Month: November 2023

E-CNY: HSBC, Standard Chartered jump on China’s digital currency bandwagon, joining pilot programme

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Four foreign-funded banks including Standard Chartered and HSBC have jumped on China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) bandwagon, as financial institutions and regulators push to expand the use of the digital currency in domestic and cross-border payments. The China branches of HSBC, Standard Chartered, Hang Seng Bank and Fubon Bank became the first overseas banks to participate in China’s CBDC pilot, the banks announced separately this week. They join more than 40 state-owned banks in launching their services on the e-CNY app, developed by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC)’s…

China’s economy is suffering from long covid

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Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. IF PLACES COULD be diagnosed with long covid, then Shangqiu—a sleepy city of 3.7m people, in central China’s wheat belt—would be a good candidate. A full year after the chaotic, ill-planned collapse of China’s “zero-covid” policies, evidence abounds of lingering harms done to Shangqiu’s economy, and to residents’ morale. Local finances were strained even before China began nearly three years of lockdowns and mass virus-testing drives. Shangqiu, in Henan province,…

China is struggling with a surge of respiratory ailments

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On China’s fever-prone social media, netizens have been sweating with anxiety as hospital waiting rooms fill up. On November 29th a provincial newspaper posted a message on Weibo, a microblog service, describing an unnamed hospital in the north. The waiting area, it said, was filled with the sound of coughing and the crying of children. After receiving confirmation that her daughter had tested positive for a bacterium that can cause pneumonia, one woman, having waited hours, still had 300 people ahead of her in the queue for a consultation. The…

China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country

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TO WEAN THEIR country off imported oil and gas, and in the hope of retiring dirty coal-fired power stations, China’s leaders have poured money into wind and solar energy. But they are also turning to one of the most sustainable forms of non-renewable power. Over the past decade China has added 37 nuclear reactors, for a total of 55, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN body. During that same period America, which leads the world with 93 reactors, added two. image: The Economist Facing an ever-growing demand…

Edinburgh Zoo says goodbye to giant pandas

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Edinburgh Zoo visitors have seen its two giant pandas for the last time before they are sent back to China. Tian Tian and Yang Guang arrived in Scotland to huge fanfare in 2011. The first giant pandas to live in the UK for 17 years, they touched down in a plane dubbed the “FedEx Panda Express” on 4 December 2011. But they are due to return in December under the terms of a 10-year loan, which was extended due to the pandemic. For security and safety reasons, the exact date…

Tata Technologies: EV designer galvanises interest in India stocks

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. India’s largest conglomerate Tata does everything from IT consulting to car manufacturing. Further proof of its omnipresence came on Thursday with the successful flotation of Tata Technologies. Shares in the first Tata company to go public in almost two decades rose as much as 180 per cent, valuing the group at $7bn. The Indian stock market is at record highs. Global investors now see the world’s most populous nation as…

EU set to push Xi Jinping to stop Chinese firms getting around sanctions on Russia

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Chinese firms were initially excluded from the bloc’s 12th package of sanctions, but the names of the companies in question may be added to the list if the EU does not secure a firm commitment to act. Important member states, including France and Germany, prefer to raise the issue with the very top leadership in Beijing. There is a sense that decisions are highly centralised in the Chinese political system, and while dialogue continues with Chinese diplomats in Europe, Brussels now wants to take it to a higher level. EU…

China Maritime Report No. 33: China’s Sea-Based Nuclear Deterrent: Organizational, Operational, and Strategic Implications

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China’s development of a credible sea-based deterrent has important implications for the PLAN, for China’s nuclear strategy, and for U.S.-China strategic stability. For the PLAN, the need to protect the SSBN force may divert resources away from other missions; it may also provide justification for further expansion of the PLAN fleet size. For China’s nuclear strategy and operations, the SSBN force may increase operational and bureaucratic pressures for adopting a more forward-leaning nuclear strategy. For U.S.-China strategic stability, the SSBN force will have complex effects, decreasing risks that Chinese decisionmakers…

‘There won’t be another Kissinger’: how veteran statesman’s death marks end of era for US-China relations

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Following the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1979, he continued to play an unofficial role in stabilising the often turbulent relationship. This included a visit to salvage relations in November 1989 – months after the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4 – under the guise of a “fact-finding mission”, a month after a similar visit by Nixon. David Arase, resident professor of international politics with the Hopkins-Nanjing Centre for Chinese and American Studies, said Kissinger had acted as a “key go-between or broker that…

China’s Xi Jinping focuses on tech innovation, supply chains during first Shanghai visit in 3 years

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“[The region] must focus on the areas of science and technology, industry, finance and the major infrastructures, which are related to national and regional security, and strengthen risk prevention … and capacity building, so as to consolidate our foundation for secure development,” Xi said. The Yangtze Delta, as one of China’s most prosperous areas and a “showcase” for the advantages of its socialist system, must also speed up integration in areas including infrastructure, industrial development, economic opening up, environmental protection and supply chain expansion, so that it could “become a…