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’s Covid Lockdowns Hit Supplies to Companies Like Apple and Tesla — Suppliers seeing production halted by pandemic curbs, adding more pressure on the global supply chain.
- Chinese Tech Giants Lose Shine as Growth Stalls — Beijing’s anti-Covid measures are likely to exacerbate a slowdown in revenue growth for companies including Alibaba and Meituan.
- Foreigners Pull Record $15 Billion From Chinese Bonds — International investors have also trimmed their positions in onshore stocks.
The Financial Times
- Shanghai residents warned about online posts over Covid lockdown — Internet regulator urges people to ‘distinguish rumours from facts’ after criticism and food shortages.
- Emerging market fund managers face worsening outflows — Ashmore among those facing withdrawals as investors weigh rising rates and geopolitical events, says BofA.
The New York Times
- How Lockdowns in China Have Further Bogged Down the Supply Chain — China’s Covid lockdowns and restrictions are holding up truck drivers who carry crucial components among factories and bring products to ports, posing a new disruption to the global supply chain.
Caixin
- In Depth: With China Stocks No Longer Paying a Premium, Private Investors Confront Need to Shift Strategies — After the rout over the past year, private equity and venture capital firms are looking for better ways to bet on overseas-traded Chinese equities.
- CATL’s First Overseas Factory to Begin Making EV Batteries by Year’s End — Located in Germany, the new plant has been greenlighted to produce up to 8 gigawatt-hours each year.
- BeiGene Taps U.S. Auditor in Search for a Way to Dodge Delisting — Hiring Ernst & Young in the U.S. may help but won’t work without a bilateral Sino-American accord on audit documents.
South China Morning Post
- French voters in Covid-hit Shanghai unable to cast ballots in election on Sunday — As voters in France and around the world prepare for tightly contested first round of the presidential poll, 4,800 citizens in Shanghai cannot leave their homes.
- China targets algorithms from the likes of Tencent, ByteDance as crackdown persists — The Cyberspace Administration of China will conduct on-site inspections of firms and ask them to submit their various services for review.
- Shanghai’s symptomatic cases more than double to 824 as city rewrites records for the seventh day with 21,222 infections — The city remained locked down after more than a week of what began as a rolling shutdown that was supposed to end on April 5.
Nikkei Asia
- Downfall of Macao’s junket king rocks Asia-Pacific gambling world — Alvin Chau was seen as a pillar of the community but now sits in jail.
- China internet regulator seeks to quiet Big Tech layoff rumors — CAC says 12 major companies’ workforce level ‘stable’ amid rising jobs anxiety.
- Tesla opens Texas Gigafactory as China factory stays shut — Austin plant follows Berlin factory as EV maker works to increase deliveries by 50%.
Bloomberg
- China’s Wind Turbine Prices Have Hit Bottom, Goldwind Says — China’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer said there’s no more room for prices to fall in the largest market after a dramatic decline in costs.
- Hong Kong Tycoons Heed China, Endorse John Lee to lead City — Hong Kong’s tycoons threw their support behind the city’s leading chief executive candidate who local media say is Beijing’s pick for the job, in their latest show of loyalty to China.
- EV Battery Maker REPT Said to Seek Funding Before Hong Kong IPO — Ruipu Energy Co., a Chinese maker of batteries for electric vehicles backed by the world’s largest nickel producer, is considering raising funds ahead of a potential listing in Hong Kong as early as this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
- Containers Pile Up at China Ports as Lockdown Blocks Trucks — Containers full of frozen food and chemicals are piling up at China’s biggest port in Shanghai as a Covid lockdown in the city and compulsory virus testing means truckers can’t get to the docks to pick up boxes.
Reuters
- University of Kansas professor convicted of concealing China ties — A federal jury in Kansas City found Feng “Franklin” Tao guilty of four of the eight counts against him including wire fraud charges in the latest trial to result from a now-ended Trump-era crackdown on Chinese influence within U.S. research.
- China shipbuilding for Taiwan firm likely aiding Chinese navy build-up – U.S. think tank — Contracts between China’s top state-owned shipbuilding firm and Taiwan’s leading shipping company are likely lowering the costs of upgrading China’s navy, posing security concerns for the island claimed by Beijing, a U.S. think tank said on Thursday.
- China uses AI software to improve its surveillance capabilities — Dozens of Chinese firms have built software that uses artificial intelligence to sort data collected on residents, amid high demand from authorities seeking to upgrade their surveillance tools, a Reuters review of government documents shows.
Other Publications
- ChinaFile: Arrest Data Show National Security Law Has Dealt a Hard Blow to Free Expression in Hong Kong – From July 1, 2020 to March 28, 2022, 183 individuals were arrested for alleged national security crimes. This breaks down to an average of almost 9 arrests per month. Very few of these cases would constitute national security-related crimes in other rights-respecting jurisdictions.
- The Washington Post: Beijing’s handpicked candidate for Hong Kong signals tighter control — In a profession known for raucous camaraderie, he was serious and “not particularly pleasant,” one of Lee’s former colleagues said. It is precisely these traits, analysts say, that make the city’s former top security officer, now 64, China’s ideal choice as Hong Kong’s next chief executive.
- The Economist: When China worries about food, the world pays — Critics accuse it of hoarding grain.
- Associated Press: Chinese man sentenced for stealing Monsanto trade secret — Haitao Xiang, formerly of Chesterfield, Missouri, was sentenced Thursday in federal court in St. Louis to 29 months in prison and fined $150,000.
- CSIS: In the Shadow of Warships — How foreign companies help modernize China’s navy.
