On behalf of the EU-China Business Association, we have the pleasure to inform you that the 13th EU-China Business Summit will take place on 16 or 17 July 2018 from 09:30 – 17:00 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The exact date is still to be confirmed.

The EU-China Business Summit is jointly organised by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) under the patronage of the European Commission and the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and with collaboration from the EU-China Business Association and Business Europe.

The Business Summit is held in parallel with the Political Summit. EU and Chinese political leaders, the Premier of the People’s Republic of China, Li Keqiang and the President of the European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker will be joining the Political Leaders plenary session. This year’s summit is expected to gather around 600 Chinese and European attendees, including Chinese Ministers, and European and Chinese Business Leaders.

More details regarding the participation and how to register are available at this link: https://goo.gl/3sQ229

An official invitation with the programme will be sent to FCCC Members in a few weeks.

We look forward to meeting you on the 16th or 17th July in Beijing!

About the EU-China Business Association
The EU-China Business Association (EUCBA) is based in the heart of Europe, Brussels. It is the EU-wide federation of the national non-profit business organisation in the European Union with specialisation and particular expertise in the exchange of knowledge on investments and trade with China. At current, EUCBA unites 19 members in 19 countries representing more than 20,000 companies – large, medium, and small, in all branches of industry, commerce, and the service sector.

EUCBA promotes direct investment and trade between China and the EU through international exchange of information and joint projects of its members – providing European companies a stronger base for expanding trade cooperation with China.

The Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce is in charge of the Vice-Presidency and Secretariate-General of EUCBA.

For more info, please visit our website: www.eucba.org or send us a mail via info@eucba.org

If you have any further questions, please send an e-mail to: Gwenn Sonck, Executive Director EUCBA: gwenn.sonck@flanders-china.be

(left to right: FCCC Chairman Mr Stefaan Vanhooren, FCCC Executive Director Ms Gwenn Sonck and Mayor of Nanyang Mr Huo Haosheng)

On 26 May 2018, Mr Stefaan Vanhooren, Chairman and Ms Gwenn Sonck, Executive Director of the Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCCC) paid a visit to Nanyang, Henan Province. During this visit, they also had a meeting with the Mayor of Nanyang city, Mr Huo Haosheng.

The aim of the visit was to get a better knowledge of the investment environment of Nanyang city and to introduce its investment environment to FCCC Member companies.
Nanyang has about 13 million inhabitants. In 2017, Nanyang’s GDP experienced a growth rate of 6,5%, with the service sector the best performing one (8,7%).

In the primary industry, Nanyang has huge mineral resources. In the secondary industry, the annual growth rate for the year 2016 was of 8,1%. New energy, machinery, modern agriculture, chemicals, automotive, textile, non-metallic mineral products, pharmaceuticals and F&B were the strongest industries. Nanyang is developing very fast. A new airport is under construction as well as a new railway, which will connect Nanyang to Beijing within three hours.

Companies interested to obtain more Information, can write an e-mail to info@flanders-china.be.

After U.S. President Doanld Trump imposed 25% tariffs on Chinese import products worth USD50 billion that “contain industrially significant technologies”, China quickly retaliated by imposing its own tariffs on 659 American imports worth USD50 billion. The U.S. will impose tariffs on imports from China, including “goods related to the Made in China 2025 strategic plan to dominate the emerging high-technology industries that will drive future economic growth for China, but hurt economic growth for the United States and many other countries”, U.S. President Donald Trump said in an official White House statement. The announcement did not say when the U.S. tariffs would take effect.

Chinese tariffs on about USD34 billion of U.S. imports will start on July 6, and be applied to soybeans, corn, wheat, rice, sorghum, beef, pork, poultry, fish, dairy products, nuts and vegetables, cars and aquatic products. The effective date of the tariffs on the remaining USD16 billion of American goods will be announced later, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said. Among those items are crude oil, natural gas, coal and some refined oil products.

The tit-for-tat action amounted to the start of a real trade war between the two countries. The Chinese government also announced that all agreements reached during several trade negotiation sessions in Beijing and Washington were now null and void. Moreover, the U.S. plans to announce investment restrictions and export controls on June 30 for Chinese persons and entities related to the acquisition of industrially significant technology, the White House said. This will escalate the trade war even further. The White House also said it will pursue additional tariffs if China takes retaliatory measures, which in the meantime it has already done. Still, some analysts believe that trade talks will soon resume. A commentary in the China Daily said that: “given the frequent flip-flopping of Trump’s administration, it is still too early to conclude that a full-blown war is underway. But China’s stance has been consistent: It welcomes dialogue but is not afraid of a trade war.”

In the run-up to the imposition of tariffs, U.S. President Donald Trump had told Fox News that “China could be a little bit upset about trade because we are very strongly clamping down.” Trump’s summit meeting with North-Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore may have emboldened him to take a harder line on China, said Daniel Russel, former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

In another sign of rising trade tensions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously against a group of Chinese vitamin C producers in a long-running antitrust battle. The ruling leaves the Chinese companies, including Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical Co, accused of colluding to fix the price and supply of their products, vulnerable to a USD148 million award in favor of the plaintiffs. China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has called the legal moves against Chinese parties “hostile” and disrespectful” and argued that the companies involved could not at the same time follow Chinese and U.S. laws. The justices’ decision sends the case back to a federal appellate court in New York.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has warned of a bubble in the share prices of new-economy companies, singling out Ping An Good Doctor, ZhongAn Insurance, China Literature, Yixin Group, and Razer, noting that the wild price swings after their IPOs have raised concerns about overpricing. The CSRC has asked issuers, underwriters, and institutional investors to “exercise caution” in the initial public offering (IPO) book building process after it recently launched a pilot program to support innovative companies to list on domestic stock exchanges and allow overseas listed mainland companies to issue China Depositary Receipts (CDRs). Book building is the process by which an underwriter attempts to determine at what price to offer an IPO based on demand from institutional investors. Several new-economy companies have quickly plunged from their peaks or fallen below their offer prices after being listed in Hong Kong.

Ping An Good Doctor, the biggest listing in Hong Kong so far this year, dropped below its IPO price of HKD54.9 on its second trading day on May 7. ZhongAn Insurance, China Literature, Yixin Group, and Razer were the four biggest technology listings in 2017. Among them, three have already fallen below the offer price. Yixin Group was the worst performer, down 51% from its IPO price. ZhongAn and Razer have fallen 9% and 42% respectively. Compared with their respective peaks, the combined market value of these companies has evaporated by more than HKD160 billion.

Meanwhile the market is looking to a few major upcoming initial public offerings (IPOs). China’s restaurant review and delivery firm Meituan Dianping plans to file for an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong, which would make it the city’s second multibillion-dollar public listing by a tech start-up this year. Meituan is considering selling about 10% of the company, the minimum required under Hong Kong exchange rules, to avoid dilution. Meituan was most recently valued at USD30 billion, making it the world’s fourth most valuable start-up, according to CB Insights. Founded in 2010 by Wang Xing, Meituan handled USD57 billion of transactions last year between about 320 million active buyers and more than four million merchants. But the company faces competition with entities backed by Alibaba in food delivery, with Didi Chuxing in ride hailing, and with its own backer Tencent in payments.

Wise Talent Information Technology, which operates China’s largest job recruitment site Liepin, is seeking to raise as much as HKD3.12 billion in Hong Kong – the second biggest IPO by a unicorn company this year after Ping An Good Doctor’s USD1.1 billion listing in April. Wise Talent is backed by venture capital firm Matrix Partners China. The retail tranche – 10% of the total offer size – will start trading on June 29 on Hong Kong’s main board. Rick Dai, Chairman, CEO and Founder of Wise Talent, said that since a lot of overseas highly-skilled Chinese are gradually returning to China for employment and using the platform, there is a big demand in the market. He added that the IPO was well-timed because of the rapid growth in Chinese tech start-ups and innovation. Liepin, launched in 2011, is China’s largest job recruitment site by revenue. Its database included 248,600 companies, 38.9 million professionals and 101,800 headhunters in 2017. About 40% of the IPO proceeds will be used to enhance research and development (R&D) capabilities, such as hiring AI and data specialists to improve existing matching algorithms and develop AI-empowered voice and facial recognition technologies to interview potential job candidates via robots.

Chinese customs officers have stopped hundreds of thousands of fake FIFA World Cup products from leaving the country as counterfeiters tried to make money from the international sporting event. Counterfeit goods, mainly footballs and sports clothing, were seized by Customs in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Yiwu, the world’s biggest wholesale market, ahead of the start of the World Cup in Russia.

China News Service reported that Guangzhou Customs impounded more than 7,800 fake FIFA products, all from one manufacturer and destined for Tanzania. Huangpu Customs, also in Guangzhou, seized 4,500 World Cup-Adidas soccer shirts mixed with a shipment of unbranded shirts. In Shanghai, Customs officials have discovered more than 130,000 items that allegedly infringed on the intellectual property rights of the World Cup. In one major case, nearly 2,500 “Russia 2018” footballs made in Nanjing were seized in mid-April before they could be shipped to Columbia through Yangshan port in Shanghai.

Hundreds of knock-off footballs were also impounded in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, in what was the 12th Fifa IPR raid by Hangzhou Customs this year. The dozen cases netted roughly 32,000 counterfeits combined. World Cup-related products are among the bestsellers on Yiwugou.com, the Yiwu commodities market’s online platform. More than 100 million of the top four products, all small flags of finalists in the event, have been sold in the past month. Chinese companies are also spending big on the event, signing up as either partners, sponsors or regional supporters, including Wanda Group, Mengniu, Hisense and Vivo, the South China Morning Post reports.