A funeral for Jiang Zemin and a trial for Jimmy Lai

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

The body of former leader Jiāng Zémín 江泽民 was driven through the streets of Shanghai and then flown to Beijing in a glass-topped coffin today, with his signature heavy-rimmed spectacles clearly visible. His funeral is scheduled for Tuesday next week.

• Websites and newspapers were still all black and white and gray scale today, and Chinese media is likely to remain colorless until the funeral is over.
• Censors and security enforcers will be on high alert for trouble as the government seeks to put an end to the protests that rocked the country over the weekend, and the possibility that new protests may coalesce around public mourning for Jiang.

Jimmy Lai’s (黎智英 Lí Zhìyīng) national security trial has been delayed, Hong Kong’s High Court announced today, pending a legal interpretation by Beijing on whether overseas lawyers can represent defendants in such proceedings. In the meantime, Hong Kong immigration authorities appear to have withheld the work visa of Lai’s lawyer, who is a British citizen.

• Lai, who turns 75 next week, faces a possible life sentence for colluding with foreign forces if he is convicted, after the media mogul was arrested in December 2020 during a crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement.

COVID responses and the war in Ukraine were some of the topics discussed in a meeting today (statements from China, European Council) between Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 and European Council President Charles Michel.

Car demand slump? Yesterday, the China Automobile Dealers Association reported that the vehicle inventory alert index for November was 65.3%, an increase of 6.3 percentage points month-on-month. A high inventory alert index indicates lower market demand.

See today’s Business briefs from the Chinese media, with more links and info on:

• Strong November sales for Hozon, Li Auto, and NIO.
• Unexciting results for XPeng.
• Autonomous taxi batteries.

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