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 EV Sales Drop for First Time Since February 2024 — Chinese exports of EVs and hybrids rise 70% in 2025 as automakers shift their focus overseas.
- Waldorf Astoria’s Chinese Owners Plan to Sell NYC Hotel After Extravagant Makeover — A sale would be part of the recent wave of Chinese property owners pulling out of the U.S. market.
- Dutch Court Orders Probe Into Chinese-Owned Nexperia — The investigation is set to prolong a fight for control of a key automotive supplier.
- Opinion: China’s Global Censorship Campaign — Beijing targets the father of a Hong Kong dissident in the U.S. By The Editorial Board.
The Financial Times
- How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity — brutality behind the propaganda — Frank Dikötter dismantles CCP myths about Mao’s leadership to tell a story of Chinese repression that is still relevant today.
- China wants to create a ‘Polar Silk Road’ through the Arctic — Beijing targets shipping routes and resources in far north.
- China charges former AstraZeneca executive — Leon Wang, who has been in detention since 2024, is charged alongside another ex-employee of drugmaker.
The New York Times
- Why Are People ‘Becoming Chinese’ on Social Media? — Think of the meme as an absurdist joke, a wellness goal or an ironic expression of protest — or all of the above. Your ethnicity is beside the point.
Caixin
- Shenzhen Gold Platforms Suspend Withdrawals Amid Price Surge — Regulators move in as leveraged trading tests China’s precious metals oversight.
- U.K. Court to Hear $4.3 Billion Bitcoin Disposal Linked to China Investment Fraud — About 8,300 Chinese victims file claims as judge signals need for unified representation.
- China Bets on Chip Clusters to Survive U.S. Sanctions — While chip clusters can help bridge the computing performance gap, industry insiders caution that systematic complexity, high costs and limited commercial demand could constrain their widespread adoption.
- Travel to China for Lunar New Year Jumps as Visa-Free Policies Spur Interest — Online travel platforms report increased bookings, though industry insiders say the gains partly reflect a low base from previous years, noting the overall scale remains modest.
- VW China Venture Secures First EU Tariff Exemption With EV Price Pledge — The Volkswagen joint venture agrees to minimum prices, volume caps, and local investments to bypass anti-subsidy duties.
South China Morning Post
- China confirms it is talking to US about Trump visit as trade truce stays on the cards — US president and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping may roll back tariffs for up to a year as officials seek short-term economic wins.
- Xi’s new year message to military reveals PLA Cyberspace Force post in South China Sea — Analyst says deployment signals Chinese military’s cyber warfare capabilities ‘are no longer confined to the mainland’.
- Opinion: How Washington’s lawyers stack up against Beijing’s technocrats — While no system is perfect, balancing out the occupational composition of policymakers could hold the key to success for both countries. By Li Cheng and Tony Xiuye Zhao.
Nikkei Asia
- China condemns Lai after interview on Taiwan’s neighbors being ‘next’ — Taipei-Tokyo ties draw intense focus from Beijing amid its feud with Takaichi.
- U.S. tensions no barrier to Chinese AI apps’ global growth: Alibaba fund CEO — Product fit can overcome geopolitics, says AEF chief Cindy Chow.
- Panama successfully navigates U.S.-China tensions over canal — Country accommodates Washington’s demands while avoiding criticism of Beijing.
- Japan PM’s historic landslide reverberates in China — Beijing’s foreign policy blunder triggers emergence of ‘Takaichi 2.0’.
- Opinion: Hainan is China’s island of the future — New free trade port is becoming a launchpad for medical tourism, finance reform and even space. By Lauren Johnston.
Bloomberg
- China Economists Urge Looser Capital Controls as Dollar Wobbles — Several prominent Chinese economists have called for loosening restrictions on the movement of money in and out of the country, arguing that a weaker dollar provides a historic opportunity to boost the yuan’s global appeal by increasing its convertibility.
- Germany Is Trying to Shield Defense Firms From China — and Even the US — As Germany pushes forward with a trillion euro-expansion of its military, the federal government is starting to worry about defense contractors’ reliance on geopolitical rivals such as China — and even the US.
- Trump Administration Warns Peru That a Chinese Port Is Costing Its Sovereignty — The Trump administration warned that Peru is losing sovereignty over a Chinese-owned port near its capital city, after a local judge ruled that the port is exempt from some regulatory oversight.
Reuters
- U.S.-China trade detente fuels mothballing of key China tech curbs — They are the latest moves by the Trump administration to rein in U.S. government actions that could antagonize Beijing following a trade truce reached by China’s Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump.
- A year on from DeepSeek shock, get set for flurry of low-cost Chinese AI models — One year after Chinese startup DeepSeek rattled the global tech industry with the release of a low-cost artificial intelligence model, its domestic rivals are better prepared, vying with it to launch new models, some designed with more consumer appeal.
- Foreign cars flow to Russia through China, skirting Ukraine war sanctions — Tens of thousands of cars are being exported from China to Russia under gray-market schemes that often circumvent Western and Asian government sanctions and automakers’ commitments to exit the Russian market, according to registration data.
Other Publications
- Foreign Policy: How Taiwan Sees the World — The island’s deputy foreign minister on Trump, defense, and why he thinks countries shouldn’t trust China.
- Foreign Affairs: America and China at the Edge of Ruin — A Last Chance to Step Back From the Brink.
- The New Yorker: What Does Xi Jinping Want? — The machinations behind his recent military purge, and whether China sees an opportunity in Donald Trump’s aggression toward Europe.
- The Economist: Chinese homebuyers are enraged by shoddy building standards — Crooked walls and broken promises are harming China’s property market.
- Rest of World: How cheap Chinese phones catapulted Kenya into the global digital economy — Andrea Pollio charts the growth of Chinese investment and companies in the Kenyan capital.
- MIT Technology Review: What’s next for Chinese open-source AI — Chinese open models are spreading fast, from Hugging Face to Silicon Valley. Here’s why that matters.
- BBC: How China became fixated on cloud seeding — China hopes to increasingly control when and where it rains.
