ASIA: Japan’s economy grew faster than initially estimated in the April-June quarter, helped by solid capital expenditure, although a resurgence in COVID-19 is undermining service-sector consumption and clouding the outlook. Revised gross domestic product (GDP) data by the Cabinet Office released on Wednesday showed the economy grew an annualized 1.9% in April-June, beating economists’ median […]

ASIA: BNP Paribas’ asset management arm is in talks to form a wealth management venture with a unit of Agricultural Bank of China (AgBank), as the French firm pursues a bigger slice of China’s $19 trillion market, Reuters reported. China further deregulated its financial markets in 2019, allowing foreign asset managers to form majority-owned wealth […]

ASIA: Singapore will reopen their borders to some travelers from Germany, Hong Kong, Macao, and Brunei as soon as August 26. Transport Minister S. Iswaran stressed that Singapore’s “connectivity with the rest of the world is essential, if not existential.” The nation has already opened borders to travelers from China, New Zealand, and Taiwan, but […]

ASIA: The disparities in provincial growth across China widened further during the past six months, with the economies in coastal regions surging ahead on the back of increased exports while northern and inland provinces continued lagging behind due to their dependency on slowing government investments, according to data analyzed of new half-year provincial economic data. […]

ASIA: The United States and its allies accused China on Monday of a global cyberespionage campaign, mustering an unusually broad coalition of countries to publicly call out Beijing for hacking. The United States was joined by NATO, the European Union, Britain, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Canada in condemning the spying, which U.S. Secretary of […]

ASIA: Shares of Didi plunged more than 7% in US pre-market trade on Friday after officials from seven Chinese government departments visited the ride-hailing giant’s offices to conduct a cybersecurity review. The ride-hailing giant was forced to stop signing up new users and its app was also removed from Chinese app stores. The Cyberspace Administration […]

ASIA: The Indian government announced some fresh relief measures for the economy, the first such package after the second COVID-19 wave, focusing largely on extending loan guarantees and concessional credit for pandemic-hit sectors and investments to ramp up healthcare capacities. The government pegged the total financial implications of the package, which included the reiteration of […]

ASIA: China bought fewer American products in May versus the prior month, while exports to the U.S. rose, according to customs data released Monday. China bought $13.11 billion dollars worth of goods from the U.S. in May, down from $13.94 billion in April, data accessed through Wind Information showed. May’s figure marked the lowest monthly […]

ASIA: Chinese and US senior trade officials held a virtual meeting to ramp up trade talks. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He held a virtual meeting with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday – his second discussion with top economic and trade officials under the Biden administration in less than a week, with both parties […]

ASIA: The US and China’s top trade negotiators have held “candid, pragmatic” talks, in their first meeting under the Biden presidency. US Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He held a virtual meeting to discuss matters. In the virtual meeting, both sides said they discussed the importance of the trade relationship between […]