Links for Monday, January 11, 2021

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

• Electric vehicles zoom zoom boom boom
  Tesla rival Nio launches first electric sedan / Caixin
  Chinese EV maker Nio may launch mass market vehicles under another marque / Reuters
  Exclusive: Tesla hunts for design chief to create cars for China / Reuters
  China’s Baidu to create an intelligent EV company with automaker Geely / Reuters

• Qualitative measures against U.S. companies
  China gives U.S. tech the silent treatment / WSJ (paywall)
  Cisco Systems and Applied Materials are both reportedly encountering delays in Chinese approval for mergers. 

• A coming backlash from China’s Big Tech?
  Why China faces handicaps in antitrust war with tech titans / Caixin (paywall)
  “Even as authorities move to reign in Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com, they lack manpower and resources to take on industry with deep pockets.”

• Community group-buying app gets more Tencent cash
  Tencent boosts stake in grocery app Xingsheng Youxuan / Bloomberg (porous paywall)
  “Tencent Holdings Ltd. has increased its stake in Xingsheng Youxuan, investing $100 million in the Chinese online grocery startup at a valuation of about $5 billion.”
  Related The China Project reporting: Consumers love cheap groceries, but can community group buying withstand government scrutiny?

• Pushing Ant Group, Tencent, and JD.com to share consumer data
  Chinese regulators to push tech giants to share consumer credit data / Reuters
  The Wall Street Journal had previously reported that regulators were pressing for consumer data from Ant Group. 

• Jitters on the Chinese markets
  China stocks drop on bubble fears after reaching 2008 high / Bloomberg (porous paywall)
  “Jitters are appearing in China’s $11 trillion equity market after the gauge surpassed its bubble peak in 2015. While overall valuations are lower than back then, the gauge of consumer staples now trades at a heady 11 times price to book.”

• SMIC shares trading to continue until February 1
  Top Chinese chipmaker SMIC gets reprieve from New York delisting / Caixin (paywall)

• Australian wheat suppliers find new markets
  Wheat exporters in Australia look beyond China to North Africa / Bloomberg via Caixin
  “With dry weather hurting top growing regions in the northern hemisphere, tighter global supplies are helping Australia’s case.”

SCIENCE, HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT: 

• WHO investigators to arrive in China on January 14
  WHO coronavirus investigation team to arrive in China Thursday / Caixin (paywall)
  WHO’s Tedros welcomes Chinese green light for virus origins probe / Reuters
  ‘Set expectations low’: verdict unlikely from WHO team exploring COVID origins in China / Guardian
  Upcoming arrival of WHO experts shows China’s support to uncover virus origin / Xinhua

• The world embraces Chinese vaccines
  Indonesia approves China’s Sinovac vaccine as infections surge / Reuters
  Seychelles rolls out COVID-19 vaccination using China’s Sinopharm, says president’s office / Reuters
  Philippines secures 25 million doses of Sinovac COVID vaccine / Nikkei Asia (paywall)
  Jordan approves emergency use of China’s Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine / SCMP
  Brazil embraces Chinese COVID-19 vaccine as cases soar / WSJ (paywall)
  “Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration has backed down from its criticism of Chinese vaccines and agreed to buy up to 100 million doses of a shot being developed by China’s Sinovac, as Latin America confronts a postholiday surge in Covid-19 cases.”

• When will carbon trading actually begin?
  China’s national emissions trading may launch in mid-2021 — Securities Times / Reuters

POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

• Major foreign policy document
  Full text: China’s international development cooperation in the new era / Xinhua
  Comment by scholar Stella Hong Zhang on Twitter: “A landmark document. It replaces the two White Papers on China’s Foreign Aid, and adopts the new term of ‘International Development Cooperation.’ Not just a semantic change reflecting the name of the new agency, but also based on a whole set of theorizing China developed in…”

• India captures, and returns, a Chinese soldier
  China calls for swift return of missing soldier held by India / Reuters
  India returns Chinese soldier who crossed disputed border / AP

• Reaction to Hong Kong mass arrests
  Joint statement on Hong Kong / U.S. Department of State
  See also a separate statement from New Zealand on January 7, via Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta on Twitter.
  China says opposes countries meddling in China’s domestic affairs / Reuters
  Hong Kong national security law: government says Western nations guilty of ‘double standards’ by criticising mass arrests / HKFP
  Last week on The China Project: Mass arrests in Hong Kong on subversion charges.

• Internet speech and judicial independence issues in Hong Kong
  Hong Kong website doxxing police gets blocked, raising censorship fears / NYT (porous paywall)
  New Hong Kong Chief Justice Andrew Cheung vows to defend judicial independence, criticizes attacks on judges / HKFP

• Lighthizer urges continuation of Trump trade policy
  Trade chief Lighthizer urges Biden to keep tariffs on China / WSJ (paywall)
  “Keep tariffs on China — all of them — even if that raises prices for U.S. businesses and consumers, he said. Weaken the World Trade Organization so that it can’t overrule U.S. policies, and make it harder for American companies to move overseas despite the cost to their competitiveness.”

• Xinjiang tweet by Chinese embassy in Washington taken down
  Twitter removes China US embassy post saying Uyghur women no longer ‘baby-making machines’ / Guardian
  China denies coercive birth control measures in Xinjiang / AP
  Opinion: The Chinese government is trying to rebrand forced sterilization as feminism / Guardian
  An op-ed by Arwa Mahdawi. 

• Xinjiang sanctions coming from U.K.?
  Raab to clamp down on firms linked to forced labor in Xinjiang / Guardian

• Tanzania asks for $167.7 million in debt relief
  Tanzania asks China for debt write-off, approves rail deal / Bloomberg via Caixin

• Angola secures three years of payment relief from Chinese creditors
  Angola gets breathing space from Chinese creditors, says finance minister / Reuters

• Xi wishes Kim “success in socialist development”
  China’s Xi congratulates North Korea’s Kim on new title / Reuters
  “Chinese President Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 has congratulated North Korea leader Kim Jong Un on being elected as general secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party…Kim was elected on Sunday, taking over the title from his late father.”
  See also: Xinhua report in English and Chinese. 

• Sanitized COVID-19 narrative emphasized in Wuhan museum
  China’s efforts to hide COVID missteps in Wuhan / NYT (porous paywall)
  An exhibition in Wuhan is “striking for what is not included. There is no mention of the whistle-blowing role of Ài Fēn 艾芬, one of the first doctors to sound the alarm in Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have originated, or the decision by Zhāng Yǒngzhèn 张永振, a Shanghai doctor, to share its genome with the world against official orders.”
  ‘Even mourning is said to shame China’: Women of Wuhan fight to be heard / Guardian

• New Taiwan passport deemphasizes “Republic of China”
  Taiwan’s new passport hopes to banish confusion with China / Reuters
  Taiwan’s new passport shrinks ‘Republic of China’ / NYT (porous paywall)

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

• Killing of Chinese grad student in Chicago
  Victim of shooting spree identified as student from China / AP via WBEZ Chicago
  “University of Chicago officials have identified the first victim of Saturday’s deadly shooting rampage as Yiran Fan, a 30-year-old PhD student of financial economics.”

• Silence from Jack Ma stirs up speculation on social media
  “Daddy Ma, are you OK?” – Jack Ma’s situation discussed on Chinese social media / What’s on Weibo

• The future of art in Hong Kong
  The gray market: Why a new raid on activists means Hong Kong’s days as an international art market are numbered (and other insights) / Artnet
  Tim Schneider argues that “contrary to the dominant perception among Westerners, censorship likely won’t be what clips the international art trade’s wings in Hong Kong. Instead, Western dealers there should fear the blade of economic nationalism, which officials could swing as swiftly and suddenly as police raided the homes of political moderates last week.”