Links for Monday, June 7, 2021

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

ByteDance accuses Tencent of foul play
Last Friday, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, released a report (in Chinese) accusing Tencent of blocking ByteDance products from being shared on popular Tencent messaging apps WeChat and QQ from 2018 to 2021, per Sina Finance (in Chinese).

• ByteDance accused Tencent of blocking six products, which it claimed prevented 1 billion users from sharing ByteDance products.
• In February, ByteDance sued Tencent over blocking links to its content, citing anti-trust legislation.
• Dark clouds over Tencent? Beijing’s ongoing antitrust crackdown is rumored to hit the messaging giant next. ByteDance is slipping in grievances before the hammer comes down.

There are teeth in China’s bitcoin crackdown
A bunch of bitcoin- and cryptocurrency-related social media accounts were wiped from the Chinese internet over the weekend, continuing a sustained government clampdown:

• Last week, the government of Sichuan Province, whose mountains and rivers have offered miners cheap hydropower, asked crypto mining companies to exit by September.
• In May, Chinese regulators sent a strongly worded reminder to fintech and payments companies that most crypto business was off limits.
• In March, the government of Inner Mongolia, where electricity from coal-fired plants is cheap, banned all crypto mining.
• The takeaway: All aspects of the crypto business are at risk of being regulated out of existence in China.

On the other hand: Sichuan crypto mining safe from regulation, for now: sources / TechNode

Is Meituan doing a whole lot more good than simply doing no evil?
Meituan launches fund to boost research into low-carbon technology / Caixin

Meituan will initially inject 500 million yuan ($78 million) into the Meituan Green Tech Fund, which will be used to finance scientists’ research on fundamental low-carbon technology as well as support demonstration projects designed to encourage the technology’s application in packaging, recycling and smart supply chain operations…

Friday’s announcement comes a day after Meituan’s billionaire founder Wáng Xìng 王兴 unveiled plans to transfer $2.2 billion worth of his company holdings into a separate charitable fund that will focus on areas such as education and scientific research.

Beijing Big Tech clampdown cools markets
The antitrust crackdown is broadening beyond what many analysts could have imagined. What seemed to be a swipe at Alibaba’s Ant Group last November may turn into a fundamental restructuring of the tech sector.

• No one gets a free pass: China’s regulators have gone after fintech, short-video apps, job-recruitment apps, ride-hailing services, energy-sharing services, after-school tutoring services, and, of course, tech behemoths like Tencent and Meituan.
• The effect? For now, cooling markets. Tech firms are grappling with losses, while new Hong Kong listings are tracking at their slowest pace since the global financial crisis.

Chip shortage still hitting Chinese auto industry
The global semiconductor chip shortage in the auto industry that began at the end of last year has continued, and is causing a “car shortage wave” in China.

• 36Kr cites (in Chinese) a Beijing sales manager who says there are two- to three-month waiting times on Mercedes-Benz E-Class and GLC models.

Another foreign player leaves the China milk powder market
U.K. consumer brand Reckitt Benckiser sells China infant formula unit / Caixin (paywall)
Primavera will acquire the Greater China division of Mead Johnson Nutrition Co., a U.S.-headquartered subsidiary of Reckitt that makes child nutrition products for $2.2 billion.

Out of jail and into the stock exchange
After years in prison, China grocery tycoon weighs twin IPOs / Bloomberg (paywall)
“In 2018, Zhāng Wénzhōng 张文中 was cleared by China’s top court of financial misconduct charges after earlier spending more than half a decade in prison. Three years later, the Chinese tycoon has revived [WuMart] the supermarket business he founded, and is about to launch two initial public offerings — one in Hong Kong and the other in the U.S.”

Electric cars and bikes
This EV is beating Tesla in China / Bloomberg (video)
Guangxi-based car company SAIC-GM-Wuling is outpacing larger players in the EV market with a compact, fully customizable electric car that starts at just $4,500.
BMW to increase China charging poles to 360,000 / Bloomberg (paywall)
工信部：1-4月电动自行车完成产量1039.8万辆，同比增长64% / 36Kr.com
E-bike production soared in the first quarter of 2021, up 64% year on year to 10.398 million units.

In search of the domestic chip
Huawei ramps up investment in chipmaking as U.S. sanctions bite / Caixin
Huawei’s venture capital arm Hubble Technology Investment now owns 5% of RSLaser Opto-Electronics Technology, which produces light source systems for chip-making machines.

Consumer brand IPO coming
Premium tea-maker Nayuki bubbles up toward Hong Kong listing / Caixin (paywall)

Imports grow as exports slow
China’s imports grow at fastest pace in decade as materials prices surge / Reuters

SCIENCE, HEALTH, AND ENVIRONMENT:

Probe orbiting Mars sends picture of Zhurong rover location
Tianwen-1 sent back HD images of landing site on Mars / Global Times
“China National Space Administration released HD images of landing site of China’s first Mars probe mission Tianwen-1. The probe’s lander and Zhurong rover, and their surroundings are clearly seen in the images.”

Responding to rocket debris criticism?
China successfully tests parachutes for safe rocket debris landing / Global Times
“System developers” at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CATL) told the Global Times that they had achieved a “technology breakthrough that will enable more precise control of rocket debris after launch and make space launches safer.”
Last month, via Reuters: ‘Irresponsible’: Nasa chides China as rocket debris lands in Indian Ocean.

More science, health, and environment links:

• Vietnam approves China’s Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use / Nikkei Asia
• Nepal gives emergency use approval to China’s Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine / Kathmandu Post

POLITICS AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

Tiananmen censorship and “errors”
Social media account of China’s Xiaohongshu goes dark after Tiananmen anniversary post / Reuters
“The Friday post on its account on China’s Twitter-like Weibo said, ‘Tell me loud: what’s the date today?,’ according to a screenshot seen by Reuters. That post was quickly deleted by Xiaohongshu, according to a person familiar with the matter, who declined to be named given its sensitivity…A Weibo search for Xiaohongshu’s official account yielded no results on Sunday, although its own app appeared to be functioning normally.”
Chinese internet regulators investigate startup after Tiananmen Square anniversary post / WSJ (paywall)
“It isn’t clear what the original intent of the Xiaohongshu social-media post was, though one of the people familiar with the matter said the post wasn’t intended to refer to the events of 1989. In recent months, Xiaohongshu had made similar posts on Fridays to celebrate the coming weekend.”
Wix, Bing, YouTube “errors” stoke fear China’s firewall is global / Quartz

On Thursday (June 3), Hong Kong democracy activist and lawmaker Nathan Law tweeted that Israeli web hosting service Wix took down a site launched by exiled Hong Kong activists…The company apologized for the removal of the website, and vowed to review its screening process to prevent ‘mistakes such as this’ from happening again…

On Friday, searches [on Bing] for ‘tank man’…temporarily turned up no matching images in countries including the U.S., U.K., and Singapore. Microsoft said over the weekend that this was due to an ‘accidental human error’…

Around the same time, former Tiananmen student leader Zhou Fengsuo raised issues relating to the availability of Tiananmen content on YouTube and Facebook.

New anti-sanctions law
China unveils new legal weapon to hit United States and other Western rivals with tougher sanctions / SCMP (paywall)
“China’s top legislative body is set to pass a new anti-sanction law on Thursday, giving substantive legal backing and protection to the country’s retaliatory measures against punitive actions by Western governments on Chinese officials and companies.”

U.S. senators in Taiwan
China faces nationalist anger over U.S. plane in Taiwan / Bloomberg (paywall)
“China’s muted reaction over a U.S. military flight to Taiwan prompted criticism from nationalists online, underscoring the pressures on President Xi Jinping to follow through on heated ‘red line’ rhetoric.”
U.S. senators took a military aircraft to Taiwan to announce vaccine donation. To Beijing, that is a major provocation / CNN
China says it lodged complaint with U.S. at senators visiting Taiwan / Reuters

Joe Biden in Europe
Opinion: My trip to Europe is about America rallying the world’s democracies / Washington Post (paywall)
The U.S. president writes that his country and Europe “will focus on ensuring that market democracies, not China or anyone else, write the 21st-century rules around trade and technology.”

U.S. bill reacting to “Made in China 2025” set to move forward
Senate poised to pass huge industrial policy bill to counter China / NYT (paywall)
“The legislation, which could be voted on as early as Tuesday, is expected to pass by a large margin…What is most striking about the legislation is the degree to which the projects that the bill funds closely parallel those in China’s ‘Made in China 2025’ program, which funnels huge government spending into technologies where the country is seeking to be independent of outside suppliers.”

Adrian Zenz research on Xinjiang birth control affirmed by “more than a dozen experts”
China policies could cut millions of Uyghur births in Xinjiang / Reuters
“Chinese birth control policies could cut between 2.6 to 4.5 million births of the Uyghur and other ethnic minorities in southern Xinjiang within 20 years, up to a third of the region’s projected minority population,” according to a new peer-reviewed paper by German researcher Adrian Zenz.
“Zenz’s research was accepted for publication by the Central Asian Survey, a quarterly academic journal, after peer review on June 3…Reuters shared the research and methodology with more than a dozen experts in population analysis, birth prevention policies and international human rights law, who said the analysis and conclusions were sound.”
Chinese birth-control policy could cut millions of Uyghur births, report finds / BBC
The research “found that under China’s birth-control policies in the region, the population of ethnic minorities in southern Xinjiang would reach somewhere between 8.6 and 10.5 million by 2040, compared to 13.1 million projected by Chinese researchers before Beijing’s crackdown.”
Last month on The China Project: U.S. dials up criticism of China over Xinjiang amid more evidence of cultural and reproductive repression.

Fear of admitting failure behind three-child policy decision?
Opinion: The real reason behind China’s three-child policy / NYT (paywall)
The sociologists Wang Feng and Yong Cai write, “Even when the government eases rules about procreation, it is only confirming that such rules exist — and that they are the party’s to dictate. This, too, is population control, and population control is a foundation of any surveillance state. The Chinese Communist Party simply cannot give that up…Lifting controls over births would be, for the Chinese Communist Party, a tacit admission that its past policies have failed.”
Last week on The China Project: China abolishes two-child policy, but very few women want three babies.

Germany again balks at EU foreign policy vetoes
EU veto ‘hostage’-taking on foreign policy must end – Germany’s Maas / Reuters
The comments of the German foreign minister, “which came days after a more junior official criticized Hungary by name, reflect growing frustration in Berlin at the way in which EU member countries can prevent the bloc from acting in matters on which almost all members agree.”

U.S. Republicans continue to push lab leak theory without citing any new evidence
DeSantis amplifies COVID-19 lab leak theory, alleges China coverup / News4Jax
“Referencing a theory that the coronavirus pandemic started after the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed two bills into law with the goal of stopping criminal foreign influence and corporate espionage in Florida.”
Trump demands China pay US$10 trillion in reparations for its handling of coronavirus pandemic / Reuters via SCMP

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

College entrance exam offers patriotic essay prompt
College hopefuls tackle essay on Party history / Caixin
“Following the release of the essay prompts included in the annual college entrance exam or ‘gaokao,’ online debate has centered around one of the topics chosen this year — Communist Party history…Communist Party history made it onto this year’s list of prompts, with one of the eight papers offered asking students to reflect on the century-long struggle that the Chinese people have ‘integrated into their souls.’”

China Animal Life Education Center opens in Beijing
Chinese animal center aims to educate public, encourage adoption / Sixth Tone
“Animal rights groups in China have launched a new welfare center to educate the public on animals and encourage the adoption of strays amid rising incidents of abuse in the absence of laws against their mistreatment.”

More society and culture links:

• Two killed, 14 missing in recent China coal mine accidents / Bloomberg (paywall)
  “Accidents at two of China’s coal mines in the past few days killed two workers while 14 people went missing, according to state media reports…One accident happened Friday in central China’s Henan Province and the other occurred Saturday in northeast Heilongjiang Province.”