China News - 5 January 2021

International

Two mainland lawyers involved with HK activists say they face having licences revoked. China has said it would revoke the licences of two human-rights lawyers involved in the case of 12 Hong Kongers whom mainland authorities arrested at sea and accused of trying to flee to Taiwan, according to the two lawyers. The two lawyers, Lu Siwei and Ren Quanniu, were hired by the protesters’ families to assist in their defence, but both were barred by Chinese authorities from representing the activists. The Telegraph, Reuters, 5 Janaury

China must come clean over Covid ‘leak’, MPs warn after US official claims ‘credible evidence’ it came from Wuhan lab. Senior Tory MPs Tom Tugendhat and Tobias Ellwood have called on the Government to probe allegations made by Donald Trump's security advisor Matthew Pottinger. The Sun, 4 January

Xi Jinping orders China’s military to be ready for war ‘at any second’, as PLA kicks off its training programme for 2021. In his first order of the new year to the country’s armed forces, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the need for “full-time combat readiness” and said the People’s Liberation Army must use frontline frictions to polish troop capabilities. SCMP, 5 January

Australia 'not for turning' in dispute with China, UK envoy George Brandis says. Australia is “not for turning” in its dispute with China and must cut its reliance on supply chains “over which we had little to no sovereign control”, the country’s top envoy to the UK has said. The Telegraph op-ed, The Guardian, 5 January

US withdraws $480m in infrastructure aid to Sri Lanka in an “apparent rebuke” against the island’s growing economic ties with China. Nikkei Asia, 5 January

China watch

Pinduoduo faces growing PR crisis over employee death. China’s fastest-growing ecommerce group is facing a growing PR crisis and an investigation into its working conditions after one of its employees died after collapsing on her way home from work. The so-called 996 office schedule -- 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, plus overtime -- has spurred criticism. FT, 4 January

Jack Ma's low profile sparks online speculation. The high-profile entrepreneur has not been seen in public since Chinese officials forced the cancellation of the Ant Group IPO. The Telegraph, 4 January

Ex-chairman of China's Huarong Asset Management sentenced to death in one of the country’s highest profile corruption cases. Lai Xiaomin was convicted of receiving or seeking bribes totaling 1.788 billion yuan ($276.72 million) from 2008 to 2018, when he was also a senior banking regulator. Bloomberg, Nikkei Asia, 5 January

Why is post-Brexit Britain adopting different path with EU toward China? Global Times, 5 January

Economy & tech

New York Stock Exchange scraps plan to delist China’s three telecoms stocks in surprise U-turn. The NYSE U-turned its decision based on "further consultation" with regulatory authorities.. BBC, SCMP, 5 January

China tells inefficient firms to shape up or prepare to fail. Bond defaults rose to a record $30 billion in 2020. Bloomberg, 5 January

UK officially confirms it is keeping EU anti-dumping measures on bikes from China. Road CC, 5 January

Longer reads & opinion

Watching China in Europe - January 2021. Noah Barkin for GMFUS, 5 January

Europe has handed China a strategic victory. This is the wrong time for the EU to agree an investment treaty with Beijing. Gideon Rachman in the FT, 4 January

Nigel Farage’s China curveball should worry the Tory party. Farage ended his New Year message by saying his central campaign for the year ahead is going to be about raising awareness of the threat to western democracy posed by China. The Spectator, 5 January

‘We need a real policy for China’: Germany ponders post-Merkel shift. “There is no willingness on Merkel’s side to change, but there will definitely be a more robust approach to China after she goes,” says Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesman for the Social Democrats, the junior partner in Ms Merkel’s grand coalition. FT, 5 January

Joe Biden’s New Year resolution? A fresh approach to China tech. The US cannot be self-sufficient in technology, much as any other country cannot. Reaching out to allies would be a start. Yuan Yang in the FT, 5 January

In a Topsy-Turvy Pandemic World, China Offers Its Version of Freedom. In the country’s cities and streets, people have resumed normal lives. New York Times, 4 January