompleted homes that they presold.
- Inflation Eases in China as Growth Challenges Pile Up — Consumer prices rose just 2.5% in August from a year earlier, slower than in the previous month and short of expectations.
- Opinion: China Is Buying the Farm — State-owned companies have bought many acres near U.S. military bases. What is Beijing up to? By Lars Erik Schönander and Geoffrey Cain
The Financial Times
- EY China opts out of firm’s radical break-up plan — Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan offices refuse to take part in Big Four accountant’s operational split.
- US lawmakers warn Apple on using Chinese group’s chips in new iPhone — Tech company accused of ‘playing with fire’ if it buys data storage components from YMTC.
- Trading of Hong Kong-listed ETFs via China Connect jumps by 90% — The scheme saw also trading volume growth of more than 50% for 83 mainland China-listed vehicles.
- Chinese park pleads for live chickens to stop tigers starving in lockdown — Zoo asks for food as zero-Covid policy threatens supplies for endangered animals.
- Naspers confirms move of Tencent shares to Hong Kong clearing system — Stock worth $7.6bn transferred to smooth future sales to fund buyback of South African group’s own shares.
The New York Times
- 2 Years After Deadly Fistfights, India and China Pull Back From Border — The two sides, after 16 rounds of talks, made an announcement a week before their leaders will meet in Uzbekistan.
- China’s Public Puts on a Show of Zero Covid for an Audience of One — Because of Xi Jinping’s unrelenting policy, the Chinese people put up with a precarious existence filled with lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing.
- How Silicon Chips Rule the World — Maintaining the flow of oil is still crucial for the world economy. But now the supply of semiconductors is also critical for commerce, and war and peace.
- Opinion: China’s Heat Wave Was a Frightening Vision of Earth’s Future — On a trip through the epicenter, ravaged landscapes, paralyzed cities and populations pushed to extremes.
Caixin
- Central Bank to Push for Universal Digital Payment QR Codes — People’s Bank of China aiming to standardize the digital yuan vows to work out a single system that will work for all electronic transactions.
- Flexible-Screen Maker Royole Has $5.3 Million in Assets Frozen Amid ‘Contract Disputes’ — Cash crunch amid tepid take-up of its technology has caused mounting losses for the company formerly viewed as a unicorn.
- CATL Shares Surge and Plunge on Turmoil in Key Lithium Project — Exit of Yongxing Special Materials from Jiangxi lithium carbonate venture raises supply concerns, but battery giant vows to proceed with new partners.
South China Morning Post
- China calls for mass Covid-19 testing, but it could burden local governments — Frequent testing has become a costly approach in the face of highly contagious Omicron variants, and cities have been told to come up with the funds to pay for it.
- Chinese shippers face abyss as freight rates plummet 60 per cent from ‘unprecedented’ highs at height of coronavirus pandemic — China’s shipping industry has reported a 60 per cent drop in freight rates, as congestion linked to Covid-19 eases globally and the country’s foreign trade slows down.
- Shanghai AI chip maker with disgraced chairman is now China’s new hope in race to catch up with Nvidia — The Tiangai 100 GPU, which took four years to develop and is used in cloud computing applications, has received US$33 million worth of orders so far.
Bloomberg
- China’s Plan to Revise Constitution Could Enshrine ‘Xi Thought’ — China’s ruling Communist Party will revise its constitution to include “major strategic thinking,” state media reported, in a sign President Xi Jinping’s doctrine could be further elevated.
- China Restricts Domestic Travel as Covid Outbreaks Persist — China is stepping up its Covid defenses as a key Communist Party meeting looms, restricting internal travel further as swathes of the country remain under tight lockdowns.
- US Eases Huawei Curbs to Counter China’s Push on Tech Standards — The US government is loosening restrictions on the sharing of technology with blacklisted firms, seeking to maintain America’s lead in setting international standards as China closes the gap.
Reuters
- China ambassador: U.N. report on Xinjiang has ‘closed door of cooperation’ — “The office closed the door of cooperation by releasing the so-called assessment,” Ambassador Chen Xu told reporters, describing the report as “illegal and invalid”.
- Exclusive: German economy ministry reviews measures to curb China business — Germany’s economy ministry is considering a raft of measures to make business with China less attractive as it seeks to reduce its dependency on Asia’s economic superpower.
- Analysis: U.S. ban on Nvidia, AMD chips seen boosting Chinese rivals — The rise of AI chip startups in China could upset plans by the U.S. to slow down China’s development of computing tools needed for military applications such as designing nuclear weapons.
Other Publications
- The Information: Sequoia Capital’s China Arm Employed Daughter of Politburo Member — In a previously unreported move that may have given Sequoia Capital China more influence with Beijing, the firm employed Wang Xisha, the daughter of Wang Yang, one of seven members of the Communist Party’s powerful Politburo Standing Committee.
- The Information: How U.S. Tech Companies Fueled China’s Surveillance State — In an excerpt from their new book, “Surveillance State,” Liza Lin and Josh Chin discuss the rise of facial recognition and how SenseTime became one of the industry’s dominant players.
- The Economist: Public patience with zero-covid is wearing thin in China — An earthquake in locked-down Chengdu renews doubts about the policy
- The Economist: Xi Jinping will at last venture abroad again — Why is Central Asia his destination?
- Foreign Policy: Taiwan Needs Weapons for Day 1 of a Chinese Invasion — Unlike Ukraine, the island will be very hard to arm during a conflict. By Blake Herzinger
