Chinascope – Page 212

Alibaba’s Ant Group Has Sold All Its Shares in Caixin Media, According to Report

Chinese Internet giant Tencent posted news that Netease originally reported saying that Ant Group (which Alibaba owns) has recently sold all of its shares in Caixin Media and completely withdrawn from investment. According to publicly available information, Caixin Media had previously introduced external investors such as Zhejiang Shu Culture, Tencent, CMC Capital, and Ant Group through A, B, C, and D rounds of financing. As of now, Ant, Zheshu Culture, and others. have disappeared from the list of Caixin shareholders. Tencent still holds a small number of Caixin shares through the Shenzhen Litong Industrial Investment Fund.

{Note: Caixin Media is a private all-media group that provides financial news and information services. Hu Shuli, the former editor-in-chief of Caixin magazine was the founder. It is said that former Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan is one of the backers of Caixin Media.}

Also, on September 23, Alibaba sold all of its shares of Mango Excellent Media, a major TV-based entertainment media in Shanghai, at a loss of over 2 billion yuan (US$ 310 million).

Source:
1. Tencent, October 12, 2021
https://new.qq.com/omn/20211012/20211012A076VC00.html
2. Sina, September 24, 2021
https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/s/2021-09-24/doc-iktzqtyt7741702.shtml

Briefings | | October 17, 2021 | Economy/Resources Government/Politics

Government: People’s Daily Reported Fantasia Holdings Missed Its U.S. Debt Payment

Fantasia Holdings announced that it was unable to make a U.S. debt payment of $206 million on its due date of October 4. The company was owned by Zeng Baobao, the niece of Zeng Qinghong, a former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) top official and the right-hand man of former CCP head Jiang Zemin. Many media have reported that Zeng heads the Jiang faction since Jiang has been in poor health and their group has taken many actions against Xi Jinping.

People’s Daily reported on Fantasia’s missing the $206 million debt payment. It also reported that Fantasia raised 3.3 billion yuan (US$ 512 million) by selling a core business Li Li Le (邻里乐) from Color Life, a property management company that Fantasia owns, to Country Garden Services Holdings, another real estate giant in China.

The fact that People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the CCP Central Committee, reported the negative news about Fantasia, may convey a strong political message.

Also, an article analyzing Fantasia has appeared in many Chinese media. The article said that Fantasia appeared to have plenty of money when it reported its bank balance and its cash of 27.1 billion yuan (US$ 4.21 billion) on June 30, 2021. Actually, however, for real estate companies, the cash they hold may be the cash deposits from different house buyers, so banks will freeze that. Also, Fantasia may not have mentioned other debts that it has hidden from its report.

The article commented that Fantasia might have been blocked from issuing bonds and it therefore had no choice but to borrow money on the capital market. By June 30, 2021, its capital debt was 67 percent of its total debt, with the U.S. dollar debt accounting for 53 percent of the total debt. Among the 12 U.S. dollar debts that it has, only one has an interest rate lower than 8 percent; the other 11 all have rates of around 10 percent or higher, way above the average 7.5 percent interest rate on Renminbi debt.

Meng’s Release Indicts Huawei

By Eric Chen

On September 25, Meng Wanzhou, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, arrived in Shenzhen, China on a plane specially chartered by the Chinese government. Continue reading →

Perspectives | | October 13, 2021 | @CS Government/Politics Opinion US-China Relations

China to Ban Private Capital in the News Business

China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) recently announced a draft “Negative List” for a Market Access List (2021 Version), and invited public comments. The draft stated that non-state capital is prohibited from carrying out news and media-related businesses, and from introducing news published by “overseas entities.”

The draft stated that non-state capital shall not engage in the news gathering, editing and broadcasting business, shall not invest in the establishment and operation of news organizations, including but not limited to news agencies, newspaper publishing units, radio and television broadcasters, radio and television stations, as well as online news information gathering and publishing services.

Non-state capital is also not allowed to operate pages, frequencies, channels, columns, or public accounts for news agencies; it shall not engage in the live broadcast business in the areas of political, economic, military, diplomatic, social, cultural, science and technology, health, education, sports and other activities related to the political direction, public opinion guidance and ideologies.

In addition, the draft points out that non-state capital is also not allowed to introduce news published by foreign entities and it cannot hold forums, summits, and awards ceremonies in the field of news media and any public opinion related business.

Source: Central News Agency, October 9, 2021
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202110090064.aspx

Briefings | | October 13, 2021 | Information/Technology

Deutsche Welle: German Scholar Gives up Teaching in China

Deutsche Welle’s Chinese website published an interview with Alicia Hennig, a scholar at the Dresden University of Technology. Hennig explained why she no longer wants to teach in China after she was in the country for 15 years.

She started teaching when she worked at a Chinese university in 2015. At the time, China had already begun to restrict the use of Western textbooks. She had to order her Philosophy of Economics textbooks from overseas, but the books were held up in customs.

When she was at Southeast University in Nanjing in October 2018, classrooms were already equipped with surveillance cameras. This was one reason that she did not want to continue teaching business ethics in China. Human rights is also a topic in the curriculum. She said, “I don’t want to teach in China anymore because I’m worried that I won’t be able to have a real discussion in the classroom.”

Hennig also found that organizing conferences with foreigners (non-Chinese) became extremely difficult because of the review process and the need to ensure that ideological red-lines were not crossed. She added that there is a lot of ideological oversight and censorship in Chinese universities. The school dean once asked her to remove certain comments from social media.

Regarding the issue of some German schools wanting to collaborate with Chinese universities, Hennig cautioned that, in addition to the possibility that the bureaucrats used corruption in dealing with academic funds, it is also important to pay attention to the fields of collaborative research. “The field of humanities is very much restricted in terms of ideology; (cooperation in) natural sciences and also technology cannot exclude (Chinese) military applications.”

Source: Deutsche Welle, October 12, 2021
https://p.dw.com/p/41XWc

Briefings | | October 13, 2021 | Government/Politics

China Acquires Canada’s Neo Lithium

China’s state-controlled Zijin Mining Group Co. acquired all the shares of Canada’s Neo Lithium Corp. for Canadian$6.50 per share in cash, for a total amount of C$960 million, making it the second acquisition a Chinese company has made within two months of a Canadian lithium mining company.

The transaction is still subject to consideration and approval at the Neo Lithium’s shareholders’ special meeting. It will also require regulatory and court approvals from the Chinese and from Canadian regulators.

Neo Lithium’s core asset is the Tres Quebradas (3Q) Lithium Project, a newly discovered lithium saline and brine reservoir complex in Catamarca Province, the biggest lithium producer in Argentina. It is estimated that its total lithium carbonate-equivalent resources are approximately 7.565 million tons. In September, Chinese electric vehicle battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL) acquired all shares of Canada’s Millennial Lithium Corp. in a cash transaction worth Can$377 million. CATL, is a supplier to the U.S. company Tesla Inc. It also became the third-largest shareholder in Neo Lithium last year after purchasing 10 million of its shares.

Source: Radio France International, October 11, 2021
https://rfi.my/7oq3

Briefings | | October 12, 2021 | Geo-Strategic Trend

Taliban: We Don’t Want U.S. Anti-terrorism Assistance

Well-known Chinese news site Sina (NASDAQ: SINA) recently reported that Senior Taliban officials and U.S. representatives will hold talks to discuss the containment of extremist organizations in Afghanistan and relax the conditions for the evacuation of foreign citizens and Afghans from the country. The Taliban stated that they did not want US counter-terrorism assistance and warned Washington not to carry out any “over-the-horizon” attacks on Afghan territory from beyond the country’s borders. A U.S. official said that the U.S. will seek a Taliban commitment to allow Americans and other foreign nationals to leave Afghanistan, as well as Afghans who have worked for the U.S. military or government and other Afghan allies. Representatives of the Afghan Taliban Provisional Government traveled to Doha, where they will meet with the U.S. delegation. This is the first face-to-face meeting between the two sides since the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan.

Source: Sina, October 9, 2021
https://news.sina.com.cn/w/2021-10-09/doc-iktzqtyu0493790.shtml

Briefings | | October 12, 2021 | Geo-Strategic Trend

China’s Reaction to Trump’s Election Win

Xinhua Commentary Series: Spotlight on the U.S. Presidential Election

Wu Guoguang: Xi Jinping’s Reversal of the Course, Will China’s Transition be Peaceful or Marked with Bloodshed?

Cheng Xiaonong: U.S.-China Strategic Relations Have Crystallized