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 Wields Security Laws to Cow Hong Kong’s Once-Free Literary Scene — New arrests show Beijing intends to bring the city’s booksellers and publishers to heel.
- China’s Crude Buying Pause Has Helped Cushion the Market. That Might Be Changing. — Lower prices for July and August cargoes could encourage refiners.
The Financial Times
- Panama officials visit Beijing in push to end shipping row — Vessels have been rapidly removing Panamanian flags after China steps up detentions.
- Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines draws from Chinese rivals in debut AI model — Former OpenAI CTO’s start-up raised $2bn last year at $12bn valuation.
- Chinese AI start-up Moonshot to launch model challenging Anthropic’s lead — Kimi K3 expected to exceed performance of Claude Opus 4.8 in sign of narrowing gap between US and China on frontier AI.
The New York Times
- Hong Kong Police Raid Independent Bookstores and Arrest 5 People — Other booksellers have been detained in recent months as part of a broad national security crackdown.
- Europe Finds It Hard to Break Up With American and Chinese Technology — France and Germany want to quit relying on America and China for key technology like artificial intelligence, but they’re having to choose where to do it.
- Global Opinion Shifts Toward Favoring China Over the U.S., Poll Finds — An annual survey from the Pew Research Center found that more countries felt positively about China than America.
Caixin
- China’s Central Bank Channels 760 Billion Yuan Toward Private Sector Lending — The figures underscore Beijing’s continued reliance on targeted monetary-policy tools to steer credit toward weaker areas of the economy.
- China’s AI Boom Creates Demand for a New Kind of Engineer — At 9 p.m. on a summer evening, 25-year-old Wu Mingze returned to his apartment in Shenzhen after a business dinner.
- China’s Lithium Giants Signal Sector Recovery With Profit Surge Forecasts — China’s two largest lithium producers are projecting sharp profit increases for the first half of 2026.
South China Morning Post
- EU accuses China of seeking to reshape global order in stark new strategy paper — China trying to ‘reshape the global order in line with their interests’, EU says in some of bloc’s strongest official criticism of Beijing.
- China completes world’s first commercial brain-computer interface implant — Coin-sized implant marks a breakthrough in neurotechnology, underscoring China’s bid to lead the global race against Elon Musk’s Neuralink.
- Why the US-China space race could come down to a thin metal cap — Propellant tank dome that is only millimetres thick must withstand extreme internal pressures and is very difficult to mass-produce.
Nikkei Asia
- Analysis: Xi Jinping tests Trump’s limits with Pacific SLBM firing — Route sent a message to the Philippines while avoiding South Korea fallout.
- Experts fear ‘great democratic depression’ as China gains ground globally — New survey shows falling trust in Trump’s US, more confidence in Xi.
- EU chemical sector buried by China imports urge Brussels to act fast — PVC maker Vynova cuts production; Ineos unit questions climate impact of Chinese goods.
- China’s small businesses struggle to raise prices as inventory piles up — Iran war and price competition add to woes in a sluggish domestic economy.
Bloomberg
- IEA Sees $6.5 Trillion At Risk if China Imposes Rare-Earth Curbs — The agency argues that countries should work multilaterally to stockpile 11 “high-risk” materials.
- Trump’s Aides See China Cheating on Trade, But Shun Reprisal — China is not abiding by the Trump administration’s understanding of the trade deal, according to White House and Office of the US Trade Representative staffers.
- China Sends Robots Into the World to Learn How to Be Human — China is deploying humanoids to logistics hubs, battery factories, and other industrial locations at a faster pace than the US.
Reuters
- China’s record consumer defaults undermine Beijing’s push to boost spending — Consumer loan defaults have soared to record highs, and analysts expect the situation to worsen as lower-income Chinese in particular sink deeper into debt.
- China asks Thailand to deport Chinese journalist, rights groups warn of persecution — China has asked Thailand to promptly extradite a Chinese journalist who rights groups say faces political persecution and torture back home because of his investigations into corruption in China.
- Opinion: China’s oil fortress will reshape the global order — China caught the oil industry by surprise during the Iran war, pulling powerful levers to shield itself from the biggest energy shock in decades. By Ron Bousso.
Other Publications
- The Economist: Sovereign AI, independent of America and China, is a pipe dream — But a degree of protection from coercion remains possible.
- The Lowy Institute: Can China create the next Apple or Nvidia? — As manufacturing’s share of the economy shrinks, Chinese policymakers are eyeing the more lucrative work behind it – producer services.
- Foreign Policy: A New Law Heralds China’s Fraught Ethnic Future — Xi Jinping’s push for assimilation won’t solve long-standing issues.
