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 Evergrande Selloff Deepens as Concern Mounts Over Its Financial Health — China Evergrande’s bonds and shares came under a second day of heavy selling pressure, as investor concerns grew about the large property developer’s financial health despite its attempt to calm such worries.
- How the World’s Dullest Market Quietly Created a Synthetic Dollar Empire — Beneath the placid surface, the trade in short-term Japanese government bills and deposits conceals a thriving world of dollar funding, which offers hints about developments in China’s banking system too.
- China’s Bonds Win Third Key Index Inclusion — FTSE Russell is set to add Chinese government debt to its key indexes, a move that could attract more than $100 billion of foreign capital.
- Shakeup of Voice of America, Other Outlets Undercuts Policy, Lawmakers Say — A bipartisan group of House lawmakers said the removal of senior officials at the taxpayer-funded media outlets has put the U.S. foreign-policy agenda in Belarus, China and Iran at risk.
- U.S. TikTok Ban Faces Fast-Track Court Review — A federal judge gave the Trump administration until Friday afternoon to postpone a fast-approaching ban on U.S. downloads of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok, or defend the policy in a court hearing this weekend.
- Hong Kong Expats Are Buying Up Luxury Homes From London to Los Angeles — The city’s wealthiest citizens are moving their money amid political unrest.
- Chinese Property Developer Decries Fabricated Documents After Selloff — China Evergrande Group said documents circulating online about a corporate restructuring involving a key subsidiary were fake, after they spurred a steep selloff in the Hong Kong-listed real-estate developer’s bonds and shares.
The Financial Times
- China Evergrande: key change — The latest test of loyalty should convince investors that enough is enough.
- World leaders praise China at critical time for Paris climate accord — Boris Johnson says UK aspires to be the ‘Saudi Arabia of wind’ ahead of protest marches.
The New York Times
- China Is Erasing Mosques and Precious Shrines in Xinjiang — Thousands of religious sites in Xinjiang have been destroyed, a new analysis suggests, part of China’s drive to erode the region’s heritage.
Caixin
- British Asset Manager Baillie Gifford Opens Wholly Owned Shanghai Unit — Edinburgh-based enterprise becomes the 29th foreign asset manager with such a unit in China as it prepares to initiate private equity funds and invest in Chinese A shares.
- Neglected Rural Areas to Get Bigger Share of China’s Land Sales Windfall — Over 50% of the profits from land-use rights will have to be spent on agriculture and rural areas by the end of 2025, policymakers say.
- China’s Factory Province First to Join New State-Owned Giant’s Gas Network — Guangdong turns over its 619 kilometers of pipelines to PipeChina as part of a major structural reform to bring down energy costs.
- In Depth: Experimental International Reactor Powers China’s Dreams of Limitless Energy — Chinese scientists see their work on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor as driving the country’s own ambitions to harness the atomic reaction that powers the sun.
- National Broadband Company Debuts to Lead Cable TV Consolidation — United National Network, controlled by CBN, is set to complete long-running project of restructuring China’s fragmented industry as it loses market share.
- In Depth: Will Huawei Become China’s Tesla Challenger? — Telecom giant quietly builds up expertise in key smart car technologies at the heart of a coming electric-auto revolution, raising speculation it may build cars.
- Chinese Online Travel Agency Trip.com Sees Revenue Plummet As Covid-19 Fallout Lingers — The Covid-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the profitability of Trip.com, a leading Chinese online travel company, in the second quarter of 2020, despite countries having begun easing travel restrictions to various degrees.
- Chinese Supply Chain Provider Xingyun Closes $200m in a Series C Round — Xingyun Group, a Shenzhen-based supply chain provider for imported goods from foreign countries, announced on Thursday that it has garnered $200 million in a Series C round of funding co-led by leading Chinese insurance player Taikang Insurance Group, healthcare-focused Highlight Capital, and Shanghai United Media Group’s joint fund Zhongyuan Capital.
- Chinese EV Charging Operator Star Charge Nabs $125m Co-Led by Schneider, CICC — Star Charge, an integrated solution provider for electric vehicle (EV) charging, has raised 855 million yuan ($125 million) in its Series A round jointly led by French global energy and automation digital solution developer Schneider Electric and Chinese CICC Capital’s sub-fund.
South China Morning Post
- Taiwan seduces European investors seeking to dodge US-China trade war and coronavirus — Seeking shelter from the US-China trade war and lured by a largely coronavirus-free environment, European companies are pouring money into Taiwan’s technology and renewable energy sectors.
- Debt woes of one of China’s top cities highlighted by first-of-its-kind bond default — In a rare dispute between provinces over the sale of local government bonds, the finance department of Henan province in central China blacklisted a brokerage firm controlled by the municipality of Tianjin this week after the firm failed to pay in full for the bonds it had bought.
- Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission takes on financial fraud on social media, launches Facebook page — With one in every five stock market scams originating on social-media platforms, Hong Kong’s securities regulator has launched a Facebook page to warn investors about such activity.
- China making progress in rebuilding pig population, but supply gap likely to last at least until 2021 — China claims to have made significant progress towards rebuilding the nation’s pig production that was first devastated by African swine fever and then hit by the coronavirus pandemic, although experts believe it will take at least another year for pork supply problems to be solved.
- Taiwan’s job market outlook gets top marks due to island’s effective control of coronavirus — The outlook for Taiwan’s labour market is one of the brightest in the world, given the island’s highly effective efforts to control the coronavirus pandemic, a top labour placement agency has said.
- China’s Xi urges revival of old rural distribution system to boost economy and enhance ‘ties with rural masses’ — President Xi Jinping has renewed his call for a revival of an old state-run distribution system to boost the rural economy, unite farmers and strengthen the ruling Communist Party’s power base in the countryside.
- Cryptocurrency helps ship 1 trillion yuan out of China to casinos, gambling every year — At least 1 trillion yuan (US$145.5 billion) worth of funds flows out of China into gambling activities every year, aggravating the country’s economic and financial security risks, according to a senior official at the Ministry of Public Security.
Bloomberg
- TikTok Draws Scrutiny in Australia After U.S. Curbs — TikTok executives sought to reassure Australian lawmakers on Friday about the security of the app’s data and indicated the reported political affiliations of employees of Chinese parent ByteDance shouldn’t be a concern.
- China’s $1 Trillion Fund Posts 17.4% Return on Stocks Rally — China’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund posted a 17.4% return on overseas investments last year as global stocks rallied, boosting its finances as it combats volatile markets amid the pandemic.
- The World’s Car Industry Pins Its Hopes on China’s Recovery — For two years, falling sales seemed to spell the end for China’s time as the world’s most vital car market. Then came the coronavirus, followed by a swift recovery that’s left Europe and the U.S. in its dust.
- Trump Asks U.S. Court to Allow WeChat Ban to Proceed — President Donald Trump asked a San Francisco judge to stay an injunction blocking a ban on Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat, arguing the Chinese-owned messaging app jeopardizes national security.
- China Buying Spree Revives Export Profits for Top Crop Traders — The world’s largest agricultural commodity traders are making the most money in years exporting everything from soybeans to corn and wheat from American ports. And it’s mostly thanks to China.
- Beijing’s Hutong Homes Offer Respite From Bustling City Streets — China demolished many of the hutongs surrounding the Forbidden City to make way for more modern buildings, but some residents have rediscovered their value.
- Li Family Bought $500 Million CK Stock. Others Aren’t Biting — Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong’s richest man, is known to his admirers as “superman” for his knack for picking assets on the cheap. But that magic touch hasn’t been working on his own companies lately.
- Yuan Rally Suggests China Ready to Let Currency Strengthen — China’s currency has been on a tear as of late. Indeed, the yuan appeared poised for its best quarter on record until this week, when Beijing tapped the brakes a bit.
- Singapore Oil Trader Hontop’s Bank Debts Close to Being Settled — China Wanda Group, the parent company of Singapore-based Hontop Energy, is close to settling the troubled oil trader’s disputes with two of its major lenders, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
- Should America Boycott China’s 2022 Winter Olympics? — Critics ask why democracies would boost the prestige of a government committing atrocities against the Uighurs.
- Alibaba’s Big Data Is Helping China’s Exporters Pivot to China — As export orders started plummeting in March amid the coronavirus’s global spread, Chinese toothbrush maker Tommy Tu turned to the domestic market. With the help of Alibaba Group’s huge trove of data on what Chinese consumers are searching for, his factory shifted to making products that became local hits, like a battery-operated electric toothbrush for 9.9 yuan ($1.5).
- China Clear Winner in Trump’s TikTok Showdown With China — The deal he’s blessed doesn’t meet his demands and gives Beijing plenty to be happy about.
- TikTok Judge Tells U.S. to Delay Ban or Argue for It Friday — The Trump administration was ordered to postpone a U.S. ban on TikTok set for Sunday or respond by Friday to a request by the app’s Chinese owner for a court order temporarily blocking the ban.
- China Far Outpaces America in Bringing Robots to Factories — The number of robots operating on Chinese factory floors rose 21% last year as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse extended its lead in automation.
- Billionaire Property Heir Has Big Bets on Troubled Hong Kong — From building Hong Kong’s largest shopping mall to constructing a sprawling $3.9 billion sports center, Adrian Cheng has been one of the most aggressive property investors in town. It’s a costly expansion strategy that’s now poised to test one of the city’s oldest real-estate empires.
Reuters
- China combines QFII, RQFII schemes, expands foreign investment scope — China moved to further ease foreign access to its capital markets on Friday, officially combining two major inbound investment schemes and broadening foreign institutions’ investment scope.
- Chinese fintech Ant sidelines banks in distribution of funds targeting its IPO — As five Chinese mutual funds targeting Ant Group’s hotly-anticipated IPO kicked off subscriptions on Friday, retail investors found the only non-direct channel through which to buy the products was online payment platform Alipay.
- U.S. senators, citing Uighurs, urge Netflix to drop planned Chinese sci-fi series — Five Republican U.S. senators have urged Netflix Inc to reconsider plans to adapt a Chinese science-fiction book trilogy into a TV series because they said the author has defended the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighur Muslims.
- China Yangtze Power opens unchanged after $1.83 billion London float — China Yangtze Power began its London debut unchanged at $26.46 per global depositary receipt (GDR) on Friday after pricing a smaller than expected $1.83 billion London listing overnight.
- China’s annual production capacity of COVID-19 vaccines expected to reach 610 million doses by end-2020, official says — China’s annual production capacity of COVID-19 vaccines is expected to reach 610 million doses by end-2020, the country’s National Health Commission said on Friday.
- China on course for record LNG imports as industries recover, expand — China’s imports of liquefied natural gas will likely grow 10% to new highs this year as companies scoop up cheap supplies to cover increasing industrial use and robust residential demand.
- Eneos to shift joint venture with PetroChina to Chiba oil refinery — Japan’s biggest oil refiner Eneos Holdings Inc will shift its joint venture with PetroChina Co to Eneos’ Chiba refinery after shutting the venture’s Osaka refinery next month, Eneos said on Friday.
- Ant launches blockchain-based cross-border trade platform ahead of $35 billion IPO — Ant Group, owner of China’s ubiquitous mobile payment app Alipay, launched a blockchain-powered platform for cross-border trade settlements on Friday, as it races to launch more technology products ahead of its blockbuster IPO.
- GM energizes China line-up with electric micro car — When 32-year-old photographer Jaco Xu needed a run-around car for work in the eastern city of Hangzhou, the price tag on the latest micro EV from GM’s China joint venture overcame his qualms about electric vehicles.
- Russia keeps China oil supplier crown in August; U.S., Brazil shipments soar — Russia was the biggest oil supplier to China in August for a second consecutive month, customs data showed on Friday, with Saudi Arabia trailing after its volumes dropped by one-third.
- China’s Qingdao finds coronavirus on seafood importer’s goods — Health authorities in China’s eastern city of Qingdao have found coronavirus contamination on some packages stored by a seafood importer after two of its handlers tested positive for the virus but displayed no symptoms.
- Electrified by Tesla, Chinese startups are on the charge — China’s electric vehicle startups are on the charge again, thanks to Tesla.
Xinhua
- Across China: Agreement on geographical indications promotes China-EU trade — Chinese consumers are expected to gain access to genuine European specialties such as Irish whiskey, Bayerisches Bier, Prosciutto di Parma in a more reliable way from next year, thanks to the signing of a China-EU agreement on product origins.
- U.S.-listed Chinese firms trade mostly lower despite rise of broad market — U.S.-listed Chinese companies traded mostly lower on Thursday, with seven of the top 10 stocks by weight in the S&P U.S. Listed China 50 index ending the day lower.
Other Publications
- Nikkei Asian Review: China’s Sinovac to crank up vaccine output for foreign demand — China’s Sinovac Biotech is prepared to rapidly increase output of its coronavirus vaccine candidate in response to demand overseas, the head of the pharmaceutical maker said Thursday.
- Hindustan Times: Chinese imports 29% down, but up in key sectors — India has taken a series of punitive actions against China amid a military standoff in the Ladakh sector along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
