CX Daily: Why China’s Bond Traders Got Cut Off From The Data They Needed

Xi arrives in Moscow and meets with Putin. A former chief of Tsinghua Unigroup faces criminal charges of corruption. Plus, why empty containers piled up at Chinese ports.

Mar 22, 2023

Chinese bond traders were baffled when three major data suppliers, Qeubee, Wind, and Dealing Matrix, abruptly stopped providing price quotes.

Brokers /

In Depth: Why China’s bond traders got cut off from the data they needed

Chinese bond traders started their day as usual last Wednesday only to find that the terminals they counted on to deliver real-time bond prices had abruptly stopped working.

Of the four go-to platforms for price quotes, Qeubee, Wind, Dealing Matrix and iDeal, only iDeal was still providing bond prices. IDeal is operated by the central bank-affiliated China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS). The three others suspended the service, with Qeubee attributing its move to “force majeure,” referring to an event beyond its control.

China-Russia /

Xi meets Putin in first state visit since Russia-Ukraine war

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow Monday afternoon and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the beginning of a three-day visit to Russia, China’s Xinhua News Agency reported.

Putin welcomed Xi at the Kremlin. The two spoke briefly to the press before an “informal meeting,” which was to be followed by a dinner. The leaders touted the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.

Flu /

Just as China emerges from Covid, concerns grow of a flu epidemic

China is battling a growing influenza outbreak as cases spike across the country, leading to class suspensions at elementary schools and spurring a scramble for antiviral drugs as fears grow of another pandemic just as the country emerges from three years of Covid-19.

The rate of people testing positive for influenza reported by hospitals across the country jumped to 53.2% in the week ending March 12, more than 70 times higher than five weeks earlier, according to the latest data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By comparison, the national Covid-positive rate for the same week was 2.7%, data showed.

FINANCE & ECONOMY

Containers /

Why empty containers piled up at Chinese ports

China’s customs bureau gave its official explanation for the glut of empty containers sitting in Chinese ports.

The piles of metal boxes result from a combination of factors — a surge in new container supply during the pandemic to meet a jump in Chinese exports, the low cost of storing the boxes in China, large amounts of empty containers returning to China after the export boom during the pandemic ease, and seasonal factors.

That was the insight provided by Yu Jianhua, minister of the General Administration of Customs, at a briefing Monday.

IPOs /

Credit Suisse collapse burns Saudi investors

Riding an oil-price boom last year, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman directed government-backed Saudi National Bank to make a $1.5 billion investment in Credit Suisse Group AG that his financial advisers harbored doubts about, according to people familiar with the matter.

Now, the Saudi investment is almost wiped out after Credit Suisse’s emergency merger with UBS Group AG. Credit Suisse’s meltdown also erased billions of dollars in investments made by Qatar’s sovereign fund and the Saudi-based Olayan family, making the Persian Gulf one of the biggest losers from a slide in financial stocks since the collapse of two U.S. banks last week.

BUSINESS & TECH

Zhao Weiguo

Corruption /

Former chief of chip giant Unigroup charged with corruption

Zhao Weiguo, former chairman and major shareholder of China’s Tsinghua Unigroup Co. Ltd., faces criminal charges of corruption eight months after the semiconductor industry tycoon was placed under investigation.

Zhao, 56, used his position as a state-owned company executive to take bribes and seek illegal gains for relatives and friends, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said Monday in a statement.

AI /

Former Google China chief joins ChatGPT mania with new AI venture

Google China’s former chief Kai-Fu Lee is poised to sop up talent from China’s recent tech layoffs for a new artificial intelligence (AI) startup that will build apps and a platform in the vein of Microsoft-backed chatbot ChatGPT.

Lee dubbed the startup Project AI 2.0 in a post on his WeChat account Sunday. It will be the seventh company incubated by his Beijing-based early-stage venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures.

Simandou /

Construction restarts at Chinese-backed Simandou iron ore mine

After being suspended for nearly a year, construction work resumed on the West African Simandou mine, said to contain the world’s largest untapped deposit of high-grade iron ore, after local authorities were finally able to get the companies behind the project to agree to work together.

The government of the Republic of Guinea held a ceremony over the weekend to officially commence the resumption of construction work on Simandou, according to posts published on its official Facebook and Twitter accounts Sunday.

Quick hits /

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Tech Insider /

XPeng warns of plunging revenue, Taiwan chip exports sputter

Long Read /

The Chinese scholars taking on fraud in academic journals