2. China used its “unreliable entity list” for the primary time ever to sanction Lockheed Martin and Raytheon over promoting arms to Taiwan. The transfer is suspected to be a response to the American blacklisting of six Chinese entities over the “spy balloon” drama in January. (CNN)
3. While the official casualty depend from China’s newest wave of covid infections is 83,150, estimates from epidemiology consultants are a lot increased, starting from 970,000 to 1.6 million. (New York Times $)
4. Now will not be time for Chinese metaverse believers. Both ByteDance and Tencent reported layoffs final week of their virtual-reality-related groups. (Yicai Global)
5. Ride-hailing app DiDi’s comeback in China exhibits the fragile stability between the federal government’s targets of containing Big Tech and fostering financial progress. (Wired $)
6. ASML, the Dutch lithography machine firm, accused a former China-based worker of stealing confidential data within the final couple of months. (Bloomberg $)
7. Bao Fan, a Chinese billionaire banker who brokered among the largest acquisitions within the Chinese tech trade, has gone lacking with no clarification. (BBC)
Lost in translation
Building a charging infrastructure that may serve the quickly rising variety of EVs in China has grow to be a tough subject. As Chinese publication Time Weekly reported, through the Lunar New Year interval, Chinese EV homeowners on highway journeys needed to wait at freeway service stations for hours earlier than they might cost their automobiles. The similar occurred final summer time when an excessive warmth wave disabled the grid in some components of China.
Currently, for every public charging put up in China, there are greater than 12 EV homeowners who can’t cost at dwelling of their densely populated city neighborhoods. The lack of public infrastructure has impressed some homeowners to lease out their personal charging posts, since these posts will not be getting used 90% of the time. The earnings from renting them out, which might attain over 2,000 RMB ($290) yearly, assist repay the prices of putting in them. But thus far, most homeowners of personal charging posts have but to comprehend that sharing is a chance: it’s estimated that solely 2.1% are shared with different EV homeowners.
One other thing
With Ford asserting its battery manufacturing plan with CATL, Quartz reporter Mary Hui seen an enchanting historic parallel. In 2023, this deal helps the Chinese battery big lastly break into the US market, whereas US-China relations are rocked by scandals surrounding a Chinese spy balloon. Back in 2001, a deal between Ford and a Chinese automaker helped the US auto big break into the Chinese market, whereas the connection between the 2 international locations was … interrupted by scandal surrounding a US spy airplane. Coincidence? I believe not.