Links for Tuesday, December 29, 2020

WORTH THINKING ABOUT

Pieces of news or analysis that caught our eye:

“COVID has no grand lesson for the world,” writes Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times, pointing to a lack of correlations between size or type of country and effectiveness in responding to the pandemic.

China has suppressed the virus with a thoroughness that should, on the face of it, commend autocracy to its doubters. Except that New Zealand is just one of the liberal democracies to have fared comparably well…As for those with hybrid models, they can be found among the bad-to-middling performers (such as Hungary) and the exemplary ones (Singapore).

Even correlations that “should” hold do not. It is unclear that rich nations were more resilient against the virus than middle-income ones. The UK has more cases than Indonesia. Spain has more than Colombia…

The closest thing to a pattern in this tempest of data is the scarcely believable success of east and south-east Asia. But that region encompasses communist China, the multi-party democracy of South Korea and various polities in between.

MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

• Fallout of Alibaba and Ant Group scrutiny
  China eyes shrinking Jack Ma’s business empire / WSJ (paywall)
  “Beijing is seeking to shrink Jack Ma’s technology and financial empire and potentially take a larger stake in his businesses, according to Chinese officials and government advisers familiar with the matter, as regulators zero in on the billionaire in a campaign to strengthen oversight of an increasingly influential tech sphere.”
  Global investors flee from Chinese tech stocks after the government crackdown on Ant and Alibaba / TechCrunch
  “Shares of major technology companies in the country have fallen sharply in recent days, with Bloomberg calculating that Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com and Meituan have lost around $200 billion in value during a handful of trading sessions.”
  Jack Ma has lost $12 billion in two months on China scrutiny / Bloomberg (porous paywall)
• Power shortages
  Cover story: Why the lights are going out in China / Caixin (paywall)
  “On top of surging industrial demand, this year’s colder-than-normal winter and local governments’ efforts to meet emission reduction goals by the end of the year further added to pressure on generators.”
  China LNG prices heat up as cold weather, supply shortages bite / Caixin (paywall)
  “With no price easing in sight, authorities impose curbs on nonresidential users and conglomerates step in to fill gaps.”
  China’s Sinopec plans record LNG imports to battle cold snap / Reuters
• Turbulent times in online tutoring
  Online tutor Xueba100’s executives go truant as company collapses / Caixin (paywall)
  “Firm appeared to be on the brink of crumbling after top executives went missing and parents and employees descended on its headquarters in search of answers.”
  Chinese online education app Zuoyebang raises $1.6 billion from investors including Alibaba / TechCrunch
  Educator TAL to raise $3.3 billion in private placement / Caixin
• Xiaomi launches a $600+ smartphone model
  Xiaomi rushes out new smartphone to grab hobbled Huawei’s market share / Caixin (paywall)
  “High-end Mi 11 flagship model available in January, two months ahead of schedule.”
• Guizhou government benefits from thirst for fancy firewater
  Chinese province gets $14bn holiday gift of Kweichow Moutai shares / Nikkei Asia (paywall)
  Billion-dollar stake in liquor-giant Moutai handed to local government firm, for free / Caixin (paywall)

SCIENCE, HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT:

• Nearly half a million were infected in Wuhan, but few elsewhere
  Few people in China have coronavirus antibodies, study shows / Caixin (paywall)
  “Under 5% of people in most-affected Wuhan have antibodies, with numbers elsewhere ‘extremely low.’”
  Yanzhong Huang on Twitter: “China CDC just announced results of a nationwide seroprevalence survey for COVID-19. Wuhan’s seroprevalence rate is 4.43%, suggesting the infection of 480,000 people, compared to 50,000 officially confirmed cases in the city.”
• Lockdown in Shunyi district in Beijing
  China’s capital locks down part of district in coronavirus fight / Reuters
  “The city has reported 16 infections and three asymptomatic cases since Dec. 18, when the first cases were found. Most of the cases were in Shunyi, which has banned couriers from entering residential compounds.”
• Vaccine development
  China’s struggling to get the world to trust its COVID vaccines / Bloomberg (porous paywall)
  China’s Walvax to make COVID-19 vaccine candidate similar to AstraZeneca’s / Nikkei Asia (paywall)
• The Yangtze River Protection Law
  China passes landmark law to protect ‘Mother River’ Yangtze / Sixth Tone

POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

• Criticism of citizen journalist jailing
  U.S., EU criticize China for jailing citizen-journalist who reported on COVID-19 / Reuters
  UN rights office decries jail term for citizen-journalist in China’s Wuhan / Reuters
  Yesterday on The China Project: China sentences citizen journalist to four years in prison for challenging COVID-19 response narrative.
• U.S. sanctions
  Trump administration bolsters order barring U.S. investment in Chinese firms / Reuters
  U.S. extends China military investment ban to subsidiaries / FT (paywall)
• Hong Kong’s new reality
  Hong Kongers charged in China plead guilty, relatives told / AP
  Hong Kong teenager jailed for China flag insult / AFP via the Guardian
  Leading Hong Kong university denies gutting China studies center long favored by overseas scholars / SCMP
  “Chinese University is digitizing and moving the institution’s archives to the main library, which management says is needed to preserve the ageing materials.”
• Australia-China relations
  Australia insists WHO inquiry into COVID origin must be robust, despite China tensions / Guardian
  China helps rescue Australian from Antarctica / BBC
  “Australia, China and the U.S. collaborated in efforts to bring the patient back home…details of the patient’s condition were not made public.”

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

• Obituary of “China’s Chopin,” Fou Ts’ong (Fù Cōng 傅聪)
  Prominent pianist Fou Ts’ong dies from COVID-19 / Sixth Tone
• Tsutaya Books opens massive store in Shanghai
  Gallery: Book retailer opens a new chapter in Shanghai / Caixin
• Book recommendations
  50 of the best new books on China for the holidays and winter 2020/2021 / What’s on Weibo