Industry-China

  • Global Finance: With the arrival of the Spring Festival holiday, terminal demand has stagnated, and the market has entered a closed state. The price of Southwest construction steel (西南建筑钢材)has been running smoothly this week. In terms of steel mills, the maintenance and shutdown plans of southwest steel mills continued to increase, and the output of steel mills in Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, and Guizhou all decreased slightly. The rebar capacity utilization rate of Southwest Steel Works was 50.49%, a decrease of 8.04% from the previous month; the operating rate was 46.94%, a decrease of 10.2% from the previous month; the weekly output was 434,500 tons, a decrease of 69,200 tons from last week.
  • Ctrip: On the first day of the Spring Festival holiday in 2023, tourism consumption in destinations picked up rapidly. Ticket bookings for scenic spots on the platform increased by 76% year-on-year, car bookings increased by 35% year-on-year, and hotel bookings increased by 19% year-on-year, all reaching the peak of Spring Festival booking data since the epidemic. Air ticket bookings rose 16% year-on-year, reaching a peak in the three years since the outbreak. The average face price of air tickets for travel two days before the festival increased from 862 yuan in the same period last year to 1,073 yuan, an increase of 24%, which is also the highest level during the Spring Festival holiday since the epidemic.
  • Maoyan Professional Edition（猫眼专业版）: On January 21, the pre-sale box office of new films for the 2023 Spring Festival exceeded 700 million yuan. “Manjianghong”《满江红》, “The Wandering Earth 2” 《流浪地球2》and “No Name” 《无名》ranked the top three in the pre-sale box office list.

China

  • Economic View(中新经纬）: On January 21, the 2022 annual GDP data of 31 provinces were all released. In terms of total volume, Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Shandong continue to sit firmly in the “top three “, followed by Zhejiang, Henan, Sichuan, Hubei, Fujian, and Hunan, and their rankings have not changed compared with the same period in 2021; in terms of growth rate , 16 provinces outperformed the “national line”, Fujian and Jiangxi tied for the first growth rate, both at 4.7%.
  • Central Meteorological Observatory: Issued a blue cold wave warning. From 20:00 on January 21 to 08:00 on January 25, the temperature in most of the central and eastern regions will drop by 6-10°C, and the temperature in northern China, the eastern part of Northeast China, and the eastern part of Jiangnan will drop by 14°C , locally exceeding 18°C. The lowest temperature in the process will appear in the morning from January 24th to 25th, and the lowest temperature line of 0°C will be located in eastern Yunnan, southern Guizhou and northern South China.
  • Civil Aviation Administration: On January 21, the national civil aviation is expected to transport more than 800,000 passengers, which is double that of New Year’s Eve in 2022. On January 20, the number of civil aviation passengers nationwide is expected to exceed 1.1 million, a year-on-year increase of 25%, and has recovered to 74% of the same period in 2019 before the epidemic. During the Spring Festival holiday, the number of planned domestic civil aviation passenger flights is expected to increase by nearly 70% compared with the same period last year.

Company

  • Amazon: Plans to invest $35 billion through 2040 to expand data center in Virginia, with multiple locations under consideration. The new investment will create 1,000 jobs.
  • Twitter: As Musk began to run the company, the number of Twitter employees has been reduced to about 1300 people, laying off 80% of the staff.
  • Wal-Mart: Launched the “Wal-Mart Business” e-commerce website for small and medium-sized enterprises and non-profit organizations, providing more than 100,000 products including office supplies, furniture, food and beverage, electronic products, etc., helping them simplify procurement and control inventory. An institutional account on the site can add up to five individual users, enabling sharing of payment information, order history, and purchasing power across teams.
  • Indonesia’s Bakrie Group: is seeking to acquire a nickel mine in Sulawesi to supply a planned integrated industrial park aimed at producing electric vehicle batteries. Previously, the group planned to invest US$9 billion in nickel smelting and manufacturing electric vehicle battery projects.
  • Italian Football Association: The Juventus club was deducted 15 league points due to financial fraud, and 11 executives including Nedved were punished with grounding penalties ranging from time to time. Juventus has the right to appeal within 30 days, which is also following the 2006 “Phonegate” scandal, Juventus is once again deeply involved in controversy.
  • It is reported that CATL, Brunp Recycling广东邦普, and CMOC（洛阳钼业）have reached an agreement with Bolivia to use the world’s largest lithium resource to ensure the supply of electric vehicle battery metals. The above-mentioned three companies agreed to invest more than US$1 billion in the initial stage to build two lithium extraction plants on the giant salt flats in Bolivia, using direct lithium extraction technology, and each plant will have the potential to produce 25,000 tons of lithium carbonate per year.
  • CEO of IBM: IBM has invested in China for nearly 30 years and hopes to continue investing in China in the next 30 years.

World

  • Officials from the U.S. and its allies agreed to impose price caps on Russian oil products, while also planning to review the level of crude oil price caps in March. In addition to the crude oil price cap, delegates agreed to two different caps on refined products, one for products that typically command a premium to crude, such as diesel, and another for products that trade at a discount to crude, such as fuel oil.(除了原油价格上限，代表们同意对成品油制定两种不同的上限，一种是针对通常较原油溢价的产品，例如柴油；另一种是针对较原油折价的产品，比如燃料油。)
  • U.S. Department of Justice: Seized additional assets related to FTX, having seized $56 million and €87 million from the accounts of Moonstone Bank and Silvergate Capital Corp. Efforts to rein in the hundreds of millions of dollars tied to the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange continue.
  • Australia’s major coal miners are in talks with the New South Wales state government to divert up to 10 percent of their coal output for domestic supply. The NSW Treasurer said coal miners not currently selling to the domestic market would be asked to reserve between 7% and 10% of their output for domestic use.
  • United Nations: Affected by negative factors such as inflation and climate change, the Latin American region will face “tremendous pressure” in 2023. The Latin American economy is expected to grow by 1.3% in 2023, which is less than half of the expected growth rate of 3.7% in 2022. Weaker economic growth will lead to reduced employment opportunities and increased poverty. The region may fall into another “lost decade”.