Author: greatChina

The State Council held its weekly executive meeting yesterday, and work resumption was at the top of the agenda. To help encourage people to return to work, the State Council is looking to promote online services, including online retail, catering, medical services and education. Further, they will encourage big companies to pay advance payments to upstream and downstream SMEs.

COVID-19 has shaken the world in numerous ways. The virus emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, Hubei Province, and has already led to the loss of 20,000 lives globally. The three countries that have been most affected so far in terms of number of deaths have been Italy, Spain and China. The massive global slowdown is likely to have an impact of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). Infrastructure development is not at the front and center of many leader’s minds right now, and at this time, much of the focus is on the negatives, rather than the positives, of increased global connectivity.

China is among the world’s leaders in EV sales and production. The market has grown immensely over the past few years, and a recent study conducted by market researcher Nielsen shows that some 50% of Chinese consumers intend to buy an EV as either a first car or to replace their current vehicle. Customers should be cautious, as the trend towards purchasing an EV to create less environmental damage is somewhat misguided. The manufacturing process of producing an EV, in itself, is environmentally unfriendly. While there are undeniable benefits of driving an EV rather than a gas guzzler, those who purchase an EV when their current car is in good condition may be doing more harm than good.

David Lake

In an interesting announcement the Statistics Bureau of China has stated the Bureau plans to revise its annual GDP forecast in the coming days. Now normally these announcement means bad economic news, however, this may not be the case. It seems that the National Economic Census has found some new data points that shows a bigger asset total than what was originally calculated in the past. If that indeed is the case, then China would indeed be richer than expected. Let’s keep a close eye on this announcement for the actual result.

Hong Kong is an important tech sector and recent breakthroughs show that China companies are making good use of its strong tech ecosystem to strengthen their product offerings and service line. The most recent breakthrough came out of a Hong Kong university for smart phone information transfer. The work at the university is back by Huawei Technologies, which plans to use this new tech release for its next generation smart phone.

It is almost impossible to find a Chinese city, big or small, that does not have at least one KFC fast food restaurant. The success of KFC is practically incomparable when it comes to the rollout of a foreign food brand. Perhaps only Coca Cola could claim a better integration with the Chinese market. Now, Popeyes is coming on to the stage and believes it can challenge the dominance of KFC. This could be an interesting competition to watch in the coming years.

A new financial index is being launched to track the performance of enterprises that benefit from the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). This most interesting index includes companies identified by the World Bank across over 70 countries. The index will focus on the top 100 companies and provide investors with a measurement on the economic benefits derived by this group of BRI leaders.

Onwards and upwards…