At 8 a.m. on July 29, a fire broke out in the No. 1 warehouse of Datong Grain Reserve in the northeastern province of Jilin. The warehouse contained 9,417 tons of corn, of which 40 tons were destroyed by fire and 540 tons by water damage. Just six days prior, the General Office of the …
Read moreRisk Watch: Burning Grain Reserves Expose China’s Food Crisis
On July 24, China’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) released economic data for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) for the first half of 2018. In the statement accompanying the data, the MoF declared that SOEs performed well in H1 2018, and that “both solvency and profitability had improved over the same period last year.” On July 27, China’s …
Read moreRisk Watch: China’s State-owned Enterprise Debt Financing ‘Ponzi Scheme’
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data released on July 27, the country’s industrial firms’ (“industrial enterprises above designated size”) profits grew 17.2 percent from the previous year. We compared the 2018 figures with that from 2017, and found that China’s industrial firms’ profits actually fell 6.8 percent. The statistics bureau’s official explanation …
Read moreRisk Watch: China’s Industrial Firms’ Profits Fell, Not Grew, in H1 2018
In response to the United States plan to levy 25 percent tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced $60 billion of tariffs on 5,207 items of American goods on Aug. 3. The tariffs range in rates from 5 percent to 25 percent. Previously, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) vowed to …
Read morePolitics Watch: China’s $60 Billion Tariff List Looks Like a ‘White Flag’
The vanishing of a hedge fund boss whose funds handled tens of billions of yuan and serviced thousands of clients caused a stir in Zhongnanhai, the Beijing headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party leadership, according to reports in mainland Chinese media on July 26. The reports note that Liu Shiyu, the chairman of China’s top …
Read moreRisk Watch: Runaway Billionaire Hedge Fund Boss Stuns Zhongnanhai
United States President Donald Trump and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker announced a new U.S.-EU trade agreement after meeting at the White House on July 26. Trump and Juncker both indicated that the goal was to “work toward zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods.” The new deal will see: …
In April, Beijing ordered 36 international airlines to refer to Taiwan as being part of China on their website and in promotional material or face punishment. The White House subsequently declared Beijing’s demand as “Orwellian nonsense” and noted that Beijing’s attempts to “export its censorship and political correctness to Americans and the rest of the …
Read morePolitics Watch: US Airline Taiwan Reference Change Out of Sync with Trump Policy
A vaccine scandal involving a major drug manufacturer based in Changchun and hundreds of thousands of Chinese children that was publicized at the start of the fourth week of July sparked a national outcry. Many Chinese, both private citizens and government officials, directed their fury towards the central government and the drug company on social …
Read moreSocial Watch: CCP Faces Severe Backlash from Self-inflicted Vaccine Scandal
Li Zhanshu, the head of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and third-ranking Politburo Standing Committee member, said during a July 16 meeting of the NPC’s Leading Party Members’ Group that officials must uphold the “paramount authority,” or “ding yu yi zun” (“the highest authority settles the question”) of “core leader” Xi Jinping. Li’s choice of …
Read morePolitics Watch: US-China Trade War a ‘Deathtrap’ for CCP Politics
In an article published on July 13, Xu Zhong, the head of research for the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), criticized China’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) for failing to actively implement fiscal policy to stimulate growth and for “playing the gangster.” On June 30, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had published a guiding opinion that …
Read morePolitics Watch: China’s Finance Ministry and Central Bank Clash as Economy Worsens