Editor’s note for Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Dear Access member,

Two things, before we get on with the news:

Wangfujing Group set the Chinese news media abuzz today today. The state-controlled real estate and retail conglomerate that grew out of the Wangfujing Department Store (王府井百货 wángfǔjǐng bǎihuò). Opened in Beijing in 1955, the store was for many years one of the few places one could buy electronics, coats, and other high-end items. In the 1990s, the store began expanding into all kinds of new operations. The company listed on the Shanghai stock exchange in 1993.

So why has Wangfujing’s share price doubled in the past month and a half? The Paper reports (in Chinese) that on June 9, Wangfujing received a tax-free license — making people suspect insider trading. Chinese day traders are freaking out and calling Wangfujing all sorts of names online. Wangfujing has made a statement that there was no insider trading involved, but we haven’t seen any coverage of this in English yet.

The Harvard study of parking lot traffic in Wuhan, which we covered yesterday, is bunk. In addition to the concerns we noted about a lack of cross-regional comparisons, several commentators with expertise in satellite imagery analysis have said that this core component of the research was also shoddily done. Nathan Ruser of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who specializes in analysis of satellite images in China, said that the data was noisy and the angles of the images led to buildings obstructing the view. Jeffrey Lewis, an expert in analyzing satellite imagery in North Korea, said that the paper “isn’t very convincing.”

Several people have also flagged that they have been unable to reproduce the claimed spike in Baidu searches for COVID-19-related symptoms, even after entering the same search term (in Chinese) that the researchers claimed they used. Caixin Globus editor Michael Anti pointed out (in Chinese) that Baidu may not be a reliable source for this type of data in any case, largely because it is well known in China (in Chinese) as a bad source of medical information.

The considerable flaws of the study did not stop Fox News from running a segment with the caption “Harvard: Wuhan showed signs of virus last August,” and of course, Donald Trump tweeted a clip of that segment.

In less depressing news about the state of science and COVID-19, more than 135 vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 are now under development, and 15 of them have moved on from preclinical testing to phase I safety trials, phase II expanded trials, or even — in one case — a phase II trial combined with a phase III efficacy trial. Five of the vaccines to move beyond preclinical testing are being developed by Chinese companies. The New York Times has launched a Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker that is worth a look.

Our word of the day is Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) (汇丰银行 huìfēng yínháng). See story #2 below.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief