2. China used its “unreliable entity checklist” 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 language entities over the “spy balloon” drama in January. (CNN)

3. Whereas the official casualty depend from China’s newest wave of covid infections is 83,150, estimates from epidemiology consultants are a lot greater, starting from 970,000 to 1.6 million. (New York Instances $)

4. Now shouldn’t be a superb time for Chinese language metaverse believers. Each ByteDance and Tencent reported layoffs final week of their virtual-reality-related groups. (Yicai World)

5. Experience-hailing app DiDi’s comeback in China reveals the fragile stability between the federal government’s targets of containing Large 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 language billionaire banker who brokered a number of the largest acquisitions within the Chinese language tech business, has gone lacking with no clarification. (BBC)

Misplaced in translation

Constructing a charging infrastructure that may serve the quickly growing variety of EVs in China has change into a tough challenge. As Chinese language publication Time Weekly reported, through the Lunar New Yr interval, Chinese language EV homeowners on highway journeys needed to wait at freeway service stations for hours earlier than they may cost their automobiles. The identical occurred final summer season when an excessive warmth wave disabled the grid in some elements of China.

At present, for every public charging put up in China, there are greater than 12 EV homeowners who can’t cost at house of their densely populated city neighborhoods. The shortage of public infrastructure has impressed some homeowners to hire out their personal charging posts, since these posts usually are not 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. However thus far, most homeowners of personal charging posts have but to appreciate that sharing is a risk: it’s estimated that solely 2.1% are shared with different EV homeowners. 

Another factor

With Ford asserting its battery manufacturing plan with CATL, Quartz reporter Mary Hui seen a captivating historic parallel. In 2023, this deal helps the Chinese language battery big lastly break into the US market, whereas US-China relations are rocked by scandals surrounding a Chinese language spy balloon. Again in 2001, a deal between Ford and a Chinese language automaker helped the US auto big break into the Chinese language market, whereas the connection between the 2 nations was … interrupted by scandal surrounding a US spy airplane. Coincidence? I believe not.