Month: September 2023

Rocket failure marks rare setback for China’s satellite network plans

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Beijing-based Galactic Energy’s winning record of nine successful launch missions for its Ceres-1 rocket ended on Thursday, potentially delaying the expansion of China’s Jilin-1, the world’s largest Earth observation satellite network. Its latest rocket failed to send a high-resolution imaging satellite into orbit. The company made the announcement six hours after the 12.59pm Beijing time lift-off from the Jiuquan satellite launch centre in the Gobi desert. “Abnormal performance was detected during the flight of the rocket. The specific reasons are being further analysed and investigated,” Galactic Energy said on its…

Bank of Japan maintains ultra-low interest rates

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Receive free Bank of Japan updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Bank of Japan news every morning. The Bank of Japan has maintained its low interest rates, signalling that it will remain in stimulus mode despite mounting speculation in financial markets that an exit from decades of ultra-loose monetary policy was in sight. In a statement accompanying its decision on Friday, the BoJ noted “extremely high uncertainties” surrounding economies and markets at home and abroad. Traders in Tokyo said markets would primarily be…

A Chinese Journalist Gave #MeToo Victims a Voice. Now She’s on Trial.

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After two years in detention, a Chinese journalist who spoke up against sexual harassment stood trial on subversion charges on Friday along with a labor rights activist, the latest example of Beijing’s intensified crackdown on civil society. Huang Xueqin, an independent journalist who was once a prominent voice in China’s #MeToo movement, and her friend Wang Jianbing, the activist, were taken away by the police in September 2021 and later charged with inciting subversion of state power. Their trial was held at the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court in southern China.…

Biden raised Canadian Sikh’s death with India’s Modi at G20

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Receive free Canada updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Canada news every morning. Joe Biden and other western leaders expressed concern to Narendra Modi about Canadian claims that New Delhi was involved in the murder of a Sikh separatist in Vancouver when they met the Indian prime minister at the G20 summit this month. Three people familiar with the discussions at the summit said several members of the Five Eyes — an intelligence-sharing network that includes the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New…

On International Peace Day Women’s Critical Role Highlighted

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On this International Day of Peace, and on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the United States announced new initiatives to help consolidate the role women play in building peace and strengthening security around the world. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the details. Camera: Veronica Balderas Iglesias Voice of America

Real Estate Crisis Triggers New Alarms Over China’s Shadow Banks

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An accountant in northeast China deposited her life savings and received a letter guaranteeing her investment in a trust firm. Workers at a state-owned utility pooled money from friends and relatives believing that their investments were backed by the government. A man sank $140,000 into an account that he was told would make a 10.1 percent annual return. They are among the hundreds of thousands of Chinese investors confronting a distressing reality: Their investments with Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, a financial giant managing $140 billion in assets, and its trust banking…

Fukushima nuclear readings discrepancy, China’s middle class shun luxury spending, Hong Kong’s expat woes: SCMP’s 7 highlights

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We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. What’s wrong with radiation readings at the Fukushima power plant? The numbers were within safety limits, but they did not add up. As Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant pumped seawater in and released treated waste water, some gamma radiation readings varied when they should…

How Xi Jinping is taking control of China’s stock market

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When Jilin Joinature Polymer made its debut on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on September 20, it became the 200th company to float on China’s domestic markets this year. Collectively they have raised over $40bn, more than double the amount raised on Wall Street and almost half the global total. Yet the country’s benchmark CSI 300 index is down 14 per cent since January, having fallen by a fifth in 2022. It has underperformed other major markets such as Japan and the US, as worries mount about China’s slowing economic growth…

The novelists painting a human picture of Modi’s divided India

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Receive free Fiction updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Fiction news every morning. Novelists are not historians, yet it’s often in fiction that a political era comes alive in all its complexities. Fiction writers have the ability and licence to capture sweeping changes — countries in transition, deepening rifts, lost generations — through intimate portraits of ordinary lives, from Thatcher’s Britain in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (2004) to America in the Obama years as explored in Nawaaz Ahmed’s Radiant Fugitives (2021).…

Chinese investors rush into local government bonds

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Receive free Chinese business & finance updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Chinese business & finance news every morning. China’s credit investors are snapping up bonds issued in its most indebted provinces, encouraged by signs that Beijing will help local governments clean up a mountain of borrowings. Local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) — investment companies that raise debt on behalf of local governments and build infrastructure projects for them — have been rushing to meet the renewed demand. Their monthly bond sales jumped…