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Many Chinese Companies Reported Big Losses in 2021

Chinese companies listed on China’s stock markets – either the Shanghai stock exchange or the Shenzhen stock exchange – are required to report their profits and losses from 2021 by the end of January. Thus, many companies with big losses submitted their information on January 28, the last trading day in January.

Suning.com Co had the largest loss, around 43.3 billion yuan (US $6.8 billion), more than the company’s market cap of 36.4 billion yuan. The company was on the Fortune 500 list in August 2021 and ranked number one among the Chinese retail companies.

The second largest loss was from China Fortune Land Development, a real estate developer, with an estimated loss of 33.1 to 39.1 billion yuan. Caixin reported that, by January 29, out of the 66 real estate companies which published their 2021 performance information, 30 reported a loss.

After the real estate companies, pig farming companies are the next group with the largest losses. Jiangxi Zhengbang Tech, ranked around 370 in Fortune’s China’s Top 500 companies. It estimated a 19 billion yuan loss for 2020.

Airlines are the next losing group. Air China estimated it had a 14.5 to 17 billion yuan loss, followed by China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines. Each reported around a 12 billion yuan loss.

The electric utility companies are the next group due to the coal price increase in China. Shanghai Electric, Datang International Power Generation Company, Oceanwide Holdings, and Huaneng Power International all reported losses of over 10 billion yuan.

Source: Epoch Times, February 4, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/2/4/n13555782.htm

Briefings | | February 10, 2022 | Economy/Resources

Some IOC Members’ Have Business Connections with China

A report shows that several members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have successful business connections with China. When talking about the IOC’s policies, they have downplayed China’s human rights issue.

John Coates has been Vice President of the IOC (2013 to 2017 and 2020 to the present) and the President of Australian Olympic Committee: The Daily Beast conducted an investigation that showed that Mr. Coates has been the Chairman of William Inglis & Son Ltd, Australia’s largest and oldest bloodstock auctioneer. In its auction last year, a Chinese buyer bought horses worth over $13 million. In 2019, the auctioneer sold the horses worth $3.5 million to a “secret” China horse club . The company also sponsored “Inglis Sino-Australia Cup” Equestrian Competition in Shanxi Province, China, which the representative of its Chinese office said is the highest-prized competition that Inglis sponsored outside Australia.

Mr. Coates said the IOC pays attention to human right, but pressuring Beijing on the Xinjiang issue is not within the power of the IOC. He said the IOC should respect the hosting country’s sovereignty.

Dick Pound is a member of the IOC and former Vice President of the IOC. Mr. Pound is an advisor to Stikeman Elliott LLP, a Canadian law firm. The company has long history of experiences in China. Its website claims that it has provided legal services to many big Chinese enterprises, and listed several of them including, for example, China National Petroleum Corporation, CITIC Group, China Investment Corporation, along with may others.

Mr. Pound said human rights issues are political when answering Xinjiang forced labor camp and genocide question. He suggested (with hope) that an independent investigation on what is happening in Xinjiang would be helpful and maybe the Chinese are preparing to consider it.

Sebastian Coe, is a British member of the IOC. Mr. Coe is a Non-Executive Board Director of the Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) and receives $130,000 as annual pay. Out of FMG’s several billion dollars in revenue in 2020, ninety percent came from China. A Chinese state-run company is a major shareholder of FMG.

Mr. Coe said last year that an international political boycott of Beijing Winter Olympics had no meaning but would only cause damage.

Source: Epoch Times, February 5, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/2/5/n13557473.htm

Briefings | | February 7, 2022 | Government/Politics

Follow up by IOC and NOS on the Dutch Reporter Who Was Dragged Away in Beijing

On February 4, when a Dutch news reporter Sjoerd den Daas was doing a live broadcast on a street in Beijing, on his home TV station NOS, a Chinese authority’ staff-member in plain clothes grabbed his arm by force and dragged him around. The Chinese staff-member was wearing a red armband (indicating he was from the authorities). He dragged the reporter out of range of the camera and told him that he should not do broadcasting at that location. Then another Chinese staff member also took their lighting equipment. The TV news broadcast was interrupted and the home anchor was shocked and astonished. Sjoerd den Daas then moved to a parking lot at the corner to continue his TV broadcast. Later he told people that he was at the location where the Beijing authorities allowed news reporters to do broadcasts.

The International Olympic Games (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams said that they had contacted the NOS about this unfortunate incident. He further called it a single incident and assured people that they could continue their work in the “closed loop,” an isolated section that Beijing had set up for the Olympic athletes, staff, and reporters.

However, NOS said that the IOC had not contacted it. The IOC had not contacted the NOS management, the news and sports chief editor, the manager of the Olympic team in Beijing, nor the news reporter himself. The IOC had not contacted any of them.

Sjoerd den Daas said this was not the first time he received this kind of treatment in China. He tweeted that in the past few weeks, he and several colleagues from other countries, were interfered with or were stopped multiple times when they were reporting about the Olympic Games.

Source: Epoch Times, February 5, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/2/5/n13557122.htm

Briefings | | February 6, 2022 | Government/Politics

Taiwan: Chinese Think Tanker: China Can Take Taiwan by Force in One Week by 2027

Jin Canrong, a Professor and Vice Dean of the School of International Relations at Renmin University in Beijing, is a hawkish think tanker in China. He got the world’s attention for providing diplomatic advice to the communist authorities.

In his recent interview with Nikkei Asia, he made the following statement:

“Reunification by force will be pushed to become a reality after the Chinese Communist Party’s 20^th National Congress is over in the fall of 2022. The leadership is likely to bring the date to 2027, around the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).”

“China already has the capability to reunify Taiwan within a week. The PLA can defeat any U.S. force within 1,000 nautical miles of (China’s) coast.”

“Japan should never intervene in the Taiwan emergency affair. The United States can no longer win over China on this. If Japan intervenes, China will have no choice but to defeat Japan as well. (Japan) should realize that a new change is taking place.”

Pandemic: Hangzhou and Xiong’an Suffered CCOVID-19

On February 1, China reported 63 COVID-19 infection cases from 8 municipalities and provinces, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangdong, and others. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is known for hiding COVID-19 information, so the actual number of cases is not known.

Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province has reported cases daily since it first reported an Omicron case on January 26. The Binjiang District, which had the most cases, sent over 300 buses to transfer 2,000 families, with about 9,000 people, from their homes to designed isolation sites. In some situations, the bus took people to certain hotels, but the hotels refused to accept the people. By now, the city has moved 30,000 people into designated isolation sites.

Xiong’an, Beijing’s satellite city, which has been designed to host the Beijing city government (Beijing will host the central government functions), reported five COVID-19 cases recently and locked down the city. However, this is a “secret” lockdown: the government didn’t publicly announce it, but only told the 1.3 million people in the city that they must stay at home and not go out. It also blocked the roads so people couldn’t leave the city. Foreign media confirmed the lockdown. Also commentators pointed out that the infection number was likely to be much higher than five, otherwise the authorities did not need to lock down 1.3 million people.

Taiwan: IOC Pushed Taiwan to Attend the Olympic Opening Ceremony

On January 28, Taiwan announced that its athletes who were attending the Beijing Winter Olympic Games would not attend the Olympic’s Opening Ceremony and the Closing Ceremony. From January 29 on, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) contacted Taiwan’s Olympic Committee multiple times, stating that the Olympic Charter requests Olympic Committees of all countries to attend the related ceremonies. The Taiwan Olympic Committee discussed the issue with the athletes and then announced that they would attend both ceremonies.

The Taiwan team uses the name “Chinese Taipei” to attend the Olympic Games. In January, Beijing suddenly called it “China Taipei” making many Taiwan people feel it was purposely belittling Taiwan (indicating Taipei is under China). That is why Taiwan announced earlier that it would not attend the ceremonies.

Propaganda: CCP Organized Chinese Olympics Athletes to Vow to Compete for Its Superior Leader

On January 25, Beijing organized over 170 athletes competing in the Beijing Winter Olympics Games to come to Tiananmen Square to make a vow. The vow was in the strong style of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) propaganda that was rare to see in China these days but common during Mao Zedong’s era.

Their vow consisted of five sentences:

“For the sake of the motherland – rush, rush, rush (为了祖国冲冲冲)

To live up to the people’s expectations – fight, fight, fight (不负人民拼拼拼)

To repay the Superior Leader I will spare no effort (报答领袖豁出去)

Always compete for first place and never give up (永争第一不认怂)

Follow the (CCP’s) General Secretary to go to the future (跟着总书记一起向未来)”

Chinese netizens criticized that some sentences in the vow were so flagrant in order to please the communist party leader Xi Jinping and that nowadays, people can only see this style of communication in North Korea’s propaganda. Some state media avoided mentioning some sentences. Youth Daily (a newspaper under the Shanghai Communist Youth League Committee) posted a title of the event with a blank page. CCTV reported the event, but its video cut out the third and fourth sentences.

The full vow can be seen here: https://twitter.com/GaoFalin/status/1486366103060336644?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1486366103060336644%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.secretchina.com%2Fnews%2Fgb%2F2022%2F01%2F28%2F996347.html

CCTV’s news video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVSzU0vXX4g

Source: Epoch Times, January 28, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/1/28/n13535794.htm

Hot Topics | | January 30, 2022 | Government/Politics

Economy: 200,000 People in China Stopped Paying their Mortgage

Recently a message was widely discussed on the Internet. On January 14, Professor Han Fuling of the Central University of Finance and Economics obtained some “insider information” and posted it: When 2022 started, over 200,000 people had stopped making their mortgage payments and were sued by the four major banks in China. The next day, Professor Han posted a message from an attorney in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province: “So many people have stopped their mortgage payments. We were exhausted after sending (that many) attorney letters.”

Recently China’s real estate prices in certain cities have dropped. Many people lost their jobs last year. Thus, people may be unable or are unwilling to make their mortgage payments. However, China does not have a way to protest if individuals decide to go bankrupt. If the person defaults on his mortgage payment, he will not only lose his down payment, but he is still responsible for (and thus, has to pay) the financial loss to the bank. If the bank auctions off the house but can’t fully recover the money, then that the person still owes the bank.

Source: Radio Free Asia, January 21, 2022
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/zhuanlan/jingmaorediansaomiao/econ-01212022154111.html

Hot Topics | | January 27, 2022 | Economy/Resources

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