Welcome to the 66th installment of the Caixin-Sinica Business Brief, a weekly podcast that brings you the most important business stories of the week from China’s top source for business and financial news. Produced by Kaiser Kuo of our Sinica Podcast, it features a business news roundup, plus conversations with Caixin reporters and editors.
This week:
- We find out that China’s economy grew at its slowest pace in nearly a decade in the third quarter, as top officials sent a slew of rarely seen coordinated messages to stem a stock-market sell-off driven by worries over a deepening trade war with the U.S. and weakening domestic activity.
- We note that Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, called an interview published in a Heilongjiang Province newspaper “seriously misleading” because of the interviewee’s opposition to genetically modified organisms.
- We hear that banking giant HSBC could become the first foreign company to list its shares in China under an initiative to link the London and Shanghai stock exchanges, giving the 153-year-old lender an opportunity to return to its roots.
- We learn that JD.com will launch a flagship online store on Google’s shopping platforms to sell directly to American consumers by the end of the year, hoping to carve out a bigger U.S. footprint even as trade tensions between the U.S. and China grow.
- We discuss a Beijing couple’s discovery of a hidden camera in an apartment leased from rental agency Ziroom, which has prompted public anger at a time of widespread anxiety over skyrocketing urban rents and poor protection of tenants’ rights.
- We report that China’s soccer authority is considering caps on investment, player salaries, and transfer fees for the soccer season beginning in 2019.
- We analyze a flurry of corruption-related developments in Chinese banks.
In addition, we talk with David Kirton, reporter for Caixin Global, about why Beijing’s recent embrace of “competitive neutrality” may not be enough to ease the concerns of G-20 countries that SOEs aren’t playing fair. We also chat with Doug Young, managing editor at Caixin Global, about a few stories this week on energy in China.
We’d love to hear your feedback on this product. Please send any comments and suggestions to sinica@thechinaproject.com.
