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
- Chinese Rocket Returns to Earth Over Indian Ocean — Re-entry eases days of anxiety that pieces would fall on densely populated areas.
- Record Iron Ore Prices Have Rusty Underpinnings — Politics and capacity constraints are behind the surge in iron ore prices but neither will necessarily play out how investors think.
- BioNTech to Make Covid-19 Vaccines in Singapore — Pfizer partner says its new Asia headquarters is expected to start production in 2023.
- Australian Stocks Set First Record High Since Covid-19 Pandemic Began — Investors balance robust economic recovery with China trade tensions and impact of border closures.
- Plus’s SPAC Merger Marks Autonomous Trucking Shift to Public Markets — The self-driving truck startup says going public will help build commercial-scale production as it seeks new orders.
- Business Groups Seek to Pause Rule Aimed at Addressing Security Threats — Commerce Department regulation, originally aimed at telecom supply chain, is overly broad, critics say.
- The Trade Two-Step as Part of Biden’s Diplomatic Dance — By Robert B. Zoellick. The president can’t afford to ignore trade, lest friends in Asia conclude they should work with China.
The Financial Times
- The EU is trailing China’s trade distortions all round the world — Brussels’ lawyers are formidable, but the solutions they devise are often outdated.
- US-China rivalry drives the retreat of market economics — Industrial policy is back in fashion as geopolitical tensions increase.
- Meituan shares slide after chief posts ancient poem — Words posted by Chinese tech giant’s boss interpreted as challenge to authorities and Xi Jinping.
- China stocks defy US blacklisting surging by nearly 20% this year — By contrast, the relaunched MSCI China index with the companies removed, was almost unchanged.
- Chinese jabs dominate Latin American vaccination campaigns — Beijing builds on Covid diplomacy as region endures crippling third wave.
- China’s ambitions in space: national pride or taking on the Americans? — A lack of international co-ordination could undermine Beijing’s bid to reap the rewards from becoming a space superpower.
- WHO approves emergency use of China’s Sinopharm vaccine — Authorisation allows jab to be deployed by Covax in boost for Chinese pharma industry.
The New York Times
- When Covid Hit, China Was Ready to Tell Its Version of the Story — The government has been using its money and power to create an alternative to a global news media dominated by outlets like the BBC and CNN.
- China Targets Muslim Women in Push to Suppress Births in Xinjiang — In most of China, women are being urged to have more babies, to shore up a falling birthrate. But in Xinjiang, they are being forced to have fewer.
Caixin
- China Became Asia-Pacific’s Largest Open-End Fund Market in 2020, Report Says — Total net assets in the country’s regulated open-ended investment funds reached $2.7 trillion at the end of last year, up from $1.9 trillion in 2019.
- Chinese Online Insurer Waterdrop Suffers 19.2% Share Price Decline in NYSE Debut — IPO by Tencent-backed insurer follows recent crackdown on fintech firms, including Waterdrop, which shut down its online healthcare mutual aid.
- China Extends Historic Corn-Buying Spree With U.S. Purchase — Chinese buying has been a key factor in driving global grain prices to multiyear highs.
- Fosun, BioNTech in $200 Million China Vaccine Venture — Pair will build Shanghai factory with capacity to make 1 billion doses of German company’s mRNA-based inoculations each year.
- China Finalizes Merger of Two Largest State Chemical Firms, Creating Sinochem Holdings — Subsidiary Syngenta remains the wildcard in the deal as it has signaled plans to IPO in mid-2022 in a move that could relieve debt pressures accumulated during its $43 billion 2016 acquisition.
- China Coal Profits Nearly Double in First Quarter — Higher demand from energy, real estate and infrastructure sectors pushes prices up, extending margins of big companies, report shows.
- Chinese Telecom Giants Lose Appeals of NYSE Delistings — Shares of China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom to be dropped from U.S. market as Biden administration maintains Trump’s investment ban.
South China Morning Post
- China’s census: what is it and why is the latest population survey so important? — Why is China’s census important? The decennial census is key to gauging changes in the size and diversity of China’s population, making it an essential tool for future government policies.
- China’s provinces fall deeper into local government debt mire, study finds — The debt problem for all but one Chinese provinces is worsening as local authorities continue to rely on borrowings to finance big-ticket spending programmes, according to a joint review of local government finances.
- China’s new bid to take on Elon Musk’s Starlink: a state-owned satellite enterprise — In late April, a day before SpaceX launched its 10th batch of satellites this year, Chinese Vice-Premier Han Zheng attended a ceremony in Xiongan, a megacity that is about a two hours’ drive south of Beijing, celebrating the creation of a new state-owned enterprise set up to operate China’s answer to Starlink, run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Bloomberg
- Beijing Slaps Fines on Tutoring Apps Backed by Tencent, Alibaba — China is expanding its far-reaching tech campaign into online education, issuing the maximum penalties to two of the country’s fastest-growing tutoring apps for violating competition and pricing laws.
- In China’s Biggest Cities, One in Five Cars Sold Is Now Electric — Electric and hybrids now account for about one-fifth of new car sales on average in the six biggest Chinese cities, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association.
- ByteDance Eyes a New $185 Billion Business Ahead of Mega IPO — Zhang Yiming built ByteDance Ltd. into the world’s most valuable private company via a string of blockbuster apps like TikTok that challenged Facebook and other incumbents on their own turf. His latest target: Alibaba.
- China Tech Giants Bet $19 Billion on Global Electric Car Frenzy — China is shaping up to be the first real test of Big Tech’s ambitions in the world of carmaking, with giants from Huawei Technologies Co. to Baidu Inc. plowing almost $19 billion into electric and self-driving vehicle ventures widely seen as the future of transport.
Reuters
- Taiwan fights to attend WHO meeting, but China says no — Taiwan will fight to the end for an invitation to a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting this month, its foreign ministry said on Monday, but China said there was no room for compromise over the island Beijing claims as its own.
- Despite highest birth rate, Shenzhen shows challenge of reversing China’s demographic decline — From her four-bedroom flat in an affluent Shenzhen neighbourhood Sharpay Huang, 28-years-old and four months pregnant, is already weighing up how long to wait before having a second child.
Other Publications
- Nikkei Asian Review: China set to publish once-a-decade census results on Tuesday — Delayed data to detail changes in population, age groups, gender and ethnic distribution.
- Nikkei Asian Review: China banks’ profit revival falters — Lenders still making bigger bad debt provisions than expected.
- Defense News: How COVID-19 has impacted South China Sea defense spending and procurement — Just as the economic impact of the pandemic varies considerably across China’s neighbors in the South China Sea, so too does their fiscal response and consequent decisions for defense spending and procurement. The relationship is not a uniform one, however, owing to differing threat perceptions and economic priorities.
