China’s GDP data delay fuels worries about economy

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

The case of the missing GDP: People all over the world are concerned over the health of the world’s second-largest COVID-hit economy, and Premier Lǐ Kèqiáng’s 李克强 reassurances yesterday that “China’s economy is improving” did little to assuage the anxieties following the delay of very important GDP data with little to no explanation from Chinese authorities.

• Bloomberg reported that the reason was that “top officials who needed to sign off on the figures were attending the Communist Party congress and had to adhere to COVID rules that restricted their movements,” citing a “person familiar with the matter.”

Small acts of protest are popping up in China and around the world in solidarity with the man who hung a banner off a main bridge in Beijing just days before the Communist Party’s 20th congress opened on Sunday.

• “We don’t want COVID tests. We want to eat” and other slogans displayed on the banner have since “appeared clandestinely in at least eight Chinese cities including Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, as well as Hong Kong,” says Bloomberg, citing CitizensDailyCN, an Instagram account with more than 30,000 followers.
• Meanwhile, signs and messages that criticize Chinese President Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 have also mushroomed up at universities in the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Australia, and elsewhere.

The U.K. is trying to stop Beijing from recruiting ex-British fighter pilots, after the BBC reported today, citing the British Ministry of Defense, that up to 30 former military pilots had gone to train members of China’s People’s Liberation Army.

• “We are taking decisive steps to stop Chinese recruitment schemes attempting to headhunt serving and former U.K. Armed Forces pilots to train People’s Liberation Army personnel in the People’s Republic of China,” a Ministry of Defense spokesperson said in a statement per Reuters.

Booming BYD’s billions: Yesterday, electric vehicle and battery manufacturer BYD announced a profit forecast for the third quarter of up to 5.90 billion yuan ($820.31 million), an increase of 365% year-on-year. For the first three quarters of 2022, BYD expects a net profit of up to 9.50 billion yuan ($1.31 billion). More in today’s Business briefs from the Chinese media:

• Metaverse hype in Hong Kong as Flowing Cloud Technology 飞天云动科技 IPOs.
• Huawei registers a hand gesture driving patent.

The Communist Party’s 20th congress continued today, and the outside world is still reading tea leaves about what it all means. This is the best of today’s coverage:

• China 20th Party Congress: China’s Xi pledges victory in tech battle / Bloomberg (paywall)
• Puzzling through Xi’s political report / China Media Project
• China’s Xi Jinping likely to pack Party leadership with allies in show of strength / WSJ (paywall)
• Xi mentions of ‘security’ eclipse ‘economy’ in historic shift / Bloomberg (paywall)

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