Links for Monday, June 14, 2021

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

Online job recruiting app nearly doubles on first public debut
Boss Zhipin is China’s largest online recruiting platform that connects job seekers and employers. On its debut on Nasdaq on Friday, Boss Zhipin’s owner, Kanzhun Ltd., rose 96% after raising $912 million in its public offering.

• That makes the Boss a bit of an anomaly. Many Chinese companies have eased off the gas pedal of late: 32 other companies based in China or Hong Kong filing IPOs in the U.S. remain pending, per Bloomberg.
• Moreover, some recently public Chinese companies have had disappointing debuts: Insurance tech firm Waterdrop, one of the last companies from China to go public in the U.S., dropped 34% from its offering price since early May.

BYD and Xiaomi in talks to work together on car business
Chinese electric car giant BYD is working with consumer electronics maker Xiaomi on upcoming car projects, according to remarks (in Chinese) by BYD chairman Wáng Chuánfú 王传福 at the China Automotive Chongqing Forum 2021.

• The partnership is not too surprising: The two tech giants are longtime partners in the cell phone business.

Huawei to develop fully driverless cars by 2025
Wáng Jūn 王军, the president of Huawei’s smart car arm, told insiders that the company aims to develop fully self-driving cars by 2025, per Yicai. Wang also laid out some details about how the smart car business would interact with the smartphone business.

• The answer: They’ll all be part of one ecosystem.
• Huawei wants to make self-driving cars as simple as an app you can download from a Huawei phone.
• China can develop a strong smartphone ecology in the next decade, Wang said.

One-hundred-year-old zongzi maker to IPO in Shanghai
Today is the Dragon Boat Festival, when Chinese eat a ton of zongzi (粽子 zòngzi), a kind of triangle-shaped rice ball.

It’s perhaps not a coincidence then that a zongzi maker filed a prospectus to IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on the same day, per 36Kr (in Chinese).

• Wu Fang Zhai is a 100-year-old zongzi maker headquartered in Zhejiang. It hopes to diversify into the “fast food” industry in order to keep up with younger consumer brands.
• According to its prospectus, it sold 365 million zongzi last year, which amounted to 2.4 billion yuan ($375 million) in sales.

How far will the crypto-mining crackdown go?
China’s crypto crackdown spreads to Qinghai and Xinjiang / Sixth Tone
Yunnan Province in China clamps down on illegal bitcoin mining / BeInCrypto via Yahoo
“At the end of last week, concerns about this upcoming ban were circulating, although official confirmation was difficult to find…However, reports in local media have confirmed that a notice was sent by authorities but did not state that mining operations would be banned…Already, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Qinghai have all told cryptocurrency mining operations to close.”
Context on The China Project: The two Chinese government moves that spooked the bitcoin market, Bitcoin mining is still huge in China despite new ban in Inner Mongolia.

Pressure on tech companies to share data
China’s new power play: More control of tech companies’ troves of data / WSJ (paywall)
“The government is now calling on big tech companies like Tencent, online retailing giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd. to open up the data they collect from social media, e-commerce and other businesses, according to official documents and interviews with people involved in policy-making.”
Kendra Schaefer, head of tech policy at Trivium China, added a few points on Twitter: “Mixed feelings on the WSJ’s latest piece of Chinese data policy. On one hand, think they did a good job of touching on key points. On the other hand, the nuance gets lost in the ominous overtones and they end up kind of missing the bigger picture…”

Travel rebounds over Dragon Boat Festival
China estimates 124 mln passenger trips during holiday / Xinhua
“The average daily passenger trips will likely exceed 41.23 million during the period, up by 52.5 percent year on year, the Ministry of Transport said Monday…The figure was down by 18.8 percent compared with 2019, the data showed.”

SCIENCE, HEALTH, AND ENVIRONMENT:

Lab leak theory
Shi Zhengli, China’s bat virus scientist, at the center of a storm / NYT (paywall)
“Shi Zhengli, a top virologist, says in a rare interview that speculation about her lab in Wuhan is baseless. But China’s habitual secrecy makes her claims hard to validate.”
Pompeo insists COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab / Politico
“‘There’s a pile of evidence a hundred feet high,’ Pompeo said on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ without offering specifics.”

Nuclear plant leaks radioactive gases, but is reportedly under control
China nuclear plant: U.S. assessing reported leak at facility in Taishan, Guangdong / CNN
“The warning included an accusation that the Chinese safety authority was raising the acceptable limits for radiation detection outside the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in Guangdong province in order to avoid having to shut it down, according to a letter from the French company to the US Department of Energy…Despite the alarming notification from Framatome, the French company, the Biden administration believes the facility is not yet at a ‘crisis level.’”
French companies cite issues at nuclear power plant in China / NYT (paywall)
Both “EDF, France’s main power utility and part owner of the power plant,” and “Framatome, an EDF affiliate and the builder of the reactors,” acknowledged problems but said they were under control.
South China nuclear plant rebuts leak reports / Caixin
“Environmental monitoring shows all radiological indicators remain ‘normal,’ plant’s operators says.”

Delta COVID outbreak in Guangdong
Delta variant producing more severe illness, doctors in China say / NYT (paywall)
“Up to 12 percent of patients become severely or critically ill within three to four days of the onset of symptoms, said Guan Xiangdong, director of critical care medicine at Sun Yat-sen University in the city of Guangzhou, where the outbreak has been centered. In the past, the proportion had been 2 percent or 3 percent, although occasionally up to 10 percent, he said.”
Two COVID-19 medical workers among new coronavirus cases in Guangzhou / SCMP (paywall)
Coronavirus: Guangzhou patients ‘thought they had the flu’, delayed seeking treatment / SCMP (paywall)
China reports 35 new coronavirus cases on June 11, Foshan airport cancels flights / Reuters
China reports 34 new coronavirus cases on June 12 / Reuters
“Of the new cases, six were local transmissions, versus eight the previous day, the National Health Commission said. All of the local cases were in southern Guangdong Province.”
Over 892 mln COVID-19 vaccine doses administered across China / Xinhua

More science, health, and environment links:

• China’s wandering elephants are on the move again. Are they headed home? / AP via NPR
• Wild elephant herd halts advance north as lone male lags behind / Caixin Global (paywall)
• China has promised to go carbon-neutral by 2060, but coal is still king / NPR
• Coronavirus: Taiwan outbreak ‘appears to stabilize’ as new cases fall / SCMP (paywall)
• Archaeologists unearth evidence of 4,500-year-old ancient Chinese cabin and nearby rice paddy / SCMP (paywall)

POLITICS AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

U.S. and Japan not avoiding China sensitivities on Taiwan anymore?
How Taiwan’s struggle for COVID vaccines is inflaming tensions with China / Guardian
“Drew Thompson, a former U.S. defence department official responsible for managing bilateral relations with China and Taiwan, said it was probably a logistical coincidence that Japan’s vaccines arrived on the hypersensitive anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and that the U.S. senators flew in on a military plane. But previous administrations in Tokyo and Washington might have ensured they didn’t.”

Australia calls to restart China dialogue
Australia says it wants to ‘sit around the table’ with China / Bloomberg (paywall)
“‘We, of course, would like to see the dialog that was occurring to continue again and start again,’ Morrison said at a press conference on Saturday at the Group of Seven leaders meeting in the U.K., according to a transcript sent by his office. ‘Australia is always ready to sit around the table and talk through how our partnership can be made to work.’”

Xinjiang and Uyghurs
Opinion: One woman’s journey through Chinese atrocities / NYT (paywall)
Nicholas Kristof recounts the anecdotes of an anonymous Uyghur woman who has fled to the United States: She “described one relative, a gynecologist, who was sent to a concentration camp for two years and then sentenced to six years in prison for removing IUDs from two women for health reasons…Another relative was sent to a concentration camp for two years because she was overseeing family planning work in a Uyghur village where a woman became pregnant without permission.”
The 41st press conference on Xinjiang-related issues / Tianshannet
“Recently, some foreign hostile and anti-China forces have set up the so-called ‘Uygur Tribunal’ in the U.K., shameless ‘hearing’ of the ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang, which is absolutely ridiculous. In response to this question, the 9th and 40th Xinjiang Related Press Conference held by the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in Beijing have already pointed out the truth.”
Related, a Reuters report on a similar press conference in April: Under pressure over Xinjiang, China takes aim at overseas Uyghurs, academics.

Ultranationalists on social media
itrulyknownchina on Twitter: “Hao Junshi, a senior Global Times editor, with 3 million followers
on Weibo fighting with ultra-nationalists all day long – yes, you read that right, the Global Times has been under siege from various ultra-nationalists for days.”

More politics and foreign affairs links:

• Hong Kong police arrests at least three on anniversary of 2019 protest / Reuters
• Beijing official says ‘real enemies’ want Hong Kong to be ‘pawn in geopolitics’ / Reuters
• Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow released from prison / Reuters
• China expanding nuclear arms stockpile in 2021, Swedish think tank says / SCMP (paywall)
• Cambodian officials accuse Washington of interference after denying U.S. attaché full access to Ream Naval Base / SCMP (paywall)

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

The lives of lower-level CCP officials
The millennial cadres running China’s neighborhoods / Sixth Tone
“Highly educated and professional, the new generation of low-level officials is stressed out and frustrated about their limited career prospects.”

Classical Chinese dance in the U.S.
Journey to the West / Neocha
A feature on the Artisan Dance Academy, the “first Chinese dance school in Boston [which] teaches Chinese dance with a focus on cultural context and traditional sensibilities.”

More society and culture links:

• Gas explosion leaves at least 25 dead and dozens critically injured in central China / Caixin Global
  “At least 25 people have died after a gas pipe exploded at a residential community food market in Central China’s Hubei Province, leaving dozens buried in the debris…At least 138 more have been injured.”