Rare Chinese 'Da Vinci' scroll likely to set Asian art auction record

An extremely rare, 11th-century Chinese scroll could set an auction price record for an Asian artwork, when it goes on the block at Christie’s November Hong Kong sale. Estimated in excess of HK$400 million ($51 million), the work is only one of two known scrolls produced by Song dynasty artist Su Shi, and the first to ever appear at auction, Christie’s said. The other resides in the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. “This is simply the best Chinese painting you could possibly get,” said Jonathan Stone, co-chairman of Christie’s Asian Art department, who likened the piece’s significance and rarity to that of “Salvator Mundi” by Leonardo Da Vinci.

Alibaba ready for possible trade war with US: Vice chairman Joseph Tsai

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Thursday said that the company is ready for a possible trade war with the United States, adding that it would not only survive the fight but will also thrive. This comes after the company reported its total earnings for the year.

"If US goods become too expensive due to tariffs, Chinese consumers can shift to domestic producers or imports from other parts of the world," CNN Money quoted Alibaba (BABA) Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai, as saying to analysts during an earnings conference call.

However, Tsai clarified that Alibaba does not want a trade war, as this would further deteriorate trade talks. He also said that the e-commerce giant would not face any difficulty in finding other markets for its products if the US becomes a tougher place for business.

"In terms of our international expansion, the world is a big place. We have made substantial progress in emerging markets like Southeast Asia and South Asia as these markets are ripe for us to add more consumers into our ecosystem," he said.

Want to play 'constructive' role to improve India-Pakistan ties: China

China on Wednesday said it was willing to play a "constructive" role in improving ties between India and Pakistan and hailed the outreach by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his new Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan to improve bilateral relations.

However, Beijing did not specify what it meant by "constructive" role.

"We welcome the positive remarks made by the Indian and Pakistani leaders on improving the bilateral relations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said.

"As a common neighbour to Pakistan and India, China firmly supports the two sides to enhance dialogue and increase mutual trust and properly handle and solve their difference. And we hope that they can jointly stay committed to the regional peace and development. China is willing to play a constructive role in this aspect," Lu added.

India to roll out 5G by 2022, increase fiber backbone to 2.5 mn kilometers

India plans to roll out state-of-the-art 5G telecom services in the next four years, a senior official said, as the nation rushes to catch up with its Asian peers.

“We are not there yet,” Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said in an interview in New Delhi, adding that complete roll-out of 5G will be done by 2022.
“5G won’t be driven by supply, it’ll be driven by demand and the rest of industry needs to wake up to this.”

The South Asian nation, traditionally a laggard while embracing latest technology in telecommunications, will follow South Korea, Japan and China where 5G service will be offered within the next two years. The high-speed and low latency service will help Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India plan, which seeks to broaden Internet access, and the Smart Cities initiative.

Donald Trump sets 25% tariff on $50 bn of Chinese goods, faces retaliation

US President Donald Trump announced hefty tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports on Friday as Beijing threatened to respond in kind, in a move that looks set to ignite a trade war between the world's two largest economies. Trump, whose hardline stance on trade has led him to wrangle with allies, said in a statement that a 25 per cent tariff would be imposed on a list of strategically important imports from China. 

He also vowed further measures if Beijing struck back. “The United States will pursue additional tariffs if China engages in retaliatory measures, such as imposing new tariffs on United States goods, services, or agricultural products; raising non-tariff barriers or taking punitive actions against American exporters or American companies operating in China,” Trump stated. Earlier, China vowed to do just that, saying it would strike back, just hours before Trump’s statement. 

Trump has already said the US would hit another $100 billion of Chinese imports if Beijing retaliated. Washington and Beijing appeared increasingly headed toward a trade war after several rounds of negotiations failed to resolve US complaints over Chinese industrial policy, market access and a $375 billion trade gap. “If the United States takes unilateral, protectionist measures, harming China's interests, we will quickly react and take necessary steps to resolutely protect our fair, legitimate rights,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said.

Facing pushback, Trump defends trade actions, says US will be stronger soon

President Donald Trump faced pushback on Monday from Republican lawmakers, an influential GOP group and foreign leaders over his tough negotiations that are hitting China, Canada and Mexico with tariffs amid fears of a trade war. But the president defended his actions saying the US would soon be in a stronger position with its top trading partners.

Trump wrote in a series of tweets that his trade negotiations with China and a slew of US allies would break down large trade barriers faced by American farmers. He said that China "already charges a tax of 16% on soybeans. Canada has all sorts of trade barriers on our Agricultural products. Not acceptable!" In a conference call later on Monday with grassroots supporters, he said: "We will be in a very strong position very soon. We don't want to be taken advantage of anymore."

Good he doesn't take real questions: Rahul Gandhi calls Modi's Q&A scripted

Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of giving pre-scripted interviews, claiming his response to real questions would have been an "embarrassment for all".

Gandhi was referring to an interview Modi gave at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore during his recent visit to the city-state.

After Modi answered a question in Hindi, the interpreter started reading from a piece of paper, prompting speculation that the script may be "pre-planned".

"The first Indian PM who takes 'spontaneous' questions that the translator has pre-scripted answers to!

"Good that he doesn't take real questions. Would have been a real embarrassment to us all if he did," Gandhi said on Twitter.

All trade commitments to fail if Trump goes ahead with tariffs: China

All commitments made so far in talks with the US over trade will be withdrawn if President Donald Trump carries out his threat to impose tariffs, China said Sunday While both sides reported some progress in discussions this weekend about how to reduce China’s $375 billion goods-trade surplus with the US, Trump’s revival last week of a plan to slap tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports has cast the talks into turmoil. “If the US rolls out trade measures including tariffs, all the agreements reached in the negotiations won’t take effect,” state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday, citing a statement from the Chinese team that met with a US delegation led by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. The Xinhua report came after Ross met Sunday with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He for talks that Ross called “friendly and frank, and covered some useful topics about specific export items.” At the same time as negotiators focus on technical steps to reduce the US deficit, Trump’s swerve has rattled Beijing as it raises the possibility that any agreement made could be simply torn up by the president.

Trump aims to impose tariffs on steel, aluminium imports from EU: Report

President Donald Trump intends to impose steep import duties on steel and aluminium imports from Europe starting Friday, after weeks of talks failed to reach a compromise, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Trade officials from Washington and Brussels had continued discussions to find a solution, such as import quotas, that would convince Trump to extend the exemption for the European Union from the 25 per cent tariff on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium.

But The Wall Street Journal cited people familiar with the matter saying a last minute deal appeared unlikely, and the tariff announcement could come as early as Thursday.

Trump imposed the tariffs in March to address global oversupply of the metals, but though it was largely aimed at China it hit US allies as well.

Washington exempted Canada and Mexico from the tariffs while negotiations continue to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement, and South Korea agreed to quotas instead of tariffs.

Trump aims to impose tariffs on steel, aluminium imports from EU: Report

President Donald Trump intends to impose steep import duties on steel and aluminium imports from Europe starting Friday, after weeks of talks failed to reach a compromise, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Trade officials from Washington and Brussels had continued discussions to find a solution, such as import quotas, that would convince Trump to extend the exemption for the European Union from the 25 per cent tariff on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium.

But The Wall Street Journal cited people familiar with the matter saying a last minute deal appeared unlikely, and the tariff announcement could come as early as Thursday.

Trump imposed the tariffs in March to address global oversupply of the metals, but though it was largely aimed at China it hit US allies as well.

China to roll over $500 mn loan to State Bank of Pakistan for one more year

China has agreed to roll over a loan of $500 million that it has placed with the State Bank of Pakistan as Islamabad's official foreign currency reserves remain in a precarious position despite taking $44 billion in loans in the past five years.

The Express Tribune reported that the People's Bank of China, through China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), had deposited $ 500 million with the SBP in June 2012.

The loan is going to mature in the first week of June this year, but China has agreed to roll it over for one more year, said sources in the ministry of finance.

Pakistan cannot use the $500 million Chinese deposit and its only purpose is to shore up foreign currency reserves.

According to sources, the loan has been rescheduled at the same old terms. Since the money could not be utilised, the interest rate was only 1 per cent, they said.

During the week ended May 18, the SBP's gross reserves dropped $ 479 million to only $10.32 billion due to payments on account of external debt servicing. The reserves are barely enough for two months of imports and are below the International Monetary Fund's adequacy levels.

Pak has external debt problem and its date with China is proving expensive

We’re about two months away from elections in Pakistan -- elections that are almost certain to be shrouded in controversy, one way or another. And, worryingly for Pakistan, it appears that the economy is weakening, just in time for the instability that might follow from the country’s turbulent politics.

Under the outgoing government -- led till last April by Nawaz Sharif, three times prime minister -- the economy had appeared to be doing well. In fact, a new energy seemed to have infused Pakistan’s entrepreneurs and investors; in the last fiscal year, the economy grew at 5.8 per cent, the fastest rate in 13 years.

That now appears set to change. Economists polled by Bloomberg worry that, in the coming year, growth will slow to 5.2 per cent -- a full percentage point below the government’s own optimistic forecast.

The problem is that much growth in the recent past has been unbalanced, depending particularly on investment from China in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) -- a branch of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s world-spanning Belt and Road Initiative -- and on Pakistani government spending that matches the CPEC’s aims. China’s big bet on Pakistan’s infrastructure has to be paid for somehow, in part through the purchase of Chinese heavy engineering and other inputs.

Trade war on 'hold', but tariffs will be back if China breaks promises: US

The Trump administration won’t impose tariffs on Chinese products for now, after the two nations made progress on trade issues during two days of talks, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.

“We’re putting the trade war on hold. So right now, we have agreed to put the tariffs on hold while we try to execute the framework,” Mnuchin said on “Fox News Sunday.”

President Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on as much as $150 billion in Chinese imports to punish Beijing for allegedly violating American intellectual property and unfair trade practices. China vowed to retaliate with tariffs on everything from soybeans to airplanes.

Mnuchin’s remarks will be a relief to investors, who had feared the world’s two biggest economies were on the brink of an all-out trade conflict. The International Monetary Fund has warned that a global trade war would undermine the broadest global upswing in years.

Trade war averted: China to buy more from US to slash $200 bn trade deficit

China will “significantly increase purchases” of US goods, the White House said as Beijing’s special envoy at talks in Washington declared a trade war has been averted between the world’s two largest economies.

A joint statement released by the White House following the talks didn’t place a dollar figure on the increased purchases by China, or address a comment by President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser suggesting Beijing had agreed to slash its annual trade surplus with the US by $200 billion.

Vice Premier Liu He, a special envoy of China’s President Xi Jinping, told reporters in Washington that talks with US officials, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, ended with a pledge not to engage in a trade war, according to a Xinhua news agency report.

Liu said the two sides agreed to stop “slapping tariffs’ on each other, Xinhua reported. Liu said his trip to the US had been positive, pragmatic, constructive and productive. Trade cooperation would be enhanced in such areas as energy, agriculture, health care, high-tech products and finance, a “win-win” choice for both nations.

Jack Ma's Alibaba acquires Pakistan e-commerce retail firm Daraz

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Wednesday said that it had purchased leading Pakistani online retailer Daraz, continuing its overseas expansion by gaining a foothold in the growing South Asian consumer market.

The move came after Alibaba announced in March a doubling of its investment in Southeast Asian e-commerce firm Lazada.

China is seeking closer economic ties with Asian neighbours including Pakistan through its Belt and Road initiative, a strategy to increase trade links that is led primarily by infrastructure projects.

Daraz, founded in 2012, was purchased from Rocket Internet, a Berlin-based incubator of online startups.

Its key markets are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Nepal, claiming 30,000 sellers and 500 brands on its platform, according to a statement by Alibaba.

Jack Ma's Too-Big-to-Fail Financial Giant Faces a Clampdown

There’s no other company on Earth quite like Ant Financial.

Spanning online payments, insurance, lending, credit scores, asset management and more, Jack Ma’s Chinese behemoth resembles a mashup of PayPal, Geico, Wells Fargo and Equifax -- with a bit of BlackRock thrown in for good measure. Thanks to clever mobile apps and a burgeoning Chinese middle class, Ant oversees the world’s biggest money-market fund and handles more than $2.4 trillion of mobile payments every three months. Many of the company’s 870 million customers rely on it for nearly every aspect of their financial lives.

But Ant’s extraordinary reach may soon expose the company to a major challenge: Chinese policy makers, worried that Ant and other financial holding companies pose systemic risks to the nation’s $12.7 trillion economy, are drafting new regulations that could make it much harder for the companies to grow.

The rules will force Ant and some of its peers that straddle at least two financial industries to obtain licenses from China’s central bank and meet minimum capital requirements for the first time, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The companies’ ownership structures and inter-group transactions will also be restricted, the people said, adding that the rules need approval from China’s State Council and are subject to change.

Donald Trump says Russia, China playing 'currency devaluation game'

US President Donald Trump accused Russia and China on Monday of devaluing their currencies while the United States raises interest rates, prompting China to accuse the United States of sending confusing messages.

"Russia and China are playing the Currency Devaluation game as the US keeps raising interest rates. Not acceptable!" Trump said in a Twitter post.

Speaking in Beijing on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying noted that what Trump said seemed to contradict the US Treasury's report that refrained from naming any major trading partners as currency manipulators.

"So it seems like the information being released by the US side is a bit chaotic," she told a daily news briefing.

Hua said it reminded her of a poem by the founder of modern China, Mao Zedong, about remaining calm in the midst of chaos.

"No matter what others say we will continue to steadily promote the reform of the renminbi exchange rate mechanism," she added, without elaborating, using the currency's formal name.

China offers a financial industry exam in English, first test on May 4

Industry exams in English are the latest example of China’s financial opening up.

Starting next month, for the first time, foreign senior staff of private securities funds will be able to take the industry’s qualifying exam in English, the Asset Management Association of China said on its website April 12. The tests are for staff including chairmen and presidents, as well as investment, research and trading heads.

Fidelity International, UBS Asset Management and Man Group are among foreign firms licensed for China’s 2.6 trillion yuan ($414 billion) private securities funds industry, which caters to qualified domestic companies and wealthy individuals, rather than selling products to the public as mutual funds do. The qualifying exams were previously only offered in Chinese, sending foreign firms scrambling for the limited pool of local language speakers to fill such posts.

“This new development is a major step toward welcoming global talent,” Liu Ming, a senior associate at Shanghai-based consulting firm Z-Ben Advisors, said in an email. “This offers more opportunity for foreign managers to transfer key senior members of their overseas teams to oversee and run their China operations.”

China holds biggest ever military drill in SCS amid Xi's presence

The Chinese military on Thursday held its largest ever maritime drill in the disputed South China Sea during which it displayed for the first time the country's aircraft carrier strike group and the most advanced weaponry of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

President Xi Jinping, also the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), reviewed the drill and addressed the sailors, PLA Daily reported.

CMC is the overall high command of the 2-million strong Chinese military.

Forty-eight warships, 76 aircraft and more than 10,000 sailors and soldiers took part in the drill which was hailed as "the biggest maritime military parade since the foundation of the new China and a heroic display of the PLA Navy in the new era," the PLA Daily reported today.

The drill was held amid frequent forays made by US naval and aircraft into the South China Sea to assert the freedom of navigation especially around the artificial islands built by China, where it has also established garrisons.

Belt and Road Initiative not a 'Chinese plot': Xi tries to allay concerns

President Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy plan to build a new "Silk Road" of infrastructure and trade links between China and Eurasia is not a "Chinese plot", Xi said on Wednesday, according to state media.

Xi's Belt and Road Initiative, unveiled in 2013, aims to bolster a sprawling network of land and sea links with Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

At a summit last May, Xi pledged $126 billion for the plan, but has failed to overcome suspicion in Western capitals, where officials suspect the professed desire to spread prosperity in the region is foremost an attempt to assert Chinese influence.

"The Belt and Road Initiative is not a Chinese plot, as some people internationally have said," Xi told a gathering at the annual meeting of the Chinese Boao Forum for Asia in the southern province of Hainan.

"It is neither the post-World War Two Marshall Plan, nor is it a Chinese conspiracy. If you had to (call it something), it's an 'overt plot'," he added, the official news agency, Xinhua, said.