"China said this week it will begin applying its so-called social credit system to flights and trains and stop people who have committed misdeeds from taking such transport for up to a year."
"In a statement after Trump’s signing of the bill, the Chinese embassy said clauses of the legislation 'severely violate the one-China principle, the political foundation of the China-U.S. relationship'."
"Under Xi—the most powerful Chinese leader in four decades—China’s own one-party system is one that is ready to be exported to regimes everywhere."
"The Chinese Communist Party on Sunday proposed to abolish the two-term term limit for the president and vice-president, sparking an online backlash which it has been trying to control. Critics flooded Weibo and WeChat — China's version of Twitter and WhatsApp — to protest the plan, but were swiftly met by the country's censors. Various Chinese characters for terms like 'emigrate,' 'lifelong,' and 'I disagree' were banned, alongside ... the letter N."
"The decision by federal regulators to reject a bid by a Chinese-led investor group to buy the Chicago Stock Exchange is a major blow to its international aspirations, but it may not derail the sale entirely, the exchange’s chief executive said Friday."
"More than a dozen former Pentagon officials, CIA analysts, US military officers, and think tank experts, as well as a retired South Korean general who spent his entire professional life preparing to fight the North, have all said variants of the same thing: There is a genuine risk of a war on the Korean Peninsula that would involve the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Several estimated that millions — plural — would die."
"The move comes months after China formally banned investments in initial coin offerings (ICOs), deeming the blockchain use case to constitute a form of illegal financing. Authorities there also shuttered online websites for crypto-trading, with the 'Big Three' exchanges closing this past fall. The new reports show that China is now targeting overseas websites catering to local users. According to the translation from SCMP, the actions are begin taken because 'after the closure of the domestic virtual currency exchanges, many people turned to overseas platforms to continue participating in virtual currency transactions.'"
"Anxiety is only increased by the latest report from Reuters that cash withdrawals at Hong Kong ATMs have surged, prompting scrutiny from monetary authorities, the banking industry, and police amid media reports that mainland Chinese are withdrawing hundreds of thousands of dollars using up to 50 cards at a time. China has battled to curb capital outflows for years. A move that took effect on Jan. 1 caps overseas withdrawals using domestic Chinese bank cards."
"The annual deposit war is particularly fierce this year. The last day of January in the [WeChat] friend groups, bankers 'beg' for deposits one after another. 'There are more than 20 banks looking, every one is asking for deposits.' a listed company's small partner told reporters that he had been too busy to reply, however. The banker's nickname is 'Guixie.' [a combination of beg and thanks] 'Perhaps because the New Year approached, company payments are more numerous, bank account capital is less, bank competition for deposits is even more intense.' A banking source told reporters bluntly, these days are quite difficult."
"Despite being one of China’s largest conglomerates, HNA has been shut out of stock and bond markets as lenders worry about its outsized debt load, forcing the company to pledge some of its core holdings as collateral for short-term loans, as the Wall Street Journal reported last month. And yet, even as the company resorted to loaning out shares and entering into arcane derivative financing agreements to finance its debt-service payments, it quickly found out that traditional avenues of financing are disappearing or becoming too costly."