Tausi Insider

An advertisement promoting Alibaba's Singles Day shopping festival, in Shanghai, China, on Oct. 22. ALY SONG/Reuters As Alibaba Group BABA-N wraps up the world’s biggest online shopping festival on Friday, the operative word seems to be flat – potentially flat sales and flat in tone with the Chinese e-commerce giant not even holding its usual gala show. The Singles Day shopping festival, which despite its name has evolved into a multi-week event, is a key barometer of Chinese retail demand. Consumer sentiment is, however, at a low ebb – hit hard by China’s stringent COVID curbs and a sharply slowing economy. Alibaba has also sought for more than a year to play down hype surrounding the event as President Xi Jinping increasingly emphasizes “common prosperity” – a push that seeks to eliminate growing wealth inequities and clamp down on what the Communist Party sees as excessive behaviours. While Alibaba has said its Tmall marketplace would offer more than 17 million products, 3 mil...

An advertisement promoting Alibaba's Singles Day shopping festival, in Shanghai, China, on Oct. 22. ALY SONG/Reuters As Alibaba Group BABA-N wraps up the world’s biggest online shopping festival on Friday, the operative word seems to be flat – potentially flat sales and flat in tone with the Chinese e-commerce giant not even holding its usual gala show. The Singles Day shopping festival, which despite its name has evolved into a multi-week event, is a key barometer of Chinese retail demand. Consumer sentiment is, however, at a low ebb – hit hard by China’s stringent COVID curbs and a sharply slowing economy. Alibaba has also sought for more than a year to play down hype surrounding the event as President Xi Jinping increasingly emphasizes “common prosperity” – a push that seeks to eliminate growing wealth inequities and clamp down on what the Communist Party sees as excessive behaviours. While Alibaba has said its Tmall marketplace would offer more than 17 million products, 3 mil...

A woman stands next to an advertisement for the Singles' Day sale in Beijing, on Nov. 9. Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press Alibaba Group Holding BABA-N and other Chinese e-commerce firms holding Singles Day shopping events together logged a 4.7 per cent decline in sales for the first 12 hours of the final day, a research firm said. The estimate from consultancy Syntun was in line with subdued expectations for this year’s Singles Day – the world’s biggest online shopping festival that has despite its name evolved into a multi-week event and is a key barometer of Chinese retail demand. Analysts have forecast flat or only slight growth in sales for Alibaba, noting that Chinese consumer sentiment is at a low ebb – hit hard by the country’s stringent COVID curbs and a sharply slowing economy. The e-commerce giant has also not held its usual celebrity-studded gala show. That’s part of an effort to play down hype around the event as Chinese President Xi Jinping increasingly emphasi...

Unfinished apartment buildings at a residential complex in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, on Sept. 17. STAFF/Reuters China’s biggest commercial banks have pledged at least US$162-billion in fresh credit to property developers, bolstering recent regulatory measures to ease a stifling cash crunch in the sector and triggering a rally in property shares. Three state-owned banks lined up around US$131-billion worth of credit lines to developers on Thursday, a day after three other lenders committed US$31-billion, responding to Beijing’s call for support. The authorities have been stepping up measures in recent weeks to support developers, after many defaulted on their debt obligations and were forced to halt construction. Economic prospects are also worsening due to renewed COVID-19 lockdowns and other curbs in cities nationwide. China reported record high COVID-19 infections on Thursday. The massive, co-ordinated injection of liquidity into the property sector buoyed t...

The headquarters of the People's Bank of China, in Beijing, on Sept. 30. TINGSHU WANG/Reuters China said on Friday it would cut the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves for the second time this year, releasing about 500-billion yuan ($93.3-billion) in long-term liquidity to prop up a faltering economy hit by record COVID-19 cases. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said it would cut the reserve requirement ratio for banks by 25 basis points (bps), effective from Dec. 5. The central bank hopes to spur more lending into the economy but analysts are skeptical it could achieve quick results, as new COVID outbreaks throw factories and households into lockdown, with little appetite for new credit, while the outlook for already slower-than-expected growth has darkened. “The reduction … will help banks follow through on a directive to defer loan repayments from firms struggling with widening lockdown restrictions,” Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, said ...

A CNOOC booth during the China International Fair for Trade in Services, in Beijing, on Sept. 1, 2022. FLORENCE LO/Reuters China’s CNOOC Ltd has raised its 2023 production target by around 8 per cent to a record 650 million to 660 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe), it said on Wednesday. The state-controlled offshore oil and gas company produced about 620 million boe last year, exceeding its goal of 600-610 million boe, CNOOC said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange outlining its annual strategic outlook. CNOOC is aiming for 6 per cent average annual production growth by 2025 when output is forecast to hit 2 million boe a day, Chief Executive Officer Zhou Xinhuai told reporters following the release. Under its stated strategy to boost the share of natural gas in its portfolio, CNOOC is stepping up the development of large domestic finds like Baodao 21-1 in the Qiongdongnan basin of South China Sea as well as gas reservoirs in global projects. CNOOC has made a “good disco...

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (R) shaking hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the China-Arab Summit in the Saudi capital Riyadh, on December 9, 2022. -/AFP/Getty Images Rashid Husain Syed is a Toronto-based journalist, consultant, and energy analyst who lived in Saudi Arabia for a quarter of a century. Ever since the deal in the ‘70s between Saudi Arabia and the United States, making the U.S. dollar the currency of global oil trade, the dollar has remained the dominant currency of the world. The arrangement meant any country buying oil, from Somalia and Ethiopia to Europe, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and China, all needed U.S. dollars. This ensured the dominance of U.S. dollars in the global financial system. Some media have speculated that one of the reasons behind the removals from power of Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi was the challenge they posed to using the U.S. dollar as the currency for their oil trade. With the rise of China as an emerging power and t...