@clashreport
 
India bans the use of Chinese spare parts in military UAVs.
 
India is concerned that the special services of China can use intelligence from the parts that provide the UAV with communications, cameras, radio transmissions and operational software.

@elerianm
Once again, #China's exports and imports contracted by more than consensus forecasts:
Exports fell by 14.5% in July (year-on-year), worse than the consensus forecast of 12.5%; and Imports declined by 12.4%, a lot worse than the expected 5%.
The numbers confirm that the #economy's mounting #growth shortfalls reflect both domestic and external challenges.
(For background, this from a few weeks ago:
https://project-syndicate.org/comme [...] an-2023-07  
#econtwitter

China said Tuesday that exports fell by 14.5% in July from a year ago, while imports dropped by 12.4% in U.S. dollar terms.
 
That’s worse than what analysts had expected.
 
A Reuters poll predicted a 12.5% decline in exports in July from a year ago, in U.S. dollar terms. Imports were expected to have dropped by 5% during that time, according to the poll.
 
China’s exports to the U.S. plunged by 23.1% year-on-year in July, while those to the European Union fell by 20.6%, CNBC analysis of customs data showed. Exports to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations fell by 21.4%, according to the data.
 
China’s imports from Russia fell by 8.1% in July from a year ago, the data showed.
Chinese imports of crude oil dropped by 20.8% in July from a year ago, while imports of integrated circuits fell by nearly 17%.

On a year-to-date basis, China’s exports for the first seven months of the year fell by 5% from a year ago, while imports dropped by 7.6% during that time.

In an interview with the Financial Times this week, the European Commission’s trade chief, Valdis Dombrovskis, said the deficit with China had reached a “staggering” level and that he would be pushing Beijing to reduce barriers to European goods when he traveled there in September. “The level of openness from the Chinese side is not the same as the level of openness from the EU side.”

“The EU restrictions on export of high-tech products to China in recent years directly limited the EU’s ability to tap the potential of export to China and led to unbalanced trade,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Tuesday. The surplus “is a natural result under the combined influence of different industrial structures, industrial specialization, ways of trade and external factors.”

News that big developer Country Garden was not able to make $22 million in bond payments is an alarm call for China's government that more private property companies are close to a tipping point if financial support doesn’t materialise soon.

Problems are even spreading at state-backed developers, which are seen as having better access to cheap funding and are more likely to benefit from government support.
 
State-backed Sino-Ocean Group is seeking to extend some offshore bond payments, while Greenland Holdings defaulted on an amortization payment.
 
A unit of Dalian Wanda Group, the largest commercial property developer in the country, has also missed a dollar coupon payment, though Greenland and the Dalian Wanda unit managed to make the payments later, avoiding official defaults.

In September alone, Country Garden has a 5.8 billion yuan ($804.72 million) onshore bond maturing and a 48 million yuan coupon due, as well as put options on a further 3.4 billion yuan of paper.
 
Offshore, it has coupon payments totalling $58 million due next month, according to JP Morgan.
 
The investment bank said Country Garden's home sales could slump more than 80% in the rest of this year compared to the four-year average, as reports of financial distress scare away potential homebuyers.

"There is oversupply and inventories, we need to digest such inventories," said a policy adviser, who declined to be identified as he was not authorized to speak to the media. "It's difficult given that the population structure has changed and people are unwilling to buy homes after the COVID (pandemic)."
 
Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Cheung said in a note that Country Garden's sales are unlikely to show meaningful improvement in the near term even with policy easing, given weak consumer confidence and the company's large exposure to less popular low-tier cities.

China's internet giants order $5 bln of Nvidia chips to power AI ambitions
 
China's internet giants are rushing to acquire high-performance Nvidia (NVDA.O) chips vital for building generative artificial intelligence systems, making orders worth $5 billion, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
 
Baidu, TikTok-owner ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba have made orders worth $1 billion to acquire about 100,000 A800 processors from the U.S. chipmaker to be delivered this year, the FT reported, citing multiple people familiar with the matter.
 
The Chinese groups had also purchased a further $4 billion worth of graphics processing units to be delivered in 2024, according to the report.
 
Nvidia offers the A800 processor in China to meet export control rules after U.S. officials asked the company late last year to stop exporting its two top computing chips to the country for AI-related work.
 
The FT report comes as President Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order that would narrowly prohibit certain U.S. investments in sensitive technology in China and require government notification of funding in other tech sectors.

China retains crown in scientific papers, widens lead over U.S.

The annual report released Tuesday, based on data from British firm Clarivate, centered on 2020 figures, taking the three-year average through 2021. China produced 24.6% of all papers published worldwide -- a margin of 8.5 percentage points above the U.S. -- and nearly 30% of the top 10% and 1% most-cited publications.

The country widened its margin over the U.S. in all three categories.

China has ranked first in the share of published papers since 2017, the top 10% most-cited papers since 2018 and the top 1% since 2019.

UK considers response to US ban on tech investments in China

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government said the executive order gave important clarity on the U.S. approach: "The UK will consider these new measures closely as we continue to assess potential national security risks attached to some investments."

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly set out Britain's new approach in April, saying it would seek to protect itself by limiting national security threats posed by China while engaging in areas such as trade, investment and climate change.

EU Commission to analyse US order on tech curbs in China

The European Commission will analyse the U.S. ban on new U.S. investment in China in sensitive technologies such as computer chips and is in close contact with the U.S. administration, the EU executive said on Thursday.
 
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order to prohibit or restrict U.S. investments in Chinese entities in three sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and certain artificial intelligence systems.
 
"We take note of the Executive Order on outbound investment released by the U.S. on 9 August. We will be analysing the Executive Order closely," a Commission spokesperson said in an email.
 
"We are in close contact with the US administration and look forward to continued cooperation on this topic."