Links for Friday, November 20, 2020

WORTH THINKING ABOUT

Pieces of news or analysis that caught our eye:

Two top Chinese scientists have cast doubt that COVID-19 originated in China, the SCMP reports:

“Wuhan was where the coronavirus was first detected but it was not where it originated,” Zéng Guāng 曾光, former chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told an online academic conference on Thursday.

Zeng is the second senior Chinese epidemiologist who has weighed in on the controversial topic in recent weeks.

Wú Zūnyǒu 吴尊友, the CDC’s present chief epidemiologist, made a similar suggestion last week, saying the pathogen could have come into the country in imports of frozen seafood or meat products.

Zeng cited an Italian study that suggested COVID-19 had been circulating in Italy as early as September 2019, but experts have cast doubt on the accuracy of the antibody tests involved in that study, and a coauthor of the study itself said that the “findings simply document that the epidemic in China was not detected in time.”

“China will eradicate poverty in 2020. And China still has a poverty problem,” tweeted Matt Chitwood, linking to his article on the subject in Foreign Affairs. Chitwood, a researcher and Sinica Podcast guest who spent two years in rural Yunnan studying China’s poverty alleviation policies, writes:

…the reality of China’s antipoverty campaign is more complicated. The program is neither a figment of government propaganda nor an unalloyed success. Two things became clear to me after two years spent living side by side with the campaign’s rural beneficiaries: China will indeed have eradicated poverty by its own metrics by the end of this year, and it still has a long way to go to address the growing urban-rural divide.

The next big Chinese social network? China internet veteran Lú Gāng 卢刚 writes on TechNode:

[T]his app called Soul really gets my attention. It is quite a special one, unlike all others social apps in the market.

The app encourages users to connect with strangers based on shared interests…Profile photos, locations, ages are not required, even discouraged, and never disclosed on the platform. You then leave the rest to an algorithm, which suggests friends and posts that may interest you…

Soul is already a popular app among China’s Generation Z population, who use it to publish [content] ranging from diary, voice clips to photos, short videos of their own performances.

MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

• JD-backed grocery delivery company: “robust revenue growth” but “spiking rider costs”
  Investors eat up Dada as grocery delivery specialist posts strong growth / Caixin (paywall)
  “Dada said it expects fourth-quarter revenue of between 2 billion yuan and 2.1 billion yuan” [$300 million to $320 million].
• More silicon chips down?
  Silver dollar or plug nickel? Debt-challenged chip giant takes investors on roller coaster ride / Caixin (paywall)
  “As China’s microchip aspirations undergo a major adjustment, the aggressive Tsinghua Unigroup Co. Ltd. is fast emerging as a poster child for how the sector could be slowly sinking under the weight of a massive mountain of debt.”
  See also on The China Project: Wuhan Semiconductor stalls amid China’s push to develop domestic chipmakers; How China’s would-be silicon savior became a debt-ridden disappointment.
• Ucommune goes in U.S. back door after failed IPO
  WeWork’s China rival completes U.S. backdoor listing / Caixin
• Growing revenues but growing losses at short seller target edutech company
  Chinese online educator fraud suspect GSX reports losses / Caixin
• More on BMW’s beleaguered Chinese partner
  Brilliance Auto’s debt problems drive it into restructuring / Caixin
  “Court determines that the cash-strapped carmaker does not have sufficient assets to repay all of its debts, but holds out hope the company can be salvaged.”
• The coal mine canary — another state-owned company that can’t pay its debts
  Investors reject coal miner’s bid to reschedule payment of defaulted bond / Caixin (paywall)
  Creditors of Yongcheng Coal and Electricity Holding Group, “a troubled state-owned coal miner, whose failure to repay a 1 billion-yuan ($152.5 million) bond has roiled China’s financial markets, are likely to reject proposals to delay payment, a decision that may trigger a chain reaction of automatic defaults on 26.5 billion yuan [$4.04 billion] of other debt owed by the company and its parent.”
• China to rank 70th in world by per capita income by 2025
  China to leapfrog 56 nations during quarter-century income surge / Bloomberg (porous paywall)
• Boeing Max can fly in the U.S., but not China
  U.S. clears Boeing Max to resume flights as China and others hold off / Caixin (porous paywall)
• U.S. technology companies no longer see China as a market but as a competitor
  How Silicon Valley views China across five dimensions / MacroPolo
• China’s State Power Investment buys Mexico’s largest independent renewables company
  China power giant makes foray into Mexican renewables with Zuma / Bloomberg (porous paywall)

SCIENCE, HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT:

• COVID-19 spread in Shanghai
  China’s Shanghai reports two local coronavirus cases / Reuters
  “China’s financial hub of Shanghai said on Friday it had confirmed two coronavirus cases in a married couple in the city’s Pudong district, its first locally transmitted COVID-19 infections in 11 days.”
• Vaccine news
  Turkey to buy Chinese COVID-19 candidate vaccine doses, in talks with Pfizer / Reuters
  “Turkey will sign a contract within days to buy at least 20 million doses of a COVID-19 candidate vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech, the health minister was cited as saying, adding that Ankara was also in talks to buy doses of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine.”
• Carbon targets vs the coal industry
  China’s vow to cut carbon emissions clashes with plans to expand coal power plants, report says / SCMP

POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

• Taiwan: Third senior U.S. official to visit since August
  Taiwan says Trump cabinet member to visit, angering China / Reuters
  “The cabinet-level head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Andrew Wheeler, will visit Taiwan, the island’s premier said on Friday.”
  Details not finalized on US official’s visit / Focus Taiwan
  See also: China’s new pressure on Taiwan in the South China Sea / Foreign Policy Research Institute
• Canadian ambassador given access to the detained Michaels
  Ambassador visits Canadians detained in China in Huawei case / AP
  “The Canadian government said that Ambassador Dominic Barton met with former diplomat Michael Kovrig on Thursday and with businessman Michael Spavor on November 10.”
• A win for Mèng Wǎnzhōu 孟晚舟? Former Canadian police officer will not testify
  Ex-Mountie refusing to testify in Huawei extradition hearing is working at Macau casino / Globe and Mail
  “His absence could give Ms. Meng’s case a boost as her lawyers try to convince the court that Canadian officials violated her rights and the extradition request from the United States should be tossed.”
• Steve Bannon, Guō Wénguì 郭文贵 and their web of deception
  How Steve Bannon and a Chinese Billionaire created a right-wing coronavirus media sensation / NYT (porous paywall)
  “Increasingly allied, the American far right and members of the Chinese diaspora tapped into social media to give a Hong Kong researcher a vast audience for peddling unsubstantiated pandemic claims.”
  Critique from a Twitter thread by long time Hong Kong and Asia observer @comparativist: The article completely “cuts out the original whistleblower complaint, the substance of what she was blowing the whistle on, and what changed to form a narrative of [a] HKU post-doc…simply getting radicalized by watching YouTube vids.”
• International debt relief
  China says has given $2.1 billion of debt relief to poor countries / Reuters
  “China has extended debt relief to developing countries worth a combined $2.1 billion under the G20 framework, the highest among the group’s members in terms of the amount deferred, the country’s Finance Minister Liu Kun said on Friday.”
• Will convicted murderer Xiè Zhéhǎi 谢哲海 be exonerated?
  After 22 years behind bars, convicted murderer gets chance at clearing his name / Caixin (paywall)
  “The case echoes that of Zhāng Yùhuán 张玉环, the victim of China’s longest unjust imprisonment, who was exonerated in August after wrongfully serving nearly 27 years in jail for a double homicide.”  

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

• Domestic abuse
  Shandong woman dies after suffering abuse by in-laws over infertility / What’s on Weibo
• Tibetan horse racer becomes internet celebrity
  Chinese internet thirsty for Tibetan heartthrob / Sixth Tone
• The mother of the empress and the perils of historical research
  History task force named something coarse shows remorse / Sixth Tone

The task force in Lingshan County, in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was established to find out if there is any validity to long-circulating local rumors that the mother of China’s only ruling empress in history — Wǔ Zétiān 武则天 (624-705) — came from their region.

But the new group’s name, “Wu Zetian’s Mother Is in Qinzhou,” used the phrase ta ma — “your mother,” a common expletive in Chinese — making it sound a lot like “Wu Zetian is in f***ing Qinzhou.”