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 Youth Unemployment Eased in April — The jobless rate among China’s 16- to 24-year-olds, excluding those enrolled in school, stood at 14.7% last month.
- China Is Winning the Minerals War — Western efforts to make a dent are languishing; ‘China is not just standing still waiting for us to catch up.’
- Singapore’s MAS Steps Up Green Finance Partnership With China’s Central Bank — The initiatives discussed included the facilitation of green finance flows between the two countries.
- A Chinese Phone Maker Did Something Apple Couldn’t: Make an EV — Xiaomi makes rice cookers, smartphones, lamps and now a car, showing how low the barriers to entry have become in the world of electric vehicles.
- China Vanke Secures Fresh Loan — The loan will be used for development projects in Changzhou, a city in Jiangsu province.
The Financial Times
- Yellen urges Europe to join US in Chinese exports crackdown — Treasury secretary rejects Brussels claims of protectionist lurch by Washington.
- BMW and JLR imported banned Xinjiang part to US, Senate probe finds — Carmakers did not immediately take action after being told of component made by company linked to Uyghur forced labour.
- Opinion: Why China is reluctant to make a much-needed shift — Beijing is stubbornly refusing to genuinely empower consumers, preferring to focus on industrial support. By Yanmei Xie
The New York Times
- U.S. Seeks to Join Forces With Europe to Combat Excess Chinese Goods — Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen warned that China’s industrial strategy posed a global threat that requires a united response.
- Senate Inquiry Finds BMW Imported Cars Tied to Forced Labor in China — The report also found that Jaguar Land Rover and Volkswagen bought parts from a supplier the U.S. government had singled out for its practices in Xinjiang.
- Opinion: Biden’s Get-Tough-on-China Tariffs May Backfire — The tide of globalization is receding, at least from American shores. By Steven Rattner
Caixin
- Inter Milan Faces Financial Jeopardy if Owner Suning Fails to Repay Nearly $380 Million — Pressure is building for FC Internazionale Milano SpA’s majority stakeholder Suning Holdings Group Co. Ltd. as a deadline has arrived for the Chinese retail giant to repay a multimillion-euro loan or risk losing control of the club.
- China Hands Out $14 Million in Vouchers to Bolster Tourism — More than 100 million yuan ($13.8 million) in consumer vouchers were distributed across China as part of a monthlong campaign to spur spending and boost tourism that will run until the end of May, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
- Beijing to Pilot Shared Electric Bikes in Southeast Suburb — Beijing is to become the first major city to promote shared electric bicycles. It is launching a pilot program over a 65.7 square kilometer area in a southeast suburb starting on May 30.
South China Morning Post
- Hot Chinese AI start-up Moonshot in talks for new funding, boosting valuation to US$3 billion — Moonshot AI is in talks with investors for additional funding that will boost its valuation by US$500 million over its previous round in February.
- Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance heat up price war in China’s AI market with steep LLM discounts, putting pressure on start-ups — Alibaba Cloud has slashed the fees for using its generative artificial intelligence models by up to 97 per cent, a week after ByteDance launched a rival service that costs less than most competitors.
- China’s returning overseas graduates hit in the pocket, face harsh reality of job market — Students with overseas undergraduate degrees in China earn an average first monthly salary about 2,700 yuan (US$374) below their expected income, according to a survey.
Nikkei Asia
- Chinese online shopping festival kicks off with steep Apple discounts — iPhone market becomes battleground for Alibaba and rivals amid weak consumption.
- Top China chipmakers SMIC and CXMT push to scrap foreign inputs — China’s top chipmakers are pushing hard to localize the supply of key chip materials and chemicals to counter U.S. export controls, sources with direct knowledge of these efforts told Nikkei Asia.
- China’s CATL aims to recharge stock price with 1,000-km EV battery — Company seeks to meet diverse needs of domestic customers.
Bloomberg
- ASML and TSMC Can Disable Chip Machines If China Invades Taiwan — ASML Holding NV and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. have ways to disable the world’s most sophisticated chipmaking machines in the event that China invades Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter.
- China’s Gold Imports Slow as Record Prices Temper Demand — China’s bullion imports slowed last month as demand in the world’s biggest consumer begins to buckle in the face of record prices.
- Alibaba Sparks China AI Price War With Spate of Steep Discounts — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. slashed prices for a clutch of artificial intelligence services by as much as 97%, spurring an immediate response from Baidu Inc. in potentially the start of a price war in China’s nascent AI market.
Reuters
- China sanctions ex-US lawmaker and supporter of Taiwan — China has banned former U.S. lawmaker Mike Gallagher from entering the country and taken other measures in response to his words and actions that “interfered in China’s internal affairs”, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
- China’s Xpeng sees higher quarterly deliveries as promotions boost EV demand — Xpeng said it expects deliveries to rise in the second quarter as price cuts draw in more buyers to its electric vehicles in the competitive Chinese market, sending its U.S.-listed shares 6% higher in premarket trading on Tuesday.
- Li Auto delays pure electric SUV launch due to insufficient fast charging network — China’s Li Auto said it has postponed plans to launch pure electric SUV models to next year, citing hurdles such as a lack of enough fast chargers, sending its shares down more than 17% on Tuesday.
Other Publications
- Associated Press: Corn, millet and … rooftop solar? Farm family’s newest crop shows China’s solar ascendancy — Shi Mei and her husband earn a decent enough living by growing corn and millet on their small farm in eastern China’s Shandong province. In 2021, they diversified by investing in solar energy — signing a contract to mount some 40 panels on their roof to feed energy to the grid.
- Foreign Affairs: How China will squeeze, not seize, Taiwan — A slow strangulation could be just as bad as a war. By Isaac Kardon and Jennifer Kavanagh
- Center for Strategic & International Studies: The Return of Tariff Man—But Not the One You Were Expecting — The news last week was that Tariff Man is back, but not Donald Trump. By William Alan Reinsch
- The Information: Tencent, Alibaba Place Bets on Startups Racing to Become China’s OpenAI — In China, dozens of startups have been competing to develop conversational artificial intelligence for the Chinese market. Now some are starting to pull ahead, in part due to backing from tech giants with large cloud operations like Tencent and Alibaba.
- The Guardian: UK cannot afford to give ‘cold shoulder’ to China, says City minister — Bim Afolami’s comments distance British government from protectionist moves by US.
- CNBC: Apple looks to boost sales in China with hefty discounts as e-commerce festival gets underway — Chinese e-commerce marketplaces JD.com and Alibaba’s Tmall have been selling select iPhone models at discounts as high as 20% since promotions for 618 festival started on Monday.
