Links for Wednesday, February 17, 2021

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

• Great Wall to sells electric cars in Thailand
  China’s Great Wall to kick-start Thai sales with focus on EVs / Nikkei Asia
  Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor announced its “official entry into Thailand, Southeast Asia’s largest car market, this year with a focus on electrified cars to break the stranglehold of Japanese brands, which together hold nearly 90% of the market share.” Great Wall intends to manufacture cars in Thailand for domestic sale and export.

• Young consumers like local
  Gen Z drive growth of domestic brands / CNBC
  Consumers born between 1996 and 2010 now account for 17% of China’s population but 25% total expenditure on new brands, according to new research, and they like Chinese brands. 

• China becomes EU’s biggest trading partner
  China overtakes US as EU’s biggest trading partner / BBC
  EU traded $709 billion worth of goods with China last year, compared with $671 billion worth of imports and exports from the US. 

• “Stop burning money,” state paper warns online education firms
  Online education’s “money burning” market war should lower its temperature / Beijing Youth Daily (in Chinese)
  Online education boomed during the pandemic, causing a price war and fierce competition. Online learning companies were “burning cash as fast as they can raise it,” as Caixin put it. Today the Beijing Youth Daily, the official newspaper of Beijing’s Communist Youth League of China, urged online education firms to “calm down” their “marketing war.”  

• Xiaomi till India’s No.1 smartphone for 2020
  Xiaomi leads Indian smartphone market despite falling numbers /Caixin 

• Chinese smartwatch maker invests $5 billion in U.S. medical technology company
  Chinese wearable device maker Huami iInvests in U.S. medical imaging firm / Caixin
  Huami invested $5 billion in Hyperfine Research seeking broader access to its medical imaging technology to make its devices smaller.

• Is TikTok planning an IPO in New York?
  ByteDance looks to list Douyin in New York, seizing on new mood in Biden administration and strong demand for China tech stocks / SCMP
  ByteDance not in preliminary talks to list TikTok on NYSE: source / Reuters
  Chinese media earlier reported that ByteDance was in preliminary talks for TikTok’s IPO in New York Stock Exchange. ByteDance disputed the report and said the company is not in such discussions with NYSE. 

• An extra busy Lunar New Year holiday for delivery person
  Chinese snd 365 million parcels during Spring Festival holiday / Yicai Global
  Logistics companies in China delivered 365 million parcels in the first five days of the week-long Spring Festival holiday, up by 224 percent over the same period last year, according to the State Post Bureau. 

SCIENCE, HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT: 

• Hong Kong to get COVID vaccines in March
  Daily Hong Kong COVID infections drop to single digits for the first time in 3 months; vaccine roll-out now expected in early March / HKFP

• Actors honored with bug name
  Insect species named after Hu Ge and Louis Koo / Straits Times
  Hú Gē 胡歌 and Louis Koo (古天乐 Gǔ Tiānlè) are actors who “were honored for their individual contributions to education and the environment.”

POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

• Indian general blasts China despite recent border pullback
  Amid pullback, Gen blasts China / Times of India
  China causing mutual distrust, says Army chief / The Hindu
  On The China Project, February 11: India and China disengage at one of many border conflict zones.

• Biden to stay tough on China
  Biden builds out China team with staff who reflect tougher tone / Bloomberg (porous paywall)
  “President Joe Biden is filling out his China policy team with staff whose past writing and speeches align with the tough tone toward Beijing that emerged under his predecessor Donald Trump, adding to evidence that the new administration won’t revert to an earlier era of conciliation.”
  Biden says China to face repercussions on human rights / Reuters
  “China will pay a price for its human rights abuses, U.S. President Joe Biden warned on Tuesday, responding to queries at a televised event on the Asian nation’s handling of Muslim minorities in its far western region of Xinjiang.”
  Secretary Antony J. Blinken with Mary Louise Kelly of NPR’s All Things Considered / U.S. Department of State
  “I think that President Trump was right to take a tougher line on some of the egregious things that China has done and is doing that are counter to our interests and counter to our values. But I think the way that we went about doing it did not produce results.” 

• Beijing denies Burmese protester claims of coup involvement
  Myanmar crisis not what China wishes to see, ambassador says / Caixin
  “China’s ambassador to Myanmar has said [in Chinese] that political turbulence in the country is ‘not at all what the Chinese side wishes to see,’ adding that Beijing had ‘no prior knowledge’ of the military coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi.”
  Myanmar protesters accuse China of backing coup plotters / FT (paywall)
  “Anti-coup demonstrators have massed outside the Chinese embassy in Yangon over the past week, holding placards attacking Beijing or showing President Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 dangling senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the junta chief, by marionette strings.”

• Illegal fishing in the South Pacific
  Chinese fishing captains face jail, big fines for alleged illegal fishing in Vanuatu / Guardian
  “The captains of two Chinese fishing vessels accused of illegal fishing and carrying driftnets in Vanuatu waters face up to five years in prison and millions of dollars in fines, but the ships’ owner insists the charges are baseless.” 

• KMT in Taiwan
  With pig parades, once-feared opposition party in Taiwan tries a revamp / NYT (porous paywall)

• Venezuela in debt
  A dream deal with China that ended in nightmarish debt for Venezuela / Dialogo Chino
  “China wired US$1 billion to Venezuela tied to astronomical sales of iron ore as debt grew and ambitious projects never materialized.”  

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

• Voice actor sparks anger at Yasukuni visit
  Japanese anime star Ai Kayano sparks anger on China’s social media after visit to controversial Yasukuni Shrine / SCMP
  The controversial memorial in Tokyo commemorates Japan’s war dead, including convicted war criminals.

• An ethical zoo in Nanjing
  The man shepherding China’s best zoo through its worst year / Sixth Tone
  “Balancing animals’ dignity and visitors’ entertainment was already a tall order, and then the pandemic hit.”

• Yuanmingyuan — the Garden of Perfect Brightness
  Debates over Beijing’s derelict Old Summer Palace are about more than history / CNN
  Paul French writes on the arguments over the past and future of the ruins of “the elaborate network of pavilions, palaces, bridges and gardens” that was sacked by European forces in 1860 during the Second Opium War.