Industry China

  • Ministry of Water Resources: From January to March, water conservancy investment completed 107.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35%. This year, a batch of projects that have been included in the plan and have mature conditions will be started, including major water diversion projects such as the follow-up project of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, key flood control and disaster reduction, reinforcement of dangerous reservoirs, construction and renovation of irrigation areas, and other water conservancy projects. Annual investment of about 800 billion yuan can be completed.
  • China Construction Machinery Industry Association: In March, 15,309 loaders of various types were sold, down 32.8% year-on-year; of which 11,399 were domestic, down 38.8% year-on-year; 3,910 were exported, down 5.81% year-on-year. From January to March, 31,789 loaders of various types were sold, a year-on-year decrease of 19.2%; of which 21,185 were domestic, a year-on-year decrease of 30.8%; and 10,604 were exported, a year-on-year increase of 21.5%.
  • International Finance News: The strong rise in raw material prices has brought support to the performance of lithium companies. Data shows that the price of domestic battery-grade lithium carbonate is still less than 60,000 yuan/ton in early 2021, and has exceeded 500,000 yuan/ton so far.
  • In the past five years, the size of contact lenses market has grown rapidly, with a compound annual growth rate of 41%. In 2020, terminal sales will exceed 20 billion yuan.
  • In the portraits of Chinese motorcycle users in 2022, the main groups are concentrated in the second-tier and below cities (54.8%), mainly young and middle-aged groups aged 22-40 (81.1%), and belong to enterprise workers (51.9%), income For the middle-income group of 5K-10K. The transportation facilities in second-tier cities are not perfect, so more users in second-tier cities choose to share motorcycles for travel. The analysis said that compared with the online car-hailing, the price of shared motorcycles is more affordable and convenient.
  • Affected by the epidemic, the scale of China’s driverless car market will decline in 2020, but the industry as a whole maintains a steady growth trend. In 2021, the investment and financing amount of China’s driverless car industry will be 78.24 billion yuan, and the number of investment and financing will be 122. Except for a slight decline in 2019, the investment scale has basically maintained a growth trend, and in 2020, it has reached a high growth rate of 219.4%. With the innovation of artificial intelligence and other technologies, the application fields of driverless cars are constantly expanding.
  • Pinduoduo, JD.com, and Gome Store are all social retail platforms most commonly used by Chinese consumers. In 2021, the scale of social e-commerce transactions in China will reach 2,378.57 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.1%. With the continuous in-depth integration of social traffic and e-commerce transactions, it is expected that the transaction scale of China’s social e-commerce industry will reach 3,416.58 billion yuan in 2023.

China

  • Beijing Municipal Medical Insurance Bureau: Since April 9, the price of a single sample of new coronavirus nucleic acid testing in public medical institutions has been reduced from 35 ~ 24.9 yuan/sample, and the price of mixed testing has been simultaneously reduced from 8 ~ 5.9 yuan /sample. This is the seventh dynamic adjustment of the new coronavirus nucleic acid detection project, and the current price is at the lowest level in China.

Company

  • TSMC: In March, its revenue was NT$171.967 billion, a year-on-year increase of 33.2%, the second highest in a single month and a new high in the same period of the previous year. From January to March, revenue was NT$491.076 billion, a year-on-year increase of 35.5%, setting a new record high in a single quarter.
  • BMW Group: In the first quarter, the sales volume in China was about 208,500 units, of which the sales of pure electric models increased by 207.9% year-on-year; the global sales volume was about 596,900 units, of which the sales of BMW and MINI brand pure electric models reached about 35,300 units, a year-on-year increase of 149.2% %. Sales in the Chinese market account for about 35% of global sales. Since 2014, sales of new energy vehicles in China have exceeded 150,000.
  • Mercedes-Benz: In the first quarter, more than 192,000 new vehicles were delivered in China; the cumulative global delivery reached 501,600, a year-on-year decrease of 15%. Among them, high-end models and new energy models performed strongly, and Maybach achieved the best quarterly sales in history; global sales of Mercedes-Benz xEV reached 67,800 units, a year-on-year increase of 37%.
  • Walmart: Will raise the starting salary of 12,000 long-distance truck drivers to $95,000-$110,000 a year from $87,500 previously. These drivers deliver deliveries to Walmart stores and Sam’s Club.

World

  • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has severely impacted the grain and vegetable oil market, causing global food prices to hit a new record high in March after February. The average food price index in March was 159.3, the highest value since the index was established in 1990, up 12.6% month-on-month and 33.6% year-on-year.
  • An international team of astronomers has discovered the most distant galaxy ever discovered, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal. This candidate galaxy, named HD1, is about 13.5 billion light-years away; may be forming stars at an alarming rate, and may even be home to the universe’s first stars; and may also contain a supermassive black hole with a mass of about the mass of the sun 100 million times.
  • Euro zone inflation hit a new high in March. Among them, Lithuania and Estonia had the highest annual inflation rates in March, with prices rising by 15.6% and 14.8% respectively. Prices rose 11.2% in the Netherlands and 11.2% in Latvia. Inflation in Germany, the euro zone’s largest economy, rose 7.6% in March, Spain 9.8%, Italy 7% and France 5.1%.

Coronavirus

  • The WHO Regional Director for Africa said that the real number of new crown infections in Africa far exceeds the number of reported cases, which may be as high as 97 times the number of reported confirmed cases. This means that more than two-thirds of Africa’s population may have been or have been infected with the new coronavirus. It is reported that the cumulative number of confirmed cases of new crown in Africa has exceeded 11.5 million, and the cumulative number of deaths has exceeded 250,000.
  • A U.S. federal surveillance report shows that between 7.7 million and 23 million U.S. new crown patients suffer from long-term symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, weakness and fatigue, lasting from months to years.