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
- Founder of Fallen Chinese Property Giant Evergrande Pleads Guilty to Fraud — Onetime billionaire helped fuel boom and bust of China’s property market.
- Opinion: AI Is Bound to Subvert Communism — China seeks to control it, but the idea of freedom is baked into its training on all human knowledge. By Cameron Berg.
The Financial Times
- China’s exports slow as Middle East turmoil weighs on trade — Rising fuel prices and tech imports spur surge in imports.
- China shock 2.0: the flood of high-tech goods that will change the world — Huang Xian’s product is about the size of his fist, a sensor that detects electrical current leakage and slots into electric vehicle chargers.
- China flexes trade power with soaring use of export controls — Tripling of restrictions in past five years underlines Beijing’s sway over crucial supply chains.
- Opinion: Battery giant CATL is no longer just a play on electric vehicles — The Chinese group’s expansion into non-automotive areas will benefit from policy-driven demand to offset consumer cycles. By Lex.
The New York Times
- China Imposes New Rules to Block Foreign Companies From ‘Decoupling’ — Multinationals in China are concerned that the regulations could allow authorities to penalize companies and executives for shifting supply chains away from the country.
Caixin
- Large EV Boom in China Fuels Calls for Weight-Based Auto Tax — Automakers are accelerating the release of large models to secure higher prices and stronger profit margins.
- World Energy Council Head Urges Nations to Use China Tech to Go Green — WEC Secretary General and CEO Angela Wilkinson said that the world needs China’s well-established clean energy supply chain regardless of how the Gulf crisis unfolds.
- China Passenger-Vehicle Sales Slide 22% as Buyers Hold Back — The sharp quarterly contraction underscores how evolving government support measures and external shocks, such as a recent surge in global oil prices, are reshaping demand dynamics in the world’s largest auto market.
- EU Shuts China Out of Science Projects, but Europe Will Pay the Price — The 95.5 billion euro initiative — the world’s largest scientific funding program — is closing its doors to China in critical fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology, semiconductors, and biotechnology.
South China Morning Post
- To compete with China, US needs to rebuild rare earth talent from the ground up — Washington’s mining ambitions may be complicated by the erosion of industrial know-how and a weak education pipeline, experts say.
- Brazil fires slave labour watchdog chief after BYD blacklisting — Union said sacking is part of pattern of political meddling in slavery cases.
- China’s imports surge in March as exports soften amid Hormuz blockade — Export figures fall short of predictions, rising by 2.5 per cent, while imports grow by 27.8 per cent as conflict in Middle East causes global disruption.
Nikkei Asia
- Shiseido, Lululemon weather China economic slump with luxury strategy — Foreign companies focus on high end to grow sales despite slowing consumption.
- US-sanctioned Chinese tanker transits Strait of Hormuz hours after blockade — Rich Starry carrying methanol from UAE, data shows, as shippers test waters.
- New Hungary PM seen resetting rules for China, EV sector: 4 things to know — Beijing loses Orban, its European champion, as Magyar expected to draw closer to EU.
Bloomberg
- BlackRock’s Asia Private Credit Fund Sees China Borrower Default — A BlackRock Inc. private credit fund in Asia has suffered its first default by a borrower after Metcold Holdings Ltd. failed to repay a loan.
- China’s Battery Exports Surge as War Drives Energy-Supply Crunch — The rise in battery shipments was accompanied by double-digit percentage growth in exports of other green technologies.
- Opinion: The Hormuz Blockade Is as Much About China as Iran — The black market for Iranian oil wouldn’t exist without China. By Javier Blas.
Reuters
- Spain, China pledge closer ties in the face of threats to world order — Europe and China must forge closer ties to counter threats to multilateralism, Spanish Premier Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday.
- Chinese chipmaker YMTC plans new factories amid heightened US-Sino trade tensions, sources say — Chinese chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) aims to build two more factories in addition to one that will be completed this year.
- How China is plugging energy supply gaps left by US-Iran conflict — The world’s largest energy product importer and consumer is switching up its supplier mix in response to the upheaval in oil, gas and fuel flows.
Other Publications
- Foreign Affairs: The Real Thucydides Trap — How Overconfidence Could Draw America and China Into a War.
- Semafor: How China is winning the global energy war — Egypt is joining a number of countries banking on Chinese clean technology, from the China-made solar panels blanketing Pakistan and Nigeria to the China-made EVs joining traffic in Brazil and Mexico.
- Rest of World: RedNote chases U.S. expansion after its “TikTok refugee” moment fades — China’s Xiaohongshu has an uphill climb in a saturated market as it hires in the U.S. and launches an e-commerce portal for overseas markets.
- The Spectator: The Hormuz blockade won’t hurt China — Any disruption to the world’s principal energy chokepoint becomes, whether Washington planned for it or not, a test of the Sino-American balance of power.
- The Economist: China’s pension failings expose its harshest inequality — Uneven hand-outs see the rural elderly till the soil while urbanites enjoy retirement.
