Hi everyone. I’m Stephanie LI.

Coming up on today’s program

• Emergency response has been upgraded after Gansu earthquake, while companies are quick to offer donation and supplies;

• World's first Zootopia land opens at Shanghai Disney Resort.

Here’s what you need to know about China in the past 24 hours 

The 6.2-magnitude earthquake that jolted China's Gansu province and neighboring Qinghai province at midnight Monday has killed 131 people, with over 780 people injured, local authorities said Tuesday.

The earthquake had damaged 155,393 houses in Gansu as of 1 pm Tuesday, according to the provincial earthquake relief headquarters.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was deeply saddened by the tragic earthquake, and the loss of life and property damage and injuries to people, his spokesman said on Tuesday.

China has upgraded the national disaster-relief emergency response to Level II for the earthquake. Over 736 rescuers from central enterprises' projects in nearby areas, as well as 2,042 firefighters, have been sent to the quake-hit region, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management.

More relief supplies are also on the way. The ministry said the third batch of relief goods, including 2,000 cotton tents, 5,000 rollaway beds, 5,000 overcoats, and 10,000 quilts, have been allocated to Gansu. As of 5 pm Tuesday, a total of 133,500 relief items have been sent to Gansu and the neighboring Qinghai province to support the basic needs of those affected by the earthquake.

Traffic has been resumed on all rural highways connecting areas severely affected by the earthquake as of 7 pm Tuesday, the country's transport authorities said Tuesday.

All the expressways as well as national and provincial trunk roads in Gansu and Qinghai are operating smoothly, and relief personnel, supplies and vehicles can reach the disaster-hit areas unimpededly, according to the Ministry of Transport.

Relentless efforts have also been made to restore power supply in quake-hit areas. The damaged main power grid circuits in the earthquake-stricken area of Jishishan county have been fully restored as of 6:30 pm Tuesday, according to the State Grid Gansu Electric Power Company.

Over 30 Chinese companies are also donating large sums of money and plenty of supplies for rescue work and post-disaster reconstruction after the deadly earthquake. 

The Tencent Foundation and TikTok operator ByteDance’s charitable foundation are each giving away 20 million yuan. ByteDance is also linking arms with Chinese movie star Jet Li’s One Foundation to donate 1,000 cotton quilts.

E-commerce titan Alibaba Group Holding has donated over 50,000 boxes of emergency supplies and gifted 10 million yuan, while  Pinduoduo has released 20 million yuan for the purchase of goods such as thermal clothing and tents and for post-disaster reconstruction in the quake epicenter of Jishishan county.

Chinese sportswear company Anta Sports is donating 40 million yuan of cold weather clothing and another sports brand Li Ning is distributing 20 million yuan of outdoor heating supplies, as temperatures remain below zero in the area.

Carmakers are also doing their bit. Chery Holdings and BYD’s philanthropic foundation have donated 12 million and 10 million yuan respectively, while GAC Group and Great Wall Motor each gifted 5 million yuan in cash.  

Moving on to regional highlights

• Shanghai has launched a series of initiatives to accelerate the construction of scientific research infrastructure to build a global science and technology innovation center. Shanghai will offer subsidies of up to 300 million yuan to cover no more than 80 percent of new facilities costs for projects researching key technologies and core equipment in the photonics, life sciences, artificial intelligence, energy, and marine sectors, according to a document the Shanghai government released yesterday. A user subsidy mechanism for scientific research facilities will also be established to support small and medium-sized enterprises focused on science and technology innovation, the document showed. 

Greater Bay Area, Greater Future

• Hong Kong on Tuesday unveiled a scheme to attract foreign investment and talent, requiring applicants to have a minimum net worth of HK$30 million in the two years before applying. The assets must include at least HK$27 million in non-residential property and financial assets such as shares and bonds. In addition, applicants for the Capital Investment Entrant Scheme must invest at least HK$3 million to support innovation and technology industries. The scheme is open to foreign nationals, Chinese nationals with permanent overseas resident status, Macau residents and Taiwan residents who are ethnic Chinese.

• An additional 22 trains will run daily along the high-speed rail link between Hong Kong and Shenzhen during the upcoming Christmas and New Year holidays. Twenty of those trains will operate between Hong Kong West Kowloon Station and Shenzhen's Futian Station, while the other two will travel to and from Shenzhen North Station from Friday to Dec 26 and from Dec 29 to Jan 1. The operation of the additional cross-boundary trains will increase the total daily number of trains running between the two neighboring cities to over 200. The Immigration Department on Tuesday estimated that around 9.03 million passengers will travel to and from Hong Kong during the Christmas and New Year festive periods, with 83.5 percent of them passing through land-based crossing points.

• The luxury "ro-ro" (roll-on/roll-off) passenger ship, Moby Legacy, with a maximum displacement of over 70,000 tons, one of the largest in the world, set sail on Tuesday to Italy from Guangzhou. Independently built by Guangzhou Shipyard International Co., the giant liner has a capacity for 2,500 passengers and around 800 vehicles, and it will be delivered to the Italian shipping company Moby.  

• The first 15 projects with a unified quality certification from Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao were unveiled on Tuesday, marking a step forward in rule convergence in the Greater Bay Area (GBA). The projects with “GBA Certification” cover manufactured consumer goods, agricultural and food products, and services. Based on standard technical indicators, all the items meet the market access requirements of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, which means that they will be able to enter the markets of all three places with only one certification. 

Next on industry and company news

• China’s electricity and natural gas consumption has reached a record high as temperatures plummet to an all-time low in some parts of the country, but there is sufficient energy supply to meet the surging demand. Electricity consumption peaked at 1.2 billion kilowatts on Dec. 17 and that of natural gas hit 1.4 billion cubic meters, said the country’s macro-economic planner National Development and Reform Commission. This is 83 million kW and 108 million cbm more than the previous high last year. China has sufficient supply of electricity and has generated 25.5 billion kilowatt-hours a day on average since the country's central heating period began on Nov. 15, which is an increase of 8.7 percent from the same period last year, according to NDRC data.  

• Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu will take over as chief executive of Taobao and Tmall Group, Alibaba's domestic e-commerce arm, effective immediately, the company said on Wednesday, as it tries to regroup after its value fell behind rival PDD Holdings. Wu, who has been Group CEO since September, also took over from previous head Daniel Zhang as the company's cloud business CEO that month. The latest appointment means Wu now leads the overall group as well as its two most important business pisions - cloud and domestic e-commerce. Trudy Dai Shan, who was appointed CEO of Taobao and Tmall in March, will step aside to assist in setting up an asset management company for Alibaba.

• Shanghai Disney Resort opened the world's first Zootopia-themed land to the public, a recreation of the movie's animal-dwelling urban area. Starting today, visitors can hop on Zootopia: Hot Pursuit, a trackless ride where guests take the role of recruits at the Zootopia Police Department and join Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps, the movie's two main protagonists, on a chase. A store in the city will also sell ice creams and donuts in different sizes to meet the needs of various animals, just like in the animation. Ticket bookings for the Shanghai Disney Resort surged 300 percent in the recent week from a week earlier thanks to the Zootopia city's highly anticipated opening, according to data from travel agency Tongcheng. 

• Chinese handset giant Xiaomi has sacked three employees from its automobile pision for violating the company’s confidentiality agreement. This and last month, the three staffers attended seminars organized by brokers and investment institutes without Xiaomi’s consent to get consulting fees, the firm said yesterday. At the seminars, the three employees disseminated false information, severely misleading the market and disrupting the normal operation of Xiaomi Automobile, the company added.

• Country Garden Services Holdings, China’s largest residential property manager, anticipates a decrease in profit of up to 4.1 billion yuan this year due to impairments. Net profit will fall by 3.2 billion to 4.1 billion yuan in 2023, the manager of residential buildings and industrial parks said in a bourse filing late Monday. It will book an impairment charge on goodwill and other intangible assets to the tune of 1.4 billion to 1.8 billion yuan, mainly because some subsidiaries failed to develop as expected and some existing businesses are undergoing adjustments. The payment cycles of some clients are getting longer, resulting in less-than-ideal cash flow, it added.

• Dajin Heavy Industry's shares jumped after China's biggest private maker of foundations for offshore wind power farms said its unit penned a deal to supply parts to a project developer in Europe's North Sea region, four days after announcing a similar order. Penglai Dajin Offshore Heavy Industry will supply single piles worth over 1.3 billion yuan for the European developer's wind farm project, with production and deliveries to gradually start from 2025, the parent company announced today.  

Switching gears to financial news

• China stood pat on benchmark lending rates at the monthly fixing on Wednesday, matching market expectations, after the central bank kept its medium-term policy rate steady earlier last week. The People’s Bank of China left its one-year LPR at 3.45 percent, while the five-year LPR, which is used to determine mortgage rates, was left unchanged at 4.20 percent in the PBOC's final rate decision for 2023. Both rates were at historic lows, after three cuts over the past year. 

Wrapping up with a quick look at the stock market

• Chinese stocks hit one-year low on Wednesday as the benchmark Shanghai Composite dropped 1 percent and the Shenzhen Component plunged 1.4 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rebounded 0.7 percent and the TECH index gained 0.5 percent.

Biz Word of the day

• The Loan Prime Rate (LPR) is the lending rate provided by commercial banks to their highest quality customers. It is seen as China’s de facto benchmark funding cost since a reform in 2019. The monthly data is a pricing reference for banks that is based on the rates of the central bank's open market operations, especially the medium-term lending facility rate.

Executive Editor: Sonia YU

Editor: LI Yanxia

Host: Stephanie LI

Writer: Stephanie LI 

Sound Editor: Stephanie LI

Graphic Designer: ZHENG Wenjing, LIAO Yuanni

Produced by 21st Century Business Herald Dept. of Overseas News.

Presented by SFC

编委:  于晓娜

策划、编辑：李艳霞 

播音：李莹亮

撰稿：李莹亮

音频制作：李莹亮

设计：郑文静、廖苑妮

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