Business trip china covid

HONG KONG — For nearly three years, President Xi Jinping of China has crushed opposition by silencing and often locking up anyone who dares defy the government. But that aura of invincibility has been shaken by stock market speculators who have made a mockery of efforts to halt a steep slide in share prices. The losses — Chinese shares have shed more than a quarter of their value in three weeks — pose an added risk, and possibly greater danger, to a global economy grappling with Greece’s difficulties in repaying foreign loans and its possible exit from the euro. About $2.7 trillion in value has evaporated since the Chinese stock market peaked on June 12. That is six times Greece’s entire foreign debt, or 11 years of Greece’s economic output. Skeptical investors have so far shrugged off each step the government has taken to keep share prices aloft: an interest-rate cut, threats to punish rumormongers, allowing the national pension fund to buy stocks and even plans to investigate … [Read more...] about China’s Market Rout Is a Double Threat

SHANGHAI — As the Chinese stock market slumps, the country’s government has stepped in boldly, unveiling a series of measures to prop up shares. But those efforts have done little to stabilize the market, with stocks continuing to slide on Wednesday. The losses create a political and economic challenge for the nation’s leadership. Beijing could face social unrest if the sell-off accelerates, since tens of millions of ordinary investors have plowed their savings into the market. The psychological toll on investors, in turn, could erode consumer confidence, dragging down growth in the already slowing economy. “The stock market is connected to the real economy,” says Fraser Howie, a longtime Asia banker and co-author of “Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise.” “When you see such violent moves, you don’t know what kinds of ripples are going to come down.” The Chinese government is moving swiftly to prevent any broader fallout. The … [Read more...] about China’s Efforts Fail to Contain Market Plunge

HONG KONG — Struggling to respond to precipitous declines on China’s stock markets over the last three weeks, the country’s biggest brokerage firms unveiled a government-endorsed plan on Saturday to buy shares starting on Monday, while both of the country’s stock exchanges suspended all further initial public offerings of stock. The government-controlled Securities Association of China said that 21 big brokerage firms had agreed to set up a fund worth at least 120 billion renminbi, or $19.4 billion, to buy shares in the largest, most stable companies, and to stop selling shares from their own portfolios. But some experts said the moves might not be enough to stop the hemorrhaging of money from the stock market, particularly given that $105 billion in shares changed hands in Shanghai on Friday. The association did not specify whether the fund would be allowed to use its initial purchases of shares as collateral to borrow money, probably from the government, and buy more shares. That … [Read more...] about China Moves to Stabilize Stock Markets; Initial Offerings Halted

BEIJING — China has quietly formed a new bureau expected to help to police social networking sites and other user-driven forums on the Internet, which are proving harder for the government to monitor and control than ordinary news portals. The new bureau marks the latest outgrowth to a morass of agencies tasked with regulating online business and communications in China. People informed of the expansion say the authorities are retooling their media apparatus to deepen their leverage over the Web, and regulators are jostling for the growing power and privilege at stake. The new agency, officially called the Internet news coordination bureau, is part of this effort to better monitor the communications of Chinese Web users, who total nearly 400 million by official estimates. Chinese officials consider tools like social networking, microblogging and video-sharing sites a major vulnerability. In the past year, they have been forced to block access in China of overseas video and … [Read more...] about China Starts New Bureau to Curb Web

First, the accountant and the freelance writer were taken away. Then, the former tutor with a degree in English literature. And several days later, the police came for the editor at the Beijing publishing house. The four detained women were friends. They spent their free time in China’s capital as many curious, creative-minded young people did: hosting book clubs, watching movies, discussing social issues like feminism and L.G.B.T.Q. rights over barbecue. When protests against coronavirus restrictions broke out in November across China , including in Beijing, they attended. And now, they are among the first people known to have been formally arrested in connection with those protests. China is waging a campaign of intimidation against people who joined the demonstrations, which were the boldest challenge to the Communist Party’s rule in decades and an embarrassing affront to its leader, Xi Jinping. The party seems determined to warn off anyone who may have been emboldened by … [Read more...] about In China’s Crackdown on Protesters, a Familiar Effort to Blame Foreign Powers

Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’ There are few stories that are more crucial to the world’s future than what’s happening in China. Take any of the most important issues of our time — climate change, geopolitics, the global economy, advanced technologies — and China is at the center of them. American politics itself has increasingly come to revolve around competition with China. In other words, what happens in China doesn’t stay in China — it reverberates through the global economy, the American political system and the international order. And a lot is happening in China right now. In November, China experienced what many have called its most significant protests since Tiananmen Square in 1989. In response, Beijing loosened its “zero Covid” policy, demonstrating a level of public responsiveness that shocked many observers of the increasingly authoritarian regime. However, that policy shift also unleashed a huge wave of infections and hospitalizations that puts the country’s … [Read more...] about There’s Been a Revolution in How China Is Governed