• US sell-or-ban law against TikTok stirs unease in China as Beijing, social media giant ByteDance stay mum on next moves
• China sends trio to Tiangong space station from Gobi desert launch as authorities declare 2030 moon landing on track
• South China Sea: Malaysia opposes ‘external forces’ meddling in the disputed waters, foreign minister says
• Chinese student jailed for stalking activist over Boston campus fliers
• US-China relations: Antony Blinken calls for level playing field for business and hits out at ‘non-market practices’
• Citybus union slams importation of mainland Chinese drivers into Hong Kong
• Hollywood movie Civil War sparks ‘superiority’ debate among China nationalists over Hong Kong versus Chinese identity
• Beijing Auto Show: Nio unveils luxury car, 2024 ET 7, as China’s EV price war heats up
• China’s and India’s coal habits are slowing down the green transition
• China preps for clampdown on financial crimes with new version of anti-money-laundering law
• Pro-China Philippine governor, Manuel Mamba, who opposes US drills, removed from office for illegal use of election funds
• US trade report keeps China on priority watch list as Blinken visit begins
• China’s Xi Jinping urges troops to ‘focus on the battlefield’ during trip to military medical school
• China’s unique retirement plan: why children still matter when it comes to support in old age
• China-EU relations: Beijing promotes Hungary’s coming presidency as chance for ‘more pragmatic China policy’ in Europe
• Heavy rainfall in mainland China forces Hong Kong to dial back high-speed rail services
• China’s US$1.35 trillion sovereign wealth fund CIC invests in Middle East via US$1 billion fund with Investcorp
• Apple still leads high-end smartphone sales in China, but Huawei and Honor are catching up
• China’s hi-tech progress reshaping global politics as US and allies seek to build ‘balancing coalition’, study says
• Nuctech raids leave Chinese businesses reeling as new EU foreign subsidies regulation shows its teeth
• [World] Blinken tackles a tough China visit. Will it help?
• Blinken, in Shanghai, begins expected contentious talks with Chinese officials
• Brave China ‘cancer warrior’ dies 2 days after 25th birthday, final wish to find brother a girlfriend left unfulfilled
• The Chinese lesson to India: how can air pollution make or break your economy?
• China’s food security push catches ‘grain-stealing mouse’ among 5 accused of US$3.45 million corn theft
• Chinese, US corporate leaders propose to defuse trade tension on supply chain, new-energy vehicles at Apec’s business lobby
• China’s central bank drops hints at future bond trades, answering calls for muscular monetary action

US sell-or-ban law against TikTok stirs unease in China as Beijing, social media giant ByteDance stay mum on next moves

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3260345/us-sell-or-ban-law-against-tiktok-stirs-unease-china-beijing-social-media-giant-bytedance-stay-mum?utm_source=rss_feed

The United States government’s passage of a sell-or-ban law against popular short video app TikTok has stirred unease and anger in mainland China, even as Beijing and social media giant ByteDance keep silent about their response.

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed into law a legislative measure that would ban TikTok in America unless Chinese owner ByteDance divests the short video platform’s US business. Biden has set a January 19 deadline – one day before his term is to expire – but he could grant a three-month extension if he determines ByteDance is making progress.

In response, China’s state media on Thursday published various opinion pieces to slam Washington’s sell-or-ban ultimatum on TikTok.

An article published by the Beijing Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party’s Beijing Municipal Committee, said the measure against TikTok is tantamount to a “robbery” that would “completely destroy American national credibility, which is already flawed”.

While both Beijing and TikTok owner ByteDance have stayed silent on potential moves, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin on Wednesday referred media inquiries to his previous remarks about the US measure against the hit short video app. Wang had said the proposed ban amounts to bullying and “will inevitably come back to bite the US itself”.

Last month, Ministry of Commerce spokesman He Yadong called on Washington to “stop unreasonable suppression of companies from other countries”.

This leaves TikTok poised to challenge the constitutionality of Washington’s sell-or-ban measure, as the four-year battle over restricting the short video app’s operations in America has turned into a significant front in the US-China tech war.

“The facts and the Constitution are on our side and we expect to prevail again,” TikTok chief executive Chew Shou Zi said in a video message posted on Wednesday, moments after Biden signed into law the legislative measure against the short video platform operator. “Make no mistake – this is a ban on TikTok.”

In 2020, then-US President Donald Trump had pushed for a sell-or-ban ultimatum on TikTok, but Beijing stepped in by requiring approval for the sale or transfer of the algorithm behind the app.

TikTok had told employees in an email sent the past weekend, according to a South China Morning Post report, that as soon as Biden signs the legislation “we will move to the courts for a legal challenge”, adding the measure shows “a clear violation of the First Amendment”.

The American Civil Liberties Union this week said that banning or requiring divestiture of TikTok’s US operations would “set an alarming global precedent for excessive government control over social media platforms”.

State-run China Daily, meanwhile, has published an article by British political and international relations analyst Tom Fowdy, who argued that the US measure was meant to “steal, undermine or impede China’s success”. “Under no circumstances will the company be allowed to sell such a wildly successful product under the threat of force to an American company,” he wrote.

On the mainland, some doubts have been raised on the prospects of TikTok’s US operations, four years since India banned the short video app after a deadly military clash in the two countries’ disputed Himalayan border region.

One user on Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-style service popular among young Chinese, posted a question on whether it was still meaningful to pursue a job interview with TikTok. Several of the replies asserted that it was pointless.

ByteDance operates Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, on the mainland where it has more than 600 million daily active users.

China sends trio to Tiangong space station from Gobi desert launch as authorities declare 2030 moon landing on track

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3260384/china-sends-trio-tiangong-space-station-gobi-desert-launch-authorities-declare-2030-moon-landing?utm_source=rss_feed

China sent off a new three-person crew to its Tiangong space station in low Earth orbit on Thursday, while remaining on track to put astronauts on the moon by 2030, according to Chinese space authorities.

The Shenzhou-18 spacecraft successfully lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northeastern China’s Gobi Desert at 8.59pm, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced shortly after the launch.

On board the spacecraft are mission commander Ye Guangfu, a veteran of the 2021 Shenzhou-13 mission, and crewmates Li Cong and Li Guangsu, who are both former fighter pilots and on their first space flight mission.

The trio will take about six and a half hours to arrive at Tiangong after the spacecraft reaches orbit and performs an automated rendezvous to dock with the space station some 400km (250 miles) above Earth, CMSA deputy director Lin Xiqiang told the media at Jiuquan on Wednesday.

The crew will be greeted by the three Shenzhou-17 astronauts who have lived and worked on Tiangong since October and are scheduled to return to Earth in about a week.

During the Shenzhou-18 crew’s six-month-long stay in orbit, they will mainly be tasked with conducting scientific experiments and spacewalks as well as routine maintenance and management of the space station, according to Lin.

For instance, they are expected to use zebrafish and hornwort to build a stable “self-circulating aquatic ecosystem” and cultivate vertebrates in orbit, a first for China, he said.

During the press conference, Lin also provided an update on China’s crewed lunar programme, noting that the building of systems and the timeline were on target to put Chinese astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade.

The development of key components for the crewed lunar landing, including the Long March 10 rocket, Mengzhou spacecraft, the Lanyue lunar lander and the spacesuits to be used on the lunar surface, were all complete, he said.

Leading scientist crucial to China’s space efforts to be expelled from top body

“Their prototype production and tests are in full swing,” Lin said.

China’s moon landing plan involves two launches of Long March 10 rockets to send three astronauts and the lunar lander into the lunar orbit separately. There, Mengzhou and Lanyue will dock and touch down on the lunar surface.

Two astronauts will spend a few hours on the moon, and then lift off to join their colleague in lunar orbit before returning to Earth.

Lin said the CMSA was working on choosing the lunar rover crew and lunar surface payloads following its call for proposals from the public – including China’s commercial space sector – last year.

Meanwhile, the United States is working to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since the Apollo Programme. Its Artemis III mission, which was previously scheduled to take off in 2025, has officially slipped to September 2026 at the earliest, Nasa said earlier this year.

The delay was caused by a number of technical reasons, including SpaceX’s outlook for building the Starship super heavy rocket, which is tasked with transferring US astronauts from the lunar orbit to the moon’s surface, as well as the company’s slower than expected development of the lunar lander.

In fact, the Artemis III mission is unlikely to happen before 2027, according to a report released by the US Government Accountability Office in December, which was compiled based on interviews with Nasa officials and industry experts.

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South China Sea: Malaysia opposes ‘external forces’ meddling in the disputed waters, foreign minister says

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3260385/south-china-sea-malaysia-opposes-external-forces-meddling-disputed-waters-foreign-minister-says?utm_source=rss_feed

Malaysia’s foreign minister said on Thursday that his country opposes “external forces” meddling in the South China Sea.

Speaking during a meeting in Beijing with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, Mohamad Hasan said foreign interference in the region was not welcomed.

Mohamad Hasan was in Beijing for the 50th anniversary celebration of diplomatic ties between Malaysia and China, according to a statement issued by China’s foreign ministry.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang to visit Malaysia as countries mark 50 years of ties

Malaysia is one of several nations with overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea and the minister’s comments largely echoed China’s long-held position that the dispute should be resolved among regional parties and “external forces” should not be involved.

According to the Chinese readout, Wang praised Malaysia as “an important member of Asean [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations], a representative of emerging economies, and a positive and stable force in the Muslim world”, and he promised that China would improve coordination with Malaysia and stand up and speak for the interests of the Global South on the international stage.

Malaysia foresees surge in Chinese tourist numbers as airlines launch new routes

The readout also said both men discussed strengthening economic cooperation and exchanged views on international issues.

Mohamad Hasan said that Malaysia highly appreciates China’s stance on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while Wang said China wanted to work with Malaysia to promote an early, comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the issue, according to the readout.

Mohamad Hasan’s visit came as the United States and the Philippines continue Balikatan 2024, an annual and two-week bilateral joint military exercise in the South China Sea until May 8.

The US and Japan have jointly backed the Philippines and accused China of “dangerous and aggressive behaviour” in the South China Sea after a trilateral meeting between Washington, Tokyo and Manila earlier this month.

Disputes between Beijing and Manila over areas of the South China Sea have intensified in the past year, particularly over resupply missions to a Philippines’ outpost at the Second Thomas Shoal. Manila has denied a “gentleman’s agreement” between Beijing and former president Rodrigo Duterte, and has sought support from its treaty ally the US, as well as Japan.

Mainland China claims most of the South China Sea while the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan also each have overlapping claims to the resource-rich waters.

Xpeng appoints Malaysian firm to sell its right-hand drive EVs in Hong Kong

On Thursday, Chinese defence ministry spokesman, Senior Colonel Wu Qian, also criticised “external interference” in the South China Sea, in reference to the US-Philippines exercise, adding that “drawing forces from outside the region or countries not directly concerned into the issue would only further complicate the situation and make it harder to resolve”.

“We believe differences should be properly handled through dialogue and consultation among countries in the region. We oppose external interference, muscle flexing, provocations, and harassment in the South China Sea, and oppose exclusive circles or bloc confrontation,” Wu said.

Chinese student jailed for stalking activist over Boston campus fliers

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/25/xiaolei-wu-chinese-student-stalking/2024-04-25T08:14:36.292Z

A Chinese college student was sentenced to nine months in federal prison Wednesday for stalking and harassing a former fellow student who had shared pro-democracy fliers around campus.

According to prosecutors, Xiaolei Wu, 26, targeted his female victim — who was identified in court documents only as Zooey — after she posted fliers calling for solidarity with pro-democracy activists in China around the Berklee College of Music’s campus in Boston.

After seeing the posters, Wu threatened to “chop [his victim’s] hands off” if she continued to put them up around the campus where both had studied. According to prosecutors, he also provided her details to his mother, a Chinese government official.

In a message shared with the court, Wu told his victim that her family in China should expect a visit from state security agents, whom he said he had informed about her actions, warning her that she would be detained by border officials if she were to return to the country.

The pro-democracy posters included the slogans: “We want freedom … We want democracy … Stand with Chinese people,” according to a photograph shared by the victim on her Instagram account in October 2022, whom prosecutors said was originally from China but now a permanent U.S. resident.

According to prosecuting attorneys, Wu embarked upon a targeted campaign of harassment across email and social media after seeing the fliers in question. “I already called the tip-off line,” Wu said in a message: “The public security agency will go greet your family.” In an email sent to the victim days later, he wrote: “I hope your family is having a good time being greeted. Be ‘safe’.”

The victim’s family in China was subjected to “repeated visits” by government officials as a result of the case, prosecutors told the court, and she no longer feels like she can safely return to China.

After his arrest in December 2022, a federal jury in January convicted Wu — who was living in the United States on a student visa — of one count of cyberstalking and one count of interstate transmission of threatening communication.

Wu will spend three years of supervised release after the completion of his nine-month sentence, according to Wednesday’s statement from the Department of Justice.

“Mr. Wu’s criminal conduct is very serious,” said acting U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy in a statement. “He harnessed the fear of potential retribution from the PRC government to harass and threaten an innocent individual who had posted an innocuous, pro-democracy flier on the Berklee campus.”

FBI Special Agent Jodi Cohen praised the bravery of Wu’s victim in coming forward. “What Mr. Wu did — in weaponizing the authoritarian nature of the People’s Republic of China to threaten this woman — is incredibly disturbing,” she said.

Lawyers representing Wu did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Thursday.

In an earlier memorandum, Wu’s attorneys said he acknowledged that his behavior over the course of two days had been reactive, impulsive, and immature. They said their client’s actions reflected a collision of two cultures: “His own highly sheltered upbringing in Communist China, and the democratic norms of the United States, many of which were still relatively new to him at the time of his offense.” According to his lawyers, Wu will be deported by immigration officials after his case is over and will not be permitted to reenter the United States.

Since 2019, the number of Chinese students visiting the United States has declined by more than 20 percent, according to State Department figures — with numbers failing to recover from an immediate slump triggered by the pandemic.

Part of the decline is due to Beijing’s crackdown on groups supporting the exchanges, but Chinese students and academics have also been subjected to increased scrutiny at the U.S. border. In 2020, the Trump administration tightened visa regulations for Chinese Communist Party members, who number around 92 million, as well as their close relatives — limiting their U.S. visas to a single-entry, one-month stay.

US-China relations: Antony Blinken calls for level playing field for business and hits out at ‘non-market practices’

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3260377/us-china-relations-antony-blinken-calls-level-playing-field-business-and-hits-out-non-market?utm_source=rss_feed

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised concerns about China’s “non-market practices” on the second day of his visit to the country.

In a meeting with Shanghai party chief Chen Jining on Thursday morning, Blinken opened by saying: “It’s important to underscore the value – in fact, the necessity – of direct engagement, of sustained engagement, of speaking to each other, laying out our differences which are real, seeking to work through them, and also looking for ways to build cooperation where we can.

“We have an obligation for our people and, indeed, an obligation for the world to manage the relationship between our two countries responsibly.”

Blinken’s visit, his second to the country in the space of 12 months, comes as the United States and China are stepping up official contacts in an effort to stop relations deteriorating further due to their ongoing disputes over issues such as trade and Taiwan.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said after the meeting: “In a constructive and candid exchange, [Blinken] raised concerns about PRC [People’s Republic of China] trade policies and non-market economic practices and stressed that the United States seeks a healthy economic competition with the PRC and a level playing field for US workers and firms operating in China.”

US trade report keeps China on priority watch list as Blinken visit begins

The US has accused China of undermining the interests of American firms through unfair competition and manufacturing “overcapacity”, floating the possibility of placing further tariffs on Chinese goods such as electric vehicles and metals to stop them “flooding” the market.

The Chinese commerce ministry said on Thursday that accusations about overcapacity are “unreasonable”, and warned they may damage business confidence and global green development.

Chen, who is also a member of the Chinese Politburo, told Blinken in the meeting that Shanghai is home to more than 8,000 American companies.

Chen said that stable relations between the two countries “have not only advanced our cooperation and exchange in all different aspects” but also “help address global challenges and help promote world peace and development”, according to a transcript of his opening remarks by the State Department.

“So whether China and the US choose cooperation or confrontation, it affects the well-being of both peoples of nations and also the future of humanity,” he added.

In a separate statement released by the Shanghai government, Chen said the city will continue to help foreign investors and support cooperation.

“We will always adhere to the direction of marketisation, rule of law and internationalisation, continue to optimise the business environment, provide efficient and convenient services, and support all types of enterprises to continue to develop in Shanghai and achieve win-win development.”

Speaking to students at New York University’s campus in Shanghai later in the day, Blinken said the relationship between the two countries is one of the world’s most “consequential” and “complicated” but emphasised the importance of communication.

He said more than 100,000 new visas had been granted to Chinese students last year, adding that both countries are working to ensure students feel welcome to study in the other country.

Chinese ambassador to the US Xie Feng said in January that more than a dozen Chinese students with valid visas were being denied entry to the US every month after interrogation by immigration officials.

Blinken also met members of the American business community at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai on Thursday afternoon, including Shanghai chamber chairman Allan Gabor and president Eric Zheng.

“US companies in China appreciate the US government’s efforts to continue engaging with China, which will be of great benefit to both sides,” Gabor said in a statement.

Following that meeting Blinken travelled on to Beijing, where he was due to meet academics later in the day.

On Friday he is expected to meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, and possibly President Xi Jinping as well.

US is ‘stubbornly’ trying to contain China, Beijing says ahead of Blinken visit

The talks are expected to cover some of the most challenging issues in their bilateral relations, including trade, Taiwan, Ukraine,and the Middle East.

On Wednesday President Joe Biden approved a US$95 billion aid package for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan on Wednesday and signed a bill into law that requires app TikTok to be divested from its Chinese parent company Bytedance or be banned in the US.

The Chinese embassy in Washington has warned that the move “puts the US on the wrong side of the principles of fair competition and international trade rules”.

Citybus union slams importation of mainland Chinese drivers into Hong Kong

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/transport/article/3260380/citybus-union-slams-importation-mainland-chinese-drivers-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed

A union for Citybus workers has decried the company’s importation of 20 drivers from mainland China into Hong Kong, raising concerns about road safety and their driving standards.

Citybus Limited Employees Union chairman Lam Nai-wa said on Thursday the organisation was outraged by the company’s decision to bring in mainland bus drivers for non-franchised operations. The first batch of five are due to arrive next month to take the local driving test.

“We are very angry about this arrangement,” Lam said. “The company has decided to import the mainland drivers without consulting us. This is entirely disrespectful to the union and its staff.”

Lam raised safety concerns, noting mainlanders drove on the opposite side of the road and used a different set of traffic rules.

“I am concerned about whether they can adapt to a different environment and drive safely in Hong Kong, which has a different set of rules from that of the mainland,” he said. “Mainland bus drivers have no experience of driving double-deckers. Who can ensure that they will be fit for the job?”

Lam questioned whether Citybus could provide sufficient training for the imported drivers and ensure road safety, urging the company to instead put the resources into hiring local drivers

“The imported drivers only have about 20 days to undergo training and a driving test,” he said. “If things go wrong, who will be responsible for the passengers’ safety?”

A company spokesman said the importation of drivers came amid a manpower shortage in the city’s transport sector. He also noted that under a government scheme allowing Citybus to import 20 drivers, the new hires would only operate non-franchised bus services, such as employee shuttles and city tours.

“The mainland bus captains will only operate designated routes under our non-franchised business in accordance with the stipulated regulations, and they will not be assigned to operate any of our around 300 franchised bus routes,” he said.

“This arrangement allows us to redeploy local manpower to our franchise bus services, ensuring the continued provision of stable, efficient and high-quality bus services to our customers.”

Hong Kong import scheme for low-skilled labour to undergo half-year review: NGO

The spokesman emphasised that they offered a competitive salary and benefits package of up to HK$30,000 (US$3,830) per month exclusively to local drivers, compared with about HK$19,000 a month for imported ones.

“It is important to note that the aforementioned benefits are exclusively tailored to the local labour market and are only applicable to new local hires,” he said.

Lai Siu-chung of the Motor Transport Workers General Union also opposed the move, saying it would adversely affect the livelihood of local bus drivers.

Separately, the Staffs and Workers Union of Hong Kong Civil Airlines on Thursday released the results of a survey conducted earlier this month that showed 67 per cent of about 300 respondents said they were pessimistic about their job prospects.

The complaints mainly centred on imported labour in the industry, which they said undermined the recruitment of local workers.

No need for quota in expanded scheme to import workers: Hong Kong labour chief

The poll also found that more than seven out of 10 respondents said they had less overtime work, which lowered their income.

The union called for better salaries and benefits for employees and for companies to prioritise the recruitment of local workers.

The city is grappling with a shortage of workers across industries and has moved to import mainlanders to work in healthcare, cleaning and construction, among others.

Additional reporting by Fiona Sun

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Hollywood movie Civil War sparks ‘superiority’ debate among China nationalists over Hong Kong versus Chinese identity

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3260332/hollywood-movie-civil-war-sparks-superiority-debate-among-china-nationalists-over-hong-kong-versus?utm_source=rss_feed

The Hollywood film Civil War has sparked a political discussion in China over a scene in which an actor from Taiwan plays a Hong Kong journalist who is identified as mainland Chinese by an American soldier and shot dead as a result.

Many people who take a nationalist position view the scene as a satirical take on Hongkongers and other groups of Chinese people who consider themselves superior and worship the West.

Directed by Alex Garland, the film is set against the backdrop of a fictional American civil war where a group of journalists, led by Lee Smith, played by Kirsten Dunst, tries to cross the front lines to interview the president before his expected surrender.

The film premiered in the United States on April 12 and despite having a budget of just US$50 million has grossed US$45.7 million in North America alone, with global ticket sales reaching US$67.3 million by April 22.

While it has been well received in the US and globally, scoring 81 per cent on the Rotten Tomatoes website, it has left many Asian audiences, especially Hongkongers, feeling uneasy, particularly due to one poignant scene.

The Rotten Tomatoes website keeps track of all the reviews counted for each film produced and calculates the percentage of positive reviews. If the positive reviews make up 60 per cent or more, the film is considered “fresh”. If the positive reviews are less than that percentage, the film is considered “rotten”.

The poignant scene in question sees US soldiers stop the journalists to question their origins.

While the American journalists pass easily, an Asian male journalist called Tony nervously replies: “I’m from Hong Kong.”

The soldier responds: “Oh, China?” and upon Tony’s confirmation, the soldier nods and pulls the trigger, killing him.

Notably, Tony is portrayed by Nelson Lee, a Taiwanese-Canadian actor, adding another level of irony to the scene.

One Chinese viewer of the movie sarcastically remarked: “A Taiwanese actor playing a Hong Kong journalist, being shot by an American soldier who considered him Chinese. How ironic!”

Despite the movie not being released in mainland China, it has sparked a vigorous discussion on social media.

Some people said the scene reflects a rare moment of political correctness in American cinema in which the views of China and the United States align.

“Thinking negatively, a Chinese person gets shot by an American soldier. Thinking positively, the US acknowledges that Hong Kong is part of China,” said one online observer.

The scene ignited discussion about identity and Hongkongers and the group of so-called gao hua, which literally means “higher Chinese”.

This group includes well-educated individuals who hold high social status, but often downplay their Chinese roots and worship the West after moving overseas.

Some people on social media pointed out that despite these individuals feeling superior to other Chinese groups and strongly embracing foreign cultures, they are still regarded as Chinese by Westerners.

“If this scenario can be depicted in a film, it means that the ideology of many Hong Kong people is typical enough to be disclosed by a drama,” said one online observer.

Another person agreed: “To those who constantly claim to be from Hong Kong, not China, you are nothing else in the eyes of Westerners. They’ll use bullets to adjust your sense of superiority.”

While a third added: “It’s not enough to just hint at issues about Hong Kong. If they had said Taiwan and then ‘bang bang’, the movie’s theme would have been immediately elevated.”

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Beijing Auto Show: Nio unveils luxury car, 2024 ET 7, as China’s EV price war heats up

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3260341/beijing-auto-show-nio-unveils-luxury-car-2024-et-7-chinas-ev-price-war-heats?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker Nio on Thursday launched a new edition of its upscale smart car, Nio 2024 ET 7, hoping to lure high-end consumers amid an escalating price war among some of the country’s top players.

The Shanghai-based carmaker’s updated executive car features more powerful smart-driving capabilities, an enhanced digital cockpit, an extra-long driving range and more comfortable passenger seats, according to founder and CEO William Li Bin.

“Through our technological innovations, the ET 7 executive car has elevated the driving and seating experience to the next level,” Li said at a launch event at the Beijing Automotive Exhibition, which began Thursday and runs through May 4.

The standard version of the new model sells for 428,000 yuan (US$59,400). Nio is currently accepting pre-orders for the vehicle. Delivery starts on April 30 in China.

Li said shipments of the original ET 7, which began in late March 2022, have reached nearly 30,000, making it the top-selling all-electric car in China priced above 400,000 yuan.

Nio is putting a hefty price tag on its latest ET 7 model even as rivals, including BYD, the world’s largest EV marker, Tesla China and Xpeng, rush to offer additional discounts on their vehicles due to falling demand in a battered economy.

Despite the mounting pressure, Nio has kept the price of its cars – all costing more than 300,000 yuan – unchanged.

At the launch event, Li also touted the driving range of Nio’s new model, which he said is the world’s first fully electric executive car that travelled more than 1,000 kilometres in a single test drive, thanks to its 150 kilowatt-hour battery pack.

Nio said it sought to address the “range anxiety” of EV drivers through a joint effort with partners, including Changan Automobile, Zhejiang Geely Group, JAC Group and Chery, to promote battery-swapping technologies and standards.

The company’s nationwide charging network has over 2,400 power swap stations and 21,000 charging stands, according to Li. “Thanks to our power swapping system … our ET 7 users’ driving range is even longer than fuel vehicles,” he said.

Nio on Thursday also unveiled the fourth iteration of its power swap station and liquid-cooled ultra-fast charger, which it plans to deploy soon.

China’s and India’s coal habits are slowing down the green transition

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/asia-opinion/article/3260196/chinas-and-indias-coal-habits-are-slowing-down-green-transition?utm_source=rss_feed

Given the likelihood of an extended heatwave this summer, the Indian government has ordered all gas-based power stations to be operational from May 1 to June 30. Power demand reached a record 243 gigawatts last September, and is forecast to hit 260GW this summer.

India signed the Cop28 accord that calls for “transitioning away” from fossil fuels, but the country’s data on coal dependence indicates that this change is still far off.

India has about 27GW of coal-based power capacity under construction, and does not plan to close down any coal power plant until 2030. India is the world’s second largest coal producer, after China.

India’s 2023 National Electricity Plan estimates that the nation will need 866.4 million tonnes of domestic coal in 2026–2027, and that this amount will increase to 1.025 billion tonnes by 2031–2032. Meanwhile, Indian coal production is predicted to increase by 6 to 7 per cent yearly and reach about 1.5 billion tonnes in 2029-30.

Over in China, 70.45GW of coal-fired power plants were decommissioned in the last 10 years. More renewable energy is being developed than in any other nation. However, the licensing of new coal-fired plants in recent years casts doubt on China’s promise to phase out fossil fuels, and coal’s role in the nation’s energy security plans illustrates the challenging issue faced by international leaders.

China’s state planner, concerned about power shortages, established a capacity price scheme that compensates generators for keeping coal plants running, regardless of whether they are used, starting in January this year. Despite analyst estimates that China’s coal usage could peak as soon as this year, Beijing has been hesitant about setting a more ambitious target: it says it will phase down coal between 2026 and 2030.

By many other measures, China is leading the world in clean technology. In 2022, its investments in renewable energy made up 55 per cent of the total worldwide and it accounted for around 60 per cent of global electric car sales. Just two Chinese companies have captured more than half the world’s electric vehicle battery market.

China also boasts the most wind and solar capacity in the world. Yet, electricity shortage in the summer of 2022 prompted a policy reversal. The shortages came about when severe drought caused hydropower generation to collapse, even as a heatwave drove demand for air conditioning.

Thereafter, not only did coal power project approvals shoot up, the National Energy Administration’s policy of setting strict conditions for new coal-fired power generation was also ignored.

Around the world, many nations have been phasing down coal faster. According to the World Resources Institute, Greece and Britain achieved the quickest coal power reductions over any eight-year period since 2000, followed by Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Romania, Germany, the United States and Chile. Out of these top 10 nations, only Portugal is coal-free.

How China can help change the game for clean energy in Southeast Asia

Unfortunately, the UN Environment Programme’s Production Gap Report last year found that governments intend to produce around 110 per cent more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with meeting climate goals set under the 2015 Paris agreement. Although 151 national governments have committed to achieving net zero emissions and new projections suggest that the world’s demand for coal, oil and gas will peak this decade, even without new policies, the government plans would result in an increase in coal production worldwide until 2030, and in oil and gas production until at least 2050.

The Production Gap Report also included profiles for 20 major fossil fuel-producing countries, most of which still promote and support such production in spite of their net-zero pledges.

According to a report from Global Energy Monitor, China and 10 other countries, including India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Indonesia and Kazakhstan, account for 95 per cent of the world’s coal capacity under consideration. China has also seen new construction starts increasing for the fourth year in a row, such that it accounts for 95 per cent of the capacity that began construction in 2023.

Last year, 20.9GW of new coal power projects were proposed in countries other than China. India took the lead among these countries, proposing 11.4GW of additional coal capacity, more than in any other year since 2016, and giving various stalled projects a new lease of life.

Kazakhstan proposed 4.6GW and Indonesia 2.5GW. In addition, 4.1GW of capacity that had been cancelled or shelved was proposed again.

In 2023, the United States accounted for almost half of the world’s coal power retirements, with 9.7GW worth of capacity shuttering. Globally, coal power plant retirements failed to pick up speed and were at their lowest level since 2011.

As global climate talks and net-zero goals gain ground, more countries are conscious of the need to cut fossil fuel consumption and invest in clean energy projects. But when two of the world’s largest growing economies, China and India, are also the biggest producers of coal and still depend on it for their energy needs, it makes it that much more difficult for them to transition to cleaner sources.

Although both countries have committed on some level to phasing out fossil fuels, this is not going to be an easy task. Given that China and India are the world’s most populous nations with high electricity demand, a complete coal phase-out would require much more time and energy.

China preps for clampdown on financial crimes with new version of anti-money-laundering law

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3260327/china-preps-clampdown-financial-crimes-new-version-anti-money-laundering-law?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s lawmakers are revamping the country’s law on money laundering to bolster a crackdown on illegal activities like cross-border gambling and underground banks, a measure that will also align its practices with global standards as it faces stricter international scrutiny.

A draft revision of the law is now under review at the ongoing session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislative body when the full congress is not in session.

“It’s necessary to root our anti-money-laundering law in the actual needs of our country and integrate into new [international] demands,” said Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People’s Bank of China, according to state news agency Xinhua. “[We need to] seize the moment to improve the law.”

The planned revision comes in advance of a fifth review by the Financial Action Task Force, an international organisation that sets standards to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

China’s anti-money-laundering law went into effect in 2007, the same year it joined the task force. The intergovernmental agency was founded in 1989 on the initiative of the Group of 7 countries to coordinate efforts to combat money laundering. In 2001, its mandate was expanded to include the funding of terrorism.

China narrowly passed the fourth round of assessments in 2019. The review stated some Chinese financial institutions had weak obligations in the control of money laundering, and the overall system lacks transparency regarding legal arrangements.

China’s central bank had previously warned the risk of money laundering remains high in the country as well as Southeast Asia, emphasising the need to address loopholes in compliance management and improve regulatory technology to handle the complex nature of financial crimes and the burgeoning fintech sector.

The present version of the Chinese anti-money-laundering law comprises 62 articles in seven chapters. The revised draft will require financial institutions to establish and enhance an internal control mechanism for money laundering, carry out due diligence with customers and save their identity information and transaction records.

The as yet unpublished draft would also bolster the supervision and management of anti-money-laundering operations, advance provisions of obligations and clarify the scope of non-financial institutions that must comply with the law, Xinhua said.

Pan noted the revision is based on a “risk-centric” principle and protects “national security”, coordinates “development and safety” and will “perfect” the anti-money-laundering system.

In a report released last year, the consultancy Oliver Wyman said the fifth-round assessment by the Financial Action Task Force will focus on “effectiveness” and “results”.

“Although the fourth examination has affirmed certain work from China, like new technology, internal control, telegraphic transfer, non-profit organisations and financing of terrorism and proliferation, the fifth review is still going to be challenging to the country and its financial industry,” said Qian Hang, a partner at Oliver Wyman.

He suggested Chinese financial institutions “raise consciousness” on fulfilling their obligations and use the fifth review period to examine weak links and upgrade their operations before the task force’s field work begins in 2025.

Pro-China Philippine governor, Manuel Mamba, who opposes US drills, removed from office for illegal use of election funds

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3260336/pro-china-philippine-governor-manuel-mamba-who-opposes-us-drills-removed-office-illegal-use-election?utm_source=rss_feed

A provincial governor in the Philippines known for his pro-China views and opposition to cooperation with the US has been summarily tossed out of office, due to illegal use of funds during an election, just as joint military exercises involving Manila and Washington take place in his region.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced on Wednesday it had disqualified Manuel Mamba from serving his third term as governor of Cagayan province for illegally using public funds during the 2022 election period.

The same allegations had led Comelec’s Second Division to disqualify Mamba in December 2022. That decision was later overturned by a full meeting (en banc) of the commission due to technicalities related to the filing of the petition.

Philippines flags ‘upsurge’ in Chinese militia as joint drills with US kick off

However, on April 16, the Supreme Court ruled the petition was filed on time and directed Comelec to once again address the matter. Eight days later, the commission ruled he was disqualified, and declared his position vacant.

Mamba said his legal team would file an appeal with Comelec and urged the people of Cagayan “to be calm and composed” as he would continue to serve as governor until a final decision was reached.

Some critics have suggested that Mamba was disqualified for not supporting the orders of President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr’s administration, which has become increasingly confrontational towards China, while also strengthening the Philippines’ defensive alliance with the United States.

Malou Tiquia, a political analyst and supporter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, recently posted on Facebook a list of provinces and cities, including Cagayan, with a caption saying “these are the provinces where governors/mayors were suspended, national funding removed, or removed from office because they didn’t follow the order asked of them”.

Retired Supreme Court associate justice Antonio Carpio told This Week in Asia that Mamba’s dismissal was legally justified. “After the Supreme Court ruled that the petition [against Mamba] should be reinstated, the decision of Comelec came out as a matter of course. The decision of the Supreme Court was correct.”

A sitting member of the House of Representatives, who declined to be named, told This Week in Asia “there is nothing suspicious about it. The Supreme Court ruled that the petition to Comelec was filed on time.”

Mamba’s province of Cagayan has been in the news this month over accusations it had been “infiltrated” by thousands of Chinese nationals enrolled in private universities. One congressman described it as a “creeping invasion”.

Last week, Mamba told a reporter on TV news show 24 ORAS, that only about 400 Chinese were enrolled in the province: “as far as I am concerned. I do not see any threat, but that is not for me to say because we have security agencies.”

Mamba, a member of a political dynasty that has dominated Cagayan for decades, openly supports China and opposes the construction of US military facilities under the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) in Cagayan.

US accused of ‘warmongering’ against China as drills with Philippines begin

Located along the northern coast of the main island of Luzon, Cagayan is about 400km south of Taiwan. It contains two EDCA development sites, one at Camilo Osas naval base in the northernmost tip of the province, and the other at Lal-lo Airport.

This year’s edition of the Balikatan – joint Philippine-US military exercises that began Monday and continue until May 8 – will include a “counter landing drill” in northern Luzon.

Mamba has been vocal in his opposition to the presence of the US military in Cagayan. Last year, he told ABS-CBN News, “I personally oppose this (EDCA) and I disagree with it. For me, it is inimical to the interest of our provinces and the Cagayanons.”

Earlier this month, he told SMNI News, “America has sold nothing to the world, not a thing because they are lazy”. He added, “the only thing they have sold is arms., that’s why they create wars. I don’t want Filipinos to die for America now, not now, not any more.”

By comparison, he has praised China. During an interview with the Manila Times last year, he said he was impressed with China’s accomplishments. “There must be something in them that we can copy and emulate.’

In February, he went to Fuzhou City in Fujian province, where he met with Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Nong Rong. According to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mamba said he was “deeply impressed by President Xi Jinping’s ideas on national governance and China’s development achievements. He believes that the Philippines and China are eternal neighbours and must make bilateral relations a success.”

US trade report keeps China on priority watch list as Blinken visit begins

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3260303/us-trade-report-keeps-china-priority-watch-list-blinken-visit-begins?utm_source=rss_feed

China remains on Washington’s “priority watch list” for intellectual property protection infringement amid a “slowdown” in Beijing’s pace of reform, the US government said on Wednesday.

The latest Special 301 Report – issued each year by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to assess the adequacy and effectiveness of the country’s trading partners’ IP rights protection – landed as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken started his three-day trip to China.

“In 2023, the pace of reforms in China remained slow,” said a senior USTR official. “Stakeholders acknowledge some positive developments but continue to raise concerns about implementation of the amended criminal law, copyright law and patent law.”

Other long-standing concerns raised by rights holders include technology transfer, trade secrets, bad faith trademarks, counterfeiting, online piracy and geographical indications, the official said.

The 93-page report, of which the China section comprises 10 pages, said the USTR has been taking actions to address “unfair and harmful Chinese acts, policies, and practices”.

The priority watch list remained unchanged from last year, with Argentina, Chile, India, Indonesia, Russia and Venezuela also continuing to appear.

In addition, 20 other countries were placed on the USTR’s “watch list”, reducing the number by two from last year, after it removed the Dominican Republic and Uzbekistan.

China has been either listed on the priority watch list or identified as a “priority foreign country” for most of the years since the report was first issued in 1989.

This year’s report noted that “statements by Chinese officials that tie IP rights to Chinese market dominance continue to raise strong concerns”, as did the 2022 report.

These included statements from President Xi Jinping on the need for China to allow no delays in breaking through the “chokehold” of critical core technologies, the latest report said.

“Such statements recall long-standing concerns about requiring or pressuring technology transfer from foreign individuals or companies to Chinese companies, as well as about whether IP protection and enforcement will apply fairly to foreign right holders in China,” it said.

Critical concerns also include “the decrease in transparency and the potential for political intervention” with the Chinese judicial system, according to the report.

China’s Supreme People’s Court admitted in December that Chinese courts were uploading fewer verdicts to China Judgments Online – an online public database serves as an important resource for lawyers, academics and the public.

The court cited security and privacy concerns and said 19.2 million court rulings were uploaded to the website in 2020, but dropped to 10.4 million in 2022, and just 5.1 million in 2023.

The move is “further hampering transparency and making it more difficult for right holders to determine how China protects and enforces foreign IP”, the USTR report said.

Although a new database of verdicts was launched in February, the report said there are still concerns over a deterioration in transparency, as the Supreme People’s Court has not clarified the extent to which case decisions will be accessible to the general public or foreign firms.

The report noted that China continues to be the world’s leading source of counterfeit and pirated goods, based on US customs seizures in fiscal year 2023.

Counterfeit and pirated goods from the mainland and Hong Kong accounted for more than 83 per cent of the value, measured by manufacturers’ suggested retail prices, during the period, according to US Customs and Border Protection.

The USTR said China’s e-commerce markets – the largest in the world – remain a source of widespread counterfeiting as sales of infringing products have migrated from physical to online marketplaces.

Last week, the USTR announced the launch of another Section 301 investigation into China’s maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors.

This is on top of the 2017 investigation that led to the imposition of tariffs on a variety of imported goods from China over the following two years. In retaliation, China attached additional tariffs to certain US goods.

In 2020, the two countries reached the first phase of an economic and trade agreement that included a progressive rollback of tariffs as well as a chapter on strengthening protection and enforcement of IP in China.

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China’s Xi Jinping urges troops to ‘focus on the battlefield’ during trip to military medical school

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3260342/chinas-xi-jinping-urges-troops-focus-battlefield-during-trip-military-medical-school?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese President Xi Jinping visited an army medical university and called on students and military personnel to “focus on the battlefield” as Beijing steps up its war readiness.

Xi visited Army Medical University in the southwestern megacity of Chongqing on Tuesday to examine the university’s academic work in battlefield medicine and inspected its battlefield emergency medical equipment, according to a report by state news agency Xinhua on Thursday.

General He Weidong, the second-ranked vice-chairman of China’s powerful Central Military Commission, accompanied Xi during his visit to the university, which was part of a three-day inspection trip to Chongqing municipality that concluded on Wednesday.

China’s PLA relaxes rules for non-combat, hi-tech troops. But there’s a catch

According to Xinhua, Xi called for strengthening logistical support, improving the combat effectiveness of troops, and promoting the physical and mental well-being of officers and soldiers.

“It is necessary to adhere to moral education and personnel training for combat readiness, deepen educational and teaching reforms, and cultivate a new generation of red military doctors who are morally upright and capable,” Xi said.

Army Medical University specialises in fields including high-altitude military medicine, war trauma medicine and burn medicine, according to its website.

It also has China’s only national laboratory for research on injuries including trauma, burns, and composite injuries, the website states.

Xinhua praised the university for “persistently prioritising military needs, advancing innovative development, and excelling in fulfilling major tasks” in military medical support during conflicts and for China’s Covid-19 response.

Xi called on the institution to “vigorously promote innovative research in specialised medical fields, consolidate traditional strengths, seize the forefront of development, and strive for excellence in military medical science”.

East Asia joins global military spending surge over China concerns: report

Beijing has been improving the war readiness of the People’s Liberation Army and allocating more resources to military logistics, personnel training and key weapons as it faces a more complex external environment.

In September of last year, the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command General Hospital held a medical support exercise in which field surgery vehicles rushed to a coastal battlefield to rescue wounded soldiers.

The PLA Eastern Theatre Command has tested the use of helicopters and drones to rescue wounded soldiers from islands off the coast of Zhejiang province. Military analysts told the Post last year that the exercise was meant to prepare for a possible military conflict near coastal islands and in the Taiwan Strait.

China’s annual military budget has grown by 7.2 per cent annually for the past two years – higher than the country’s 2024 economic growth target of 5 per cent.

During China’s annual parliamentary session in March, PLA spokesman Wu Qian said the growing defence budget would be directed towards improving combat readiness and preparing for wars as “challenges persist at home and abroad”.

“The instability and uncertainty of the security situation we face have increased, and the task of the military struggle is arduous and burdensome,” Wu said, adding that international military conflicts had broken out and China’s domestic anti-separatist struggle was “complex and grim”.

China’s unique retirement plan: why children still matter when it comes to support in old age

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/social-welfare/article/3258751/chinas-unique-retirement-plan-why-children-still-matter-when-it-comes-support-old-age?utm_source=rss_feed

At the end of 2023, the number of people in the China aged 65 and above reached 217 million, making up 15.4 per cent of the total population.

This has led to concerns that with rapid ageing, the existing pension system may fail to keep pace.

As a result, elderly people have turned to raising children to look after them in their old age.

This is commonly known as yang er fang lao. Here, the Post explains the phenomenon.

Simply put yang er fang lao is the process of raising children so they can offer the seniors support in their later years.

The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences predicts that the national pension system will run out of funds by 2035.

This estimation was made before the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns of 2019, which severely impacted the economy.

Shanghai had an average monthly retirement pension of 5,039 yuan (US$700) in 2023.

By comparison, many second and third-tier cities have pensions as low as 2,900 yuan.

Not everyone, such as farmers and the self-employed, has such cover, so for generations, Chinese society has relied on filial piety to care for its elderly.

This also means that many seniors move in with their children after retirement.

In ancient China’s agricultural economy, people lived off the land and relied on physical labour.

Old age brought diminished physical capabilities, so the solution was to have lots of children to ensure late-life care.

Parents have traditionally been revered, and children are taught to be “filial and grateful”.

Also, adult children have an obligation to support and assist their parents under Chinese law.

Supporters think that yang er fang lao can improve the quality of life for the elderly.

“When kids were young, parents were their support, and as they grow older, they become the spiritual support for parents,” said Liu Yuhengwei, a 55-year-old former state-owned company employee in Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei province.

“But there must be consensus between the two generations, rather than forcing children,” added Liu.

Some critics also believe that this mindset will increase the economic burden on younger generations.

“I won’t deprive my child of independence and dignity. They are independent individuals,” said Zhang Yong, a 57-year-old college professor in Wuhan.

“I’m willing to spend my old age in a nursing home,” he added.

Scholars believe that traditional expectations for children to care for them in old age hampers the independence of the latter, worsening intergenerational conflicts.

For parents, children are their possessions, and they can decide everything for them.

However, the younger generation, which is financially self-sufficient, opposes this idea.

“Raising children for old age is a form of moral hostage taking under the guise of nurturing This makes difficult to exchange for genuine love,” said Juliet Ma, a 23-year-old student in Beijing.

Despite opposition from her family, Ma and her boyfriend insist on a DINK lifestyle, or double income, no kids.

When Ma’s mother asked angrily what she would do in old age without children, she said: “The savings from not having children will suffice for a luxury nursing home or travel during my golden years.”

The yang er fang lao model is gradually losing its appeal, according to Lu Jiehua, a professor in the Department of Sociology at Peking University.

As a partial result, number of only children in China exceeded 260 million by the end of 2021.

If a family consists of two only children, they will have to support at least four elderly parents.

Faced with this dilemma, numerous Chinese seniors are exploring alternative options to alleviate the pressure on their offspring.

Many choose a long-term stay in a specific location with a travelling group, known as sojourn retirement.

Hotel and community-based elderly care options have also gained popularity.

China-EU relations: Beijing promotes Hungary’s coming presidency as chance for ‘more pragmatic China policy’ in Europe

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3260310/china-eu-relations-beijing-promotes-hungarys-coming-presidency-chance-more-pragmatic-china-policy?utm_source=rss_feed

China is pushing Hungary to promote a “rational and friendly view” and adopt a “more pragmatic China policy” by the European Union after it takes the rotating presidency of the bloc in July.

The message was delivered by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi when meeting Peter Szijjarto, Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in Beijing on Wednesday.

The meeting came ahead of a trip that Chinese President Xi Jinping will reportedly take to the country after visiting France and Serbia next week. Beijing has yet to confirm the trip.

It also comes amid souring relations after the EU accused China of overcapacity in green industries that might distort the market – a claim Beijing denies. The EU has also embarked on a de-risking drive that targets China’s supply chain and hi-tech industries.

Wang called Hungary “a European country of unique influence that adopts an independent policy”. He said Beijing hoped Budapest would encourage the EU to take a “rational and friendly view of China’s development” and pursue a “more active and pragmatic China policy”.

“[China hopes Hungary will] strengthen China-EU strategic communication, create more positive expectations for mutually beneficial cooperation, and promote the sustained, stable and healthy development of China-EU relations,” Wang said, according to the readout.

In response, Szijjarto said Hungary opposed “decoupling” with China, and welcomed more investment from Beijing flowing into his nation under the Belt and Road Initiative, according to the Chinese readout.

The foreign minister also said Hungary had always believed that treating China as a partner was “a right choice”, while regarding the powerhouse as an enemy would only lead to “missed opportunities”. Szijjarto vowed to boost China-EU relations through connections with Budapest and Beijing.

“China is a major country with global influence. Hungary welcomes China’s increasing role in maintaining world peace and stability. Hungarian-Chinese and European-Chinese relations must remain robust in the current turbulent international situation,” he said.

Trump hosts Hungary’s Orban at Mar-a-Lago, praises him as ‘fantastic leader’

Szijjarto’s trip to China came as China-EU official exchanges reached a high this year, even as relations between the two economies are souring, including visits to Beijing by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne.

Meanwhile, amid the ongoing Ukraine war and US-China rivalry, some EU countries have taken action against China in the name of national security in recent months.

This week, EU officials entered the Chinese firm Nuctech’s Dutch and Polish subsidiaries, saying it was “carrying out unannounced inspections at the premises of a company active in the production and sale of security equipment in the EU”. It has drawn China’s official opposition.

Days after Scholz’s visit, Berlin this week arrested three people on suspicion of spying for China and hours later London charged two people under the Official Secrets Act over allegedly spying for China.

Under Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s rule, Budapest has been widely seen as a Beijing and Moscow-friendly hard-right EU member. This year, the European bloc’s parliament firmly questioned and tried to revoke the country’s coming presidency.

Since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Hungary has extensively used its veto power to derail decisions related to punishing Russia or aiding Ukraine, such as the EU ban on Russian oil and the 50 billion euro (US$53 billion) special fund for Ukraine.

Last year, under Brussels' call for de-risking from China, Orban was the only leader to attend China’s Belt and Road Forum, vowing deeper infrastructure cooperation between the two nations. Just months later, Italy withdrew from the belt and road programme.

Heavy rainfall in mainland China forces Hong Kong to dial back high-speed rail services

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/transport/article/3260291/heavy-rainfall-mainland-china-forces-hong-kong-dial-back-high-speed-rail-services?utm_source=rss_feed

High-speed rail services between Hong Kong and southern Guangzhou were suspended or redirected on Thursday in response to severe weather in mainland China.

The MTR Corporation said authorities across the border had informed it of the suspension of Guangzhou South-bound routes G6528, G6516, G6530 and G6536, as well as Hong Kong-bound routes G6527, G6515, G6529 and G6535.

Hong Kong’s rail operator added that two routes between the city’s West Kowloon terminus and Guangzhou South, G6510 and G6511, were redirected to Shenzhen North.

The company also reminded passengers to check the service’s website at 12306.cn, as well as its own page and mobile app for more details.

The service changes were prompted by ongoing heavy rainfall in Guangdong province, where flooding has killed at least four people and displaced tens of thousands more.

Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Jiangmen and Yangjiang were among the cities rocked by the severe weather in recent days as rainbands moving south reached the coast.

Over in Hong Kong, the local forecaster said the city could expect patches of unstable weather this week.

The Hong Kong Observatory at 9am Thursday said residents should brace for thunder and showers in several hours’ time.

“Showers will be heavy at times. Members of the public should be on the alert,” it said.

Hong Kong told to brace for heavy showers, squally thunderstorms in coming days

The forecaster also warned residents to expect heavy showers and squally thunderstorms in the coming days.

“With the trough of low pressure moving away early next week, showers will ease off slightly over the region,” the Observatory said. “Another trough of low pressure is expected to bring unsettled weather to southern China midweek next week.”

China’s US$1.35 trillion sovereign wealth fund CIC invests in Middle East via US$1 billion fund with Investcorp

https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/3260290/chinas-us135-trillion-sovereign-wealth-fund-cic-invests-middle-east-us1-billion-fund-investcorp?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s sovereign wealth fund has established a US$1 billion fund with the Middle East region’s biggest alternative asset manager to invest in companies among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and China, putting investment dollars behind warming relations between the two regions.

The Golden Horizon Fund, launched with Bahrain-based Investcorp Holdings, marks the first time that China Investment Corp (CIC), which has assets of US$1.35 trillion, has invested in the Middle East.

Qi Bin, executive vice-president and deputy chief investment officer with CIC, said that the partnership will strengthen economic relationships between China and the GCC countries.

“As one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, CIC has been actively investing in both developed and emerging economies,” Qi said in the statement released on Wednesday. “During the past couple of years, we have built several bilateral funds with leading financial institutions to facilitate industrial cooperation between China and major economies in the world.”

“Currently we are working closely with Investcorp to build a similar bilateral fund to strengthen financial and industrial ties between China and GCC countries.”

The announcement of the fund’s launch took place at Investcorp’s China-GCC Investment and Business Cooperation Summit in Riyadh. The event featured prominent speakers including Qi, and Ibrahim Al-Mubarak, Saudi Arabia’s assistant minister of investment, and representatives of CIC’s global private-equity partners Goldman Sachs and HSBC, as well as other industry experts.

Fred Ma Si-hang, an adviser to Investcorp, and Nicholas Ho Lik-chi, the commissioner of the Hong Kong government’s Belt and Road Initiative Office also attended the summit.

The new investment fund will be anchored by CIC and institutional and private investors from the GCC, according to the statement.

Target companies are expected to have high growth potential in attractive sectors, including consumer, healthcare, logistics and business services. The new vehicle also includes Investcorp Saudi Pre-IPO Growth Fund, which was launched in 2021 and focused on a diversified portfolio of companies at a pre-IPO stage of development in Saudi Arabia.

China-Middle East ties enjoy a ‘renaissance’ as trade spats strengthen ties

“This is the first step in what we expect to be a fruitful relationship, and we look forward to making significant positive impacts on businesses in both regions,” said Hazem Ben-Gacem, co-CEO of Investcorp.

Efforts to strengthen economic ties between the Middle East and China have increased since a Middle East visit by President Xi Jinping in December 2022.

The fund is expected to focus on investing in GCC countries, with the intention of eventually bringing them to enter the mainland China market, showcasing a mutually beneficial arrangement, according to a source who is familiar with CIC’s investment strategy.

In the past, bilateral funds have generated impressive investment returns of over 20 per cent, the source said.

CIC, established in 2007, serves as a vehicle to diversify China’s foreign-exchange holdings through investments in public and private assets. With its three units, CIC International, CIC Capital Corp, and Central Huijin Investment, CIC manages a substantial portfolio of assets.

Investcorp has expanded into the infrastructure space and has a history of successful investments including ownership of brands like Gucci and Tiffany & Co.

Apple still leads high-end smartphone sales in China, but Huawei and Honor are catching up

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3260289/apple-still-leads-high-end-smartphone-sales-china-huawei-and-honor-are-catching?utm_source=rss_feed

Apple’s dominance in China’s high-end smartphone market is being challenged by local rivals, including US-sanctioned Huawei Technologies, according to new data from industry consultancy IDC.

While smartphone shipments in China rose 6.5 per cent to 69.3 million devices in the first quarter, Apple shipped 10.8 million iPhones, down from 14.7 million in the fourth quarter last year, IDC data showed.

The US tech giant, which was the top smartphone vendor in the last quarter of 2023, saw its market share in the past quarter fall to 15.6 per cent from 17.8 per cent a year earlier. It lagged Chinese manufacturers Honor and Huawei, which grabbed 17.1 per cent and 17 per cent of the market, respectively.

The IDC data is in line with findings published earlier this week by another research firm, Counterpoint, which also showed Apple’s market share shrinking, although Counterpoint placed Vivo and Honor in second and third place, respectively.

“Apple faces increasing competition despite its strategy to prop up sales by cutting prices,” said Antonio Wang, vice-president of IDC China.

Foldable phones will be key for Android smartphone brands seeking to compete with the iPhone in the high-end market, according to Wang. Handsets with such designs and artificial intelligence (AI) features are poised to boost smartphone sales in China, with total smartphone shipments this year rising 3.1 per cent to reach 279 million, he added.

Unlike some of its rivals, Apple has yet to integrate its smartphones with generative AI features, popularised by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The Cupertino, California-based company is expected to unveil its AI strategy during its annual developers’ conference in June.

Apple is also exploring a tie-up with Chinese web search and AI giant Baidu to install the latter’s Ernie chatbot on iPhones sold in China, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal last month.

Despite losing out to domestic brands in China’s overall smartphone market, Apple still topped the premium segment, which consists of handsets priced over US$600. However, its market share dropped to 58 per cent in the March quarter from 70 per cent a year ago, according to Arthur Guo, senior research analyst at IDC China.

The fall can be attributed to economic woes in the world’s second-largest economy, which prompted consumers to consider budget phones, as well as competition from Huawei, its spin-off Honor and other domestic manufacturers.

Huawei’s share in the high-end market jumped to 20 per cent in the past quarter, up from 12 per cent year on year, thanks mainly to strong demand for its 5G-enabled Mate 60 series, Guo said. Honor’s share also expanded steadily to reach 9 per cent.

“Huawei’s comeback has disrupted the market equilibrium,” Wang said, while adding that Huawei still faces “supply-chain bottlenecks” that could impede its growth.

Globally, smartphone makers shipped a total of 289 million units in the first quarter, marking a 7.8 per cent year-on-year rebound and continuing a growth trajectory for the third quarter in a row, according to IDC.

China’s hi-tech progress reshaping global politics as US and allies seek to build ‘balancing coalition’, study says

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3260232/chinas-hi-tech-progress-reshaping-global-politics-us-and-allies-seek-build-balancing-coalition-study?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s advances in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, 5G and quantum computing are reshaping world politics by prompting an increasing US-led effort to counter its growing influence, a new study has concluded.

Describing the situation as “unprecedented” the researchers said a global “balancing coalition” had been formed in response – by the United States and it allies – which uses sanctions, export bans and controls in key industries such as semiconducting, as well as forming strategic alliances to reduce China’s reach in emerging technologies (ETs).

Baidu, Zhipu AI top Chinese AI rankings, but OpenAI still technical leader

The paper, published in the peer-reviewed Chinese Political Science Review, draws on the balance of threat theory, which says states consider a country’s perceived threat levels alongside its power when making decisions.

“China’s growing power and expansion in emerging [technologies] are key to driving momentum of the global shifts in technology and the geopolitical landscape,” Maria Papageorgiou, study author and a lecturer at the University of Exeter in Britain, said in a university statement on Monday.

The development of emerging technologies, which have “unpredictable implications” on national security, “demands a reassessment of the role of technology in international affairs and its impact on the international system,” the team wrote.

China’s advances in fields such as AI and 5G have been accompanied with a global technological spread through initiatives such as the Digital Silk Road, which had made it a competitor and a “threat” to the US, according to the paper.

While perceptions of a country’s power are often constrained by geographical proximity, the transboundary nature of these emerging technologies makes them “unimpeded by traditional air, land, or sea defences”.

The team wrote: “When faced with a threat, states in an anarchic international system can either balance the threat or bandwagon with the source of the threat.”

The authors found that between 2017 and 2023, China’s position as a “near-peer competitor to the US” in technology has driven a policy shift designed to “outspend China and restrict its access to certain critical technologies, new markets and resources required for its technological progress and to counter Chinese technology acquisition”.

China has surpassed the US in semiconductor manufacturing and assembling capacity, though it still lags behind in semiconductor production equipment and memory chip innovation, the research concluded.

In 2021, the US banned investments into 59 Chinese companies in the semiconductor sector, including Huawei Technologies. The following year the Chips and Science Act, which aims to boost investment in the domestic semiconductor industry, came into force.

Other countries “have followed [America’s] footsteps”, the paper said, including an agreement between the US, Netherlands and Japan in January last year to “deny some advanced chip manufacturing machines to China and to restrict sales of equipment for advanced semiconductors to China”.

“The acceptance of US policy recommendations, which sometimes takes place following months of arduous negotiations, embodies a united effort from the US and its allies to impede China’s acquisition of state-of-the-art semiconductor technology with the objective of preserving their own technological superiority,” the team wrote.

While China still lags behind the US in core AI technologies, it is a sector where China has “come to compete with the US,” and begun exporting its technology, they added.

“As a result, over 60 countries exclusively use Chinese AI surveillance technology, most of which are in Africa and Latin America.”

In 2019, the announcement of a joint partnership between the US and Singapore in developing AI for national security “was one of the first initiatives of strategic alignment in ETs”, the team wrote.

Alongside growing AI capabilities, “China is on track to possess as much as 30 per cent of the world’s data by 2030,” which also raises the threat level, according to the paper.

China has become dominant in global adoption of 5G, with Huawei leading global implementation, accounting for 91 commercial contracts, mostly with developing countries in Asia.

“Over the past year, the US has engaged in an aggressive campaign to convince European partners to ban Chinese suppliers from their 5G network,” the team wrote, citing moves by Britain, Japan, New Zealand and Sweden to limit its role in 5G networks due to concerns about espionage and potential influence over global telecommunications.

The US has also expanded its campaign to developing nations – including the Philippines, Costa Rica and Kenya – urging them not to use China 5G technology.

The researchers also pointed to the EU-US Trade and Technology Council, which signals “a potential alliance to counter Chinese technology expansion”. The council was established in 2021 and has said it would focus on export controls and concerns about emerging technologies.

China acquired US-restricted Nvidia AI chips built in servers, tenders show

“The US seeks to reinforce cooperation with its key allies to stay ahead of China and counter its technological advances … by raising institutional, administrative, and market barriers against competitors in both informal, diplomatic, and formal alliance settings,” the researchers wrote.

They added: “China’s growing power and expansion in ETs are key to driving momentum of the global shifts in technology and the geopolitical landscape.”

Nuctech raids leave Chinese businesses reeling as new EU foreign subsidies regulation shows its teeth

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3260295/nuctech-raids-leave-chinese-businesses-reeling-new-eu-foreign-subsides-regulation-shows-its-teeth?utm_source=rss_feed

At 9.30am on Tuesday, authorities descended upon the Warsaw and Rotterdam offices of Nuctech, a Chinese manufacturer of airport scanning machines.

In the sort of raids usually reserved for busting cartels, officers seized IT equipment and mobile phones.

They also “scrutinised office documents and demanded access to pertinent data”, according the China Chamber of Commerce to the EU, which lobbies for Chinese business interests in the bloc.

The “competition officers” – from Brussels, Poland and the Netherlands – were looking for evidence of financial help that Nuctech may have received from the Chinese government.

In Brussels policy circles, Tuesday’s raids were about as dramatic as it gets, and the revelations – first revealed by the South China Morning Post – sent shock waves through the EU.

They suggest that the European Commission has moved to a new stage in cracking down on what it views as one of the biggest risk to the Eurozone economy: foreign subsidies from Beijing, which it believes are causing industrial overcapacity that could see Europe flooded with cheap Chinese imports.

On Wednesday, Chinese businesses in Europe were still reeling from the raids, which stunned even the competition lawyers advising these companies.

“This action surprised even me – a dawn raid in Europe to find out more information about subsidies granted in China makes no sense,” said Andreas Reindl, managing partner at Brussels law firm Van Bael & Bellis, which specialises in competition law.

Reindl, who published a book in January about the new foreign subsidies regulation (FSR) under which the inspections occurred, described the raids as “political gamesmanship”, adding that the target – Nuctech – is probably “also perplexed and doesn’t know anything about the FSR”.

But if Chinese businesses want to continue working in Europe, they had better learn about it fast. Since January, the EU has wielded the weapon, which was adopted last year, four times. On each occasion, it has targeted Chinese companies.

The FSR is designed to root out “market-distorting” handouts, by forcing non-European entities to be as transparent about what they have received as firms from the bloc, which are subject to stringent state aid disclosure rules.

It can be triggered during procurement processes, as well as merger and acquisition activity. Or – as with Nuctech – the commission can decide to investigate any business operating in the EU that it suspects has received state subsidies and is disadvantaging local competitors.

While the commission did not name Nuctech in its statement about “unannounced inspections”, it said that officials had “indications that the company may have received foreign subsidies that could distort the internal market”.

Nuctech, which has been frozen out of some Western markets over security concerns, said it was “cooperating with the European Commission and is committed to defending its reputation as a fully independent and self-supporting economic operator”.

Michel Struys, a Brussels-based partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells, said every Chinese company in the EU should be prepared to receive a knock on the door, given the trigger-happy nature in which the EU is using the FSR.

“Chinese companies have been put on the back foot, but the best form of defence is attack, and that is to be prepared. A lack of preparation is the real problem here,” said Struys, who has advised some of the companies already targeted under the new law.

Even before Tuesday’s events, businesses were worried. Before Nuctech, regulators went after European subsidiaries of solar giants Longi and Shanghai Electric, as well as CRRC Corporation Limited, the state-owned rolling stock company.

The rapid-fire nature of the tool flies in the face of conventional wisdom that Brussels is a slow and lumbering bureaucracy. Trade investigations typically take years to conclude, and one open case listed on the World Trade Organization’s website has been at the consultation stage since April 1995.

But the FSR comes from the world of competition, where things move much more quickly. In the case of procurement or takeover cases investigated under the law, investigators have just 110 days to complete their work.

They also demand levels of openness that many Chinese businesses are not ready for. EU authorities can command Chinese firms operating in the bloc to hand over their books for forensic scrutiny, with little time to get them in order.

The local subsidiary of rail company CRRC withdrew from a bidding process in Bulgaria after balking at the requirements of complying with a procurement investigation. EU industry boss Thierry Breton responded on X that the inquiry had “already yielded results”, suggesting this was what he had intended to happen.

According to Struys, “the reaction time is slow” for Chinese companies. “They need to talk to x, y and z, sometimes even the party. Many of them are not ready for this,” he said.

In an interview with the Post, Fang Dongkui, secretary general of the China Chamber of Commerce to the EU, laid out a litany of grievances with the tool.

The commission’s definition of “foreign financial contributions” was “overly broad and non-exhaustive”, he said.

According to Fang, Brussels is “scrutinising subsidies received by Chinese parent companies that were passed through on to their European entities”, which the chamber thinks should be treated as separate entities.

Perhaps most concerning for Chinese businesses is the danger that adhering to this law could set them up to contravene other laws in China.

European businesses have complained of the challenges of complying with Beijing’s anti-espionage and data transfer regulations, while continuing to satisfy incoming rules on supply chain audits set in Brussels.

Now it appears that the same anxiety could be spreading to Chinese firms too.

Feng said that “in specific instances, the commission had requested confidential bidding information, including pricing details, contracts or documents containing business secrets that allegedly could be related to subsidies”.

These actions are “posing a risk [to Chinese companies] of breaching relevant tender regulations or Chinese laws”, he said.

The instrument has added new wrinkles to an already strained EU-China trading relationship. Brussels has 34 open trade investigations against Beijing, while two-thirds of its active trade defence measures – currently numbering 184 – are against China.

For François Chimits, an analyst of Chinese trade and economic activity at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Brussels, this could be the EU tool with the most teeth.

So sweeping are its requirements, it could act as a “de facto ban” for many firms, who would simply not be able or prepared to comply. “The commission has an awful lot of leeway to expel almost any Chinese firm,” he said.

“Most of them receive subsidies, so this could lead to a de facto ban from the single market on some Chinese companies in certain sectors. It is a more elegant way of doing so than an outright ban Instead it creates a very significant barrier to entry.”

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[World] Blinken tackles a tough China visit. Will it help?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-68894782

Blinken, in Shanghai, begins expected contentious talks with Chinese officials

https://apnews.com/article/us-china-taiwan-ukraine-tiktok-blinken-397a23494cc818a3205ceebb4bb78e4bU.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, center, watches U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, left, shake hands with Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Jining at the Grand Halls, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Shanghai, China. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool)

2024-04-25T02:47:21Z

SHANGHAI (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken opened his first full day of meetings in China on Thursday by talking with local government officials in Shanghai.

Blinken discussed local and regional issues with Chen Jining, the Chinese Communist Party Secretary of Shanghai. He also planned to speak to students and business leaders before flying to Beijing for what are expected to be contentious talks with national officials, including Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Blinken arrived in Shanghai on Wednesday shortly before President Joe Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid package that has several elements likely to anger the Chinese, including $8 billion to counter China’s growing aggressiveness toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea. It also seeks to force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform.

China has railed against U.S. assistance to Taiwan, the self-governing island that it regards as a renegade province, and immediately condemned the move as a dangerous provocation. It also strongly opposes efforts to force TikTok’s sale.

Still, the fact that Blinken made the trip — shortly after a conversation between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, a similar visit to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and a call between the U.S. and Chinese defense chiefs — is a sign the two sides are at least willing to discuss their differences.

“I think it’s important to underscore the value — in fact, the necessity — of direct engagement, of speaking to each other, laying out our differences, which are real, seeking to work through them,” Blinken told Chen.

“We have an obligation for our people, indeed an obligation to the world, to manage the relationship between our two countries responsibly,” he said. “That is the obligation we have, and one that we take very seriously.”

Chen agreed with that sentiment and said the recent Biden-Xi call had helped the “stable and healthy development of our two countries’ relationship.”

“Whether we choose cooperation or confrontation affects the well-being of both peoples, both countries, and the future of humanity” he said.

Chen added that he hoped Blinken was able to get a “deep impression and understanding” of Shanghai.

Shortly after arriving, Blinken attended a Chinese basketball playoff game between the local Shanghai Sharks and the Zhejiang Golden Bulls, with the home team losing in the last seconds in 121-120 nailbiter.

Brave China ‘cancer warrior’ dies 2 days after 25th birthday, final wish to find brother a girlfriend left unfulfilled

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3258770/brave-china-cancer-warrior-dies-2-days-after-25th-birthday-final-wish-find-brother-girlfriend-left?utm_source=rss_feed

Social media in China is mourning the death of a young woman from cancer, whose life ended abruptly two days after she turned 25, but her hope never faded.

Liu Yi, 25, from southwestern China’s Sichuan province, passed away in April.

Two days before her death, she posted a video on Douyin, saying: “I am the master of my fate. I will bravely fight the monster named cancer.”

Liu graduated from Sichuan Normal University Film and Television College with big dreams.

Her hopes were cruelly dashed when she was diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer a year ago.

She bravely fought it, even naming her Douyin account “great cancer warrior”.

She also made a bucket list of all the things she wanted to do before she died.

On the list was a trip to Yunnan province in southwestern China, a place known as the country’s paradise.

There were 12 things she wanted to do while she was there, which included watching the sunrise, tasting Yunnan coffee, riding in a sports car, singing in a pub, having a portrait of herself, and finding a girlfriend for her older brother.

Only the last wish remained unfulfilled by the time she passed away.

The rest were fulfilled last November with the help of Yunnan-based Douyin influencer @Baozaoxiansheng.

He and his wife invited a photography team to dress Liu in Bai traditional clothing and photograph her by the scenic Erhai Lake.

Posting her trip on his account, the influencer said he admired her passion for life, which she embraced despite the severe pain she was suffering.

The couple helped Liu with her wishes and supported the belief that her health would improve.

Liu said she was “reborn” following the trip, and agreed to meet them again after she had recovered.

Liu’s half-brother, Cui, said his sister remained obsessed with her unfulfilled wish of finding him a girlfriend.

He said dating was the last thing on his mind after his sister died, and he would only consider it after a period of mourning.

“I will find a girlfriend some time in the future and fulfil my sister’s wish then,” he said.

Liu’s bravery and passion for life has touched many people online.

“I hope she can dress beautifully and sing her favourite songs forever in Heaven,” one person wrote.

“Even though the pain from cancer seized her body, it never affected her soul,” @Baozaoxiansheng said.

The Chinese lesson to India: how can air pollution make or break your economy?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3258747/chinese-lesson-india-how-can-air-pollution-make-or-break-your-economy?utm_source=rss_feed

Beijing and New Delhi have more in common than being two of the world’s most populated capital cities – extreme air pollution has blanketed both their skies.

While stories of air pollution in Delhi resemble “Beijing from 20 years ago” to climate policy expert Saurabh Jain-Punamiya, the Delhi problem has grown into a pan-India problem, with air pollution cutting almost six years off the life expectancy of the country’s residents.

In the past four years, financial hub Mumbai has seen “pollution at levels it has never seen in the last hundred years of its history”, according to Jain-Punamiya, former policy and research secretary to the minister of environment at India’s state government of Maharashtra from 2020 to 2022.

“The correlation between economic activity and pollution is very clear for all of us to see,” he said, but he asserted that setting aside pollution to achieve GDP growth is “unacceptable”.

Jain-Punamiya said India has the potential to break the link between GDP growth and pollution and emissions trends.

“The growth or infrastructure upgrade India is getting today is what China got in the early 2000s,” he said, however there is a “very encouraging” growth in the use of solar power and electric vehicles.

“We’re doing it at a speed no other country has done, except China,” he said.

Over the past decade, China has rapidly improved its air quality while continuing to grow its economy. And now, the lessons it learned in pursuit of blue skies could offer an example to other developing nations like India.

Experts have said India could achieve economic growth in the same way China and major economies have without following in its emissions footsteps and compromising air quality.

Just by transitioning away from polluting energy sources, by 2030 India could reduce its PM2.5 – the most harmful small particles and a key indicator of air pollution – by 20 per cent, said energy investment analyst Siddharth Singh at the International Energy Agency.

“There will have to be a faster uptake of clean electricity generation, electric mobility, cleaner fuels in industry, and most importantly, a full transition away from firewood that is used in cooking and heating,” he said.

“Any trade-offs that might exist between development and the emission reductions are slowly disappearing. Today, clean energy sources provide quality jobs and economic growth directly, and reduce the burden of poor health indirectly.”

Karthik Ganesan, a fellow and director (research coordination) at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water in New Delhi, said poor air quality, as much as it impacts human health, has an equally large impact on the economic output of the country and India must address it on a war footing.

“Even without attaining the levels of industrialisation of China, unfortunately, we have already gone down the path where we have air pollution at very dangerous levels,” he said.

“A lot of pollution is not necessarily coming from industrial activity; it is coming from consumption and poor waste management.”

India can most certainly improve air quality while maintaining the use of fossil fuels, but in the long run, cleaner energy sources are likely to be the more cost-effective way to keep India’s air clean, he said.

Outdoor air pollution, including particulate matter (PM) emissions, is primarily caused by human activity. Things like fossil fuel-burning power plants and vehicles, as well as indoor heating and cooking are major sources, according to the American Lung Association.

A 2022 peer-reviewed study found that residential fuel usage was the largest air pollution source in India.

Dried cow dung is a traditional type of cooking fuel used in India, but while less than 10 per cent of households used it, cow dung contributed to around half of the residential PM2.5 emissions, the study found.

In rural China, in 2012 clean fuels were already being used in half the cooking, while in rural India, the uptake of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) grew from around 20 per cent in 2000 to 60 per cent in 2020, the researchers said.

The team, based in Punjab, said residential biofuel usage in India is likely to be phased out by 2035, and open waste burning is projected to become the country’s largest source of air pollution by the same year.

While India can improve its air quality, Michael Greenstone, economics professor and director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, said it is challenging to “find regulatory tools that work and that are consistent with the urgent and vital need for continued, rapid economic growth”.

But moving to market-based approaches such as pollution markets or taxes has shown major promise.

Greenstone, whose research inspired the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) which links air quality with life expectancy, has been involved in an “exciting” initiative by the state government of Gujarat called India Clean Air Markets.

Essentially, the government sets a cap on emissions but then allows industries to buy and sell permits to stay below that cap.

The state ran a randomised experiment where firms were either regulated under the existing rules or by the new cap and trade regulations. The new regulations came out as the clear winner.

“Pollution went down by 20 to 30 per cent, and industries’ compliance costs went down,” Greenstone said.

“The current form of regulation is so costly for polluters,” he said. By India moving to a more environmentally conscious market approach, it can “facilitate faster economic growth by reducing the cost to industry”.

It is an approach that has been widely used in developed countries like the United States, but the Gujarat initiative has shown it is also effective in India, according to Greenstone.

“There is a remarkable opportunity sitting there to be grabbed that will allow for faster economic growth and allow for people to live in a cleaner and healthier environment,” he said.

Providing information can also develop political will to address air quality, which is what Greenstone hopes to achieve with the AQLI, which uses satellite air quality data to form an index of average global life expectancy loss due to air pollution.

“Economic growth is great, but it is a limited measure,” he said, adding that “if you are making everyone sick” and reducing the length of their lives, these are real human costs.

In India, public awareness on how air pollution impacts People’s Daily lives is growing. Long-term issues are surfacing, such as chronic diseases and their economic repercussions, according to Pallavi Pant, head of global health at the Health Effects Institute, an independent research organisation in Boston.

“Our economies are driven by people powering them. Continuous exposure to air pollution is really damaging to people’s health. It can manifest in the form of chronic non-communicable diseases, like heart and lung diseases. The country has to take care of people living with those diseases. Significant medical expenditure can come with it,” she said.

“[China offers] a clear example of where you decided this is a problem and started putting people, power, resources and science into it.

“India is slowly going there and consolidating how policymaking across different sectors, ministries and departments happen so that air pollution starts to be something that is taken into consideration at various levels of decision-making,” Pant said.

“Our path is perhaps a little bit slower, but it’s headed in a similar direction.”

She pointed to China’s watershed moment in 2013 when public outcry following frequent and widespread air pollution in the previous autumn and winter seasons in northern China led to a turning point for the country’s air pollution governance.

It launched an aggressive nationwide five-year campaign that year to combat air pollution and reduce smog by imposing strict controls, including replacing coal-fired power generation with renewable energy and natural gas, and regulating the use of cars in major cities.

A massive air quality monitoring network was also set up to collect a huge quantity of environmental data across the country.

The capital city of Beijing, for example, has seen levels of PM2.5 more than halve since the 2013 drive.

“It was a visible problem – people were getting affected and we needed to deal with it. India has had similar moments which have led to some changes,” Pant said, pointing to India’s 2019 National Clean Air Programme, a five-year action plan to combat air pollution in more than 100 cities.

“It is less ambitious in some ways compared to the programme in China,” Pant said. “But for the first time it started to bring real attention to the issue of air pollution, not just at the national level – but also what the states and cities individually will do.”

Bhargav Krishna, a fellow at Sustainable Futures Collaborative, an independent research organisation based in New Delhi, said health professionals in India are struggling to make the case for health to be a key factor in air pollution policymaking alongside technology availability and finances.

The environmental health and policy researcher said while the scientific community has scaled up substantially in the past years, the lack of access to high-quality local health data is hindering public health research.

“We need accurate data to be able to do effective costing studies which we lack. The research ecosystem really is not up to scratch to be able to support interventions right now,” he said.

“[In China] new studies are coming out all the time. Part of that is supported by the open availability of health data and air quality data. That remains a big challenge here – the quality and utility of health data in India are still a question mark.”

Krishna said the health effects and life lost to air pollution are yet to be seen in economic terms, pointing to a countrywide study by more than 100 researchers in the India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative Air Pollution Collaborators published in 2020.

The paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Lancet Planet Health found that lost output from premature deaths and morbidity attributable to air pollution meant economic losses of a total of US$36.8 billion, or 1.36 per cent of the country’s GDP.

They warned at the time that “the high burden of death and disease due to air pollution and its associated substantial adverse economic impact from loss of output could impede India’s aspiration to be a [US]$5 trillion economy by 2024”. India’s current GDP size is US$4.11 trillion, according to Forbes India.

Krishna said generating primary research in India is still expensive, supported mainly by international donors.

“We are talking on the orders of millions of dollars over five to six years to be able to conduct some of this work,” he said. “The Indian ecosystem has been trying to support this by having mutually beneficial arrangements with, say, institutions in the US or Britain [for] collaborative research.”

A Chinese study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Environmental Economics and Management last year found that air pollution has had an impact on innovation.

“Severe air pollution can damage human capital, thereby reducing the production of patents in a country or region,” said Wang Chunhua, corresponding author and professor of economics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The team found a corresponding 1.1 per cent decrease in patents and deteriorating air quality in China between 2006 and 2010. However, from 2011-2015, the number of patents increased by 2.2 per cent. China began reducing its PM2.5 concentrations in 2013.

China’s experience shows that “when pollution levels are high, the net benefits of improving air quality may be greater”, making it necessary to use policy tools and enforcement “based on national conditions,” Wang said.

While there may be trade-offs, such as costs, to improving air quality, “the positive impact of air quality on innovation, and thus long-term economic growth” should be considered, he added.

Zhu Zhiqun, a professor of political science and international relations at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, said as a green energy leader that has maintained a reasonable level of GDP growth, China should work with India to combat climate change.

Zhu said differences between the two major economies, especially border disputes, “should not hamper their cooperation on important issues that concern human security on both sides”.

“Air pollution is becoming more acute in India while China has accumulated much experience in the past two decades in cleaning up the environment,” he said.

“Political leaders must demonstrate their wisdom and willingness to seek cooperation for the benefits of both nations.”

Jain-Punimaya said he believes India is open and willing to learn from China if relations between the two nations improves.

At present, he said, China has not been forthcoming about how its air quality transition really happened and what the human cost was – a story that the country needs to tell “more willingly”.

If China is able to exchange this information with India, it would be “game-changing”, according to Jain-Punimaya. In fact, he said, cooperation with China and other Brics nations is “probably the greatest collaboration waiting to happen”.

China’s food security push catches ‘grain-stealing mouse’ among 5 accused of US$3.45 million corn theft

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3260193/chinas-food-security-push-catches-grain-stealing-mouse-among-5-accused-us345-million-corn-theft?utm_source=rss_feed

Police in northern China have detained five people for allegedly colluding to steal about 10,000 tonnes (22 million pounds) of corn valued at around 25 million yuan (US$3.45 million) over a two-year period in a major fraud case amid Beijing’s food security push.

A grain dealer surnamed Guo in Hebei province has been accused of misrepresenting delivery data, the state-backed CCTV reported on Monday.

Guo, a supplier for an unidentified “major local grain company” in the province, allegedly provided less corn in deliveries between 2020 and 2022, the report said, quoting a local police officer.

Explainer: 6 things to know about China’s GM food progress amid its food security push

The case was revealed as authorities have heavily regulated the grain sector in recent years amid Beijing’s increasing sensitivity over food supply against a backdrop of geopolitical tensions, disrupted international food trade and climate change.

The group had been detained in July after the grain company reported a discrepancy with its actual inventory.

The quintuplet remains in police custody on suspicion of contract fraud and theft as prosecutors review the case.

Guo admitted to dishonesty during the delivery process, but said that he did so because he had a business dispute with the grain company, police said.

The deception was made possible with help from four granary workers, one of whom, surnamed Gou, was employed by the grain company as a security guard.

Gou was supposed to be the “first line of defence for food security”, but “colluded with grain dealers and became a grain-stealing mouse instead of a food guard”, the report said.

China has played up the importance of guaranteeing food security for its 1.4 billion population and avoiding any unnecessary losses in recent years amid a volatile global food market and frequent extreme weather events.

And despite the challenges, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said China has managed to maintain “ample grain reserves”.

Grain reigns supreme in China’s food security as country seeks record yields

China’s ratio of food reserves to consumption is “far above” the 17 to 18 per cent line recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the ministry said in January without releasing a specific figure.

In the top grain producing province of Heilongjiang, over 1,000 cases of corruption in the agricultural sector had been filed as of November, involving more than 1,400 officials, according to a documentary aired in January by CCTV.

Cracking down on scams and corruption and reducing waste are part of efforts to raise China’s grain self-sufficiency, along with developing higher-yielding seeds and reclaiming arable land.

China’s total grain harvest hit a record of over 695 million tonnes in 2023, and Beijing has pledged to keep the output gain above 650 million tonnes this year.

Chinese, US corporate leaders propose to defuse trade tension on supply chain, new-energy vehicles at Apec’s business lobby

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3260237/chinese-us-corporate-leaders-propose-defuse-trade-tension-supply-chain-new-energy-vehicles-apecs?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese and American business leaders are proposing to defuse two contentious trade issues between the two nations, as they seek to strike a tone that is more conducive to commerce between the world’s two largest economies.

The Chinese and US delegations of the Business Advisory Council (Abac) of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (Apec) proposed to establish a sustainable supply chain management mechanism, according to the Chinese team’s chairman Ning Gaoning.

The mechanism would ensure “resilience in the global supply chain, and be beneficial to businesses,” Ning said in an interview during the Abac’s meeting in Hong Kong, adding that the proposal was “well received” and received “lots of comments.”

The group also proposed to add new-energy products such as electric vehicles, solar panels and batteries to a tariff-free schedule, so that they can be shared and traded for the benefit of humankind, said Ning, who retired in 2022 as chairman of China’s state-owned Sinochem Holdings Corporation.

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The two proposals would next be submitted to the relevant trade or commerce ministries in each of the 21 member economies of Apec – including Hong Kong and Taiwan – for discussion by their senior officials, before they are recommended to the respective heads of government. If adopted, the proposal could make its way into the communique after the Apec Leaders’ summit in the Peruvian capital Lima, during a weeklong meeting that starts on November 10.

There is no guarantee of success, as Abac proposals must wend their way through the bureaucracies of 21 member economies before appearing on the leaders’ agenda. Even if they are adopted, Apec’s pronouncements are non-binding.

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Still, any adoption by the body is a fillip to multilateralism and a return to the path of breaking down trade barriers, as electric vehicles become the latest lightning rod in US-China trade relations. About 200 Abac delegates are meeting in Hong Kong from April 22 to 25.

“Homeshoring, reshoring and friendshoring are really all against the original purpose of Apec, which was established at the end of the Cold War for the purpose of integration, free trade, environmental [protection] and sustainability,” Ning said. “It’s not very often today [that] a Chinese organisation and a US organisation [can] reach an agreement on [proposals] that are beneficial to business.”

The proposal about new-energy products will help to address sustainability, climate change, and carbon deduction. “It’s an inevitable and very urgent task,” Ning said. “We experienced the hottest weather already last year. We should really [handle] that threat globally.”

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In his view, China is leading the way in this regard. “China is pushing for free trade, environmental policy, [and] transition for energy.”

China is already the world’s largest electric-car market. New-energy vehicles (NEVs) will make up about half of new car sales in mainland China by 2030, as state incentives and expanding charging stations win over more customers, according to Moody’s Investors Service. NEVs comprise pure-electric cars, plug-in hybrids and hydrogen-powered cars.

“The members realise the very fast-growing electric vehicle market inside China. We anticipate it will be over 60 per cent in the next five years, sometime [in] 2030, and will take an overwhelming position in the global car market,” said Ning, who is a leader in Abac’s sustainability working group.

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Ning, a veteran of state-owned enterprises, said that business should separate from politics and that the world would benefit greatly if trade becomes freer.

“Business and government today seem to get different views for different reasons. What is fair trade? What is national security? And many, many things confuse everybody, and … the trade becomes less free.”

He thinks China should lead by example. “China will have to develop and manage its own business well, and try to be competitive. Try to be the open economy in the world and open for trade and investment, and still to lead the way in the open competition globally,” Ning said.

Another proposal by Canada during the Abac meetings in Hong Kong is about food security.

Canada, one of the world’s biggest food and agricultural product exporters, has called for more private-sector participation in food policy to enable the free flow of trade without concentrating the production in a few areas, according to Ning.

“The world can generate enough food today because the world still has enough land. But if you’re talking about 2050, the global population will grow to 9 billion. There is now doubt about it,” Ning said.

Established in 2011, the Apec Policy Partnership on Food Security is a task force to strengthen public-private cooperation to address food security issues in the region.

The Apec views food as a super commodity, which is something one cannot weaponise, Ning said.

China’s central bank drops hints at future bond trades, answering calls for muscular monetary action

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3260230/chinas-central-bank-drops-hints-future-bond-trades-answering-calls-muscular-monetary-action?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s central bank has suggested a greater openness to more forceful intervention in the pursuit of economic growth, with hints it could soon resume treasury bond trades in the secondary market – an action that would plant the bank squarely on one side of a debate which has roiled policy circles for months.

“The central bank’s trading of treasury bonds in the secondary market can be used as a liquidity management method and a reserve of monetary policy tools,” the Financial News – a publication backed by the People’s Bank of China – quoted an unnamed official as saying in an article on Tuesday.

The commentary on the viability of a US-style “money printing” programme came as speculation grows over the likelihood of a more assertive liquidity boost from Beijing.

Unlike the US and Europe, in China a “monetising budget deficit” – where a central bank buys debt issued by the government to cover fiscal deficits – remains controversial.

“The market scale of Chinese sovereign bonds ranks third globally and liquidity has improved significantly, which provides a possibility for the central bank’s transaction of sovereign bonds in the secondary market,” the PBOC official said.

Despite the bank’s characteristically cautious wording, analysts said it could represent a significant change in approach.

“If the central bank increases the purchase of government bonds to implement money injection in the future, this may not be an ordinary monetary policy supplement, but a major policy shift,” said Huajin Securities in a note on Wednesday.

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The PBOC’s comments followed an article published earlier the same day in party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily. In the latter piece, the Ministry of Finance said it would support a “gradual increase” in the purchase and sale of government bonds.

The ministry provided no details on fiscal or monetary coordination, and has yet to announce a timetable for the sale of special ultra-long term treasury bonds.

Citing unnamed experts, the central bank also said that treasury bond issuance by the Ministry of Finance should be “big enough” and at “a stable pace”, to be effective and avoid unexpected volatility in interest rates.

But the PBOC’s objective in trading treasury bonds is different from that of central banks in developed countries, the unnamed PBOC official added.

“When the central banks of some developed economies have exhausted their conventional monetary policy tools, they are forced to purchase treasury bonds on a large scale to achieve monetary policy goals,” the official said.

The contrast with quantitative easing policies was noted by analysts with Everbright Securities, who concurred with the PBOC official that any potential trading of treasury bonds would include both buying and selling, unlike other central banks which only make purchases.

Concerns have mounted over the liquidity in China’s treasury bond market, and deflationary pressure has also sparked fervent discussions among policy advisers over whether Beijing should opt for more radical methods to manage its economy.

Analysts at Tianfeng Securities said in a note on Wednesday that the trading of treasury bonds over a long period of time can be viewed as an easing measure similar to cutting the reserve requirement ratio – the proportion of their cash holdings banks are mandated to keep in reserve. Lowering this minimum is one way to boost liquidity in the economy without resorting to direct trading.

Late last month, it was revealed that President Xi Jinping had called on the PBOC during a financial work conference in October to “gradually increase the trading of treasury bonds in its open market operations”, rhetoric directly echoed by the Ministry of Finance in the People’s Daily article.

The PBOC is barred by law from purchasing Chinese government bonds in primary markets, but no such prohibition has ever been implemented against the buying and selling of these debt obligations in the secondary market.

China’s economy has beaten expectations in 2024, growing by 5.3 per cent in the first quarter year on year and laying the groundwork for meeting Beijing’s annual target of about 5 per cent.

However, some policy advisers are cautious about the longer-term outlook, with a prolonged property downturn, mounting local government debt, weak demand and low levels of inflation all standing in the way of a sustained economic recovery.

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Unlike other developed countries, the growth of China’s consumer price index has been low since the start of the year, while the producer price index – which measures the cost of goods at the factory gate – fell for the 18th straight month in March.

Zhang Monan, deputy director of the Institute of American and European Studies at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, is among the advisers proposing less orthodox ways to handle the situation.

She said China could adopt certain practices used by the US to weather economic crises throughout history, the coronavirus pandemic most recently.

“In the context of the new policy cycle and economic cycle, we can free our minds and break stereotypes, especially because we have entered a different stage of development and can change our views on some traditional issues,” said Zhang at a forum in Beijing on Sunday, arranged by think tank Huaxia New Supply Economics Research Institute.

“The so-called dirty talk about debt can now have a new and different perspective.”

Beijing has been reluctant to expand its fiscal policy, preferring one-off measures such as the issuance of special treasury securities. It has delegated a large share of its borrowing to local governments, much of which is off the budget – meaning it would not affect this year’s fiscal deficit ratio, currently set at 3 per cent of gross domestic product.

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In China’s planned budget for 2024, treasury debt was up by just 180 billion yuan (US$24.8 billion) compared with the year before. The central government said it would sell another 1 trillion yuan in ultra-long term special treasury bonds this year, another off-budget move.

Compared to the European Central Bank – which holds around 65 per cent of treasury debt issued by countries in the euro zone – Chinese treasury debt accounts for less than 5 per cent of the PBOC’s assets, according to Beijing-based think tank National Institution for Finance and Development (NIFD).

“We still recommend that the central government budget deficit and the scale of treasury debt should be moderately increased for a long time to come,” the NIFD said in a report on Sunday.

After the US Federal Reserve pledged an “unlimited” expansion of US treasury and mortgage-backed securities purchases in 2020 – and Congress approving the largest-ever flood of federal money the same year – the US economy contracted by 31.4 per cent in the second quarter. However, it has rebounded since.

“This [coordination] is a relatively mature experience in many countries in the three years since the pandemic,” said Zhang, who used to work with the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planner. “[It avoids] deleveraging in the private sector and the residential sector, with more leverage taken by central banks and government departments. It is worthy of discussion.”