News briefing for Tuesday, September 20, 2022

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

Will Hong Kong finally ease up on inbound quarantine rules? The city’s leader, John Lee Ka-chiu (李家超 Lǐ Jiāchāo), signaled an ease to its mandatory COVID-19 hotel quarantine policy on Tuesday — with a nod from Beijing — and said that the government plans to announce further loosening “as soon as possible.”

Another political critic has been scrubbed from Weibo: Láo Dōngyàn 劳东燕, a criminal law professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing who is well known for her critique of Beijing’s policies, woke up to find her entire social media account had been wiped clean, just one month before the CCP’s 20th National Congress.

“We must wake up! We must return to normalcy!” Gao Yu 高昱, the deputy executive editor and head of investigations at Caixin Media, reportedly wrote in light of the anger that erupted on Chinese social media after a passenger bus transferring people to quarantine crashed on Sunday, killing 27 and injuring 20. His message, which was sent to a WeChat friend group and was subsequently shared outside the chat, has since been deleted on Chinese social media.

Chinese jets to be powered by used cooking oil: Yesterday, energy giant Sinopec announced that its bio-jet fuel (which uses waste catering oil as raw material) has been issued with an airworthiness certificate by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAA). Sinopec can now sell its bio-jet fuel to the aviation industry. See today’s Business briefs from the Chinese media, with more links and info on:

• Arrests in the railway and shipbuilding industries.
• Another Chinese company listing in Zurich.

Big IPO leap for Leapmotor: The Chinese electric vehicle maker is planning to raise $1.03 billion in a Hong Kong listing, the largest in the city this year.

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