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
- Taiwan Ruling Party’s Election Drubbing Could Ease Tensions With China — Local election results on self-ruled island could persuade Chinese leaders that they can peacefully influence politics there, analysts say.
- Chinese Startups Try to Make It Big in the U.S.—but Without the Backlash — Companies are moving their headquarters out of China, creating a separate entity overseas, or renaming themselves and dropping Chinese references.
- China’s World Cup Viewers See Covid-Driven Censorship — Soccer fans accuse state television of tweaking broadcasts to avoid showing scenes of maskless spectators.
- HSBC Set to Sell Canadian Arm to Royal Bank of Canada for $10 Billion — RBC said deal, expected to close by late 2023, will enhance its competitiveness on global stage.
Zero-Covid Protests
- Chinese Protests Put Xi Jinping in a Bind — Lifting restrictions would risk a wave of Covid infections, while crushing demonstrations would have uncertain consequences.
- China Clamps Down on Protesters Against Zero-Covid Policies — Police turn out to discourage gatherings in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong as state-media backs Xi Jinping’s approach to the pandemic.
- China Covid Protesters Become Targets of Beijing’s Surveillance State — Police use data from mobile phones to track down people who participated in nationwide demonstrations against Xi’s pandemic controls.
- White House Says Chinese Have a Right to Peacefully Protest — The demonstrations present a challenge for President Biden after he and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed to reset relations.
The Financial Times
- Washington steps up pressure on European allies to harden China stance — Biden administration pushes Nato to prioritise restraint of Beijing.
- Rishi Sunak signals determination for UK to engage with China — Prime minister says era of golden relations is over, but stops short of describing Beijing as a threat.
- Alibaba founder Jack Ma living in Tokyo after China’s tech crackdown — Billionaire has spent almost six months in Japan after largely disappearing from public view.
- Hong Kong challenges own court with appeal to Beijing to block UK lawyer — Intervention ‘flies in the face’ of city’s attempt to reclaim status as financial centre.
- Dutch chip toolmaker ASMI warns of escalating trade tensions — US and Netherlands officials to hold talks as Washington steps up push for allies to mirror export curbs.
- JD.com to slash pay for top staff as China growth slows — Ecommerce company pledges to help ordinary workers as Beijing targets wealth gap.
Zero-Covid Protests
- Xi’s ‘myth of infallibility’ under threat as zero-Covid protests rattle China — Communist party boss must decide whether to relax his signature policy or crush demonstrations.
- China protests add to uncertainty for investors — Demonstrations show how the country is struggling to deal with Covid and an easing of lockdowns.
- Investors bet protests will prompt Beijing to loosen Covid-19 curbs — Chinese stocks rally but concerns remain that expectations of coronavirus restrictions easing could ‘backfire’.
- Apple’s growth streak under threat as China’s zero-Covid backlash bites — Worker revolt at Foxconn factory poses risk to company’s 14-quarter run, analysts suggest.
- China blames local officials for outbreaks as Beijing sticks to zero-Covid plan — Health authorities vow to boost vaccination of elderly after widespread protests against restrictions.
The New York Times
- China Says It Will Do More to Vaccinate Older People Against Covid — Only 40 percent of those age 80 or older have had booster shots. Officials said they will go door-to-door and bring vaccines to nursing homes to lift that number.
- China Regroups to Snuff Out a Wave of Covid Protests — Communist Party officials are using decades-old tactics, along with some new ones, to quash the most widespread protests in decades. But Xi Jinping is silent.
- China Protests Over ‘Zero Covid’ Follow Months of Economic Pain — President Xi Jinping’s unbending approach to the pandemic has hurt businesses and strangled growth, squeezing the world’s second-largest economy.
- Proud, Scared and Conflicted. What the China Protesters Told Me. — In more than a dozen interviews, young people explained how the events of the past few days became what one called a “tipping point.”
- White House Weighs How Forcefully to Support Protesters in China — The demonstrations over Covid lockdowns present a challenge for President Biden, who has insisted he will call out abuses by authoritarian governments.
- Chinese Unrest Over Lockdown Upends Global Economic Outlook — Growing protests in the world’s biggest manufacturing nation add a new element of uncertainty atop the Ukraine war, an energy crisis and inflation.
- At a China Covid Protest, a Mix of Giddy Elation and Anxiety — In a country where protests are swiftly quashed, many who gathered to voice their discontent — under the watchful eye of the police — were uncertain about how far to go.
- Videos Show Heavy Police Presence In Response to Protests in China — In Chinese cities where protests were held over the weekend, the police put on a show of force on Monday to deter gatherings. Some protesters showed up despite the tight security.
- China to Launch Astronauts to Tiangong Space Station: How to Watch — The crew will set off from a secretive desert launch center to rendezvous with fellow astronauts aboard Tiangong, the country’s newly completed outpost in orbit.
- Opinion: How China Lost the Covid War — Do you remember when Covid was going to establish China as the world’s dominant power? By Paul Krugman
Caixin
- Cover Story: China’s Share Markets Back on the Fundraising Menu for Ailing Developers (Part 2) — China is reopening the door to the domestic stock market to cash-strapped property developers by lifting a years-long ban on share sales in yet another major bid by policymakers to pull the ailing real estate sector out of a slump that has seen sales fall off a cliff and a flood of defaults.
- China’s Property Support Seen as Helping State-Owned, Quality Private Developers — The recent slate of measures will encourage the better firms to acquire and help complete unfinished projects, insiders say.
South China Morning Post
- Jimmy Lai’s national security trial: Hong Kong justice department seeks ‘7-day adjournment’ amid wait for Beijing’s interpretation of law — City leader John Lee doubles down on move to ask central government for review of legislation after court rules British lawyer can represent media tycoon.
- China’s elite Tsinghua University meets students after weekend protest against Covid restrictions — Witness says students not satisfied by lack of clear-cut responses following long-term dissatisfaction over pandemic restrictions.
- Where are all the tech experts? Hong Kong’s got plenty of jobs but not enough talent, and employers are fed up — Expats have left, Hongkongers have emigrated and there aren’t enough fresh tech graduates to fill vacancies.
- HSBC to sell Canadian business to Royal Bank of Canada for US$10 billion — Sale comes as bank is facing pressure from its biggest shareholder, Ping An Insurance, to spin off its Asian business.
Bloomberg
- UK Summons Chinese Ambassador Over ‘Unacceptable’ Arrest of BBC Journalist — China’s ambassador to the UK has been summoned to the Foreign Office amid a diplomatic row over the arrest and alleged beating of a BBC journalist covering Covid protests in Shanghai, according to a UK Government source.
- China’s Covid Zero Policy Is Putting Its Climate Projects on Ice — Environmentalists say the country’s strict Covid restrictions are cutting off international collaborations and stymieing climate projects.
- Heavy Police Presence Thwarts Another Night of China Protests — Protests against China’s stringent Covid regime failed to take place Monday night, as authorities deployed a heavy police presence in the capital and other major cities to deter a repeat of the weekend’s demonstrations.
Reuters
- Chinese authorities seek out COVID protesters — Chinese authorities have begun inquiries into some of the people who gathered at weekend protests against COVID-19 curbs, people who were at the Beijing demonstrations told Reuters, as police remained out in numbers on the city’s streets.
- Behind Foxconn’s China woes: mistrust, miscommunication, COVID curbs — Tens of thousands of workers had fled the plant in central China in previous weeks and violent protests had erupted over a COVID-19 lockdown and confusion over hiring bonuses.
- Dating apps and Telegram: How China protesters are defying authorities — Opponents of China’s anti-COVID measures are resorting to dating apps and social media platforms blocked on the mainland to evade censors, spread the word about their defiance and strategy, in a high-tech game of cat and mouse with police.
- China decoupling takes one step forward, one back — Wealthy democracies want to cut their reliance on China. But decoupling remains more a geopolitically driven aspiration than economic fact.
Other Publications
- The New Yorker: Chinese Protesters Warily Tell Xi Jinping, “Don’t Push Me” — The nation’s most defiant public demonstrations in years oppose “zero COVID” policies, but their roots run deeper.
- Associated Press: Students sent home, police on patrol as China curbs protests — Chinese universities sent students home and police fanned out in Beijing and Shanghai to prevent more protests Tuesday after crowds angered by severe anti-virus restrictions called for leader Xi Jinping to resign in the biggest show of public dissent in decades.
- The Globe and Mail: RCMP investigating Chinese interference in Canadian affairs, Commissioner says — The RCMP is investigating broad foreign interference by China in Canadian affairs, says Commissioner Brenda Lucki, but she declined to detail precisely what type of activities are being probed by the federal police force.
- The Guardian: Rishi Sunak signals end of ‘golden era’ of relations between Britain and China — PM’s first major foreign policy speech warns of the creeping authoritarianism of Xi Jinping’s regime.
- Politico Europe: China’s rebellious youth has forgotten Tiananmen — The new generation are victims of forced collective amnesia — with little sense of how hard the state is willing to crush dissent. By Jamil Anderlini
