China News - 21 July 2021

International

Ministers cut off funding to chip factory after sale to Chinese-owned firm. UK Research and Investment (UKRI) has suspended grants to Newport Wafer Fab under Government instructions after its sale to Chinese-owned Nexperia. The move comes after documents seen by the China Research Group revealed that the company had been involved in more than a dozen publicly-backed projects before its sale to Nexperia, including a £5.2m defence initiative to use advanced semiconductor technology to support cutting edge radar and satellite systems. The Telegraph, CNBC, Silicon UK, 20 July

Huawei equipment quality still insufficient says UK. Huawei has made “no overall improvement” in its software engineering and cybersecurity quality three years after it promised to fix systemic problems, according to the annual report from the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre. FT, 20 July

Climate change: US and China must work together to end ‘mutual suicide pact’, says John Kerry. Without sufficient emissions reductions by China, Mr Kerry said, the global goal of keeping temperatures under 1.5C was "essentially impossible". He also suggested that the US was willing to work closely with China to secure a reasonable climate future. The Telegraph, BBC, FT, 20 July

Hong Kong police arrest former top editor of pro-democracy paper Apple Daily. Police arrested Lam Man-chung, the former executive editor-in-chief of Hong Kong’s defunct pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily, on Wednesday morning for allegedly conspiring to collude with foreign powers to endanger national security. HKFP, 21 July

Chinese suppliers to Apple, Nike shun Xinjiang workers as U.S. forced-labour ban looms. Several Chinese factories phased out Uyghur factory workers transferred from Xinjiang through a state-backed labour programme last year as Western countries increased scrutiny of forced labour from the remote northwestern region. WSJ, 20 July

US military bought cameras in violation of China sanctions. Purchased camera systems were supposedly made in the U.S. but actually originated from Chinese companies - including Hikvision and Dahua - blacklisted for security and human rights reasons. The Intercept, 20 July

China pressures Pakistan after losing 9 engineers in bus attack. Following a terror attack that killed nine Chinese engineers in northern Pakistan last week, Beijing has ramped up pressure on Islamabad, postponing a high-level joint committee for the Belt and Road Initiative and halting a billion-dollar hydropower project. Nikkei Asia, 21 July

China warns Lithuania over Taiwan opening de facto embassy. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office warned Lithuania on Tuesday not to "send the wrong signals to Taiwan independence forces" after the Chinese-claimed island said it would open a de facto embassy in the Baltic country. Reuters, euronews, Business Standard, 20 July

Biden administration reveals Chinese government compromised 13 US pipeline companies with a coordinated cyber attack between 2011 and 2013. Daily Mail, NYT, 20 July

PLA holds drills in all major Chinese sea areas amid consecutive US military provocations. Global Times, 20 July

Brazil’s produce ‘fundamental for guaranteeing China’s food security’. China Dialogue, 20 July

China focus

Deadly floods hit central China, killing 12 and forcing thousands to flee homes. Torrential rain has caused severe flooding in central China’s Henan province, forcing people from their homes and leaving stations and roads submerged. More than 10,000 people have been evacuated to shelters following the record rainfall. BBC, Sky News, The Guardian, Sixth Tone, Independent, Xinhua, 20 July

China scraps fines, will let families have as many children as they’d like. Families in China can now have as many children as they like without facing fines or other consequences, the Chinese government said late on Tuesday. Births dropped 15% last year, a fourth-straight year of decline. CNBC, 21 July

Economy & tech

China’s rare earth exports surge past pre-coronavirus levels, despite Western push to diversify supply. China’s rare earth exports in the first six months of the year were 16.5 per cent higher than the same period in 2019. China controls about 90 per cent of the world’s rare earths supply, but trade frictions are driving Western governments and carmakers to find alternative suppliers. SCMP, 21 July

China unveils ‘world’s fastest’ maglev trains. The new “maglev” train, which uses magnetic levitation to remove friction with rails and can reach speeds of more than 370mph, comes as Beijing seeks to cement its position as the world’s most prolific builder of high-speed lines. The Times, Reuters, Daily Mail, 20 July

Beijing calls out Amazon, ByteDance, NetEase for violating users’ rights in latest crackdown. The 145 named apps have until July 26 to take corrective measures or face punishment for illegally collecting user information, the Ministry of Information Technology (MIIT) said on Monday. SCMP, 20 July

Taobao, Weibo fined for illegal child content. Kuaishou, Tencent's messaging tool QQ, Alibaba's Taobao and Weibo have been summoned by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and will be asked to "rectify" and "clean up" all illegal content. BBC, 21 July

E-commerce giant Alibaba kicks off ‘largest ever’ recruitment drive for new graduates. SCMP, 20 July

Longer reads & opinion

UK-China relations as viewed by Chinese think tanks and academics: Cautious optimism remains. Thomas des Garets Geddes. MERICS, 20 July

China’s looming succession crisis. What will happen when Xi is gone? Jude Blanchette and Richard McGregor. Foreign Affairs, 20 July

Constant but camouflaged, flurry of cyberattacks offers glimpse of new era. Once imagined as a new kind of warfare, government-linked hacking has instead become a widespread and perhaps permanent feature of the global order. Max Fisher. NYT, 20 July

America and its allies admonish, but do not punish, China for hacking. After years of failing to dissuade state-sponsored attacks on its own, the Biden administration is looking to its friends for help. The Economist, 20 July

Governments need to set standards to limit cyber paranoia. Beijing’s stance on Didi has echoes of Trump administration’s tendency to put policy before process. Yuan Yang. FT, 20 July

Will China’s cybersecurity review of IPOs close the door on tech firms raising funds in New York? China’s requirement for a cybersecurity review of virtually all foreign initial public offerings (IPOs) could drastically accelerate the decoupling between American capital and Chinese technology. Josh Ye and Xinmei Shen. SCMP, 20 July

Markets haven’t even begun to reflect China-US decoupling risks. The Didi saga has given investors a clear warning of the decoupling dichotomy between China and the US running through global capital markets. George Magnus. FT, 21 July

China is pushing Japan to take on a growing military role in the Indo-Pacific. Kathrin Hille. FT, 21 July

How China’s electric vehicle market became the world’s biggest. Brian Smelzer. RADII, 20 July

Is this the end for China’s American education craze? Ma Yingyi. Sixth Tone, 20 July