China Business Now

Local GDP growth paces in Chinese provinces showed a mixed performance in the first three quarters of 2021. Despite a series of challenges, including new COVID-19 outbreaks and heavy rains that constrained economic activities, 8 of the 31 provincial-level economies expanded at speeds above 10 percent, and 10 provinces managed to stay ahead of China’s GDP growth of 9.8 percent.

If there’s one thing that’s way more spookier than all the vampires and ghosts haunting Halloween, it has to be the coronavirus playing “treat or trick” at your door. Tourists and staff lining up to receive tests at the Shanghai Disney Resort made a national headline on Sunday night, after a positive case from neighbouring province Zhejiang who had been to the Disney on Saturday was found. More places, including at least two hospitals in Shanghai, started to screen out potential epidemic infections on Monday. There was no positive case found so far.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday attended the 16th East Asia Summit, and encouraged relevant parties to respect each other, work together, increase their input on fighting COVID-19 and economic recovery, uphold regional peace and stability, and promote development and prosperity.

The white paper said in 2020, China’s carbon intensity was 18.8 percent lower than that of 2015, exceeding the binding target set in the 13th Five-Year Plan. The drop in carbon intensity translates to a total reduction of about 5.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 to 2020, and demonstrates that China has largely reversed the rapid growth of its carbon dioxide emissions.

The capital city reported 11 new infections from Sunday to Tuesday, bringing the accumulated number in the latest flare-up to 20, most of which are elderly people with a higher risk to develop severe conditions.

China is sticking to its gun in regulating the housing market. Top legislature will enact a property tax in selected regions across the country, rolling out the pilot plan as part of a wider “common prosperity” program to enhance housing affordability and tame runaway prices.

China aims to gradually increase the share of non-fossil energy consumption to around 20 percent by 2025, around 25 percent by 2030, and over 80 percent by 2060, by which China will have fully established a clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient energy system, with energy efficiency reaching the advanced international level.

Delta is back, again. This time, the Northwest suffers the blow. Since two tourists originally from Shanghai were found COVID-19 positive in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province on October 16. Health experts believe the sporadic outbreaks are common and China is able to to curb the epidemic resurgence soon. Shao Yiming, a leading physician and immunologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said China's epidemic prevention and control strategy in the past had proven effective as more than 80 percent of the population is now fully vaccinated.

China's property market continued to ease in September amid strict government regulations to curb housing speculation. Both new and pre-owned home prices in China's 70 big and medium-sized cities increased at a slower pace in September from a year earlier, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed. New home prices in four first-tier cities stood unchanged while prices of second-hand homes edged down 0.4 percent last month from that in August.

The landmark Wealth Management Connect (WMC) pilot program in the Greater Bay Area saw solid results on its first day of operations on 19 October, with strong demand for cross-boundary wealth management products, marking another crucial development in the ever-closer financial cooperation in the area. Retail investors in Hong Kong and Macao invested 15.4 million yuan in mainland wealth management products, and 17.7 million yuan of mainland investment went the other way, the Guangzhou branch of the central bank said.