U.S. and Japan join forces to protect Taiwan! On Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga held a bilateral leadership summit. At a press conference, Suga said the two sides in today’s talks reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
Chinese Communist Party Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian disparaged Tsai as a local official, and netizens beat him to the punch: How come they haven’t seen the appointment document from the Central Organization Department?
On Friday, the Chinese Communist Party claimed that its economy grew by a whopping 18.3 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, but the fishy figures behind the numbers were a big surprise to outsiders. In addition, Citi announced it will exit its personal business in 13 markets, including China, highlighting the deteriorating financial environment in China. The share of Taiwan companies’ investment in China is sharply reduced to 33% in 2020.
Will Xi Jinping buy it? U.S. media revealed that Huarong, one of China’s four largest asset management companies, owes a total of $42 billion in debt.
Cuban Communist Party leader announces resignation, family rule will come to an end.
Lai Xiaomin Leaves a Mess: Huarong Owes $42 Billion in Overseas Debt
The death of Lai Xiaomin left a mess behind, and Huarong is suffering from a debt crisis and speculation that it may even go bankrupt. On a cool Friday morning 11 weeks ago, Lai Xiaomin, known as the “God of Wealth”, was executed in Tianjin.
Bloomberg 15 reported that Lai’s death sent shockwaves through global financial circles: from Hong Kong to London to New York, the market asked: Will the Chinese government underwrite the $23.2 billion that Lai borrowed from overseas markets? Will international bond investors have to swallow their own bitterness? Is an important state-owned enterprise like Huarong still too big to fail, as global financial markets have been thinking? Or will they just watch it collapse like every other company?
Owen Gallimore, head of credit strategy at ANZ, said, “It’s groundbreaking for a company with a government background like Huarong to default once it does.” That’s because a default by Huarong would be a “watershed” moment for China and Asian credit markets.
Bloomberg reports that not since the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s has there been an event as risky as Huarong. In total, Huarong owes the equivalent of $42 billion to bondholders at home and abroad. About $17.1 billion of that will mature by the end of 2022, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Founded in 1999, Huarong Asset is one of the Big Four asset management companies and was listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in October 2015. As a “bad debt bank,” Huarong aims to safely resolve the large amount of bad debt incurred by state-owned enterprises.
Like the other three bad debt banks, China Huarong swapped overdue debt for equity in hundreds of large state-owned enterprises. During this period, it helped Sinopec and other giants that had been losing money for years at the time to turn around.
Biden’s Kan holds press conference, reconfirms a major issue
On Friday, Biden held a U.S.-Japan leadership summit with visiting Kan at the White House, where the two sides discussed issues including climate change and North Korea’s denuclearization, as well as the stability of the Taiwan Strait as China expands its military activities.
Asked at a joint press conference whether the situation in the Taiwan Strait was discussed, Kan was reluctant to go into details for diplomatic reasons, but said that there was a clear consensus between Japan and the United States on the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, which was reaffirmed today.
Zhao Lijian disparaged Tsai Ing-wen as a local official, netizens hit the face: How come they did not see the appointment document from the Central Organization Department?
President of the Republic of China Tsai Ing-wen received a visiting delegation led by former Senator Chris Dodd, a close friend of Joe Biden, for the first time since he took office, at the presidential palace on 15th. The members include Richard Armitage and James Steinberg, who served as deputy secretaries of state under President George W. Bush Jr. and Barack Obama, respectively.
During the visit of former U.S. Congressman James Todd and his delegation to Taiwan, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian even said “Tsai Ing-wen is just a local leader of China” when expressing his protest, causing an online backlash. Scholars believe that the CCP’s war-wolf diplomacy actually shows the authorities’ extreme weakness, and that it is done for the people at home to stabilize the critical situation.
Biden’s close friend, former Senator Dowd, led a delegation to Taiwan, and a White House statement said Dowd’s visit was at the request of President Joe Biden, and emphasized that “the United States stands with our friends and allies in the Indo-Pacific region to advance shared prosperity, security and values, which includes deepening relations with Taiwan.”
On the 15th, Tsai met with Todd and his delegation and hosted a dinner. Responding to questions from the Japanese media on the meeting and Tsai’s thanks to the Biden administration for emphasizing the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a regular Foreign Ministry press conference on the 15th that he made China’s stern position clear yesterday on the U.S. delegation’s visit to Taiwan.
Zhao Lijian, in addition to opposing official exchanges between the U.S. and Taiwan, asked the U.S. side to be careful in its words on the Taiwan issue, and also said “Tsai Ing-wen is only a local leader of China” with a so-called corrective title, a statement that caused an outcry on the Internet.
Netizen “eight or nine monsoon” asked, “I want to ask Tsai Ing-wen who appointed this leader? How come I haven’t seen the appointment document from the Central Organization Department? How can a local government in China have its own army, currency and diplomatic passport? Or even establish foreign diplomatic relations?”
Dr. Wang Juntao, a U.S. political scientist and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese Democratic Party, told the Epoch Times that the U.S. will not heed Zhao Lijian’s opposition to interaction between U.S. and Taiwan officials, not to mention that Todd does not have any position at this time.
Dr. Wang stressed that what the Chinese Communist Party fears most is that the United States will include Taiwan in its strategic alliance to encircle the entire Chinese Communist Party. The U.S. is now creating a four-country posture around China centered on the U.S., Japan, India, and Australia, uniting all other countries to encircle the CCP. Although India is historically non-aligned, it is now in fact involved.
Regarding Zhao Lijian’s reference to Tsai as a local CCP leader, Wang Juntao said that the war wolf performance of CCP diplomats is also the CCP’s mandate for them to speak tough, big and empty words in front of imperialism.
Wang Juntao stressed that in fact Xi Jinping feels a strong sense of crisis, you see his recent statements, always mentioning the struggle, what the bottom line thinking, in fact, shows that he is very weak inside.
“So some people say that the language of war wolves indicates that the CCP now has confidence and is calling the shots, my view is the opposite, I think he is now very faint-hearted. Because Xi Jinping they have offended too many people, he is in internal and external difficulties, but he will never admit it.” He said.
“So the talk of ‘leveling the world’ and ‘rising in the east and falling in the west’ and using all this language is actually to cover up the weakness of heart, and also to give these people a chicken blood, so that in the middle of a false atmosphere, they can cover up the failure of their roots.”
Citi announces it will exit its personal business in 13 markets, including China
On April 15, Citigroup announced that it will seek to exit its personal business in 13 global markets, including the Chinese market.
It is understood that Citi will seek to sell its retail banking businesses in China, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam, but institutional client business in those countries will not be affected.
It is reported that during the transition period, Citi’s business, operations and offices will remain unchanged and will provide services to customers as usual, and will be updated on the next steps.
Bloomberg reported on April 16 that Citigroup’s plan to exit the retail banking markets in China and India underscores the embarrassment suffered by multinational banks in the battle for markets in these two large Asian economies, where despite billions of dollars invested over the past decade, the results have hardly lived up to their initial aspirations.
On Thursday (April 15), Citigroup chief executive Jane Fraser said the bank had realized that its operations in China, India and 11 other markets did not yet have the scale needed to compete.
Barriers to foreign banks doing business in China have been erected by the Chinese Communist Party authorities and have been raised again in the recent past, when the Communist Party has introduced new rules that significantly restrict the ability of foreign banks to do business in China, reducing their competitiveness relative to local banks.
A batch of rules introduced in December 2020 and January 2021 limits the amount foreign banks can transfer from overseas to China. And another rule that took effect on March 31 requires foreign banks to reduce lending and sell bonds and other investments.
The New York Times reported on April 6, citing people familiar with the matter, that the new rules have sent shockwaves among global bank executives and foreign companies in China that rely on loans from those banks.
Taiwan’s share of investment in China plunged to 33 percent last year
Taiwan Executive President Su Tseng-chang said Thursday 15 that the share of China as an investment destination for Taiwan has plummeted from 84 percent in 2010 to 33 percent by 2020.
Photo: Taiwan’s Executive President Su Tseng-chang
He said that after adjustments in recent years, Taiwan’s overseas investments are no longer concentrated in mainland China, but are more diversified, in line with the basic economic philosophy of “not putting all eggs in one basket. He added that in the past, too many Taiwanese businesses chose to relocate to mainland China.
Su said one of the key policies to achieve this goal is to attract these companies back to Taiwan, creating more jobs and added value while rebuilding global supply chains.
Chinese Communist Party Claims 18.3% Economic Growth, Foreign Media: Only Half of the Story
On April 16, the Chinese Communist Party’s statistics bureau said the economy grew by a whopping 18.3 percent year-on-year in the first quarter. Overseas experts analyzed that mainland China’s economy is actually slowing down, and that behind the gimmicky numbers lies a persistently fragile and unbalanced economy. “On a (quarter-on-quarter) basis, the economic growth rate is falling sharply,” experts said.
Last year, Western countries saw double-digit contractions, while the Communist Party claimed to have achieved 2.3 percent growth in 2020. Today’s (April 16) announcement of record year-on-year growth in the first quarter showed a “boom” and “prosperity” that was reported with gusto by the domestic media.
The Times reported that the Communist Party’s figures only “tell half the story,” with Western economists warning that they mask the fragility of the mainland’s economy and that it has not yet emerged from the depths of the epidemic.
The so-called 18.3 percent growth rate is not an indication of how “strong” China’s economy was in the first quarter, but can be attributed almost entirely to the weakness of the first quarter of 2020, when the economy slumped 6.8 percent, causing growth figures for the same period this year to look somewhat “stunning,” according to the newspaper. “stunning”.
In fact, the figure is below the 19% growth rate expected by economists in Reuters and Bloomberg polls, raising questions about the momentum of the economic recovery in the remaining three quarters of the year.
Moreover, if you look at the “ringgit” between quarters – according to the National Statistics Office – the continent’s gross national product (GDP) grew by just 0.6 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier. This is lower than the revised growth rate of 3.2% in the previous three months, and likewise missed the expected growth target of 1.5%.
A detailed analysis of economic activity in the first quarter reveals weak performance in key sectors. According to Capital Economics data, growth in mainland industrial and construction activity fell from 2.3% in the fourth quarter of 2020 to 1.3% in the first quarter of this year; meanwhile, the service sector contracted by 2.3%.
“The first quarter was flat,” Louis Kuijs, head of Asian economics at Oxford University’s economics department, was quoted as saying by The Times. “The completely weak start to the year was overshadowed by these stunning ‘year-on-year’ figures.”
Beijing has pegged its growth rate for the year at about “6%,” but it still faces many economic risks. China was the first country to fall into the epidemic, but not the first to emerge from it. While the Communist Party has engaged in heavy-handed surveillance measures, it has lagged behind Western countries in its vaccination program. Beijing set a goal of vaccinating 560 million people (about 40 percent of the population) by the end of June, but has so far administered only 179 million doses. By comparison, the United Kingdom and the United States have vaccinated nearly 60 percent of their populations.
The Times reports that, on the other hand, the Chinese Communist Party is withdrawing stimulus measures after pumping up to $738 billion into the economy, and Xi Jinping and Vice Premier Liu He, among others, are tightening lending to prevent financial risks and curb asset bubbles. Western societies, meanwhile, are adopting easing policies that threaten to break the Communist Party’s attempts to normalize monetary policy.
Al Jazeera reports that Julian Evans Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics, said the latest data “masks a sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy” as stimulus spending and easy credit are being scaled back. .
“As service sector activity resumes its trend, there will be less room for catch-up growth. The current export boom is likely to wane in the coming quarters as global consumption patterns return to normal. Finally, fiscal policy and tighter regulation of property developers appear to be putting pressure on the construction sector.” Pritchard’s analysis said, “On a (quarter-over-quarter) basis, growth has fallen back sharply.” “(In addition to being slower than last year’s first quarter) growth is slower than at any time in the last decade.”
Cuban Communist Party Leader Announces Resignation, Family Rule to Come to an End
On Friday (April 16), Raul Castro officially announced that he is resigning as head of the Cuban Communist Party. The move ends a reign that began in 1959 with his brother Fidel Castro.
Raul Castro made the announcement during a speech at the opening of the Cuban Communist Party’s eighth congress. Castro did not announce who his designated successor would be, but he had previously said he favored ceding control of the country to Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel, who takes over as Cuba’s president in 2018.
The move is considered a historic one, as the Castro brothers have been in power since the 1959 revolution in Cuba, and Raul Castro’s move to resign is seen as the end of the Castro family’s history in power.
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