Clash at a Chinese consulate in Manchester

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

A Hong Kong pro-democracy protester was pulled onto Chinese consulate grounds in Manchester and beaten up on Sunday during a demonstration against the 20th Party Congress that began the same day in Beijing, the BBC reports. Videos (1, 2, 3, 4) of the incident posted online show a group of unidentified men emerging from the consulate and forcing the man inside the gates of the compound, before police and other demonstrators helped pull him back out. (Though the consulate is technically on U.K. soil, it cannot be entered without consent from Chinese authorities.)

• Protesters had “displayed an insulting portrait of China’s president,” a consulate spokesperson said per the report. Other things on display included flags that read “Hong Kong independence,” and “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” a common slogan during the protest movement in 2019 that has been ruled a secession threat under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law.
• Members of the British Parliament have called for an investigation, and have put pressure on Foreign Secretary James Cleverly to summon China’s ambassador in Britain for an explanation.

BMW is moving the production of its award-winning electric Mini from Oxford to China by next year, the Times reported on Saturday, dealing a major blow to the U.K.’s ambition of becoming a global leader in electric vehicle manufacturing.

Apple suspended plans to use chips from Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC), a Chinese state-owned memory chipmaker, as a slew of semiconductor firms hurry to change their supply chains to comply with the Biden administration’s new technology export curbs, Nikkei Asia reports.

Trust me, the economy is doing fine? At a press conference this morning at the 20th Party Congress in Beijing, an official stated that China’s economy “rebounded significantly” in the third quarter, but the government declined to issue the usual economic data for the third quarter. has been delayed, without giving any reason or a new release date. Also in today’s Business briefs from the Chinese media:

• Companies are not hiring.
• It’s cheap to ship goods from Shanghai to LA.
• The solar panel export volume keeps rising.

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