China Financial News

Biden and Xi Jinping had more in common with a counseling session for a couple contemplating divorce. The premise: Let’s try to keep things civil for the kids. All week, fear of a new Cold War has loomed over San Francisco, where Asia-Pacific leaders are gathered. After four hours of talks on Wednesday, the US and Chinese presidents offered a glimpse of just how hard it’s going to be to manage their relationship away from that course. The meeting at the Filoli Estate, 30 miles south of San Francisco, was months in the planning. But when the stakes are high, and the differences fundamental, even the most arduous diplomatic groundwork can sometimes only yield small victories. The US and China have agreed to collaborate on climate and artificial intelligence, and resume military-to-military contacts. More American students will be welcomed in China, Chinese pandas may return to American zoos, and Xi vowed to crack down on fentanyl shipments. Bigger and more divisive issues like trade, tariffs leftover from the Trump years and competition over technology were set aside for now. Also largely unanswered after Wednesday’s talks was the question of what comes next. There are plans for working groups that will see middle-ranking officials meet occasionally, but no future high-level interactions were announced aside from a planned China trip by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, although the two leaders pledged to speak directly if tensions flared. And 2024, which starts with a presidential election in Taiwan and ends with another one in the US, is shaping up to be a crucial year for the world’s most important relationship.

Oil prices drop over $3 on China's demand concerns, US crude stock; Brent crashes to $78/bbl Both of these crucial benchmarks marked a 9.12% decline this month so far, reaching their lowest levels in four months. The substantial decrease in crude oil prices on Thursday followed a larger-than-anticipated build-up in U.S. oil inventories.

SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) — China's central bank asked some lenders to cap interest rates on an interbank debt instrument this month, people with knowledge of the matter said on Friday, referring to the rising short-term yields on bank debt and strains in funding markets.

By Joe Cash

Antony Blinken has said the US will continue to say things that China doesn't like, as he defended President Joe Biden's remarks wherein he called his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping a "dictator". Biden called Xi a «dictator», just hours after they met for the first time in more than a year and held candid and productive discussions to revive bilateral ties on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. When pressed on whether Biden's comments were the position of the US government, Blinken responded that the president «speaks for all of us», CBS News reported.

By James Pearson

By Paritosh Bansal

China’s President Xi Jinping a “dictator". The video of Joe Biden calling Xi Jinping a “dictator" surfaced a day after Joe Biden met his Chinese counterpart Xi on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Anthony Blinken, 61, visibly grimaced and was seen fiddling with his hands when Joe Biden said Xi “is a dictator in the sense that he is the guy who runs the country that is a communist country … based on a form of government different than ours" at a press conference.

Luxshare’s move to make investments in Vietnam is a result of many failed attempts to expand its operations in India. Those who do not know, Luxshare is Apple's primary supplier for AirPods and could be an upcoming supplier for iPhones. As per the reports from the publication, the company now aims to shift their investment worth $330 million to Vietnam's northern province of Bac Giang.

So far six companies, including Panthertrade (Hong Kong) Limited, a subsidiary of Futu Holdings (US: FUTU),have filed for a virtual asset trading platform license in Hong Kong.

Investing.com-- Oil prices hovered around a four-month low in Asian trade on Friday, and were headed for steep weekly losses amid signs of increased supplies and fears of worsening global demand. 

Investing.com-- Most Asian currencies moved little on Friday after strong gains earlier this week, while the dollar headed for a sharp weekly fall as weak labor market data fueled more bets that the Federal Reserve will trim interest rates by mid-2024. 

By Samuel Shen and Rae Wee

Investing.com-- Chinese technology stocks plummeted on Friday, with Alibaba Group (HK:9988) (NYSE:BABA) leading losses after the e-commerce giant shelved a planned IPO for its cloud unit, citing the impact of U.S. curbs on chip exports to China. 

Investing.com-- Most Asian stocks fell on Friday, cooling after marking some strong gains earlier this week, while Chinese technology stocks clocked steep losses after Alibaba flagged the impact of recent U.S. chip export curbs. 

Data showed US consumer prices were unchanged in October, and the annual rise in underlying inflation was the smallest in two years. In the 12 months through October, the CPI climbed 3.2% — below economists' estimates — after rising 3.7% in September. Meanwhile, the global cryptocurrency market cap fell by 2.3% to around $1.37 trillion in the last 24 hours. At 11:57 a.m., Bitcoin was trading 3.1% lower at $35,562, while the second most popular token, Ethereum, was down 3.9% at $1,980.

Semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials is under US criminal investigation for potentially evading export restrictions on China's top chipmaker SMIC, according to three people familiar with the matter. The largest US semiconductor equipment maker is being probed by the Justice Department for sending equipment to SMIC via South Korea without export licenses, the sources said. Hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment is involved, one of the people said. Reuters is reporting details of the probe for the first time.

Shares in Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba tanked more than seven percent at the Hong Kong open Friday after the firm's surprise decision to call off part of its high-profile restructuring because of the US-China chip war. In a move that shocked investors, the Hangzhou-based tech giant said Thursday that US curbs on exports of advanced chips had forced it to call off the spinoff of its cloud computing arm. The firm's stock dived 7.13 percent soon after the starting bell in Hong Kong, tracking a collapse in its New York-listed shares. Washington has moved to bar the shipment to China of powerful chips, including those from California-based Nvidia, which are crucial to the development of artificial intelligence, on national security grounds. In one of its most wide-ranging restructurings, Alibaba said in March it planned to split the vast group into six distinct entities that would be able to separately pursue funding through public listings. But on Thursday, it called off the creation of its Cloud Intelligence arm in light of «the recent expansion of US restrictions on export of advanced computing chips». «We believe that a full spin-off of Cloud Intelligence Group may not achieve the intended effect of shareholder value enhancement,» the company said in its earnings release. «Accordingly, we have decided to not proceed with a full spin-off, and instead we will focus on developing a sustainable growth model for Cloud Intelligence Group under the fluid circumstances,» Alibaba said. Alibaba is a key player in China's expansive digital economy and the operator of a major online shopping platform. The Hangzhou-based group's performance is considered a barometer of domestic consumption, which has flagged in recent

Xi Jinping, fresh off his meeting with President Joe Biden, courted Indo-Pacific leaders in a flurry of meetings on Thursday at a time of intensifying competition with the United States. Xi held individual talks with the leaders of Mexico, Peru, and Fiji, and he planned a later session with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, all on the sidelines of a summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation economies.

For a relationship so strained that even the act of a phone call made by one and taken by the other is news worthy, one may have expected more discretion. But soon after US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping met on Thursday, Biden, at the risk of setting back whatever progress might have been made, touched a raw nerve, again. “Look, he is.

Mint, quoting a commerce ministry statement. The global narrative on the risk high dependence on Chinese imports represents to global supply chains started with the US red-flagging it, especially for times of emergencies such as during the covid-19 pandemic when any disruptions could have ramifications across the world.