News Briefing for Wednesday, September 21, 2022

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

Wáng Yì 王毅 met with Henry Kissinger in New York on September 19, China’s Foreign Ministry announced (in English, Chinese) on Tuesday, amid separate meetings with the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Cuba, France, and Ethiopia. He called the former U.S. secretary of state an “old friend and good friend of the Chinese people,” but also gave the following warning on Taiwan:

Achieving peaceful reunification is our best wish…But it’s noteworthy that the more rampant “Taiwan independence” activities are, the less likely it is to resolve the Taiwan question peacefully.

A Chinese saying goes to the effect that “To defend even an inch of land, a country will not hesitate to sacrifice one thousand soldiers.” The saying reflects the will and resolve of the Chinese people.

The consequences of the U.S.’s now-shuttered China Initiative are still very much alive, after a federal judge threw out three of four convictions against Franklin Tao (Táo Fēng 陶丰), a chemical engineer and associate professor at the University of Kansas who was accused of illegally moonlighting at a Chinese university.

• Meanwhile, two scholars who were also targeted by the Department of Justice’s controversial anti-espionage program are now pursuing ways to hold federal investigators accountable for “upending their lives.”

A livestream influencer has returned to the public eye after going radio silent since June 3: Lǐ Jiāqí 李佳琦, a popular online sales host also known as the “Lipstick King,” quietly reappeared on Alibaba’s ecommerce platform Taobao three months after he went live on the eve of the Tiananmen Square crackdown anniversary with a cake shaped like a tank.

China had 6.2 million millionaires in 2021 — up by more than a million from 2020, and the number is expected to double by 2026, according to a report released by Credit Suisse on Tuesday.

Will Boeing’s big jet return to China after three years? The Civil Aviation Administration of China met last week with Boeing to discuss the American company’s 737 MAX, a signal that the aircraft may return to service after being grounded in 2019 over safety concerns.

Developing economies in Asia are growing faster than China’s for the first time in three decades, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said in a new report, but all countries (including China) are still facing massive headwinds from Beijing’s COVID-zero lockdowns.

• The ADB further downgraded growth forecasts in the region, and now expects developing countries in Asia (excluding China) to grow by 5.3% in 2022, while China is projected to grow by 3.3% in the same year.

Huge drop in insurance sales staff: According to the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, in the first half of the year, Chinese insurance companies employed a total of 5.70 million sales staff, a decrease of 712,000 from the end of 2021 and a drop of over 4 million compared with mid-2020. See today’s Business briefs from the Chinese media, with more links and info on:

• Leapmotor to list in Hong Kong next week.
• Growth in Shanghai shipbuilding output.
• Harmony OS on 300 million devices.

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