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
- Floods in China’s Zhengzhou Kill Dozens, Displace Hundreds of Thousands — Record storms dump almost a year’s worth of rain in three days; troops sent to shore up dams on verge of collapse.
- Chinese Suppliers to Apple, Nike Shun Xinjiang Workers as U.S. Forced-Labor Ban Looms — Three suppliers do an about-face after hiring thousands of Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims.
- China Moves to Ease Child-Rearing Costs, in Drive to Boost Births — Policies would raise supply of affordable child care, encourage housing preferences for families with children.
- China Compromised U.S. Pipelines in Decade-Old Cyberattack, U.S. Says — Latest hacking allegations come as Biden administration unveils new cybersecurity rules for pipeline operators.
- Assets in Ant Group’s Flagship Money-Market Fund Drop to 2016 Levels — Before Chinese regulators forced Ant to call off its blockbuster IPO, the fund had more than $180 billion in assets under management.
The Financial Times
- US official to visit China as diplomatic stand-off resolved — Deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman will meet foreign minister after Beijing initially snubbed.
- Beijing fines and warns big tech groups over explicit content — Alibaba and Tencent among companies summoned by regulator as scrutiny on China’s tech sector intensifies.
- China is pushing Japan to take on a growing military role in Indo-Pacific — Tokyo’s annual defence white paper accuses Beijing of attempting to destabilise regional status quo.
- Markets haven’t even begun to reflect China-US decoupling risks — Sell-off in Didi shares is a clear warning of the dichotomy faced by investors.
- China must cut emissions to avoid climate ‘chaos’, warns US envoy Kerry — America’s climate tsar says Biden administration will ‘consult’ on a potential carbon border tax.
- Huawei equipment quality still insufficient says UK — Monitoring body says progress has been made but new problems have emerged.
The New York Times
- One of China’s Biggest Stars Faces a #MeToo Storm — An 18-year-old said the singer Kris Wu enticed young women like herself with career promises, then pressured them into having sex. He has denied the accusations.
- Biden Has Angered China, and Beijing Is Pushing Back — Accusations of hacking and other moves by the Biden administration have surprised and angered China’s leaders, who are pushing back with punitive actions and vitriol of their own.
- Kodak Deletes Post by Photographer Who Called Xinjiang an ‘Orwellian Dystopia’ — After public backlash in China, the American company dropped an Instagram post featuring images of a region where accusations of human rights violations have drawn intense scrutiny.
Caixin
- Provincial Banking Regulator Fired Over Bribery Allegations — Yang Qinghe was removed from public office and booted from the Communist Party after a corruption investigation found he had allegedly taken bribes for financial favors.
- Debt-Ridden Anxin Trust Gets Government Bailout — Shanghai-owned enterprises form new company to take controlling stake in detained businessman Gao Tianguo’s former highflyer.
- Chipmaker Tsinghua Unigroup Starts Search for Strategic Investors to Fund Bankruptcy Restructuring — New backers should be capable of taking over core chipmaking and cloud computing businesses, company says.
South China Morning Post
- Apple supplier Foxconn puts Zhengzhou workers on leave amid worst flooding in Henan province in a century — Foxconn Technology Group has given tens of thousands of workers a day off at two of its three major factories in Zhengzhou, as industries count the costs of disruptions from the catastrophic flooding in central Henan province.
- China’s rare earth exports surge past pre-coronavirus levels, despite Western push to diversify supply — China’s exports of rare earth products in the first half of the year have surged past pre-pandemic levels in 2019, as the world’s biggest producer of the metallic elements recovers momentum despite attempts by the United States to bolster its domestic supply chain and some Western carmakers to find alternative suppliers.
- Huawei spends US$1 million on lobbying in second quarter, boosting spending to counter Washington bans — Huawei Technologies Co ramped up spending on Washington lobbyists last quarter as a US ban on the company’s equipment means it would be left out of projects associated with the billions Congress plans to spend on infrastructure.
Bloomberg
- China Evergrande’s Boss May Have Run Out of Friends and Out of Time — Hui Ka Yan has gotten out of trouble before with the help of poker club pals and longtime suppliers. But this cash crunch may be existential.
- Four of Hong Kong’s Top Banks Halt Some Evergrande Mortgages — HSBC Holdings Plc, Bank of China Ltd.’s Hong Kong unit and at least two other major lenders stopped providing mortgages to buyers of China Evergrande Group’s unfinished residential properties in Hong Kong, the latest sign of dwindling confidence in the developer’s financial strength.
- U.S.’s Kerry Urges China to Help Break Climate ‘Suicide Pact’ — U.S. climate envoy John Kerry called on China to step up its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, or put the world at risk of missing international targets.
- Hong Kong Broadcaster Warned Against Implying Taiwan Is Country — Staff at Hong Kong’s public broadcaster have been told to avoid “inappropriate terminology” that would imply Taiwan is a sovereign state as the Asian financial hub continues to try to curb dissent.
Reuters
- Eyeing IPO, Volvo Cars to take full control of its Chinese business — Volvo Cars has struck a deal to buy out parent company Zhejiang Geely Holding from their joint ventures in China, in a move that could make a potential initial public offering (IPO) for the Swedish automaker more attractive to investors.
- Airbus delivers first A350 jet from Chinese completion plant — Airbus on Wednesday delivered the first A350 widebody jet from its Tianjin final assembly line to China Eastern Airlines, further bolstering its industrial footprint in China relative to rival Boeing Co.
- Ant Group’s money market fund Yu’e Bao shrinks one-fifth in second quarter — Ant Group’s money market fund Yu’e Bao shrank nearly 20% in size in the second quarter, according to Tianhong Asset Management Co Ltd, which manages the fund.
- British ministers cut off funding to chip factory after sale to China – Telegraph — British ministers have cut off taxpayer-funded payments to Britain’s biggest microchip factory after its sale to a Chinese-owned technology company, the Telegraph reported late on Tuesday.
Other Publications
- Buzzfeed News: China Can Lock Up A Million Muslims in Xinjiang at Once — Here is the most complete picture yet of the staggering scale of China’s prisons and detention camps for Muslims in Xinjiang.
- The Intercept: U.S. Military Bought Cameras in Violation of America’s Own China Sanctions — Purchased camera systems were supposedly made in the U.S. but actually originated from Chinese companies blacklisted for security reasons.
- Associated Press: Hong Kong police arrest former Apple Daily senior editor — Lam Man-chung, who was the executive editor-in-chief of Apple Daily, was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security, according to the South China Morning Post newspaper, which cited an unnamed source.
- Quartz: Why Hong Kong’s proposed doxxing law alarms Google and Facebook — Critics say the legislation is so ambiguous in wording and expansive in scope that it undermines the freedom of expression and communication, and may even threaten US tech firms’ presence in Hong Kong.
