Tag: china

China’s services activity eases in April but still solid, Caixin PMI shows

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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China’s services activity expansion slowed a touch amid rising costs, but growth in new orders accelerated and business sentiment rose solidly in a boost to hopes of a sustained economic recovery, a private sector survey showed on Monday.

The Caixin/S&P Global services purchasing managers’ index (PMI) eased to 52.5 from a 52.7 in March, remaining in expansionary territory for the 16th straight month. The 50-mark separates expansion from contraction.

The world’s second-largest economy grew faster than expected in the first quarter but it is still facing a host of challenges including a prolonged property slump and lacklustre domestic demand.
“The strong start to the year is consistent with the Caixin manufacturing and services PMIs, which have remained in expansionary territory for several straight months,” said Wang Zhe, Senior Economist at Caixin Insight Group.

Overall new business hit the highest since May last year, while better overseas demand and growth in tourism activity helped propel growth in new export orders to their fastest pace in ten months.
That in turn helped lift business confidence among Chinese service providers in the 12 months ahead to the highest this year.
Companies did continue to face some cost pressure, with input price rises for material, labour and energy though the uptick remained below the long-run survey average. That led firms to increase prices charged to their customers, while they remained reluctant to fill vacancies created by departures.
“Consistent efforts should be made to ensure earlier policies are implemented effectively and promptly, maintaining the current economic recovery momentum and eventually improving overall market expectations,” Wang said.
Economists say the Caixin survey is skewed more towards smaller, export-led firms than the much broader official PMI, which showed a sharp slowdown in services sector activity for last month.

The Caixin/S&P’s composite PMI, which tracks both the services and manufacturing sectors, rose to 52.8 last month from 52.7 in March, marking the fastest pace since May in 2023.

China’s economy has struggled to mount a solid post-COVID revival, mainly due to the ripple effects on confidence and demand stemming from a prolonged property sector crisis.

While pockets of strength in the first quarter GDP report raised hopes of a steady recovery through the rest of the year, the general consensus among economists is that a robust revival is some way off.

Investors and analysts say China’s structural reform efforts must go hand-in-hand with greater stimulus measures to foster a stronger and sustainable economic recovery.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

China successfully launches lunar probe mission to collect samples for first time from far side of moon

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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China on Friday launched a 53-day-long lunar probe mission to collect samples for the first time from the far side of the moon and bring them for scientific studies. The Chang’e-6 mission is tasked with collecting and then returning samples from the moon’s far side to Earth — the first endeavour of its kind in the history of human lunar exploration, China National Space Administration (CNSA) said.

The entire mission would last for 53 days. The far side of the moon is not visible from Earth. An hour after the launch, an official announced that Chang’e-6’s launch was “a complete success”.

The lunar probe was carried by a Long March-5 Y8 rocket blasted off smoothly from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the coast of China’s southern island province of Hainan. The launch was telecast live by state-run television. Chang’e 6 consists of four components: an orbiter, a lander, an ascender and a re-entry module, according to CNSA.

After collecting dust and rocks on the moon, the ascender will transport the samples to the lunar orbiter for transfer to the re-entry module, which will carry them back to Earth. The CNSA said earlier that the mission is poised to make breakthroughs in key technologies, such as automatic sample collection, take-off and ascent from the far side of the moon. Meanwhile, the probe will carry out scientific exploration of the landing zone.

The CNSA has announced that scientific instruments from France, Italy and the European Space Agency/Sweden will be on board the lander of the Chang’e-6 mission and a Pakistani payload on the orbiter. This is the first time that China has included an orbiter from its all-weather ally Pakistan in its moon mission.

According to reports from Pakistan quoting the Institute of Space Technology (IST), the satellite ICUBE-Q has been designed and developed by IST in collaboration with China’s Shanghai University SJTU and Pakistan’s national space agency Suparco. ICUBE-Q orbiter carries two optical cameras to image the lunar surface.

The Chang’e lunar exploration probe is named after the Chinese mythical moon goddess. The Chang’e 5 brought samples from the moon’s near side. Chinese said the analysis of the samples found they contained water in tiny beads embedded in lunar dirt.

China also plans to have a lunar station on the moon in future. A major space power, China in the past successfully launched unmanned missions to the moon, including landing a rover. China has also sent a rover to Mars and built a space station, which is currently in operation.

Earlier, China announced plans for a manned lunar landing by 2030. India became the first country to land near the little-explored lunar south pole region last year when its Chandrayaan-3’s lander, carrying the Pragyaan rover successfully landed there.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

China’s highway collapse: Search persists as death toll rises to 48

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The death toll climbed to 48 on Thursday as search efforts continued in southeastern China after a highway section collapsed in a mountainous area, sending more than 20 cars down a steep slope.

Officials in the city of Meizhou said three other people were unidentified, pending DNA testing. It wasn’t immediately clear if they had died, which would bring the death toll to 51. Another 30 people had non-life-threatening injuries.

The collapse happened about 2 a.m. on Wednesday after a month of heavy rains in a mountainous part of Guangdong province. Vehicles fell down the slope and sent up flames as they caught fire.

The search was still ongoing, Meizhou city Mayor Wang Hui said at a late-afternoon news conference. No foreigners have been found among the victims, he said.

Search work has been hampered by rain and land and gravel sliding down the slope. The disaster left a curving earth-colored gash in the otherwise verdant forest landscape.

“Because some of the vehicles involved caught fire, the difficulty of the rescue operation has increased,” said Wen Yongdeng, the Communist Party secretary for the Meizhou emergency management bureau.

“Most of the vehicles were buried in soil during the collapse process, with a large volume of soil covering them,” he said.

He added that the prolonged heavy rainfall has saturated soil in the area, “making it prone to secondary disasters during the rescue process.”

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Highway collapse in China claims 36 lives, sends over 20 vehicles tumbling down slope

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A section of a highway collapsed after heavy rains in a mountainous area in southern China, sending cars tumbling down a slope and leaving at least 36 people dead, authorities said Thursday.

The Meizhou city government said that 23 vehicles have been found after a 17.9-meter (58.7-foot) long section of the highway gave way about 2 a.m. on Wednesday. Thirty other people had injuries, none of them life-threatening, a government statement said.

The search effort was complicated by steady rain, gravel and soil coming down at the site, posing some risk to the workers, a fire department official told Chinese media.

Rescue teams divided the area into 10 grids and searched with dogs and life-detecting devices, the report said. Excavators and cranes were also brought in to help.

The collapse left a barren scar down a steep slope in an otherwise verdant green forested area. Witnesses told local media they heard a loud noise and saw a wide hole open up behind them after driving past the section just before it collapsed.

Video and photos in local media showed smoke and fire at the scene, with a highway guardrail leaning down into the flames. A pile of blackened cars could be seen on the slope leading down from the highway.

A photo later showed a construction crane lowering a mangled car to the road surface, near three other similarly wrecked vehicles. All appeared to have been burned out.

Over 56 centimetres (22 inches) of rain has fallen in the past four weeks in the county where the roadway collapsed, more than four times as much as last year. Some villages in Meizhou flooded in early April, and the city has seen heavy rain in recent days.

Parts of Guangdong province have seen record rains and flooding in the past two weeks, as well as hail. A tornado killed five people in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, last weekend.

Heavy rain and flooding pose a special risk to mountain roadways and highway bridges because of erosion, debris flows and landslides. China has massively expanded its infrastructure in recent years, adding more than 1 million highway bridges, the world’s largest network of high-speed trains and scores of new airports.

In the rush to build, flaws in design and construction methods have frequently come to light, while regular inspections and maintenance are sometimes given short shrift. Dozens have died in recent years in tunnel collapses and floods, including 14 who drowned in subway trains in the central city of Zhengzhou during massive flooding that killed around 300 people.

Subsequent reports said the system had not been prevented with adequate and other equipment and that officials failed to suspend service as they should have under government directives.

China’s overseas projects such as roads and dams under the Belt and Road Initiative have also been criticized for design problems and poor quality, potentially posing a challenge to its efforts to build its influence in the developing world.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

US urges China, Russia to declare only humans, not AI, control nuclear weapons

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A senior US official on Thursday urged China and Russia to match declarations by the United States and others that only humans, and never artificial intelligence, would make decisions on deploying nuclear weapons.

State Department arms control official Paul Dean told an online briefing that Washington had made a “clear and strong commitment” that humans had total control over nuclear weapons, adding that France and Britain had done the same.

“We would welcome a similar statement by China and the Russian Federation,” said Dean, principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability.

“We think it is an extremely important norm of responsible behaviour and we think it is something that would be very welcome in a P5 context,” he said, referring to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

Dean’s remarks come as the administration of US President Joe Biden tries to deepen separate discussions with China over both nuclear weapons policy and the growth of artificial intelligence.

The Chinese defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The spread of artificial intelligence technology surfaced during sweeping talks between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on April 26.

The two sides agreed to hold their first bilateral talks on artificial intelligence in the coming weeks, Blinken said, adding that they would share views on how best to manage risks and safety surrounding the technology.

As part of normalising military communications, US and Chinese officials resumed nuclear weapons discussions in January, but formal arms control negotiations are not expected any time soon.

China, which is expanding its nuclear weapons capabilities, urged in February that the largest nuclear powers should first negotiate a no-first-use treaty between each other.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Highway collapse in China’s southern Guangdong province leaves at least 24 dead

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A section of a highway collapsed early Wednesday in southern China, sending cars tumbling and leaving at least 24 people dead, according to state media.

Eighteen cars fell down a slope after a 17.9-meter (58.7-foot) long section of the highway collapsed, according to a statement from authorities in Meizhou city in Guangdong province. The incident occurred around 2 am.

The death toll had risen to 24 by Wednesday afternoon, according to China’s official Xinhua News agency.

Parts of Guangdong province has seen record rains and flooding in the past two weeks, as well as hail. Some villages in Meizhou had flooded in early April, and the city had seen heavy rains in recent days.

Witnesses told local media they heard a loud noise and saw a hole open up several meters wide behind them after driving past the section of the road just before it collapsed.

Video and photos in local media showed smoke and fire at the scene, with highway rails slanting downward into the flames. A pile of blackened cars could also be seen on the slope leading down from the highway.

The ground beneath the highway appeared to have caved in, along with the section of the road that had broken off.

Rescue workers have taken 30 people to the hospital, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Chinese scientist who first published COVID sequence protests after being locked out of his lab

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China was staging a sit-in protest after authorities locked him out of his lab.

Virologist Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post Monday that he and his team had been suddenly notified they were being evicted from their lab, the latest in a series of setbacks, demotions and ousters since Zhang published the sequence in January 2020 without state approval. The move shows how the Chinese state continues to pressure and control scientists conducting research on the coronavirus.

News of Zhang’s protest spread widely on Chinese social media, attracting public attention. In an online statement, the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center said that Zhang’s lab was being renovated and was closed for “safety reasons.” It added that it had provided Zhang’s team an alternative laboratory space.

In response, Zhang wrote online that his team wasn’t offered an alternative lab until after they were notified of their eviction, and that the lab offered didn’t meet safety standards for conducting their research, leaving his team in limbo.

When Zhang tried to enter his lab over the weekend, guards barred him from entering. In protest, he sat outside on flattened cardboard in drizzling rain, pictures from the scene posted online show.

“I won’t leave, I won’t quit, I am pursuing science and the truth!” he wrote in a post on Chinese social media platform Weibo that was later deleted. “The Public Health Center are refusing to let me and my students go inside the laboratory office to take shelter.”

Zhang said it was “inconvenient” for him to speak when an AP reporter reached him by phone on Tuesday, saying there were other people listening in. But in an email to collaborator Edward Holmes seen by AP, Zhang confirmed he was sleeping outside his lab after guards barred him from entering.

An AP reporter was blocked by a guard at an entrance to the compound where Zhang’s lab is located. A staff member at the National Health Commission, China’s top health authority, said by phone that they were not the main department in charge and referred questions to the Shanghai government. The Shanghai government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Zhang’s ordeal started when he and his team sequenced the virus on Jan. 5, 2020 and wrote an internal notice warning Chinese authorities of its potential to spread. At the time, Zhang had not yet made the sequence public. The next day, Zhang’s lab was ordered temporarily shut by China’s top health official, and Zhang came under pressure by Chinese authorities.

Foreign scientists soon learned that Zhang and other Chinese scientists had sequenced the virus but had not yet been permitted to publish them, prompting public calls for publication. In response, Zhang published his sequence of the coronavirus on Jan. 11, 2020, despite a lack of government permission.

The move allowed health authorities around the world to begin testing for the virus, revealing that it was spreading outside China’s borders and triggering the development of test kits, vaccinations and disease control measures. Zhang was later awarded prizes in recognition.

But Zhang’s publication of the sequence also prompted additional scrutiny of his lab, according to Holmes, Zhang’s collaborator and a virologist at the University of Sydney. Zhang was removed from a post at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and barred from collaborating with some of his former partners, crippling his research.

“Ever since he defied the authorities by releasing the genome sequence of the virus that causes COVID-19 there has been a campaign against him,” Holmes said. “He’s been broken by this process and I’m amazed he has been able to work at all.”

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

China’s factory activity holds up, signaling recovery has legs

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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China’s factory activity expanded for a second month, the best streak in more than a year, bolstering hopes that the rebound in the world’s second-biggest economy can be sustained.

The official manufacturing purchasing manager index was 50.4 in April, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday. That compares with a median forecast of 50.3 in a Bloomberg survey, and a figure of 50.8 last month. Any reading above 50 points to an expansion.

The non-manufacturing measure of activity in construction and services was 51.2, compared with a forecast of 52.3 and a March reading of 53.

The factory gauge offers encouragement to Chinese policymakers who are relying on the country’s industrial producers to offset weak domestic demand and help the economy meet this year’s growth target of around 5%. It’s the first major signal of China’s economic activity in the second quarter of 2024. In the first quarter, an initial bounce was followed by a slowdown in March across a slew of indicators.

Analysts say Beijing will likely need to boost public spending and cut interest rates in order to hit its growth goal, amid concern that a lopsided recovery will be hard to sustain as household spending remains weighed down by China’s real estate slump.

The government is betting that an export-led factory boom can compensate, even though there are mounting geopolitical threats to that strategy. Western countries accuse China of building excess capacity in its industries and dumping cheap products abroad, and warn they may erect new trade barriers. A surprise decline in Chinese industrial profits last month also underscored the risks.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Chinese firms ‘go underground’ on Russia payments as banks pull back fearing US sanctions

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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An appliance maker in southern China is finding it hard to ship its products to Russia, not because of any problems with the gadgets but because China’s big banks are throttling payments for such transactions out of concern over US sanctions.

To settle payments for its electrical goods, the Guangdong-based company is considering using currency brokers active along China‘s border with Russia, said the company’s founder, Wang, who asked to be identified only by his family name.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Elon Musk leaves China with Tesla driving software hurdles cleared with Baidu deal

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Elon Musk’s quick visit to China paid immediate dividends, with Tesla Inc. clearing two key hurdles to introduce its driver-assistance system to the world’s biggest auto market.

The US carmaker will partner with Chinese tech giant Baidu Inc. for mapping and navigation functions to deploy what it calls Full-Self Driving, or FSD, according to people familiar with the matter. Tesla has also passed a key data security and privacy requirement in China, which would help ease some of the concerns over bringing FSD to market.

Baidu shares rose as much as 7% in Hong Kong trading.

The moves come after Tesla Chief Executive Office Elon Musk made an unannounced trip to China on Sunday, seeking approval for driver-assistance software that could help arrest the carmaker’s revenue decline. While the suite of features requires constant supervision and doesn’t make Teslas autonomous, the company charges $8,000 in the US to buy FSD outright, or $99 a month for a subscription.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Chinese officials told Tesla that Beijing has tentatively approved the company’s plan to launch its FSD feature in the country, citing people familiar with the matter.

Musk met Sunday with Premier Li Qiang, who as the Chinese Communist Party secretary for Shanghai helped the company set up what is now its top plant globally. His private jet left Beijing on Monday, according to FlightRadar24.

Honored to meet with Premier Li Qiang.

We have known each other now for many years, since early Shanghai days. pic.twitter.com/JCnv6MbZ6W

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2024

While Tesla initially enjoyed a red-carpet welcome in China, its fortunes have faded more recently as it faces tougher competition from domestic EV makers like BYD Co. and Li Auto Inc. Tesla’s share of China’s auto market shrank to around 6.7% in the fourth quarter of 2023, from 10.5% in the first quarter of last year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on China’s Passenger Car Association data.

Advanced driver-assistance systems are becoming increasingly common in China, with many local players including Xpeng Inc. and Xiaomi Corp. using such features as a selling point for vehicles.

Approval for FSD in China would be a major boost for Tesla, which is coming off its first year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue since 2020. Even after slashing prices, the company sold fewer cars in the first quarter. Musk is cutting headcount by at least 10% and looking to accelerate new models, including less-expensive vehicles, that could be ready by early 2025, if not before year-end.

Musk’s surprise China visit is “a watershed moment,” Wedbush Securities senior analyst Dan Ives said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “This could open up FSD in China, which I view as unlocking what really could be the golden opportunity for them.”

Teaming with Baidu — one of about only 20 qualified suppliers with the country’s top-level mapping credentials that can be applied to driver-assistance functions — will allow Tesla to tap the Chinese company’s vehicle lane-level navigation and mapping services. Tesla has been using Baidu for in-car mapping and navigation apps since 2020.

While getting the green light for FSD in China might help Tesla claw back some lost ground, the system has proved problematic in the US. The top US auto-safety regulator has just opened a probe into the company’s less-capable Autopilot system, citing 20 crashes that have occurred since December involving vehicles that received an over-the-air software update.

During an earnings call last week, Musk emphasised the importance of autonomous-driving development, saying that people who doubt Tesla’s ability to “solve” autonomy shouldn’t invest in the company.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow