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• Chinese border crossers chase the American dream, with mixed success
• Russia and China pounce on Trump rally shooting to undermine U.S.
• China suspends nuclear talks with the U.S. over Taiwan arms sales
• [Sport] Watch: Huge fire breaks out at Chinese shopping centre
• China wants humanoid robots to automate aged care, handle grunt work as demographics shift
• Shenzhen to put autonomous buses on roads as China accelerates self-driving vehicle tests
• China calls off arms control talks with US over weapon sales to Taiwan
• WTO says China is backsliding on key reforms and lacks transparency on subsidies
• US anti-China wall built around science ‘backfired’ on America: report
• China’s smart computing gets upgrade as AI demand, tech restrictions drive expansion
• China likely to ditch unified AI legislation due to ‘considerable disagreement’, timing
• Singapore law firms expand to China as global peers retreat from the mainland
• India to speed up visa process for Chinese technicians to tame production backlog: sources
• South China Sea: hotlines exist, but Philippines says Beijing ‘does not answer’
• China to host new round of Hamas-Fatah talks but its influence ‘may be limited’
• Huawei enters new partnership to drive increased AI adoption in China’s heavy industries
• 3 Chinese clean-energy firms to set up solar, wind manufacturing in Saudi Arabia
• South China Sea: Beijing urged to create deadline for Manila to withdraw from shoal
• China’s youth-jobless rate improves as challenges still threaten stability: NBS
• [World] The convicted Chinese tycoon who built a pro-Trump money machine
• Meet China’s track ‘goddess’, humble hurdler Xia Sining keeps low profile
• China battens down the hatches for blustery trade winds as odds of Trump victory rise
• As China’s sway over Pacific islands grows, will Japan counter by coming to Palau’s aid?
• How China’s continued opening up sets country on path to better future
• From humble intern to fashion icon, how China KOL Xu Yan capture 60 million hearts
• [Sport] China tycoon Guo Wengui found guilty of fraud in US
• The viral ‘apple fungus’ that’s intriguing the Chinese internet – and scientists
• Mainland Chinese spend record US$9 billion on homes in Hong Kong in first half
• China’s caviar is roe-mancing the world as sales go swimmingly, exporters reel in profits
• China’s second-largest car dealer faces forced delisting as investors snub its shares
• China’s third plenum: Xi Jinping tells party to show ‘unwavering faith’ in reform plan

Chinese border crossers chase the American dream, with mixed success

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3270865/chinese-border-crossers-chase-american-dream-mixed-success?utm_source=rss_feed

In many ways, Shen Jiahui had been preparing for America long before his arrival in September 2023. Shen, who renamed himself Capote after the American writer Truman Capote, spent much of his 20s and 30s living outside his home province of Zhejiang, reading Western literature and dreaming of a life outside China.

Had he known about the US border crossing route earlier, the 38-year-old said he would have come sooner. Unlike most of his fellow migrants who heard about it through Chinese video-sharing app Douyin, Shen first found out through Twitter.

Spending much of his non-working hours with the words of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Hemingway, Shen says he frequently felt stifled by the political environment and misunderstood by those around him.

“I always felt that my lifestyle was quite unique or different from the mainstream in China, so I thought I might have more in common with Westerners,” he said.

Shen describes a distant relationship with his parents. He had a girlfriend before leaving, but he couldn’t convince her to make the trip with him.

Over half a year into life in Monterey Park, California, he has no complaints, appreciating everything from the American transportation system to the freedom to express his thoughts. Despite having moved apartments and jobs several times, spending much of his day washing dishes at a restaurant, and barely speaking English, he says he has adjusted well.

“I’m not super ambitious,” Shen said, adding that perhaps more time in the US would help sharpen his goals. For now, his aspiration is to learn enough English so he can move to rural America and be away from people – particularly other Chinese people.

After traversing thousands of miles, Chinese migrants arrive excited and hopeful about their new lives in the US, regardless of their background or reasons for coming. Unable to speak English, they settle in Chinese-majority neighbourhoods like Monterey Park and Flushing, New York. Months and years in, their stories reflect a mixed bag of fulfilled expectations and dashed dreams.

Shen, with his detached demeanour and affinity for Western culture, is one of the luckier ones. Indeed, the migrants’ assessments of their new lives are partly dictated by their experiences in China – whether economics, politics or other reasons drove them out – presenting a complex reality of agency and adaptation that contradicts some immigration critics’ representations of them as lazy or dangerous.

And while shifting border policies in the US and Latin America will likely decrease their numbers in the coming months, those who have already arrived will undoubtedly shape the communities they reside in for years to come.

For Yang Xin, the move was about escaping harassment. A videographer from Henan province, Yang said he decided to leave after being targeted by local officials for trying to film and post videos about Covid-19 in Chinese hospitals.

Like many of his fellow migrants, the 36-year-old didn’t dare to think in detail about his new life before departing. All he knew was that he had to leave and that it was possible to get to the US via a boat from the Bahamas. He eventually made it there, but was soon detained by immigration officials.

It was only in detention, through online posts, that he learned about getting into the US through the now-popular South American route.

Yang crossed the US-Mexico border in December 2021, before the route became widely known among Chinese. After documenting his journey, he unintentionally became one of the early influencers for the tens of thousands who came after him. “It was like an adventure,” he says of his trip, countering the tales of danger that his fellow migrants have told.

After being released from US immigration detention, he spent his first weeks travelling, using up his savings before finding a construction job. Six months after arriving, Yang received his work permit through the asylum process and bought a pickup truck.

Now, two and a half years into life in Monterey Park, he is still waiting for asylum approval but says he’s in a good place. He continues to reject offers to serve as a paid consultant for would-be border crossers. In April he quit his job to focus on learning English at a local community college. “I was busy earning an income so I didn’t have time for English. I finally do now,” he said.

An active member of the Democratic Party of China in California, Yang knows he has little chance of returning to China. Hearing that his parents were being harassed because of his absence, he decided to install a camera at their home so he could keep track of them from the US. “They’re the only things I miss about China,” he said.

It’s unclear how many Chinese border crossers came primarily for political reasons, but those who did are often ready to put China behind forever.

Those who came chasing the economic dream had different expectations, hoping that America would offer relief from the economic downturn and uneven recovery that have bogged down the world’s second-biggest economy.

The US economy has defied fears of recession since the country emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic, but some migrants are struggling to benefit months or years after arriving.

“I’m very disappointed in the US,” said Wang Jiawei, a border crosser from Jiangxi province who arrived in January 2023. “I want to leave but I can’t,” explaining that his passport is with immigration officials while his asylum case is pending.

Unlike his counterparts who found America later in life, Wang’s American dream began when he was a young child. Growing up poor in the 1980s, Wang, now in his 40s, remembers the joy he felt when a godmother in the US sent back packages of goods. America, in his mind, was a place of riches, and that image stayed with him as he moved from China to Vietnam in search of better fortunes.

Wang eventually came to the US by way of Southeast Asia, after working there for two years.

Like some of his fellow border crossers, he said he had participated in small acts of protest back in China, at one point speaking out against someone pushing the Chinese Communist Party line in Taiwan. As a result, Wang says he was repeatedly harassed by party officials in both China and Vietnam – once, he said, they beat him until he passed out.

But it was still the allure of economic opportunities that pushed him to leave, bolstered by hearing about US President Joe Biden’s reputation for friendly asylum policies. “Economics was my No 1 reason for coming, freedom was No 2,” he said.

These days, Wang describes working long hours, facing stiff competition for jobs, and having to ward off scammers in Monterey Park. “Chinese people here constantly scam other Chinese people,” he said.

If it were up to him, Wang would return to Southeast Asia. “America is too free, it allows people to exploit the law,” he said.

Wang is not alone in wanting to leave; many Chinese migrants interviewed said they knew others who regret coming.

There are no official statistics on how many border crossers have voluntarily left the US, but recent data suggests that some may have been deported. According to the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 288 Chinese nationals were repatriated in the 2023 fiscal year.

Though the migrants are largely immune to negative portrayals in the English-language press, political developments, particularly the enhanced cooperation between China and the US on deportation flights, are increasingly making them anxious.

Those who return to China not only come back empty-handed after paying tens or hundreds of thousands of Chinese yuan to snakeheads to reach the US but also risk jail or fines, depending on local rules. It’s the prospect of jail that turns many away from considering a return.

Staying, however, means vying for limited work with other border crossers. According to Angela, an agent at a two-decades-old employment agency in Monterey Park that links Chinese workers and employers, the number of jobs available within the Chinese-speaking community has remained steady, while the number of jobseekers has increased.

Most migrants can work only within the Chinese community because they don’t speak English, and many aren’t interested in learning it.

Another obstacle, Angela says, is that they have developed a reputation among Chinese bosses for complaining too much. “They don’t want to work hard,” she says, adding that some of them feel entitled to being in the US.

For better or worse, the border crossers are slowly changing the communities they have joined, staffing massage parlours, restaurants, construction sites and other local businesses. According to Angela, new employment agencies have emerged in Monterey Park to serve the increased demand.

Family hostels, often charging less than US$20 a night, have also seen a rise in clientele. Migrants stay in them, often a few to a room, as an initial landing spot before finding more permanent homes.

Adding to the mix are legal agents, some proffering a cheap, quick and often unreliable path to asylum. “We welcome the border crossers,” said one, who for months stood by Flushing’s Queens Public library with a sign advertising services. “They’re good for business.”

Churches, too, have seen an influx of new adherents seeking documentation of religious activity that might subject them to persecution if they were to return to China.

For border crossers without clear evidence for asylum, much of their free time in their initial year is spent building their case to stay.

Zhou, who arrived from Fujian province in October 2023 and asked to use a pseudonym, said he spends several hours every Sunday at a Chinese church in Flushing, attending services and building a relationship with the pastor.

He says he was recently baptised and received a certificate for it, but is still waiting for his US work permit.

Zhou explained how he and his wife and 20-something son came to improve their economic conditions on the advice of family members, but said America had fallen short of his expectations. “I thought it would be heaven here but it’s hell,” he said.

Unlike the Chinese migrants who traversed the jungles of Latin America, Zhou took an easier but more expensive path: he flew directly to Tijuana, Mexico, then walked over the border.

While the Fujian native says he’s already made back the money he spent on the trip here, he was unprepared for US employers’ higher expectations for work and the high costs of asylum lawyers.

Migrants come with different levels of preparation. With limited resources, some can do little more than join WeChat groups to get a sense of what life might be like if they dare to make the journey.

Once they arrive, they tap into the same networks but ultimately rely largely on themselves, finding it hard to trust others and unfamiliar with other available services.

Community groups like the New York-based Chinese-American Planning Council, which has been assisting Asians and undocumented migrants for decades, say that few of the border crossers have sought their help.

The more well-to-do migrants come with a bit more preparation, though still struggle to fully adapt.

About a year after arriving with his wife and three children, Cai Zhigang now runs three guest houses for Chinese tourists and recent border crossers in Rowland Heights, California, offering them free assistance and advice about life in America.

Describing himself as a former nationalist who became disenchanted with the gap between the rhetoric and actions of Chinese officials, the 40-year-old says he left because of religious persecution and wanting a better future for his children.

Still, Cai, a former People’s Liberation Army soldier and local cadre, laments leaving behind decades of contacts and a once-thriving business.

Though settling in has been easier than he expected and he is eager to become a US citizen, he still feels like China is home. “America isn’t heaven,” he said. “It just allows you to live more like a human being.”

Russia and China pounce on Trump rally shooting to undermine U.S.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/17/trump-shooting-china-russia-disinformation-campaign/2024-07-15T21:04:50.276Z

Russia and China swarmed X and other social media platforms hours after the shooting at a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pa., seizing on the most prominent assassination attempt of the internet era to stoke disorder, in part by blaming President Biden and other Democrats for the violence.

“Biden calls Trump ‘threat to the nation,’ ” posted Sputnik International, a Russian state media site, sharing a video of a recent Biden speech to more than 400,000 followers. “Trump gets shot the very next day … Coincidence?”

The wave of sensational posts painted the United States as a nation in decline and on the verge of civil war. Russian state media boosted accounts saying that the U.S. had devolved into a Third World country. Chinese state media shared cartoons labeling America a “violence exporter.” And Iranian accounts spread false claims that the gunman was affiliated with antifa, a loosely knit group of far-left activists that Trump and Republicans have previously blamed for violence.

The frenzied post-shooting news cycle was a gift to adversaries who have spent years developing a digital strategy to leverage crises for political gain. The lack of immediate information about the gunman, stark images of a bloodied former president in broad daylight and rampant homegrown conspiracy theories created an ideal environment for influence operations to exploit.

Violence exporter. #US
美国向世界输出政治暴力。
✏️@LatuffCartoons pic.twitter.com/krhAQio9QL

— Valiant Panda (@_ValiantPanda_) July 16, 2024

“Any domestic crisis can and will be picked up and exacerbated by state actors, who will try to turn it to their own ends,” said Reneé DiResta, former research manager at the Stanford internet Observatory and author of “Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality.”

Foreign adversaries pounced on the opportunity to portray the United States as “a violent and unstable actor — at home and around the world,” said Graham Brookie, vice president of the Atlantic Council’s technology programs and strategy.

While some state accounts publicly stoked these narratives on X, researchers also observed activities in more private channels, with Brookie remarking Sunday that Kremlin proxies across the messaging service Telegram were “having a day.”

Russia has used state-controlled media to promote negative stories about the United States for decades, a method that accelerated with the growth of English-language outlets and social media. After the invasion of Ukraine, however, some platforms blocked or labeled RT and Sputnik.

In response, Russia has put more work into generating unlabeled propaganda, including regular and “verified” blue-check accounts on X, influencers on Telegram and other platforms, and communications through unaffiliated media. The deniability makes messages more credible, regardless of overlaps with content published to state-funded media.

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The widespread impact of online foreign influence in American elections was first felt in 2016, when Russia used social media to target conservatives with scare messages about immigrants, minorities and crime, while also posing as Black activists angry at police violence. Since then, China has adopted some of the same techniques, according to researchers and intelligence officials.

In April, Microsoft reported that Beijing was using fake accounts to push questions on controversial topics including drug abuse, immigration and racial tensions. The accounts — which posed as American voters — sometimes probed followers about their support for U.S. presidential candidates.

“We know that Russia has historically taken these events as an opportunity to spread conspiracy theories, and we assume they are still running operations that include impersonating Americans,” longtime information researcher and University of Washington professor Kate Starbird said Tuesday.

The spike in posts related to the shooting comes as foreign interference operations are exploding and becoming more difficult to track. A variety of foreign actors are engaging in the campaigns, while advances in artificial intelligence have made it easier for even small actors to translate their messages into English, craft sophisticated images and make bogus social media accounts seem genuine.

Russian and Chinese accounts have proliferated on X, posting on such hot-button political issues as the decay of American cities and the immigration crisis at the Texas border. Earlier this year, propaganda accounts promoting Chinese views multiplied in the run-up to Taiwan’s elections. And last week, U.S. and allied officials identified nearly 1,000 fake accounts on X that used artificial intelligence to spread pro-Russian propaganda.

Since Saturday’s shooting, Russian diplomatic accounts have been amplifying critical statements from Kremlin spokespeople on X and other social media, said Melanie Smith, a U.S. research director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Chinese state media outlets have taken a more neutral tone, focusing on allegations that Secret Service failures led to the violence, she said.

The Global Times, a Chinese State media outlet, shared a cartoon early Sunday depicting a hammer labeled “political violence” falling on a map of the United States. “Looking to the future, if the U.S. is unable to change the current situation of political polarization, political violence is likely to intensify,” the account tweeted.

#Opinion: Looking to the future, if the US is unable to change the current situation of political polarization, political violence is likely to intensify, further exacerbating the vicious cycle between those two phenomena. https://t.co/nveRG1rkIx

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) July 15, 2024

Some foreign actors have brazenly accused their enemies of somehow orchestrating the attack on Trump. For example, Russian-affiliated accounts on X suggested without evidence that Ukraine or the U.S. defense industry may have been involved to prevent Trump from cutting off aid to the region and withdrawing lucrative military contracts.

“Trump may have become an obstacle to the arms industry with his 'America First’ program. The industrial and military lobbies have always had very long arms,” read one post in German.

“Trump’s coming to power means the collapse of the arms race … So you can look for someone who benefits,” said one in French. The accounts are tracked by Antibot4Navalny, a Russian activist research group.

In an interview on the Russian state TV channel Solovyev Live that was promoted on the messaging platform Telegram, U.S. journalist John Varoli said, “Ukrainian special services might be behind this, on the orders of the White House,” according to a translation by anti-misinformation company NewsGuard.

Varoli further suggested without evidence that the suspected gunman was affiliated with the anti-fascist movement antifa, as did Iranian state media. As of Wednesday, the FBI had been unable to establish a motive; investigators said Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old nursing home employee from suburban Pittsburgh, appeared to have acted alone.

Over the past two years, social media platforms have scaled back work against foreign misinformation and curtailed communication with the U.S. government about it. The FBI recently resumed some communications with the companies, The Post previously reported. The contacts resumed shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court threw out a challenge from conservatives, who sought to ban such contacts as impermissible government interference in protected free speech.

Platforms such as Meta have teams that identify and respond to covert foreign influence operations. But the company, along with X and YouTube, has weakened or eliminated policies and programs meant to fight political misinformation and limited access to tools that helped independent researchers root out such networks.

“I’m worried that we’ve lost a little bit of those windows into that activity due to changes in recent years,” Starbird said.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Those teams, which typically ramp up in the months immediately before an election, may not be prepared for a crisis such as the assassination attempt so early in the political cycle, said Brian Fishman, who previously led Facebook’s work against dangerous individuals and organizations and co-founded the trust and safety company Cinder.

“The danger here,” Fishman said, “is that the threat to our political process isn’t just coming on Election Day.”

Naomi Nix contributed to this report.

China suspends nuclear talks with the U.S. over Taiwan arms sales

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/07/17/china-nuclear-taiwan-trump-biden/2024-07-17T14:58:14.958Z

China on Wednesday said it has suspended arms control and nuclear nonproliferation talks with Washington, blaming the diplomatic stall on ongoing U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. The freeze comes just eight months after the two countries held their first formal dialogue on the matter in almost five years.

“Over the past weeks and months, despite China’s firm opposition and repeated protest, the U.S. has continued to sell arms to Taiwan and done things that severely undermine China’s core interests and the mutual trust between China and the U.S.,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian on Wednesday.

U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the decision “unfortunate” and said Washington would continue to bolster the security of allies and partners in the region in the face of Chinese threats.

“China has chosen to follow Russia’s lead in asserting that engagement on arms control can’t proceed when there are other challenges in the bilateral relationship. We think this approach undermines strategic stability. It increases the risk of arms race dynamics,” he said at a regular press briefing Wednesday.

The Chinese announcement comes as U.S. policy on Taiwan hangs in the balance ahead of the November election. Former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday called into question Washington’s long-standing policy of arming Taiwan, the democratic, autonomous island that China claims as its territory.

In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump accused the “immensely wealthy” Taiwan of swindling America out of its role in computer chips manufacturing, and suggested that it ought to “pay us for defense.” Taiwan has “done nothing” for America, Trump said.

The United States has a long-standing policy of providing arms and training to Taiwan, a relationship that the Biden administration and U.S. lawmakers from both parties have sought to expand in recent years.

Congress in 2022 authorized the U.S. government to spend $2 billion in annual security funding for Taiwan from 2023 through 2027, and in April this year approved $2 billion in security grants for the Asia-Pacific region as part of a larger supplemental national security spending bill.

Lawmakers and administration officials have also pledged to accelerate a years-long backlog of weapons sales to Taiwan that includes critical upgrades to its fleet of F-16 fighter jets. Last month, the State Department approved new sales of missiles and drones worth an estimated $360 million.

All of this has drawn fierce criticism from Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed to take Taiwan by force if necessary, and the People’s Liberation Army has executed a series of escalating military exercises around the island in recent years.

The Biden administration oversaw the rare talks between the two countries’ top nuclear arms officials in November as part of a broader shift to reopen high-level communication channels between Beijing and Washington. While some Republican lawmakers have criticized the renewed engagement — accusing the White House of softening on China — the administration maintains that the communication, particularly between the two countries’ militaries, is critical to manage the threat of conflict.

“The goal was not to paper over our differences. Our aim instead was to address misperceptions and miscommunication, to avoid major surprises,” said U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan at a Council on Foreign Relations event in January where he discussed the rationale behind the talks with Beijing.

But China’s refusal to continue engagement on nuclear proliferation over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan highlights the limitations in the scope of that engagement, as Biden heads toward a precarious election.

“[T]he Chinese side has decided to hold off discussion with the U.S. on a new round of consultations on arms control and nonproliferation. The responsibility fully lies with the U.S.,” Lin said.

The foreign ministry’s statement was China’s first public confirmation that talks have stalled, though U.S. officials indicated earlier this year that Beijing’s commitment had waned.

In March, under Secretary of State Bonnie Jenkins told a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that despite the promising initial discussions, Beijing had declined follow-up meetings and had not provided “substantive” responses to risk-reducing suggestions proposed by Washington.

She said the rapid buildup in China’s nuclear warheads — alongside Russia’s own sizable arsenal — raised concerns that the U.S. could soon be facing two “expansionary and significantly-armed peers.”

A report released by the Pentagon last year estimated that China had more than 500 operational nuclear warheads and is likely on track to double that figure by 2030. The United States has an arsenal of roughly 3,700 nuclear warheads, according to estimates by the Federation of American Scientists.

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[Sport] Watch: Huge fire breaks out at Chinese shopping centre

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cn081g6182po[Sport] Watch: Huge fire breaks out at Chinese shopping centre

China wants humanoid robots to automate aged care, handle grunt work as demographics shift

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3270805/china-wants-humanoid-robots-automate-aged-care-handle-grunt-work-demographics-shift?utm_source=rss_feed

Wandering around an exhibition hall at a tech fair in Shanghai, a humanoid robot took small steps for robotkind. And while still unable to leap itself, its presence nonetheless illustrated strides in China’s robotics industry.

It appears a little clumsy at first glance – unlike the anthropomorphically perfected androids seen in sci-fi – but the 25kg (55-pound) device features full-body controls and 30 degrees of movement freedom. It can also grasp objects and is capable of conversing in sign language.

Zhang Yongwen, CEO of the robot’s nascent manufacturer, Fairyon Humanoid Tech, sees the company’s future mainly in the homes of elderly people – offering them much-needed assistance and companionship.

“We’re also developing a new type that can make facial expressions that closely resemble humans, such as smiling and blinking,” he said, speaking at last month’s China (Shanghai) International Technology Fair, where his robot turned heads while roaming the floor.

Established early this year in Shanghai, Zhang’s company is among the humanoid robot developers that have multiplied in China in recent years as the country has set its sights on technological innovations and high-end manufacturing amid an intensifying trade and tech rivalry with the United States.

Human-like robots, which can be highly versatile when using tools created by humans and can respond to human emotions, are expected to help make up for a diminishing demographic dividend that the country once enjoyed, and to plug the gap in elderly care as Chinese society rapidly ages and its workforce shrinks, according to industry insiders.

A new high ground in the global scientific and technological competition, the humanoid robot sector in China entered a period of “explosive growth” last year, seeing an industry size of 3.91 billion yuan (US$539 million), or 85.7 per cent larger than the year prior, according to a report issued in April by a government-backed think tank, the China Centre for Information Industry Development.

It projected that China’s industry will continue to grow rapidly and expects it to be valued at more than 20 billion yuan by 2026.

Globally, the market for artificial beings will see an average growth rate of 70 per cent per year through 2035, leading to a global market size of US$38 billion, according to a Goldman Sachs research note in January.

Carmaker Tesla could start selling its high-profile humanoid robot, Optimus, which is still in development, by the end of next year, CEO Elon Musk said at the company’s annual shareholder meeting last month.

And as many as “a few thousand” units could be working in the company’s factories by 2025, he added.

Zhang, the Shanghai CEO, said: “As China’s population ageing deepens, robots are taking up a big amount of labour left by a smaller workforce and are becoming an important driver of new economic growth.”

Dividends of a young and increasing population are widely believed to be an important pillar for China’s quick economic rise over the past decades, but a rapid demographic shift is expected to put downward pressure on the labour supply and economic growth of the world’s second-largest economy over the coming decades.

China’s population fell by 2.08 million in 2023 to 1.4097 billion, a year after reporting the nation’s first population decrease in six decades, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics.

The proportion of those aged 65 and above also rose from 9.7 per cent in 2013 to 15.4 per cent in 2023, data showed.

As labour costs rise in a greying society, humanoid robots, which can be efficient helpers in workplaces and at home, are also helping businesses cut costs and produce more standardised goods, said Qiu Yufeng, co-founder of Hangzhou-based robot company Zopia Robot.

“Though we’re a global leader in the application of industrial robots, these machines are still unable to do a lot of work like humans do, such as telling products apart by their size, shape and rigidity,” he said.

“Because most of the tools we use are designed based on human characteristics, the most convenient way to replace human labour is to create humanlike robots,” he explained.

The artificial intelligence (AI) craze has been a “major breakthrough” in robotics, as embedding the technology makes them more similar to humans and able to work in different scenarios and various fields, he added.

In comparison, traditional robots are mostly task-specific – a welding robot can only weld, and a stacking bot can merely pile up products.

But there is also a question of whether humanoids are necessarily needed when specialised robots may be able to execute routines much more efficiently, unencumbered by the restrictions of the human form.

In 2022, China installed 290,258 industrial robot units, accounting for more than half of the 553,052 industrial robot installations recorded in factories worldwide, according to a report from the International Federation of Robotics.

The mass production of robots boasting AI brains and humanlike bodies is a goal that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology vowed to realise by 2025, according to an ambitious blueprint document issued in November.

Calling them as “disruptive” as electric cars, smartphones and personal computers, the ministry also pledged that by 2027, China will have reached an advanced level in terms of its overall capacity to make the product.

Besides addressing a shortage of skilled workers, the value of humanoid robots to an ageing China also lies in the potentially substantial changes that the technology brings to elderly care, Qiu said.

“It’s particularly meaningful to long-term care, as those machines are anthropomorphic and can interact with elderly people, offering emotional support and companionship, plus other assistance,” he said. “Compared with human nannies, who are expensive and could abuse seniors … robots will not have these problems and can be used for at least 10 years.”

While the adoption of AI-powered robots is expected to push some human workers out of their jobs, it is not going to worsen youth unemployment – an issue that China has struggled to tackle as it enlarges enrolment in tertiary education, said Leon Liang, a sales engineer with robotics maker Siasun.

“College graduates can’t find jobs not because there are no opportunities, but because they don’t want to be skilled workers at factories,” he said.

As more young Chinese pursue higher degrees and stable office work, businesses are having difficulty recruiting blue-collar workers – and those jobs being increasingly done by robots, he noted.

“Some companies offered a competitive monthly salary of 10,000 yuan for a welder but simply can’t find a qualified one,” he said.

In comparison, the average monthly salary expectation among the class of 2024 is 8,033 yuan (US$1,100), according to a report released in October by Chinese recruitment platform Liepin, based on information from the résumés it had collected.

Compared with the government’s ambitions for a quickly maturing humanoid robot industry, Liang was tempering his expectations, noting that the goals will require “a lot of patience and money, though everyone is swarming the sector”.

Most of the humanlike robots made in China so far are being bought by research institutes for further development, said Qian Yuqi, a marketing manager from Unitree Robotics in Hangzhou.

Her company is already mass producing a 1.8-metre-tall, two-legged robot it launched last year and is selling units mostly to carmakers, she said, declining to discuss specifics.

Nio, one of China’s major electric car makers, has been running tests this year to optimise the use of humanoid robots at its manufacturing base in Hefei, Anhui province. “They still need a lot of training,” a staff worker told the media during a factory tour in late June.

Over the past decade, China has gone “from lagging behind to catching up and ultimately leading in humanoid-robot-technology patents”, with its world-leading number of humanoid-robot-patent applications and number of valid patents, according to a report in December from a research institute under the People’s Daily party mouthpiece.

However, what’s more important is the number of core patents, which China still lacks, said Qiu from Zopia.

“It doesn’t work if we have numerous patents but not enough core ones. I would say we’re getting closer to the US in this regard,” he said.

He added that he believed China was not far from its goal of mass-producing humanoid robots by 2025, as businesses flourish in the field.

“The domestic supply chain is still not complete, at present, but as businesses keep learning and integrating resources, it is quite likely to be built within a couple of years,” he said. “Time is pressing, though.”

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Shenzhen to put autonomous buses on roads as China accelerates self-driving vehicle tests

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3270804/shenzhen-put-autonomous-buses-roads-china-accelerates-self-driving-vehicle-tests?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s southern tech hub of Shenzhen plans to put a fleet of 20 driverless buses on the road this year, according to the local bus operator, amid the country’s push for a wider roll-out and commercialisation of autonomous driving technology despite regulatory, security and social concerns.

The self-driving buses will operate along four bus routes in Shenzhen’s Qianhai district, an economic zone neighbouring Hong Kong, where stops include subway stations, commercial and business districts, industrial parks, residential areas and tourism sites, according to an announcement by Shenzhen Bus Group, the state-owned public transport firm.

With government approval for a trial run already granted, the company said it aims to create “the largest fleet of autonomous driving buses in the downtown area of a first-tier city”.

Shenzhen Bus Group will start operating the first bus route as early as this month, charging a fare of 1 yuan (US$0.14) per ride during the trial period, the state-backed Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported on Tuesday.

Rather than using a fleet of its all-electric single-decker buses, the autonomous vehicles will be nine-seat minibuses equipped with high-definition cameras, sensors and lidar, according to the Shenzhen Bus Group announcement.

Shenzhen has been making a big push to become China’s autonomous vehicle hub. It joins other cities such as Guangzhou and Wuhan in being among the first to allow self-driving buses.

Shenzhen rolled out the country’s first dedicated regulations for intelligent connected cars in 2022, allowing registered autonomous vehicles – without the typically required safety driver – to travel on certain roads and in other areas designated by local transport authorities.

Last September, Shenzhen also allowed self-driving cars to run on 89 kilometres of highway, including 13km of “highly complex sections”, for testing.

Robotaxi services have already become commonplace in Shenzhen’s Nanshan and Pingshan districts, where rides in these vehicles are heavily discounted or free. Robotaxis operated by Baidu’s Apollo Go service can be easily hailed by commuters in these areas via a mobile app.

The city is also the first to allow fully autonomous cars to operate across an entire district, according to the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily report. In Pingshan, licensed operators including Baidu have deployed fleets of robotaxis without safety drivers.

Shenzhen, with a population of 17 million people, has pledged to grow its intelligent vehicle industry to 200 billion yuan in revenue by 2025, according to an action plan released by its municipal government in June 2023.

However, the roll-out of autonomous driving technology is drawing scepticism in some circles amid concerns about safety and job losses.

A fleet of more than 500 Apollo Go robotaxis in Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province, has become so popular in the city of 13.7 million that local taxi drivers are petitioning the municipal transport authority to limit the use of Baidu’s service.

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China calls off arms control talks with US over weapon sales to Taiwan

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3270835/china-calls-arms-control-talks-us-over-weapon-sales-taiwan?utm_source=rss_feed

China has cut off arms control and non-proliferation talks with the United States because of Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

“China has decided to suspend talks with the US on holding a new round of arms control and non-proliferation consultations,” ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

“The responsibility for this situation lies entirely with the US.”

He said the US’ continued sales of weapons to the island in the face of Beijing’s opposition had “severely damaged the political atmosphere necessary for continued arms control consultations between the two sides”.

China was willing to maintain communication with the US on the issue but only on the condition that “the US must respect China’s core interests and create the necessary conditions for dialogue and exchange between the two sides”, the ministry said.

China and the US resumed their talks on arms control and nuclear non-proliferation less than a year ago following the end of Covid restrictions.

The two countries held their first meeting in four years in November in Washington, where both agreed on the importance of maintaining such communication under the conditions of respect and trust, the ministry said.

But Taiwan has increasingly become a sore point – in addition to tensions over trade, the South China Sea, and technology.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China, to be reunited by force if necessary. The United States, like most countries, does not recognise self-governed Taiwan as independent, but is opposed to any attempt to take the island by force.

The US, legally bound by its 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to help the island protect itself, has been its top weapons supplier.

In April, it passed a US$95 billion foreign aid package that included arms support for Taiwan. And in December, it approved a US$300 million tactical systems upgrade for the island.

WTO says China is backsliding on key reforms and lacks transparency on subsidies

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3270837/wto-says-china-backsliding-key-reforms-and-lacks-transparency-subsidies?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s progress on key structural changes to its economy has stalled and Beijing has not been transparent on subsidies for major industries, the World Trade Organization has said.

In its first trade policy review for China since 2021, it praised the major role its economy plays in bolstering global trade – but also highlighted some of the major complaints Beijing’s major trading partners have raised in the intervening period.

“China remained an important driving force for global economic growth … however the structural change it had previously embarked upon – away from industry and towards services – came to a halt,” read the report, compiled by economists at the WTO’s secretariat in Geneva.

The 173-page assessment – which, as is standard, was met with a 28-page response from the Chinese government – is being debated by WTO members in the Swiss city on Wednesday and Friday, in what is expected to be a spicy exchange.

The peer review is designed to “enable regular analysis of the trade policies of all WTO members”. The four biggest traders – the United States, European Union, China and Japan – are reviewed every three years, with other members having less frequent evaluations.

At the heart of this week’s discussion will be issues of state subsidies and overcapacity, which have dominated economic exchanges between China and the West over the past year.

The WTO said that while China has provided notifications of “support programmes” through the evaluation period, “the replies provided by China do not enable the secretariat to have a clear overall picture” of the amount of subsidies given to its firms.

“In particular, the secretariat was not able to gain deeper insight into the levels of financial support for certain highly traded sectors, such as aluminium, electric vehicles, glass, shipbuilding, semiconductors, or steel,” read the report, namechecking some of the hot button industries that have been highlighted by the EU, US and others.

The report cites estimations from academic and private equity sources that these subsidies could top US$900 billion, saying “the incentives provided by these funds have generally not been notified to the WTO”, even as the Chinese authorities say they “operate under market principles”.

“While more work is needed in this area to get a clearer picture, the overall lack of transparency in China’s government support may also contribute to debates on what is perceived by some as overcapacity in some sectors,” it continued.

Major players including the EU and US, but also Brazil, India and Mexico, have placed duties on Chinese imports in sectors such as electric vehicles and steel and aluminium.

The governments in question have cited surplus capacity and unfair subsidies as reasons for doing so.

These two issues will feature prominently in the two-day debate, according to a confidential list of questions anonymously submitted to the Chinese WTO delegation that has been seen by the Post.

Other issues on the list include the Communist Party’s involvement in private businesses, protecting foreign investors against forced technology transfers and whether Chinese retaliatory trade measures are consistent with WTO agreements.

During China’s last review, the debate devolved into a bunfight, according to an account seen by the Post at the time.

Long critiques of Beijing’s trade policies came from Australia – which was at the time embroiled in a tit-for-tat dispute with China – the US, EU, Japan and Canada.

The latest report praised China for “continuing to liberalise its foreign investment environment” and reducing the sectors that are off limits to foreign investors to 31.

It said the country’s integration into the global trading system had resulted in rising wealth in recent decades and “the eradication of extreme poverty”.

But it warned: “China’s strong growth has been accompanied by high levels of income inequality and strong urban-rural wealth contrasts”.

Overall, it found Beijing’s tariff structures have “remained largely unchanged” since 2021, but a number of trade and export controls have come into force in the period studied.

These include the suspension of seafood imports from Japan over the release of waste water from the Fukushima nuclear plant and a broadening of the items requiring export licences, including gallium, germanium, graphite and drones.

The report pointed to China’s “limited progress” in joining the WTO’s agreement on government procurement – something that has frustrated policymakers in Europe and triggered a probe into the perceived lack of market access for its firms in China’s lucrative government tenders earlier this year.

Beijing’s response said that “in the face of complicated and severe international situations, China overcame the pressure of declining external demand and insufficient domestic demand and realised steady growth on foreign trade and overseas investment”.

It said it had “deepened reform” of its state-owned enterprises, and pointed to last summer’s 24-point plan to assuage the concerns of foreign investors, which Beijing said would ensure they are treated in the same way as domestic firms in certain areas.

China’s report said it was making reforms with a view to joining multilateral deals, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement.

It also said it is “taking steps to pilot high-standard international economic and trade rules in areas such as reforms on SOEs [state-owned enterprises], digital economy, intellectual property rights and government procurement”.

US anti-China wall built around science ‘backfired’ on America: report

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3270675/us-anti-china-wall-built-around-science-backfired-america-report?utm_source=rss_feed

The rollback in scientific cooperation between the US and China has “backfired” on the American STEM community, the Chinese science ministry’s newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing a study on scientific productivity in the United States.

The study by researchers at Boston University, the University of Pennsylvania and Claremont Graduate University, was published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private, non-profit research organisation.

It examined the impact of rising US-China geopolitical tensions from 2016 to 2019 on the mobility of students, citing research between scientists, as well as scientist productivity in both countries. Analysing public résumés and research metadata, the study likened the tensions and decoupling between the nations as “building a wall around science”.

“We document a sharp decline in Chinese usage of US science as measured by citations, but no such decline in the propensity of US scientists to cite Chinese research,” the study said.

“We find that while a decline in Chinese usage of US science does not appear to affect the average productivity of China-based researchers as measured by publications, heightened anti-Chinese sentiment in the US appears to reduce the productivity of ethnically Chinese scientists in the US by 2 to 6 per cent.”

The report referred to US efforts like the 2018 China Initiative targeting ethnically Chinese scientists accused of espionage, and the Trump-era trade war as reasons behind the drop in productivity among ethnically Chinese scientists in the US.

On Tuesday, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology’s official news site, Science Technology and Daily, published an article on the report titled “Who was finally trapped by the ‘small yard, high fence’?”

The article referred to a strategy adopted by the US to restrict Chinese access to key technologies, especially ones with military potential.

In October 2022, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan described it by saying: “Chokepoints for foundational technologies have to be inside that yard, and the fence has to be high, because our strategic competitors should not be able to exploit American and allied technologies to undermine American and allied security.”

Some observers warned that while technologies vital to US national security had to be protected, “not all Chinese students, researchers and scientists are spies”.

“Overreach in the form of blanket bans, unwinding global supply chains, and discrimination against Chinese individuals based on national origin is not the answer,” Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the think tank New America and Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Centre, said in testimony about the strategy at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in 2019.

According to Science Technology and Daily, the NBER study revealed that the breakdown of Sino-US scientific cooperation initiated by the US had “backfired” on the American scientific community and weakened the country’s own research.

However, the NBER researchers said their results “do not suggest any clear ‘winner’”.

“[The results] instead indicate that increasing isolationism and geopolitical tension lead to reduced talent and knowledge flows between the US and China, which are likely to be particularly damaging to international science,” the researchers said.

“Many of the policies tied up in the rise of tensions between the US and China … were driven by an inherently nationalistic motivation to reduce reliance on the other country and, in the process, to strengthen each country’s scientific capabilities.”

The study noted that this not only included US policies, but Chinese efforts to strengthen domestic science such as the Thousand Talents Programme, which sought to recruit overseas ethnically Chinese academics to work in the country.

The future of the US-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement, which began in 1979 and was given a six-month extension in February, was still unclear.

“Further deterioration of this relationship would lead to a loss of young Chinese talent on the US side, reduced access to frontier knowledge on the Chinese side, and be a hit to scientific productivity,” the researchers said.

The US researchers said that the rise in tensions during the Covid-19 pandemic had only strengthened nationalist policies in both nations.

The 2022 US Chips and Science Act, and a “2022 Chinese government directive nicknamed ‘Delete America’ aimed at driving US technology out of the country” were also identified in the report as contributing to nationalistic sentiment.

The researchers also found that other countries may begin to benefit from Chinese talent leaving the US.

“Between 2016 and 2019, ethnically Chinese graduate students became 16 per cent less likely to attend a US-based PhD programme, and those that did became 4 per cent less likely to stay in the US after graduation,” the report said.

“In both instances, these students became more likely to move to a non-US anglophone country instead.”

China’s smart computing gets upgrade as AI demand, tech restrictions drive expansion

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3270834/chinas-smart-computing-gets-upgrade-ai-demand-tech-restrictions-drive-expansion?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s capacity for smart computing has undergone rapid growth in the past year, driven by a market frenzy for artificial intelligence (AI) large language models and the country’s multivariate efforts to bolster its tech industry, shore up growth and guard against containment measures taken against the sector by the United States.

Smart computing power now accounts for 30 per cent of the country’s total capacity, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday. Per a July report from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), this was an increase in proportion of nearly 5 percentage points since June of last year, with smart computing’s share expected to reach 35 per cent by 2025.

Smart computing, as opposed to general computing, focuses on handling complex algorithms and large-scale unstructured data using high-performance graphics processing units. This can help companies train large models faster and at lower cost, a pressing concern after restrictions laid down by Washington have limited China’s access to high-performance chips.

The world’s second-largest economy is unifying its computing resources to speed up tech development as these and similar curbs escalate. By the end of May, China had over 10 smart computing centres with high-performance clusters.

Beijing is also eager to achieve technological self-reliance as it searches for new sources of economic growth, seeing great potential in the dividends up for grabs on the bleeding edge.

According to estimates from CAICT, every 1 per cent increase in computing power contributes around 0.2 per cent to the country’s economic growth, and 0.4 per cent to growth in the digital economy. The institute also calculated that every yuan invested in the industry will generate three to four times that amount in economic output.

The race for tech parity has become more urgent following the US release of large language model ChatGPT and the text-to-video model Sora. These developments, coupled with the increasing likelihood of Donald Trump’s re-election as US president, could intensify the country’s tech blockade against China.

As the AI boom fuels a surge in demand for computing power, local governments have supercharged the construction or deployment of their own clusters.

For example, the southwestern city of Chengdu – home to nearly 900 AI companies valued at a cumulative 78 billion yuan (US$10.8 billion) – put a new smart computing centre into operation on July 2. Local authorities said they expected the centre to enhance efficiency by up to 80 per cent and save costs for research institutes as well as tech firms.

China released its first computing interconnectivity platform last week, which will identify, register and test computing resources nationwide and provide AI firms access to computing power from across the country.

Analysts had said the country’s fragmented computing market was a bottleneck preventing the flow of data across regions, hindering the progress of China’s AI industry and increasing costs for tech companies training large models.

On the national level, China plans to build eight computing hubs and 10 data centre clusters in a megaproject called “Eastern Data and Western Computing”, projected to drive around 400 billion yuan in investment each year.

China likely to ditch unified AI legislation due to ‘considerable disagreement’, timing

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3270544/china-likely-ditch-unified-ai-legislation-due-considerable-disagreement-timing?utm_source=rss_feed

China is likely to set aside efforts to produce unified national artificial intelligence legislation because of “considerable disagreement” between industry and academics, according to a legal expert involved in discussions to draft the law.

“Currently, China may plan to abandon drafting such a law … mainly because the opinions are so divided and there is still considerable disagreement within both the industry and academic communities,” said Zheng Ge, a professor of public law at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

In addition to the disagreement, “the vast majority of experts believe the timing to craft unified national AI legislation may not yet be mature since the technology is evolving so rapidly”, Zheng said.

Zheng made the remarks last Friday in Beijing on the sidelines of the Confucius and Aristotle Symposium on Ancient Wisdom for Modern Challenges, which was jointly hosted by the Tsinghua Institute for Advanced studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the Mencius Foundation.

China has been drawing up its own AI legislation and a draft of a unified law was submitted for review to the country’s top legislative body, the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, according to its annual legislative work plan made public in May.

But Zheng said the submission was only at a very early stage and there was no timetable for the draft, which suggested a lack of progress.

Zheng said that instead, the regulations to be rolled out would be sector or industry-specific, since AI technologies were constantly and quickly evolving.

After the European Union in March unveiled the world’s first AI legislation, discussion intensified about a similar move in China. Beijing has placed artificial intelligence at the centre of its mission to transform the country’s economy and achieve hi-tech self-reliance amid rivalries with Washington and its allies.

During the annual “two sessions” gathering in March, business and political elites tabled divergent proposals on how to establish AI regulations and laws.

Lou Xiangping, an NPC representative and chairman of the Henan branch of China Mobile, called for building a “systematic legal and regulatory framework” for AI. However, Zhang Yi, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and senior partner at the Beijing office of law firm King & Wood Mallesons, cautioned that “overbearing legal interventions could inhibit the healthy and orderly development of AI”, according to reports from Chinese media outlets.

Zheng, with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said China may strike a more balanced approach to AI lawmaking compared to the EU and the United States, considering AI’s rapid advances and the potential risks it entails.

“On one hand, we want to promote the development of artificial intelligence, as development is a key theme for China. On the other hand, we do not want this technology to bring about large-scale negative impacts,” he said.

The EU’s AI act has classified AI systems into unacceptable, high, limited and minimal risk levels and offered different regulations and requirements for organisations to develop AI. It has also banned technology considered “cognitive behavioural manipulation of people” that is “considered a threat to people”.

Zheng said such a ban would be “very unrealistic” for China’s tech industries as “AI manipulates human behaviours more or less, including the simplest recommendation algorithms”.

Zheng added that the US does not have, nor does it intend to have, such a law as its society encourages innovation and market growth, while the EU enforces stricter regulations not only to protect individual rights but also to restrict dominant American companies due to the EU’s relative weakness in the tech sector.

The opportunities and risks of AI have quickly pushed the technology onto diplomatic agendas in meetings between the major powers as the EU has taken the lead in AI regulation.

There were also high-level discussions between China and the US about the risks of AI during meetings in Geneva in March. At a summit in the UK last November, Washington, Brussels and Beijing agreed to collectively manage AI risks.

This month, Beijing issued the Shanghai Declaration on Global AI Governance at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, which called on each country to formulate their own AI laws or policies tailored to their national conditions.

Also this month, Beijing rolled out a new draft policy proposing at least 50 sets of AI standards by 2026, covering AI safety, governance and applications.

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Singapore law firms expand to China as global peers retreat from the mainland

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3270795/singapore-law-firms-expand-china-global-peers-retreat-mainland?utm_source=rss_feed

Singapore’s two largest law firms are expanding in China, banking on a trend of Chinese companies venturing overseas even as some of their global peers pull back from the world’s second-largest economy.

Rajah & Tann Asia is set to open a representative outpost with an initial 10 lawyers in Qianhai, Shenzhen in October, head of the Shenzhen office Hew Kian Heong said by phone. The office in the Chinese tech hub will focus on international arbitration as well as construction, technology, media and telecoms.

“Geopolitics and escalating tensions between China and the West have led to an increased interest and motivation for China’s private companies to look to the rapidly growing economies in Southeast Asia for making their investments,” said Hew, adding that Singapore has long positioned itself as a springboard for such investments into the region.

China’s Ministry of Justice has approved the plan, which will add to Rajah & Tann’s Shanghai office.

Allen & Gledhill entered China with a new office in Shanghai in January to help Chinese companies “navigate the challenging and evolving business and legal landscape across” Southeast Asia.

Singapore is a favoured regional hub for Chinese businesses seeking to go global. The moves by Rajah & Tann and Allen & Gledhill contrasts with some foreign firms shrinking their presence in mainland China and Hong Kong amid a dearth of deals and increased regulatory oversight from Beijing.

Philadelphia-founded Dechert is closing its outposts in mainland China and Hong Kong. Mayer Brown is breaking away from a 160-attorney Hong Kong partnership, and Winston & Strawn is shuttering its office in the city.

Foreign law firms with offices in China fell to 205 in 2022 from 225 in 2019, based on the latest available numbers from the Ministry of Justice website.

India to speed up visa process for Chinese technicians to tame production backlog: sources

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3270815/india-speed-visa-process-chinese-technicians-tame-production-backlog-sources?utm_source=rss_feed

India is expected to speed up the process of issuing visas for Chinese technicians, three government officials said, as it looks to overcome delays at manufacturing units that have hindered investments running into billions of dollars.

After the nuclear-armed nations clashed on their Himalayan frontier in mid-2020, India blocked virtually all Chinese visitors, as well as investments from its neighbour, but is reconsidering its stand on visas as the losses pile up.

The plan to hasten visa approvals is backed by the trade ministry and is being considered “positively” by the foreign ministry, despite its initial reservations over the four-year frost in ties with China, one of the officials said.

Domestic industry and government officials asked the foreign ministry to revisit the issue, said one official aware of the details, as the delays posed a challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambition to boost local manufacturing.

The officials sought anonymity as the decision has not yet been made public.

The trade ministry, home ministry, and foreign ministry did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

The government’s reluctance to approve visas stacked up production losses of US$15 billion for the electronics manufacturing sector alone during the last four years, The Economic Times newspaper has said, citing an industry estimate.

The technicians are needed to operate Chinese-made machinery installed in Indian hi-tech manufacturing units in industries ranging from telecoms to steel products and solar panels.

India received nearly 1,600 visa applications for Chinese technicians between last November and April this year, a government official said.

After the 2020 border clashes, India stepped up scrutiny of Chinese investments, halted planned projects, and shut down Chinese mobile apps.

Faster business visas will be issued for technicians needed to run Chinese-made machines installed in Indian factories in 14 sectors covered by a US$24-billion scheme to spur production of hi-tech electronics items, among others, the officials said.

A new fast track portal will be set up to cut the time for visa approval decisions to less than a month, from a year now, one of the officials said.

The visa would permit stays of up to six months for the Chinese technicians, another official added.

South China Sea: hotlines exist, but Philippines says Beijing ‘does not answer’

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3270819/south-china-sea-hotlines-exist-philippines-says-beijing-does-not-answer?utm_source=rss_feed

Hotlines to avert clashes in the South China Sea already exist but Beijing does not answer calls, according to Philippine government sources familiar with such mechanisms, after news emerged China was willing to consider a communication between the two heads of states so “nothing will be lost in translation”.

Examples cited by sources include cases in recent months when the Philippine side attempted to contact their Chinese counterparts over clashes in the Second Thomas Shoal, a flashpoint in disputed waters in the South China Sea.

The Associated Press on Tuesday reported Manila and Beijing recently signed an agreement to establish a hotline between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Philippine leader Ferdinand Marcos Jnr.

This was after both countries sat down on July 2 and signed the “Arrangement on Improving Philippines-China Maritime Communication Mechanisms”, agreeing to “discuss further how to operationalise this mechanism,” according to a statement issued by the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) that same day.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) had also issued a separate statement on the 9th Bilateral Consultation Mechanism meeting on the South China Sea and confirmed that “the two sides also had an exchange on improving the maritime communication mechanism, promoting the dialogue between the coastguard of the two countries”.

But the MFA made no mention of having signed any “arrangement” to improve the so-called maritime communication mechanisms.

The Philippine Coast Guard or PCG, a civilian agency, together with the Armed Forces of the Philippines, has been escorting resupply missions to Second Thomas Shoal which China calls Ren’ai Jiao.

A highly placed source, aware of PCG activities, told This Week in Asia on Wednesday that the PCG had an “active hotline of communication” with its Chinese counterpart but this “had never been used during resupply missions”.

“It’s not dead,” the source insisted, however. This was only used “for coordination with the [Chinese side] if there are search-and-rescue operations, especially during inclement weather, or there are missing fishermen,” the source said.

Another source, who knows about the hotline between the two countries’ foreign ministries, told This Week in Asia: “There is an existing hotline between the DFA and MFA but China does not answer [when] the DFA calls.”

The source recalled that this came to light in August last year when DFA spokeswoman Teresita Daza told reporters the department had handed a note verbale to Chinese Ambassador to Manila Huang Xilian after the Chinese coastguard and Chinese militia ships blocked and blasted water cannons at PCG ships and other vessels resupplying troops stationed at the Second Thomas Shoal on August 5 last year.

Daza said the diplomatic note stated: “The Philippines, through the DFA, also expressed disappointment that the DFA was unable to reach its counterpart to the maritime communication mechanism for several hours while the incident was occurring.”

The DFA reminded its counterpart that during Marcos Jnr’s state visit in Beijing in January 2023, he had directly broached to Xi the establishment of a new hotline between the DFA’s Maritime and Ocean Affairs Office and the MFA’s Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs.

The Presidential Communications Office quoted Marcos Jnr on January 5 last year as saying the proposal was to avert “misinformation” so that “nothing will be lost in translation”.

It was only in March this year that Marcos Jnr revealed during an interview with ABC Australia that he had personally proposed to Xi “a kind of hotline between us”.

“So that if there is a message that needed to be sent from one president to another, we can be assured that that message will reach them,” he said.

The urgent need to have a presidential hotline was underscored by the June 17 incident when Chinese naval and coastguard vessels not only blocked a resupply mission but their personnel – armed with axes and machetes – also boarded some Philippine vessels, damaged the boats and carted off high-powered firearms.

Since that incident, the Philippine military had not undertaken a new resupply mission, navy spokesman Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad said on Wednesday. However, the PCG successfully evacuated a sick soldier on July 7 despite China’s attempts to block it, according to a July 9 statement issued by Commodore Jay Tarriela, the official spokesman on PCG activities in the West Philippine Sea.

The United States has issued repeated reminders that such incidents could spiral out of control and if the Philippine government asks for Washington’s help, this would trigger the 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty.

“Yes, of course, they have been offering help and they asked us how they could help us in any way,” the armed forces chief of staff General Romeo Brawner said on Tuesday.

But, he said, “We try to exhaust all possible options that we have before we ask for help.”

On Tuesday, Brawner and defence secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jnr met General Charles Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US. Brawner said the meeting “sends a strong message to our neighbours and signals that our military-to-military relationship is strong”.

China to host new round of Hamas-Fatah talks but its influence ‘may be limited’

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3270765/china-host-new-round-hamas-fatah-talks-its-influence-may-be-limited?utm_source=rss_feed

Plans for a new round of talks in Beijing later this month between rival Palestinian factions have raised hopes of reconciliation and agreement about post-war governance in Gaza, but China’s influence over the outcome may be limited, observers said.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Tuesday that China would release details of the Hamas-Fatah meeting “in due course”.

He was responding to several Western media reports a day earlier that delegations – led by Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, and Fatah deputy head Mahmoud al-Aloul – could be in Beijing by next weekend.

The New York Times reported that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet the Palestinian factions on Sunday, July 21 and again on Tuesday.

The Washington Post noted that the meeting follows an agreement between Israel and Hamas – after sporadic talks – that control of Gaza would be handed over to a new Palestinian force in the event of a ceasefire.

This will be the second meeting in the Chinese capital for senior officials from Hamas and Fatah, after talks in April covered political reconciliation and potential post-war governance, according to Beijing.

Despite Beijing’s statement that the factions had an “in-depth and candid dialogue”, neither Hamas nor Fatah announced any breakthroughs after the April meeting.

On Tuesday, Lin said China had “consistently supported reconciliation and unity among Palestinian factions through dialogue and consultation” and was willing to “provide a platform and create opportunities” for their engagement.

“China is ready to strengthen communication and coordination with them … to work together towards the goal of intra-Palestinian reconciliation,” he said.

China has increasingly positioned itself as a geopolitical player and alternative to Washington in the Middle East, after brokering a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran last year.

Like most countries that recognise Palestine, China regards the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority led by Fatah as the legitimate government.

But Beijing has also maintained close communication with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and has had strained relations with Fatah for years. China’s stance has hampered its mediation role in the Gazan conflict.

China has also been strongly critical of Israel during the war in Gaza, which was sparked by the October 7 Hamas attack in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

Since then, nearly 39,000 Palestinians had died as of Monday, according to the Hamas-run health authority in Gaza, which added that at least 80 people were killed on that day alone.

Liu Xinlu, director of the school of Arabic studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said the talks may yield “some degree of reconciliation”, as both sides sought to extract political capital ahead of a ceasefire.

A poll conducted in May by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research found Hamas twice as popular as Fatah in the West Bank, while support for Hamas in the Gaza Strip was at 38 per cent, compared with Fatah’s 24 per cent.

“The will for internal reconciliation is strong on both sides, with Hamas needing more support and political resources and Fatah wanting to seize the political and moral high ground,” Liu said.

“So I think there is a high possibility that the two factions can reach a so-called reconciliation, or at least expressing an attitude, like the [Beijing-brokered] Saudi-Iranian normalisation [in March 2023].

“China is neither a creator nor a party to the problem. It has always advocated Arab, intra-Arab and intra-Palestinian solidarity and cooperation, so it is well suited to serve as a platform for [the talks].”

James Dorsey, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, was less optimistic. He noted Beijing’s limited leverage over Israel, which ultimately would decide the Gaza governing body’s future.

“A permanent ceasefire and [establishing] a Palestinian administration [in Gaza] are two different things. Because the key issue is going to be whether [the new Gazan administration] is under Israeli tutorage,” he said.

“The Israelis demand the rubric of security [in Gaza]. But China has no clout in that and it has no leverage [on Israel].”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far rejected calls to include the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in a post-war Gazan government.

Netanyahu’s comments that he would not “replace Hamastan with Fatahstan” have cast a shadow over hopes for a viable future of the Gazan authority.

According to Dorsey, Israel has “thrown out some ideas” on governance in Gaza, “but they refuse to issue a real plan for the day when the fighting stops”. They have “made it very clear that they don’t want to see the Palestinian Authority take over Gaza”.

“China has been very critical of Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war, and in Israel’s perception China has allowed a lot of antisemitism expression on social media. So, China is not the party that can swing Tel Aviv, certainly not like Washington,” he said.

Huawei enters new partnership to drive increased AI adoption in China’s heavy industries

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3270813/huawei-enters-new-partnership-drive-increased-ai-adoption-chinas-heavy-industries?utm_source=rss_feed

Huawei Technologies has entered into a partnership with Sichuan Zigong Conveying Machine Group Co (ZGCMC) to expand the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in heavy industries such as mining, bulk material transport and equipment manufacturing.

The three-year pact between the two firms will involve the “deep integration” of large language models – the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT – in those industries, according to a filing on Wednesday by Shenzhen-listed ZGCMC, one of China’s leading enterprises in the design, manufacture and installation of bulk material conveying machinery.

ZGCMC said it will “prioritise the use of Huawei’s product solutions and professional services within the scope of the pair’s cooperation”. Huawei will provide support in terms of programme design, global ecosystem cooperation and talent training, according to the filing, which did not provide the amount of investment involved in the partnership.

Privately-held Huawei did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The partnership between Huawei and ZGCMC will also cover fields such as cloud computing, big data, digital transformation and smart factories.

This new initiative by Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment supplier and one of China’s major smartphone vendors, shows the Shenzhen-based company’s efforts to expand its business into industrial solutions.

A major cooperation between Huawei and state-owned Shaanxi Coal Industry, for example, has helped cut by half the number miners who work 100 metres below ground through the deployment of 5G infrastructure and AI, helping this sector get a digital makeover, according to a South China Morning Post report last year.

As the world’s biggest coal-producing country with 4,000 mines, China aims to make its large-scale and most hazardous mines “smart” by 2025. All coal mines in the country are expected to be modernised by 2035, according to guidelines on the mining industry’s digital upgrade issued by eight state agencies in 2020.

Huawei also pushed automation in Tianjin, northern China’s biggest seaport. With the firm’s 5G infrastructure in place, a staff of 200 operators and engineers can manage 1 million twenty-foot equivalent units of annual cargo throughput at Tianjin Port’s Terminal C, about 25 per cent of the employees needed in a typical year during the terminals’ pre-digital age, the Post reported in February last year.

The company’s initiatives to help transform traditional industries have gained further urgency after Chinese President Xi Jinping called for efforts to boost “disruptive innovation”, integrate technology with industry, and increase supply chain resilience when he presided over the Politburo study session earlier this year.

Huawei’s digital-transformation efforts in coal mining, ports and even hospitals shows its focus on broadening its operations in the world’s second-largest economy, as its international business has been curtailed by the wider trade and tech dispute between Washington and Beijing. The United States government added Huawei to its trade blacklist in May 2019.

3 Chinese clean-energy firms to set up solar, wind manufacturing in Saudi Arabia

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3270786/3-chinese-clean-energy-firms-set-solar-wind-manufacturing-saudi-arabia?utm_source=rss_feed

Three major Chinese clean-energy manufacturers will build production plants in Saudi Arabia to expand their global footprints amid US and European trade barriers and fierce competition at home.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced on Tuesday that it will form joint ventures in the Middle Eastern country with Jinko Solar and TCL Zhonghuan, two of the world’s largest producers of solar modules and solar silicon wafers, as well as wind turbine maker Envision Energy.

The new agreements are part of PIF’s effort to localise advanced technologies in the renewable-energy sector in Saudi Arabia, said Yazeed Al-Humied, deputy governor and head of investments for the Middle East and North Africa region at PIF.

“These projects will also enable Saudi Arabia to become a global hub for export of renewable technologies,” he said.

Jinko Solar said on Tuesday that it will build a US$985 million facility with an annual capacity of 10 gigawatts (GW) for both high-efficiency solar cells and solar modules. Saudi Arabia’s Vision Industries, a privately owned green energy developer, will also be a shareholder in the joint venture.

“This partnership is another major milestone in the execution of our globalisation strategy, and will further help us optimise our global manufacturing and marketing infrastructure, as well as enhance our global competitiveness,” Li Xiande, chairman and CEO of Jinko Solar, said in the statement.

Also partnering with PIF and Vision Industries, TCL Zhonghuan will invest US$2.08 billion in a plant capable of producing 20GW of photovoltaic silicon ingots and wafers a year, according to an exchange filing in Shenzhen.

Envision Energy’s joint venture with PIF and Vision Industries will involve the manufacture and assembly of wind-turbine components, with an estimated annual generation capacity of 4GW. Neither Envision nor PIF disclosed the investment amount.

Jinko Solar shares lost 4 per cent to close at 7.5 yuan on Wednesday after surging as much as 2 per cent on Tuesday in Shanghai after the announcement. Shares of TCL Zhonghuan lost 3 per cent to 8.73 yuan on Wednesday after gaining 5 per cent a day earlier. Shares of other major Chinese solar firms such as Longi and Tongwei also got a boost.

The three joint ventures represent the latest in a series of investments by Chinese clean energy developers to globalise their manufacturing bases as they are struggling with a price war and worsening oversupply.

Clean energy developers in China, the world’s largest wind and solar market, view the Middle East and Southeast Asia as their next gold mines given tariff increases imposed by the US and anti-subsidy investigations launched by the European Union.

Trade in the energy sector between China and the Middle East is likely to increase significantly and reshape the sector globally in the wake of the Saudi-Iran peace deal brokered by China last year, according to Swiss bank UBS.

By 2030 energy-related trade between the two sides will have risen by US$423 billion annually, with renewables and petrochemicals accounting for US$77 billion and US$325 billion, respectively, the investment bank estimated.

South China Sea: Beijing urged to create deadline for Manila to withdraw from shoal

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3270758/south-china-sea-beijing-urged-create-deadline-philippines-withdraw-shoal?utm_source=rss_feed

Beijing should establish a definitive time frame for Manila to withdraw from Second Thomas Shoal, marking a critical step towards ending the long-standing “cat-and-mouse game” over the contentious submerged reef, a leading Chinese maritime expert said.

Describing persistent confrontation over the Second Thomas Shoal as “a bleeding wound,” Wu Shicun, founder of the Hainan-based National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said there was an urgent need to conclusively settle escalating tensions surrounding the reef.

“China’s delayed efforts to restore tranquillity on Second Thomas Shoal may embolden the Philippines to take risky actions, expanding its infringement activities in areas such as Sabina Shoal, Sandy Cay and Scarborough Shoal,” Wu said during an interview with Chinese media.

He urged China to “diplomatically present a time frame to the Philippines for its withdrawal from Second Thomas Shoal” and said the plan should specify the dates for military personnel to withdraw and plans for humanitarian aid during the transition period.

Over the past year and a half, the waters surrounding Second Thomas Shoal – known as Renai Reef in Chinese and Ayungin Shoal in the Philippines – have been the stage for escalating tensions between Beijing and Manila.

The epicentre of the constant and increasingly fraught maritime stand-offs is a rusting World War II-era Philippine navy ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, which is a strategic military outpost manned by a small contingent of Philippine troops.

In his remarks, Wu suggested China take a firmer stance once the deadline expired. He said Beijing might need to take decisive action to “prevent and block the Philippines from engaging in provocative and status quo-altering activities”, such as blocking maritime and airdropped resupplies to the reef, if Manila did not comply with the proposed time frame.

Beijing could impose a “temporary alert zone” in line with its Chinese coastguard law and new coastguard administrative procedures, outlining the area, duration, and management measures for the alert zone, according to Wu.

“After a certain period of blockade, the Philippine military personnel stationed at the reef will face a ‘survival crisis’. China could then, from a humanitarian perspective, establish a ‘special corridor’ allowing the Philippines to retrieve its military personnel stationed there,” he said.

Tensions flared between Beijing and Manila earlier this year when Beijing claimed it had reached an informal agreement permitting the Philippines to resupply the ship “out of humanitarian considerations”.

The arrangement requires Manila to provide advance notice of resupply missions, accept Chinese on-site supervision and exclude the transfer of construction materials.

The Philippine government has since refuted the existence of such an agreement, deepening their diplomatic rift.

Wu added that Beijing should also register its dissatisfaction with Manila through their bilateral and biannual diplomatic consultation mechanism established in 2017. The most recent talks under the mechanism were held this month.

“Through this active and operational dialogue framework, China must clearly convey to the Philippines that their actions, which extend beyond the agreed-upon consensus of ‘humanitarian resupply only’, are unacceptable,” he said, adding that Manila’s attempts to permanently fortify the shoal were also unacceptable to Beijing.

Furthermore, Wu said that staying transparent regarding their actions was also crucial, and Beijing could inform the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and other relevant parties through diplomatic channels beforehand.

“The aim is to clarify that China’s actions are intended to restore Second Thomas Shoal to its original state, promptly end the stand-off, prevent accidental escalation and secure China’s positive perception from public opinion and the international community,” he said.

China’s youth-jobless rate improves as challenges still threaten stability: NBS

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3270772/chinas-youth-jobless-rate-improves-challenges-still-threaten-stability-nbs?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s jobless rate for the 16-24 age group dipped to 13.2 per cent in June, excluding students, and has gradually improved for the past three months, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

After contracting to 14.2 per cent in May, the youth-unemployment rate further shrank by a full percentage point last month.

Meanwhile, the jobless rate for the 25-29 age group, also excluding students, was 6.4 per cent in June, and similarly marked a third consecutive month of decline, while the rate for the 30-59 age group remained unchanged from May at 4 per cent, the NBS said.

“The overall employment situation remained stable in the first half of the year,” said Wang Pingping, director of population and employment statistics at the NBS, as the broad urban-unemployment rate stayed unchanged at 5 per cent.

“However, it is important to note that both pressure on the overall employment volume and structural conflicts exist. Ensuring stable employment still faces certain challenges,” Wang warned.

In June last year, the jobless rate for the 16-24 age group hit a record-high 21.3 per cent, weighing heavy on Beijing’s post-pandemic recovery efforts.

Authorities in August halted monthly data publications to recalibrate how the rate was gauged. After not releasing any figures for July-November, a newly calibrated rate of 14.9 per cent was announced for December.

The NBS had decided to remove unemployed students from the equation, noting that they were in school to study, and that finding a job was not their priority.

Revising the rate was done to “more accurately reflect the employment and unemployment status of the youth who are in need of a job after graduation”, NBS director Kang Yi said.

President Xi Jinping has also pledged to make youth employment a top policy priority, and he has stressed that employment for university graduates is critically important.

With the continued implementation of youth-employment-stabilisation initiatives such as skill-training programmes and the creation of many more internship opportunities, the outlook for youth employment is poised to gradually improve, the NBS’ Wang said.

Last month, China unveiled robust initiatives, including subsidies for companies hiring college graduates and a scheme to create at least 1 million internship positions annually for young people by the end of 2025.

[World] The convicted Chinese tycoon who built a pro-Trump money machine

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65019134

Meet China’s track ‘goddess’, humble hurdler Xia Sining keeps low profile

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3270644/meet-chinas-track-goddess-humble-hurdler-xia-sining-keeps-low-profile?utm_source=rss_feed

Rising China sports star Xia Sining is attracting a lot of attention for her athletic performance and also her striking looks as the Paris Olympics approach.

Dubbed the “prodigy hurdler” and “goddess of beauty”, Xia first rose to fame in March 2019 at just 16, when she won the women’s 100m hurdles at the 2nd National Youth Games in China, setting a national record that remains unbroken.

In July last year, she clinched her first national championship in the women’s 100m hurdles at the National Athletics Championships.

In May, she won another championship at the National Athletics Grand Prix and also set a new personal best of 13.08 seconds.

“I just love the track. Every time I reach the finish line and the coach says you’re faster than last time,’ I feel so excited and happy,” Xia told the People’s Daily.

Beyond her athletic achievements, Xia is a social media sensation, attracting more than 3 million followers on Douyin, including many who are drawn to her good looks.

“Actually, if you take photos of athletes, you’ll find that everyone has a great aura because we are active in sports. After exercising, the temperament becomes particularly vibrant. So I don’t think I’m particularly beautiful. It’s because people yearn for this sunny lifestyle,” Xia said.

Sporting conversion

Originally from Shaoyang, Hunan province, in central China, 21-year-old Xia is the daughter of a former athlete.

Despite her sporty lineage, she initially pursued the arts, learning the piano, violin, erhu and folk dancing as a child.

In her last year at primary school, she signed up for the long jump event in a student athletics competition, which was when it was discovered she had a talent for hurdling.

However, when she told her parents she wanted to switch her focus to athletics, they were initially resistant.

“My family wasn’t very well-off, and my mother had invested a lot in my arts education. More importantly, my father had endured significant hardships while training in track and field, with his legs covered in scars. They did not want me to endure such hardship,” Xia said.

Over time, her persistence and determination ultimately won them over.

“I have a particularly stubborn personality, mostly inherited from my mother. She told me that girls must have their own thoughts, be independent and strong, then they have the right to choose their lives,” she said.

Star sisters

Among the new generation of Chinese women’s 100m hurdlers, stand-out athlete Xia and her peer Wu Yanni are leading the way.

They are even dubbed the “Gemini stars on the Paris Olympics track”.

Recently, a viral video captured Wu and Xia warming up together before a race, in which Xia was seen struggling to hold back her laughter at Wu’s signature warm-up moves.

This drew comparisons between the two because, while Wu is known for her outgoing personality that often stirs controversy, Xia is recognised for being humble, shy and keeping a low profile.

Xia is sanguine about all the attention she and Wu are getting.

“Our country has relatively few talented hurdlers, and many provinces do not have coaches. As long as these discussions promote the development of track and field, make more people like hurdling, and encourage more people to exercise and become healthier, it’s a good thing,” she said.

Fans are excitedly anticipating their performances in Paris.

“Xia Sining and Wu Yanni, the twin stars of the track. We look forward to you achieving more success at the Paris Olympics and bringing glory to the country,” one fan said.

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China battens down the hatches for blustery trade winds as odds of Trump victory rise

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3270667/china-battens-down-hatches-blustery-trade-winds-odds-trump-victory-rise?utm_source=rss_feed

China has made ample preparations for the tsunami of tariffs likely to reach its shores if former US president Donald Trump returns to the White House, analysts said, as its government and private sector have all but resigned themselves to a worst-case scenario.

“Another trade war seems inevitable,” said Chen Fengying, a researcher with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) – a think tank with ties to the country’s Ministry of State Security.

Trump, the Republican nominee in this year’s presidential election, was shot in the ear at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday – an attack that appears to have turned the tide in his favour in the short term, although the incident’s ultimate impact remains to be seen.

In 2018 and 2019, his administration imposed tariffs of up to 25 per cent on hundreds of billions of US dollars of Chinese goods. During this year’s campaign he has already issued sterner threats, including duties in excess of 60 per cent on all Chinese imports.

“It seems we are already adapting gradually,” Chen said. “We have been digesting the tariffs through supply chain relocation – there is no other way.”

After some initial panic following the first wave of tariffs in 2018, China has been restructuring its global trade patterns by tapping emerging markets like the Middle East and Central Asia and simultaneously striving to reorient the country’s economy around domestic consumption.

“In other words, China has a completely different mentality,” Chen said.

One avenue for Trump to impose higher duties would be through the revocation of China’s permanent normal trade relations status with the US, said Nick Marro, principal economist for Asia at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“Trump’s playbook over [his first term] very much involved him testing the limits of his authority and his office, alongside experimenting with how far he could go to shock US-China trade and diplomatic relations,” Marro said.

“A second Trump presidency is scarier because he’ll have a better sense of what he can and can’t do – specifically, what he’d need to do to get around those constraints to achieve what he wants.”

On Monday, Trump chose Ohio Senator J.D. Vance – an outspoken China hawk – to be his vice-presidential nominee. In his first interview after his selection with Fox News, Vance branded China “the biggest threat” to the US.

But whatever its utility during the campaign, the feasibility of such a high tariff on Chinese goods is uncertain, analysts said, as it could trigger another spike in an already stubbornly high inflation rate weighing heavily on consumers.

“A lot of US manufacturers are not globally competitive, and rely on critical intermediate inputs and capital goods sourced from abroad, including China,” Marro said.

The absence of an immediate alternative to these goods presents a risk of a jump in producer prices at the very least, he said, adding that even if prices drift down in the coming years, they might settle at an equilibrium higher than the pre-tariff average.

“If a 60 per cent tariff is imposed on all Chinese products, it means a total decoupling of the US-China relationship,” said Lu Xiang, a research fellow in US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

“When there is still room for negotiation on tariffs, China will still care about bilateral relations. But if trade relations break completely and there is zero interdependence, China will not care about the US any more, and that would also be the most unstable scenario [for Trump].”

While Trump has a pragmatic side and cares less for ideology, suggesting he may not necessarily make Sino-US relations tense himself, Lu said the more hawkish stance taken by the Republican Party – many call for a total decoupling – is harder to change.

Ding Shuang, chief economist for Greater China at Standard Chartered Bank, said it is possible that Trump could announce the 60 per cent tariffs once elected, but such a position is more likely being used for favourable positioning in further negotiations with Beijing.

Under a new Trump presidency, the two countries may find room for compromise in areas such as energy – China is a major importer and the US a prolific exporter – and US treasury bonds, which China has been offloading at record speed.

In the short term, the Chinese export sector might get a boost if Trump wins, as US importers could front-load shipments and build up inventory before tariffs kick in, Ding said.

“This also means that the current trend of industrial chains relocating out of China will continue,” Ding said.

But in contrast to the approach taken by the Joe Biden administration – where investment links have been curtailed significantly – Trump has voiced support for Chinese companies to build factories in the US and hire local workers.

This may shift the direction of these firms’ outbound investment away from places like Southeast Asia and Mexico, Ding said.

“Many Chinese manufacturers are assuming the trade war is going to start again. Their efforts to transfer production capacity abroad are continuing, or even accelerating,” Ding said.

“For China, from the policy perspective, it cannot just add more industrial capacity without domestic demand,” he added. “[It] would be forced to rebalance its economy by boosting domestic consumption.”

As protectionist policies – especially around sensitive technologies – have become bipartisan consensus in the US, even absent a second Trump term the future of US-China relations is unlikely to brighten any time soon.

While maintaining Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports, the Biden administration imposed more duties on a range of goods in May and intensified limitations on the technology trade through what it terms a “small yard, high fence” strategy.

Of the two candidates, Chen from CICIR said Trump might be louder and propose more sweeping measures, but Biden is quieter and more precise.

“Sometimes, dogs that don’t bark bite harder,” she said.

As China’s sway over Pacific islands grows, will Japan counter by coming to Palau’s aid?

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3270681/chinas-sway-over-pacific-islands-grows-will-japan-counter-coming-palaus-aid?utm_source=rss_feed

Palau is appealing to Japan for help monitoring Chinese maritime activity within its exclusive economic zone. Analysts say Tokyo has assisted other nations with similar challenges in the past and may be willing to do so again to counter Beijing’s growing influence in the region.

The Pacific island nation’s national security coordinator, Jennifer Anson, described the “challenges” it has faced in recent years in an interview with Japanese national broadcaster NHK on Monday. Chinese research vessels have repeatedly been spotted operating not only within Palau’s EEZ, but also “hovering” dangerously close to the crucial underwater fibre optic cables that connect the remote territory to the rest of the world, she said.

Anson’s concerns don’t end there. She also noted that Chinese ships have been sighted conducting research activities in Palau’s extended continental shelf area – a development that has analysts worried.

“There are a whole host of non-threatening and legitimate activities that Chinese vessels could be carrying out in those waters, but the Quad countries are very worried that any research could have dual purposes,” said Ben Ascione, an assistant professor of international relations at Tokyo’s Waseda University, referring to the strategic security alliance between Japan, India, Australia and the United States.

“China could very well be testing the water to see how the Quad nations react and their commitment to the Pacific states,” he told This Week in Asia.

“There is no reason to panic, but these nations need to be alert so that Pacific island countries do not turn to China, as we have already seen happen.”

Quad governments have been alarmed at the close ties that China has forged with the Solomon Islands, for example, which include the signing of a security pact in 2022, the details of which remain secret.

After a recent meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping, the Pacific nation’s new Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele announced on Tuesday that Beijing would inject US$20 million into its economy as well as fund extensions to the country’s only international airport.

Palau’s 600,000 sq km EEZ is “quite vast for our small island,” national security coordinator Anson said. “That is, with our limited resources, to be able to monitor [it], to be able to provide the surveillance that we need to know what is going on.”

Anso, who is in Japan to take part in the 10th Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting in Tokyo that began on Tuesday said her government is particularly interested in receiving information from Tokyo about the ships operating off Palau as that data is not currently available to the island nation.

She emphasised the importance of the two-day conference, which is regularly hosted by Japan for 18 Pacific nations and territories, given China’s growing influence in the region.

Palau, with a population of around 18,000 people, is one of only 11 countries to maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own. Most countries do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but the US and its allies are opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force.

Palau has resisted pressure to drop its diplomatic support for Taiwan and switch its allegiance to Beijing, as many other small nations have already done, and Anson suggested that many of the other Pacific nations attending the Tokyo conference do not want to “say anything bad about China” because they are close partners of Beijing.

Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor of politics and international relations at Waseda University, said a relatively straightforward first step for Japan to assist in monitoring the Chinese vessels would be for Tokyo “to provide satellite data of all vessels in Palau’s waters and to monitor their movements.”

“It may be a little more difficult to soon provide patrol craft or other equipment, but the government here is certainly thinking about it,” he said.

“Japan is well aware that many of the small island states of the Pacific are quite afraid of China, that they will lose their sea areas and even possibly their land to China, which is why they are seeking any kind of cooperation they can obtain from Japan.”

Analysts say Japan has set precedents for this type of assistance, having previously provided coastal patrol ships, radar and communications equipment to nations in Southeast Asia like Vietnam and the Philippines as they seek to counter Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Waseda University’s Professor Ascione believes there is significant potential for Tokyo to expand similar capacity-building efforts to Pacific island states like Palau as China’s regional ambitions grow.

“And the more China becomes active in and around the Pacific islands, then there is even greater need for this kind of capacity building from Japan,” he told This Week in Asia.

While the assumption is that the Chinese research vessels are surveying for fish stocks and minerals, Shigemura warned they could also be mapping the ocean floor for potential military applications – emphasising the strategic stakes at play.

How China’s continued opening up sets country on path to better future

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3270510/how-chinas-continued-opening-sets-country-path-better-future?utm_source=rss_feed

At the third plenum of the 11th Central Committee in 1978, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping called on Communist Party cadres to “emancipate our minds, use our heads, seek truth from facts”. He would soon take charge of a country that had freshly emerged from the disastrous upheaval induced by ideological extremism and unbridled mass mobilisation.

Few in the world then could have foreseen the seismic transformations that China would undergo. In strategically privatising segments of the national economy, bolstering governmental transparency and accountability and pursuing China’s integration into the global economy, Deng and his associates did away with the prior fixation on grand narratives and set the country on a track of pragmatism-fuelled modernisation.

Nearly 50 years on, China faces a vastly different world. It has leapfrogged many countries on its way to becoming the second-largest economy in the world. The Global South is rising, albeit unevenly and with apparent internal differences. Supply chains are increasingly being disassembled and reassembled, with finance and trade flows redirected along the lines of geopolitical and regional blocs.

Yet there are also similarities between the past and present. Some observers, such as historian Niall Ferguson, have argued that the present era is one of Cold War II. The much-heralded post-Cold War ethos of win-win globalisation and free trade appears to have given way to a rude awakening that intense strategic rivalries between great powers are here to stay.

With the third plenum taking place this week, China must recognise that its fundamental recipe for success has not changed. Keeping its doors open and making way for bottom-up experimentation remain integral elements of its economic success, especially as it seeks to undertake the much-needed transformation into a knowledge-based advanced manufacturing powerhouse with a robust, affluent middle class.

First, China must empower its entrepreneurs to fill pressing gaps and elevate the experimental competitiveness of both private and state-owned enterprises. Economist Keyu Jin has pointed to the demand deficit and loss of confidence in the private sector as obstacles in China’s post-pandemic recovery. Researchers have observed that local government debt has crowded out private investment through selectively imposing funding constraints.

As a backbone of employment and growth, private firms – especially small and medium-sized enterprises – have a significant role to play in disseminating and leveraging innovation to create greater value for society. Yet in the first 11 months of 2023, fixed-asset investment of the private sector contracted by 0.5 per cent, as compared to a 6.5 per cent rise in the state sector.

Recent signals and measures such as President Xi Jinping’s meeting with prominent liberal economists and business leaders are most welcome. In addition, there was the National Development and Reform Commission’s report championing more robust financing and listing support for private enterprises while admonishing “selective” law enforcement.

However, more is needed. China must improve the consistency, certainty and clarity in its policymaking processes and communications with private firms, as well as strengthen legal protections for grass-roots entrepreneurship and civilian-led research and innovation.

While state support is crucial in overcoming overhead costs in strategic sectors such as solar panels, electric vehicles and lithium batteries, Beijing should now promote competition between well-established firms and encourage joint ventures with foreign partners instead of employing further subsidies. Such resources are best deployed elsewhere, such as launching agricultural and geriatric tech research, which could help with China’s food security and ageing population.

Second, Beijing must continually open up the country to foreigners, whether they are tourists, students or skilled labour. Zheng Yongnian, a political scientist and professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen, has called upon China to unilaterally open up to the rest of the world.

There have been recent signs of the leadership’s responding to the needs and interests of foreign businesses. These include the move to relax mainland visa restrictions for non-Chinese permanent residents in Hong Kong and the inclusion of Australia and New Zealand in the list of unilateral visa-free countries announced by Premier Li Qiang during his visit to Oceania last month.

Going forward, Beijing should expedite the expansion of the visa-free list of countries while extending automatic mainland entry visas to select groups of international students enrolled in Hong Kong. This would bolster the city’s role as a buffer zone between the mainland and the world.

More attention must be paid to the concerns and difficulties experienced by foreign firms operating in China, such as the administrative obstacles associated with legal registration, business disputes and the opacity of security laws. Robust action is needed to restore the confidence of foreign investors.

Finally, experimentation and openness require an accurate, sophisticated understanding of the outside world. The Covid-19 pandemic dealt a severe blow to people-to-people exchanges between China and the world at large.

China must not forego constructive dialogue and healthy debate with experts, groups and parties with which it does not necessarily always see eye to eye. Closed-door discussions with well-informed and well-intentioned interlocutors, even if critical, should happen more frequently and cover a wider range of issues and locations.

Loyal advice can be jarring on the ears. Positive storytelling and effusive praise are of course welcome, but it is only through informed, engaged and fair-handed responses to criticism that China can show the world at large what it truly is: a responsible power which can work constructively with others to advance the core interests of the entire world.

From humble intern to fashion icon, how China KOL Xu Yan capture 60 million hearts

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3270606/humble-intern-fashion-icon-how-china-kol-xu-yan-capture-60-million-hearts?utm_source=rss_feed

A viral video of a fashion blogger in China being proposed to in Paris which attracted a staggering 60 million views on social media has placed her life under the spotlight.

Xu Yan, better known as Teacher Xu, was once a humble newspaper intern, but she now has about 20 million followers on mainland social media platforms.

On July 13, her boyfriend, also a blogger with 3 million fans whose alias is Hangzai, proposed to her in Paris and she accepted, the news outlet Net Ease reported.

Hangzai did not tell Xu about his proposal plan.

Instead, he asked her assistant to tell her she was meeting a business partner in a luxury hotel near the Eiffel Tower.

As Xu walked onto the hotel’s balcony, which was decorated with flowers, she saw her boyfriend dressed in a white suit and holding a bunch of roses.

“A long time ago, I told Hangzai that I had never seen the Eiffel Tower on a starry night. Today, when the Eiffel Tower lights up, I become a fiancée,” Xu wrote on Weibo.

The proposal footage attracted 1.3 million likes on Douyin alone – with nearly 60 million views in total across platforms that included Weibo and Bilibili – demonstrating Xu’s popularity online in China.

But a decade ago, the now 32-year-old was just an intern at a newspaper earning 800 yuan (US$110) a month.

She had graduated from Jinan University in Guangzhou, southern Guangdong province, with a major in Chinese literature.

In the newsroom, Xu was assigned to edit articles before publishing them on the social media app WeChat.

Months later, she landed a full-time job with a local company operating its new media platform, with a monthly salary of 13,000 yuan (US$1,800).

She worked at the company during the day and made extra money in the evening by writing articles for public accounts on WeChat.

Midway through 2015, Xu quit her job to become a full-time blogger. Her content focused on love and relationships.

As her articles trended online, Xu was well rewarded with a monthly income of 50,000 yuan (US$6,800) by the end of that year, she said.

However, Xu said her enthusiasm for the topics she was focusing on soon dried up because she was so young and had limited life experience.

Instead, she chose to write about beauty and fashion, although she had little knowledge in those areas either.

Not surprisingly, many readers criticised her for not being professional, which motivated her to read about fashion and do research. Gradually, her opinions received greater recognition.

“For some years, I worked for many hours a day and took no days off. I got back home at midnight every day. So I did not know what the streets of Shenzhen (in Guangdong) looked like in the daytime,” Xu said.

Eventually, she achieved online fame.

Xu has interviewed many of China’s top stars, such as Yang Mi, Zhao Lusi and Zhu Yilong, and she is a close friend of some celebrities.

She also set up her own company Yanchi Culture to help incubate new bloggers.

Now renting a 300-sq m house in downtown Shanghai, Xu lives a life of luxury, with all the material trappings of success, such as a pair of slippers that cost 40,000 yuan (US$5,500).

“I think the secret to my success is to carry on and to work hard. Find something you love and spare no efforts in doing it. Do not consider the returns, but focus on spending your efforts. That is it,” Xu said.

Her marriage proposal video has sparked a stir on mainland social media.

“I am moved by their romance. I hope they will be happy forever,” one online observer on Weibo said.

“You note how wealthy she is, but you ignore her diligence and talent,” said another.

[Sport] China tycoon Guo Wengui found guilty of fraud in US

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce78gkd7pgjo

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The viral ‘apple fungus’ that’s intriguing the Chinese internet – and scientists

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3270655/viral-apple-fungus-thats-intriguing-chinese-internet-and-scientists?utm_source=rss_feed

A photo of an apple sprouting a mushroom-like growth has taken the Chinese internet by storm, leading researchers to investigate the unlikely pairing and what it could mean for fruit cultivation and breeding better strains of a fungus valued for its medicinal properties.

A social media user with the handle “Peirong” on the Chinese platform Xiaohongshu discovered the white fungal growth on an apple she had bought a month earlier. Her family convinced her to post a photo online, which soon attracted thousands of likes.

Among those who saw the unusual apple was Xu Rongju, a doctoral student at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Kunming Institute of Botany and Mae Fah Luang University in Thailand.

Xu identified the growth as Schizophyllum, also known as the splitgill mushroom – a type of fungus with fan-shaped caps.

Schizophyllum is found around the world and consumed as food and medicine in Asian countries. Although it is generally harmless, it can cause infections in human lungs if it is inhaled.

The fungus typically grows on things with a relatively neutral pH level, including rotten wood. However, apples are moderately acidic.

“The flesh of apples contains fruit acids, which generally do not favour the growth of fungi,” Xu said. However, Schizophyllum’s ability to resist acid might have been what allowed it to grow, according to the researcher.

Xu contacted Peirong to try to buy the apple, but the blogger said she would send the fruit to him and his fungus research group for free. The apple arrived at their lab in the city of Kunming in southwest China last week, according to media reports.

Xu observed the fungal fruiting body that had emerged from the apple, before cutting it open to look at the branching filaments, called hyphae, that extended into the apple.

The fungal species was confirmed through DNA sequencing, and fungus samples from different parts of the apple were isolated so they could be cultured in the lab to observe their growth and for use in future experiments.

Xu said his team believed that spores from the fungus might have fallen onto apples while the fruit was being transported or stored and then germinated into “wounds” on the apple stalks, later spreading into the apple flesh.

Zhejiang province, where Peirong lives and bought the apple, has had heavy rainfall and humidity this summer, which may have enabled the fungus to grow.

“Schizophyllum is a very important medicinal edible fungus with great economic and production value,” Xu said, adding that the research could be used in breeding a more adaptable or higher yield fungus.

Xu said the research could also help scientists understand Schizophyllum’s effect on apple cultivation.

“Typically, Schizophyllum prefers to grow on rotting wood. However, there have been research reports from other countries indicating that [it] can also cause apple wood rot disease,” Xu said.

In 2016, a research team from Tunisia reported that wood rot among apple trees several years earlier, which had affected the country’s biggest apple producing region, was caused by the fungus.

“Currently, there are no reports of the fungus causing large-scale disease outbreaks in apples. Therefore, the growth of white fungus on apples could provide some reference for future apple cultivation and production,” Xu said.

“We will compare it with Schizophyllum strains that we have sent into space. And we also want to taste whether it is apple-flavoured splitgill mushroom, which netizens are looking forward to.”

Xu often watches videos of mushrooms shared by other social media users and occasionally answers questions about types of fungi and whether they are edible.

“This is not the first time that netizens have helped researchers find materials,” Xu said, adding that he and his team “often receive mushrooms sent by enthusiastic netizens, and subsequent research has found that they are new species and have been successfully published”.

Mainland Chinese spend record US$9 billion on homes in Hong Kong in first half

https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3270692/mainland-chinese-spend-record-us9-billion-homes-hong-kong-first-half?utm_source=rss_feed

Buyers from mainland China are a force to be reckoned with in Hong Kong Kong’s property market.

Mainlanders spent a record HK$70.5 billion (US$9.03 billion) in the first half, a year-on-year increase of 42 per cent, on new and lived-in homes, according to Centaline Property Agency, one of the largest real estate consultancies in the city.

They accounted for 6,117 deals, also a record and 70 per cent higher from a year earlier, according to data compiled by the property agency. Buyers from the mainland accounted for one in five residential transactions in the city from January to June.

In 1997, when homes in the city sold for an average of HK$7,808 (US$1,000) per square foot, mainlanders only accounted for 1 to 2 per cent of residential transactions.

“Mainland buyers choose to buy property in Hong Kong for many reasons, including immigration and settlement, investment and for education purposes,” Louis Chan Wing-kit, CEO of the residential division of Centaline, said on Tuesday.

The surge in property demand from mainlanders came after the government scrapped the decade-old property market curbs in February, giving the market an immediate boost. The government withdrew the Buyer’s Stamp Duty that targeted non-permanent residents and a New Residential Stamp Duty for second-time purchasers. Homeowners were also given a reprieve from paying Special Stamp Duty if they sold within two years.

“Since the lifting of the property curbs in February, the cost of buying a flat in the city for mainland Chinese has decreased by 30 per cent, hence the surge that we have seen in the first half,” Chan said.

The draw of relaxed curbs is likely to lose its lustre, he added, predicting that the ratio of mainland buyers will decrease to 10 per cent in the third and fourth quarters.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority complemented the government’s efforts with higher loan amounts for eligible buyers. Homes valued at less than HK$30 million are now eligible for 70 per cent mortgage financing, compared with the previous cap of 60 per cent for flats valued between HK$15 million and HK$30 million.

The incentives are also aimed at global talent, which Hong Kong is keen to attract through programmes such as the Top Talent Pass Scheme rolled out in December 2022. The scheme aims to lure individuals with annual incomes of at least HK$2.5 million and graduates from the world’s top 100 universities who have worked for three of the past five years.

In the first half, mainlanders bought a third of the new flats sold in the city. They bought more than 3,000 of the 8,974 units sold from January to June, according to Centaline. They made up for 40 per cent of the HK$109.7 billion deal value in the same period.

This shows mainland buyers are an “indispensable source of income for developers”, Chan said.

Stewart Leung Chi-kin, the chairman of the Real Estate Developers Association of Hong Kong, as well as Wheelock Properties, said the benefits of Hong Kong’s talent programmes and the government’s initiatives to boost the economy are likely to trickle down to the property market.

“I believe Hong Kong’s property market has the ability to rebound,” Leung said, predicting that the city’s economy is likely to recover by the end of the year.

“Likewise, property prices can be expected to increase at least 5 per cent,” he added

Additional reporting by Salina Li

China’s caviar is roe-mancing the world as sales go swimmingly, exporters reel in profits

https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3270643/chinas-caviar-roe-mancing-world-sales-go-swimmingly-exporters-reel-profits?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese caviar is increasingly finding its way to dining tables worldwide due to improved quality and an efficient cold-chain delivery system, making the country the world’s biggest exporter of caviar despite US tariffs.

Data from the International Trade Centre (ITC) shows China exported 276 tonnes of caviar to the global market in 2023, up 3 per cent from a year prior and nearly twice as much as in 2019, when 140 tonnes were exported.

With a unit price of nearly US$300 per kilo, up 4 per cent year on year, Chinese caviar exports generated US$82.7 million in 2023, accounting for about 40 per cent of the global market share.

“At first, our caviar faced concerns from foreign customers due to past perceptions of affordability over quality in Chinese food products,” said Wang Bin, president of caviar juggernaut Hangzhou Qiandaohu Xunlong Sci-Tech, which sells the popular Kaluga Queen brand.

“However, with superior quality, competitive pricing, and exceptional customer service, Chinese caviar has been capturing a larger share of the global market in recent years.”

By total production, China now accounts for more than 50 per cent of the world’s annual production, Wang said. Major buyers include the US and EU countries.

In 2018, as the trade war between the US and China intensified, Washington imposed a 25 per cent additional tariff on a range of Chinese goods, including caviar. This raised the total tariff from 15 per cent to 40 per cent on Chinese caviar to the world’s biggest caviar importer.

As a result, the “landed duty paid” price of Chinese caviar increased by about 30 per cent to US$293 per kilo in 2019, according to data from the US government.

But contrary to initial concern that additional tariffs might hinder its caviar exports, China remains the most important source of US caviar imports. In 2023, 60 per cent of imported caviar in the US came from China, according to official trade data.

While caviar’s long-held luxury status keeps it off most plates, for its targeted consumers, quality reigns supreme, said Wang. Price fluctuations matter less as long as the flavour remains exquisite. He said that technological breakthroughs have allowed his company to breed unique sturgeons that yield large, flavorful roe with faster maturation, boosting the quality and productivity.

Despite the increase, Chinese caviar maintains its price advantages compared with historically renowned producers such as Iran and France. In 2023, caviar exported from Iran cost more than US$2,000 per kilo, more than six times that from China. French caviar, at about US$700 per kilo, was also more than double the price of China’s, according to the ITC.

Shawn Wang, CMO at Tendata, a Shanghai-based provider of global trade data, said China’s technological advancements in storing and transporting caviar have made it more cost-effective.

“The strong cold-chain logistics system gives China a significant edge in the global market,” he said. “This means that companies can consistently transport temperature-sensitive goods all the way from farms and factories to processing plants and finally to international customers at a relatively lower cost compared with companies in developed countries.”

But while caviar is popular in the global market, it remains relatively niche in China, he added, noting how it can take time to acquire a taste for the delicacy.

Wang Bin agreed, pointing out how only 20 per cent of his company’s caviar sales are from the domestic market.

“But China has shown a strong openness to foreign cuisine as is now a major market for many Western foods,” Wang Bin said. “I believe caviar will eventually gain popularity in China, too.

“What’s more, in case of any more trade barriers in the future, increasing domestic sales would help mitigate the impact.”

China’s second-largest car dealer faces forced delisting as investors snub its shares

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3270694/chinas-second-largest-car-dealer-faces-forced-delisting-investors-snub-its-shares?utm_source=rss_feed

China Grand Automotive Service, the mainland’s second-largest car dealer in terms of sales, is set to be expelled from the Shanghai Stock Exchange after its shares traded below their par value for 20 consecutive days, the latest sign of cracks appearing in the world’s largest vehicle market.

The Shanghai-based company plunged by the 10 per cent daily trading limit on Tuesday, ending at 0.87 yuan (12 US cents). It was the 19th trading session in a row that Grand Automotive saw its shares crash below the 1 yuan threshold.

Even if it were to jump by the daily trading cap of 10 per cent on Wednesday, it would not be able to break through the 1 yuan mark. According to exchange rules, a stock has to terminate trading and face delisting after its shares trade below the 1 yuan face value for 20 straight days.

“The company’s shares are being snubbed by investors, which reflects their bearish view about the business outlook for car dealers,” said Ding Haifeng, a consultant at Shanghai-based financial ­advisory firm Integrity. “Increasing electric vehicle (EV) adoption, new sales models and intensified competition make it extremely difficult for distributors of petrol cars to survive.”

Grand Automotive would become the second car dealer to be disqualified from the bourse in about a year, following the delisting of Pang Da Automobile Trade in June, 2023.

Through more than 730 outlets across the country, it sells premium cars under brands such as BMW, Audi and Volvo.

In 2023, Grand Automotive, which is controlled by Xinjiang Guanghui Industry Investment Group, reported deliveries of 713,500 vehicles, which raked in 138 billion yuan. It trailed only Zhongsheng Group Holdings in terms of sales.

The car dealer posted a net profit of 392 million yuan last year, a turnaround from a net loss of 2.66 billion yuan in 2022.

As of Tuesday, Grand Automotive was valued at 7.2 billion yuan based on the closing price of 0.87 yuan.

Electric vehicle penetration in China, the world’s largest automotive and electric car market, has surged to 40 per cent from about 1 per cent a decade ago as millions of petrol vehicles are replaced by battery-powered vehicles featuring autonomous driving technology and digital cockpits.

At present most EV brands, from Tesla to start-ups like Nio and Xpeng, build and run their own sales networks by using e-commerce platforms to woo young customers.

China’s automotive sector, which is mired in overcapacity woes, is facing an uphill battle to improve profitability amid an escalating price war.

Among the top players, only BYD, the world’s bestselling EV maker, and Li Auto, a direct rival to Tesla on the mainland, have reported profits so far this year.

In April, Goldman Sachs predicted in a research report that another cut of 10,300 yuan per vehicle by BYD, or 7 per cent of the company’s average selling price, could drive the nation’s EV industry into losses this year.

Cui Dongshu, general ­secretary of the China Passenger Car Association, said in February that most mainland carmakers were likely to continue offering discounts to retain market share.

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China’s third plenum: Xi Jinping tells party to show ‘unwavering faith’ in reform plan

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3270696/chinas-third-plenum-xi-jinping-tells-party-show-unwavering-faith-reform-plan?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese President Xi Jinping – hailed by official media as a “supreme reformist” – has told the Communist Party to show “unwavering faith and commitment” to his grand strategy even as international investment banks cut their forecast for China’s growth,

The party’s elite Central Committee is currently in the middle of the third plenum, a key policy meeting that will determine the country’s development plan for the next five to 10 years.

The gathering in Beijing is being held against the backdrop of an increasingly complex and challenging environment at home and abroad.

On Tuesday the country released weaker-than-expected growth figures for the year’s first half, prompting some investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, to cut their annual growth forecast for the world’s second-largest economy.

Elsewhere, the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House has raised concerns that Washington will adopt a more hawkish policy towards China at a time when the European Union is also stepping up the pressure on Beijing.

As Xi prepared to deliver a work report behind closed doors, the party’s leading theoretical journal Qiushi published a rallying cry by the Chinese leader on Tuesday under the headline “Maintaining Self-Confidence and Self-Reliance”.

It called on party members to show unwavering faith and commitment to the development path China has charted for itself and warned there is no “ready-made solution” or “foreign instruction manual” it can follow.

The journal also published excerpts from his previous speeches, including a passage that said: “China’s economy did not collapse in the past because of the ‘China collapse theory’, and it will not stop growing because of rhetoric claiming China has plateaued. China’s development prospects are bright, and we have belief and confidence.”

This, together with articles published in other official outlets, including one by state news agency Xinhua that hailed him as a “thoroughbred reformer”, suggests that there will not be any significant directional shift.

Instead, Beijing is likely to stick to its development strategy focusing on technology, advanced manufacturing and other sectors considered critical to the nation’s overall strength.

While this may differ from the typical Western understanding of “reform” – which implies market liberalisation – it is consistent with Xi’s vision, which is about improving the party’s governance and delivering China’s “great rejuvenation”.

Hailing Xi as a “statesman, thinker and strategist”, Xinhua said he has “always shouldered the heavy responsibilities of reform” and “personally reviewed and revised all major plans”.

It also described him as “another outstanding reformer in the country after Deng Xiaoping” and noted that the two paramount leaders “each faced strikingly different historical circumstances”.

Deng had to build up a poverty-stricken China from scratch while Xi had taken over when the country was already the second biggest economy in the world, but many of the advantages that had helped it develop rapidly – such as cheap labour – were already starting to diminish.

“Instead of resting on the laurels of his predecessors, Xi was committed to carrying on reform, even though he knew how hard it would be,” Xinhua said, adding that he had played a role in all China’s major reforms throughout his career.

Another Xinhua article said Xi had chaired 72 meetings since coming to power in 2013 and been in direct charge of all reform programmes since then.

Xie Maosong, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Strategic Studies at Tsinghua University, said the official messaging clearly signalled that Xi would not be deflected from his chosen path and will institutionalise his brand of reform to ensure it becomes “a major political legacy”.

Deng Yuwen, a former deputy editor of Study Times, the Central Party School’s official newspaper, cautioned that the party must keep an eye on public sentiment as discontent about the weakening economy grows.

“Chinese people today tend to blame unequal opportunities and an unfair system rather than their own lack of ability for their poor economic status, according to a recent survey [by US-based by Big Data China],” he said.

“The public wants more upwards mobility, fairer job opportunities and basic things such as food safety. The party must demonstrate that they can deliver these goals.”

d safety. The party must demonstrate that they can deliver these goals.”