News Briefing for Tuesday, July 19, 2022

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

Beijing denies invitation to European leaders: Deputy director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Zhào Lìjiān 赵立坚 has denied a report from the South China Morning Post claiming that Beijing had invited top European leaders to meet Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 in Beijing this November.

China warns against Pelosi’s Taiwan visit: Beijing has warned that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reported upcoming visit to Taiwan would have a grave impact on bilateral relations between the two countries, as China ramps up military activity around Taiwan. Pelosi’s visit would mark the first trip to Taiwan by a sitting House speaker since Newt Gingrich in 1997.

U.S. chip program: The U.S. has created chip legislation that will provide $52 billion to boost its semiconductor manufacturing, and that would impose barriers to China’s chipmaking plans. The bill would help attract chip manufacturing to the U.S. and curb international reliance on China’s semiconductor market. The Senate plans for procedural voting as early as Tuesday.

Xinjiang forced labor ban: U.S. allies appear committed to following Washington’s lead banning forced labor goods from China’s Xinjiang region, a senior U.S. official told Reuters on Monday, warning companies they could not maintain “deliberate ignorance” about their supply chains.

Chinese programmers are underpaid compared with their U.S. counterparts: A hiring service provider, CodeSubmit, released a research study on programmers’ salaries in different countries. The numbers indicate that the average 2022 salary of Chinese programmers is $23,790 — only 21.6% of U.S. programmers’ annual wages. This information may indicate why emigration has been popular in the Chinese technology community over the past months.

China’s Netflix meets TikTok: Douyin, the short-video platform akin to TikTok, has partnered with Netflix-like platform iQiyi on Tuesday. Now Douyin can create shorter content derived from some of iQiyi’s original TV series and longer videos. Douyin’s 600 million daily users can also share short clips of iQiyi’s TV shows and movies.

Shanghai took a hit, Beijing barely grew: In the first half of the year, Shanghai’s GDP was 1.934 trillion yuan ($286.82 billion), a year-on-year decrease of 5.7%, while Beijing’s GDP grew a little — 0.7% — for a similar total of 1.935 trillion yuan ($286.87 billion).

Express delivery jumped in June: The leading domestic express delivery companies have announced strong revenue growth for June, including STO Express’ with 2.98 billion yuan ($442.04 million), a year-on-year increase of 55.09%.

Almost a fifth of China’s cars are powered by new energy: According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs) reached a record-high 2.6 million units in the first half of the year, an increase of 1.2 times year-on-year, accounting for a market penetration rate of 21.6%.

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