Latest China Headlines

All the headlines from our China Topic Page, ordered by recency.

Cold Chain Mystery: Does Coronavirus Spread Via Contaminated Food Packaging?

Aug 20 2020 // Evidence shows that food is an unlikely route of transmitting the coronavirus across borders, but contaminated items continue to grab the spotlight, deepening the uncertainty over whether the $220 billion cold chain...

Pandemic Hits Insurer AIA Group’s New Business in Hong Kong, China

Aug 20 2020 // Hong Kong-based insurer AIA Group Ltd. on Thursday reported a 37% fall in new business for the first half of the year, as the COVID-19 pandemic dented sales of its insurance products in its main markets of Hong Kong and...

China Makes Investor Class Actions Easier in Crackdown on Corporate Fraud

Aug 19 2020 // China wants its army of mom-and-pop investors to take corporate fraudsters to task with landmark class action lawsuits, but heavy government involvement means they are not likely to be as common as in other legal systems,...

Global Insurance M&A Surges in 1st Half but Lull Likely in H2 on COVID Uncertainties

Aug 17 2020 // Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the global insurance industry rose in the first half of 2020 with 201 completed deals worldwide, up from 197 in the second half of 2019, according to Clyde & Co’s...

University Insured Chinese Student Tuition Revenue Against Virus. Then COVID-19 Hit.

Aug 17 2020 // After becoming dean of the University of Illinois business school in 2015, Jeffrey Brown worried that politics or a virus would choke off a major source of revenue for his school: Chinese graduate students. So, in 2017,...

Alibaba’s Ant Group Makes Preparatory Filing in China for Giant IPO

Aug 14 2020 // Ant Group, the fintech arm of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding, has made a preparatory filing with China’s securities regulator for its planned blockbuster initial public offering. The group,...

Companies Risk Losing More Than 40% of Annual Profit on Supply Chain Shocks: McKinsey

Aug 11 2020 // Companies risk losing more than 40% of annual profit once a decade in a world threatened by trade wars, cyber attacks, pandemics and climate change, according to McKinsey & Co., which estimates the COVID-19 crisis...

Oil Leak from Cargo Ship Pollutes Mauritius Beaches as Insurers Assess Liability

Aug 11 2020 // The oil cleanup from a leaking cargo ship that ran aground off the coast of Mauritius continues while the government and insurance firms begin probing liability for the accident. The incident has befouled the white-sand...

Chinese Artificial Intelligence Firm Sues Apple for $1.4 Billion Over Siri

Aug 3 2020 // Chinese artificial intelligence company Shanghai Zhizhen Intelligent Network Technology Co. Ltd,. also known as Xiao-i, has filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc, alleging it has infringed on its patents. The company is...

China-Backed Hackers ‘Targeted’ COVID-19 Vaccine Firm Moderna, Reuters Reports

Jul 31 2020 // Chinese government-linked hackers targeted biotech company Moderna Inc., a U.S.-based coronavirus vaccine research developer, this year in a bid to steal data, according to a U.S. security official tracking Chinese...

EU Begins to Tackle Cyber Warfare with Targeted Sanctions

Jul 31 2020 // Taking a firm geopolitical stand, the European Union imposed sanctions on targeted individuals and entities from Russia, China and North Korea in a sign that it was tackling cyber warfare head on. As part of the measures,...

Reuters: Rite Aid Deployed China-Linked Facial Recognition in Poor Neighborhoods

Jul 30 2020 // Over about eight years, the American drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp quietly added facial recognition systems to 200 stores across the United States, in one of the largest rollouts of such technology among retailers in the...

Third Wave of Severe Flooding Expected in China

Jul 27 2020 // China warned that the worst of the deluges that have led millions to be evacuated may be yet to come, after a third wave of floods formed in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River on Sunday. “The flood control and...

German Prosecutors Arrest Ex-Wirecard Execs on Suspicion of Running Criminal Racket

Jul 24 2020 // German prosecutors arrested three former top executives of Wirecard on Wednesday, saying it suspected them of masterminding a criminal racket to fake the company’s accounts and bilk creditors of billions of...

Excessive Floods Endanger Aging Chinese Dams and Could Cause ‘Black Swan’ Disaster

Jul 22 2020 // The dam at a small reservoir in China’s Guangxi region gave way last month after days of heavy rain in a collapse that could be a harbinger of sterner tests for many of the country’s 94,000 aging dams as the...

China to Offer Additional Insurance, Financial Support for Flood-Hit Regions

Jul 20 2020 // China’s banking and insurance regulator on Saturday announced measures to further increase credit and lending support and insurance protection for areas that suffered from recent floods. The China Banking and...

China Regulator Raises Cap on Equity Investments Made by Domestic Insurers to 45%

Jul 20 2020 // China’s banking and insurance regulator said it was raising the cap on how much the country’s insurers can invest in equity assets, an effort trying to bring more long-term funds into the capital market. The...

China Takes Over Insurers, Other Firms Linked to Financier Missing Since 2017

Jul 17 2020 // Chinese regulators will assume control of nine financial firms that are linked to a financier who was taken from a hotel in Hong Kong by Chinese authorities in 2017 and hasn’t been seen in public since. Among the...

Global Insurance Premiums Set to Rebound in 2021 After COVID-Related Dip: Swiss Re

Jul 13 2020 // Though the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to lead to the deepest recession since the 1930s, global insurance premium volume will rebound to pre-crisis levels by the end of 2021, forecasts Swiss Re in its latest sigma...

China Braces for Continuing Floods in One of Worst Rainfall Seasons on Record

Jul 13 2020 // China is preparing for flooding in its northern regions that could potentially hurt crop output amid torrential rain that’s lasted over a month and caused billions of yuan in economic damage. The floods have killed...