Welcome to the 77th 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 dive into the closure of 28 Confucius Institute programs by Canada’s province of New Brunswick because of what it called the Institute’s “one-dimensional perspective of China.”
- We learn that a Chinese Supreme Court judge confessed last week to taking the key legal documents from a case involving a long-running contract dispute, in a surprise development to a widely watched scandal involving the country’s top court.
- We report that China’s top banking regulator is stepping up an anti-money-laundering campaign by imposing new restrictions on financial institutions — as the government tries to rein in risky transactions.
- We note that recent national curbs on actors’ paychecks seem to be making it cheaper to produce video content in China.
- We analyze China’s first court devoted to financial cases, which is aiming to give the country greater influence over international judicial practices in the high-stakes industry.
- We discuss this week’s corruption news involving Fang Fenghui 房峰辉, former chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army, and Zhao Jingwen 赵景文, former executive director and Party committee member of state-owned investment conglomerate Citic Group.
- We hear about good news from Chinese pharmaceutical company Zhejiang Jinhua Conba Biological 浙江金华康恩贝, which has received approval to grow cannabis for medicinal and other industrial purposes in Yunnan Province.
In addition, we talk with Jing Xuan Teng and Olivia Ryan, reporters at Caixin Global, about a story titled “Why aren’t people in China dying of the flu” and some new studies of Chinese mental health. We also chat with Charlotte Yang, a reporter at Caixin Global, about a Chinese film featuring Peppa Pig and the sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth (流浪地球 liúlàng dìqiú).
