News Briefing for Monday, July 18, 2022

Here’s what else you need to know about China today:

Xi makes first Xinjiang visit in eight years: Since Friday, state media have been rolling out a series of articles and features on Xi Jinping’s 习近平 first tour of Xinjiang in eight years. His trip comes as Western nations push for the UN to publish its report on human rights abuses in the region. Xi, however, promised that current policies would continue, in order to ensure social stability.

“China has nothing to gain from sacrificing its relationship with Russia and joining Western pressure on Moscow to stop the war,” says Alexander Gabuev in a short Twitter thread: “It would not mean less pressure on China or eased sanctions from the West, so there is simply no incentive for Beijing to throw Putin under the bus.” Gabuev, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, was recently a guest on the FT’s Rachman Review podcast.

SOE trillions: State-owned enterprises (SOEs) controlled by the central government have reported total revenues of 19.2 trillion yuan ($2.84 trillion) and net profits of 1.08 trillion yuan ($160.64 billion) for the first half of the year, year-on-year increases of 12% and 6.1%, respectively.

Amino acid super profits: Meihua Bio has reported revenue of 14.22 billion yuan ($2.10 billion) for the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 28.96%, and net profits of 2.57 billion yuan ($380 million), a year-on-year increase of 156.45%, which the company attributed to growth in demand for the amino acid lysine, a supplement to low-cost animal feeds.

More huge airline losses: China’s three major domestic airlines have announced dire profit warnings for the first half of the year: Net losses of up to 12.1 billion yuan ($1.79 billion) for China Southern Airlines, 21 billion yuan ($3.10 billion) for Air China, and 17 billion yuan ($2.51 billion) for China Eastern Airlines.

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