According to the Reuters, during Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s visit to Hanoi this weekend, two people briefed about the Sino-Vietnamese plans to sign of future agreement regarding railway links and agricultural trade.
Seamless rail links are a sign of growing trust between the two countries and would be a boost for trade and supply chains, as a growing number of Chinese manufacturers move some export-oriented operations to Vietnam amid trade tensions between China and the United States.
The deals, which one of the people said also included agreements on payment systems and customs procedures, could further boost economic ties between the two Communist-ruled neighbours after a series of high-level meetings and cooperation agreements signed in recent months.
China kicks off 500 bln yuan swap facility to aid stock market. China’s central bank said on Thursday it would start accepting applications from financial institutions to join a newly created funding scheme, initially worth 500 billion yuan ($70.62 billion), to aid the capital market.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said eligible securities firms, fund companies and insurers can apply to join the swap scheme, which gives them easier access to funding to buy stocks.
“The swap facility is designed to provide liquidity support to non-bank financial institutions, and can help lift confidence in the stock market” ; said Ming Ming, analyst at Citic Securities.
The PBOC first announced the scheme on Sept. 24 as part of a broad package of policies to stimulate the economy and boost capital markets.
Clarification: The term “swap” refers to the exchange of one asset or liability for another similar asset or liability by increasing or decreasing risks.
Brussels rejected a proposal by the Chinese government for imported electric vehicles made in China to be sold at a minimum price of 30,000 euros ($32,946), sources said, a move Beijing hoped would avert EU tariffs being imposed next month.
The European Commission said it had dismissed minimum price offers from EV makers in China a month ago as part of an anti-subsidy investigation that has thrown Beijing and the European Union into their biggest trade dispute in a decade.
Electric cars cost on average less than half as much in China as they do in Europe and the United States, according to 2023 figures from data firm JATO Dynamics. The country’s carmakers benefit from a range of cost advantages – from local access to raw materials and batteries, to heavy subsidies from Beijing.
The average retail price of a battery-electric car in China was around 32,000 euros ($35,126.40) in the first half of 2023, including models such as BYD’s Seagull that sell for under 10,000 euros. By contrast, the average retail price of a battery electric car in Europe was 66,000 euros.
In rejecting the Chinese proposal, Brussels said at the time that it was not only about the prices carmakers charge for their China-made EVs, but also the subsidies they received producing them and removing the impact of such support payments.
The Commission had declined to provide details of the offers, by which makers of EVs in China pledged to respect certain pricing thresholds to avoid flooding the European market with cheap vehicles the bloc says local rivals cannot compete with.
Chinese hackers accessed the networks of U.S. broadband providers and obtained information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
Verizon Communications , AT&T and Lumen Technologies are among the telecoms companies whose networks were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized U.S. requests for communications data, the Journal said. It said the hackers had also accessed other tranches of internet traffic.
China’s foreign ministry responded on Sunday that it was not aware of the attack described in the report but said the United States had “concocted a false narrative” to “frame” China in the past.
“At a time when cybersecurity has become a common challenge for all countries around the world, this erroneous approach will only hinder the efforts of the international community to jointly address the challenge through dialogue and cooperation,” the ministry said in a statement to Reuters.
Beijing has previously denied claims by the U.S. government and others that it has used hackers to break into foreign computer systems. The companies themselves , whose systems were attacked , have not commented.