Month: April 2023

Evergrande extends deadline for debtholders to agree to restructuring plan

Media Library

Evergrande has extended a scheme designed to persuade creditors to agree to its long-awaited offshore restructuring plan, reflecting challenges for the property developer as it seeks to recover from its default 18 months ago. The company, whose cash crunch in late 2021 contributed to a sector-wide liquidity crisis that continues to drag down growth in China, said earlier in April that a major group of investors had backed its plan to exchange their holdings for new notes and instruments. But this week Evergrande said in a stock exchange filing that…

The Shining Promise and Dashed Dreams of China’s Live Shopping Craze

Chin@Strategy

A High-Tech New Opportunity Growing up, Taiping could hardly have imagined making a fortune by any means, let alone by talking into his phone. Born in the plains of Inner Mongolia, a region in northern China where temperatures can plummet to minus 20 degrees, he left school after fifth grade, working as a herdsman, security guard and truck driver. He hardly spoke Mandarin, China’s dominant language, as his schoolteachers had taught mostly in Mongolian. In 2015, noticing that his town’s scenic grasslands were attracting tourists, Taiping, then 30 years old, decided…

State-run China Telecom unveils own ChatGPT-like service, joining generative AI competition with Baidu and Alibaba

Media Library

The telecoms firm rose to become the third-largest player in the market in the second half of 2022, with 10.3 per cent market share, behind Alibaba at 31.9 per cent and Huawei Technologies at 12.1 per cent, according to market research firm IDC. Tencent Holdings fell to fourth place with 9.9 per cent of the market. Earlier this month, Alibaba launched its own ChatGPT-like service called Tongyi Qianwen for corporate clients. It has already embedded the technology into the enterprise collaboration platform DingTalk, and plans to integrate it into Tmall…

Bank of Japan drops part of forward guidance on rates and starts policy review

Media Library

The Bank of Japan has scrapped a key part of its forward guidance on interest rates in Kazuo Ueda’s first board meeting as governor, signalling the first step towards unwinding its ultra-loose monetary policy. The yen fell sharply on Friday as the 71-year-old economist played it safe during his debut, announcing a comprehensive review of the BoJ’s policies while holding off from revising its longstanding yield curve control measures. Ueda became the first academic to take the helm of Japan’s central bank this year, with the job of laying the…

Tech war: Huawei Q1 revenue stagnates as tech giant struggles to counter US sanctions

Chin@Strategy

Huawei’s profit fell nearly 70 per cent for the full year of 2022. “As a company, we have no capability to change the geopolitics or the environment, we can only adapt to that environment,” chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou said at the company’s annual report press conference last month. Huawei is still scrambling to adapt its production of smartphones and telecoms network equipment to the “new normal” of trade restrictions, which were tightened by Washington in 2020. The sanctions cover Huawei’s access to advanced semiconductors developed or produced using US…

Can China broker peace in Ukraine? Don’t rule it out | Rajan Menon and Daniel R DePetris

Chin@Strategy

Rajan Menon Daniel R DePetris Xi Jinping’s phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy was a long time coming, but it should not have come as a surprise. Beijing is on everyone’s shortlist when it comes to prospective peacemakers in Ukraine. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is no exception. “I know I can count on you to bring back Russia to reason and everyone back to the negotiating table,” Macron told the Chinese leader during their meeting in Beijing this month. Though Xi replied that he would call the Ukrainian president, he…

Australian government resists blanket WeChat ban despite restrictions by multiple departments

Chin@Strategy

The Australian government is resisting issuing a ban on WeChat on government devices despite many government departments instituting their own bans after the TikTok edict earlier this month. TikTok was banned from government devices in early April over data collection and security concerns connected to the Chinese government. The move followed a review by the home affairs department which examined a range of social media platforms, but TikTok was the only app singled out for an immediate ban. At the time TikTok was banned, dozens of federal departments had already…

‘India’s century’: can the most populous nation unlock the potential of its youth?

Media Library

Noida, just outside Delhi, didn’t even exist until about 50 years ago. Today it is home to some 1mn people, and replete with condos, factories, and an airport due to open next year, which are swallowing up land where villages and farms used to be. It is one of the capital’s new satellite cities, where India’s biggest metropolis — with more than 30mn people — spills into three neighbouring states. Cities like Noida have sprung up as India’s population has steadily grown in past decades. This month, that growth passed…

Germany’s China dilemma takes on a new urgency

Media Library

The writer directs the Center on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution An eye-catching phrase in the UK’s most recent national strategy document — the awkwardly named “Integrated Review Refresh 2023” — notes that western allies increasingly agree that “the prosperity and security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific are inextricably linked.” Everything Everywhere All At Once would be an equally accurate description of the current geopolitical mood. And that is why Germany, while straining to help Ukraine defend itself against its Russian attacker, is currently racing to reduce…

Tesla rival BYD’s profit soars more than 400% in first quarter

Media Library

Tesla rival BYD has reported a more than fivefold jump in net income for the first quarter as the Warren Buffett-backed Chinese group shook off a rabid price war and slower sales growth that hit foreign and local rivals in China. BYD said on Thursday net income rose 411 per cent to Rmb4.1bn ($593mn) in the first three months of the year as the Shenzhen-based group expanded its dominance in plug-in hybrid and battery-powered electric vehicles in China. The result beat market expectations and follows a blockbuster 400 per cent…