Welcome to the 81st installment of the Caixin-Sinica Business Brief, a weekly podcast that brings you the most important business stories of the week from China’s top source for business and financial news. Produced by Kaiser Kuo of our Sinica Podcast, it features a business news roundup, plus conversations with Caixin reporters and editors. This week: We report that high-level U.S. officials are visiting Beijing this week for yet another round of trade talks. Meanwhile, China’s Vice Premier, Liu He 刘鹤, is set to visit Washington in a few weeks. We discuss an explosion at a chemical plant in eastern China, which has killed at least 64 people and seriously injured nearly a hundred. We discuss the development of the so-called Jing-Jin-Ji 京津冀 cluster, a planned city cluster that will integrate Beijing, nearby Tianjin, and Hebei Province. Its progress is lagging behind other major city integration projects, a new government report has found. We hear the news that electric car-maker Tesla is suing a former engineer who left the company to join a rival Chinese startup, accusing him of stealing trade secrets, including source code. We learn that a police officer is currently being tried in Hunan province for taking more than $6 million in bribes over seven years in order to change individuals’ driving records. We note that Hong Kong residents have been cleared to open mainland accounts at Bank of China’s Hong Kong branches under a pilot program without having to visit the mainland. We chat about Liu Guiping 刘桂平, the new president of China Construction Bank, China’s second-largest bank by assets. In addition, we talk with Tanner Brown, breaking news editor for Caixin Global and co-producer of this program, about a mysterious opulent villa built illegally in the middle of a national park in China.

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