China wants to become the world market leader in battery-powered EVs. However, this does not mean that hydrogen technology will be neglected, as Frank Sieren reports. It is to be used in commercial vehicles and buses. However, green hydrogen has hardly played a role so far.
No other country in the world produces billionaires as rapidly as China. According to the latest Forbes ranking, there are now 626 of them. Beijing is the world capital of billionaires and has overtaken New York. Gregor Koppenburg and Jörn Petring analyze how the ten most important newcomers in the Forbes ranking have earned their fortunes.
China’s recent sanctions against ten Europeans and four EU organizations leave much unclear. Marcel Grzanna spoke with sinologist Mareike Ohlberg. She says: “The Chinese government’s strategy is to unsettle and frighten the other side.” This applies to critical minds abroad as well as at home.
In November last year, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) presented a development plan that envisages the country becoming a “hydrogen nation” over the next 15 years. By 2035, the Chinese state wants to have one millionEVs with fuel cell propulsion on the roads, with an initial focus on commercial vehicles, trucks, and buses.
The 2022 Winter Olympics is the first major showcase project. At the venues, 1800 buses with fuel cells will already be on the road.
According to a white paper by the China Hydrogen Alliance (NAHC), fuel cell vehicles could account for between seven and fourteen percent of Chinese commercial vehicle sales by 2030. This would correspond to 360,000 to 720,000 vehicles.
This is in line with Beijing’s targets to be climate neutral by 2060 and to have reached the peak of CO2 emissions before 2030. Today, two-fifths of all climate-damaging transport emissions are caused by trucks. In this sector, hydrogen drives make more sense than e-batteries since e-batteries in trucks would have to weigh tons, take a long time to recharge, and achieve only a short-range according to the current state of the art. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is lighter. The tanks can be better accommodated in a large vehicle. There is also no need for a huge network of hydrogen filling stations; strategic refilling stations at motorway junctions, for example, are sufficient. By 2035 China wants to have installed more than 1000 such filling stations.
Eye on the Chinese growth market
The Chinese truck market accounts for around 40 percent of global sales. It is still dominated by national manufacturers such as FAW Jiefang and Dongfeng. SAIC Motor from Shanghai is one of the companies with its own fuel cell technology. The country’s largest vehicle manufacturer announced last year that it would launch at least ten new hydrogen models by 2025. The company has invested the equivalent of €7370 million in the research and development of hydrogen drives over the past 20 years. With the SAIC Hongyan, the company presented a promising hydrogen truck at the end of last year.
Brussels is also demanding that European truck manufacturers reduce their CO2 emissions by an average of 15 percent by 2025 and by as much as 30 percent by 2030.
In December, Daimler Truck AG, Iveco (CNH Industrial), the oil companies OMV and Shell, and the Volvo Group, therefore, presented a new syndicate called H2Accelerate, which aims to help hydrogen trucks achieve a breakthrough. “The fuel cell is a crucial CO2-neutral solution for trucks in heavy-duty long-distance transport,” explains Martin Daum, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler Truck AG.
Foreign manufacturers build factories
It is all but certain that China will soon become even more of a focus for foreign truck builders. VW truck subsidiary Traton, which has a strategic partnership with Chinese truck manufacturer Sinotruk, is currently building a truck factory in Jiangsu province, with series production scheduled to begin in early 2022. Traton’s MAN brand holds a 25 percent stake in Sinotruk. “The technological requirements for commercial vehicles are increasing worldwide and are converging more and more on international markets,” explains Traton CEO Matthias Gründler.
Toyota and Hyundai, the two companies whose fuel cell cars have currently reached the highest market maturity, are also active in China. Together with the Chinese car manufacturers FAW, Dongfeng, GAC, and BAIC, as well as Beijing SinoHytec, a company specializing in stationary fuel cell systems, Toyota has founded the United Fuel Cell System R&D, which aims to advance the development of cost-effective fuel cell systems. Toyota holds a 65 percent stake in the joint venture.
Hyundai, in turn, is building its first fuel cell plant outside Korea in Guangzhou, southern China, at a cost of around $1 billion. The South Koreans had already begun delivering their Xcient Fuel Cell hydrogen truck last year as part of a pilot project in Switzerland.
Beijing is also tempting with subsidies. Every region that promotes technologies for fuel cell vehicles can be reimbursed up to €200 million. That means: Money is only given to those who can already deliver. In the case of heavy-duty trucks, subsidies of up to €133,000 per vehicle were recently possible.
Green hydrogen hardly plays a role so far
China is already the world’s largest producer of hydrogen, with an annual production of 20 million tons. However, the technology is not yet truly green. Over 90 percent of hydrogen is produced from coal and chemical by-products. CO2-neutral “green hydrogen” from energy sources such as water, wind, and solar energy has hardly played a role so far. For the time being, Chinese hydrogen promotion is primarily focused on technological leadership.
However, several large-scale projects for the production of hydrogen from solar and wind power are planned, for example in Inner Mongolia, where a gigantic hydrogen production plantisto be built. One thing is clear: Developments in the Chinese market will be decisive. With its size and the growing influence of its industrial policy, the country is potentially the largest market for hydrogen technology worldwide.
Car Industry
Electromobility
Renewable energies
Truck
China’s new billionaires
The new Forbes billionaire ranking can be quickly summarized from a Chinese perspective: It was a super year for China’s super-rich. The People’s Republic has gained 202 billionaires, bringing their number up by a good third to 626. Beijing alone is now home to 100 billionaires, making the Chinese capital the city with the most billionaires, ahead of New York. Jack Ma is no longer the richest man in China. He has been replaced by mineral water king Zhong Shanshan. Tencent founder Pony Ma and Colin Zheng Huang, founder of online retailer Pinduoduo have also passed Ma.
More interesting than the familiar faces at the top of the list are the entrepreneurs who have just become billionaires. Among the new names on the list, 59 alone have made their fortunes through IPOs in the past year. Others have benefited from the fact that the value of their already listed companies has multiplied. An overview of the ten most important Chinese newcomers in the Forbes ranking:
Chen Zhiping, whose fortune not only topped the billion-dollar mark for the first time last year but catapulted directly to $15.9 billion, is the founder ofSmoore International, the world’s largest e-cigarette maker, which he floated on the Hong Kong stock exchange last July.
Li Hua ($7.1 billion) is the founder ofFutu, a popular financial platform in China. Similar to the US provider Robinhood, Futu is made for private investors who simply want to trade on the stock market on their smartphone. The shares of the trading platform, which is traded in New York, rose by almost 1400 percent last year.
Wang Junlin ($6.3 billion) revived two state-owned companies as a manager before joining then struggling liquor maker Sichuan Langjiu in 2001. Wang restructured and privatized the historic brand, which has its roots in the Han dynasty. Last year, the company announced its plan for an IPO.
Wang Ning ($6.3 billion) started building toymaker Pop Mart shortly after graduating from university in 2010. A decade later, he floated the company on the Hong Kong stock exchange in December 2020. The company is famous for its collectible figures. Similar to surprise eggs, customers do not know beforehand which figure is hidden in the package.
Jian Jun ($5.6 billion) is the founder ofShenzhen-basedImeik Technology Development, making medical cosmetic products such as advanced anti-aging face masks. Jian took the company, founded in 2004, public in Shenzhen last September. The share price has more than doubled since then.
Cao Renxian ($5.3 billion) founded the company Sungrow Power Supply back in 1997 when he was still working as a university professor. Its products, used in 150 countries, convert direct current from solar panels into alternating current for the power grid. In addition to commercial and residential applications, Sungrow also supplies components for floating solar farms, which is a huge business in China.
Kate Wang ($5 billion) has become rich, just like Chen Zhiping with e-cigarettes. Wang also “earned” her billions on the stock market when her company RLX Technology was first listed last year.
Liu Fangyi (4.2 billion) is the big winner of the COVID crisis. Shares in his company Intco Medical Technology, which makes disposable medical products such as masks and gloves, soared more than 650 percent last year amid the pandemic. Liu started his business selling disposable gloves back in the 1990s when he was studying at the University of California, according to Forbes, before returning to China in 2003 to found Intco.
Steven Meng Yang (4.2 billion) used to work as a software developer at Google in the US. In 2011, he then foundedthehardware developer Anker Innovations in Shenzhen. Initially, the company specialized in replacement batteries for laptops. After some time, the focus changed to chargers for smartphones. Its products are shipped from China and sold primarily through Amazon. When it went public last year, Anker Innovations was valued at $8 billion. Founder Yang holds 44 percent of the shares.
Li Xiang (4 billion) is the founder ofthe ChineseEV startups Li Auto, which went public in New York last July. Li Auto says it sold 33500 vehicles in its home market last year. Its biggest rivals are Chinese EV makers Nio and XPeng, which are also listed in New York. Gregor Koppenburg/Jörn Petring
Finance
Society
News
Xpeng plans a third EV factory
Electric start-up Xpeng has announced the construction of a third factory for electric cars. The planned plant in the central Chinese city of Wuhan is to have an annual capacity of 100,000 EVs, also produce powertrains and have a development laboratory, as Xpeng recently announced. To this end, the company is cooperating with the provincial government – which probably means that it will receive benefits or even subsidies. However, the company, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, did not initially disclose an investment sum or a production start date.
Xpeng is currently emerging as one of the leading EV start-ups. Founded in 2014, the company had long been overshadowed by glamorous competitors in the media – some of which have already disappeared from the scene or are struggling with financial problems. In 2020, Xpeng ranked third among start-ups in China, including Tesla, with 27,042 EVs sold. These brands mainly attract private customers. In the first quarter, Xpeng sold 13,340 EVs of its two models, the P7 and G3 – a whopping 487 percent more than the same period last year. A third model is to be presented at the Shanghai auto show, according to local media reports.
“Smart electric vehicles are becoming increasingly popular in China,” Xpeng founder and chief executive He Xiaopeng said in the statement. “Expanding our capacity in key hubs like Wuhan plays a crucial role for us.” Wuhan is one of China’s auto clusters, so it is likely to already have suppliers of interest to Xpeng.
The recent strong boom in the electric market is causing renewed euphoria in the segment. In 2020, despite the COVID pandemic, 1.3 million EVs were sold, 24 percent more than in 2019. Analysts at the Bloomberg news agency even expect an increase of 54 percent for 2021.
Most start-ups produce with only one plant – so far, this is also the case for Xpeng, whose electric cars roll off the production line in Zhaoqing in the southern province of Guangdong. A second factory is under construction in the provincial capital of Guangzhou – similar in size to the now announced plant. Production in Guangzhou is scheduled to begin in late 2022. ck
Car Industry
Electromobility
Guangdong
Beijing wants to strengthen competition authority
The Chinese competition authority wants to increaseitsstaff by 20 to 30 employees. In addition, the authority is to be provided with more financial resourcesto take actionagainst anti-competitive behavior, Reuters reported, citing informedcircles. According to the report, the State Administration for Market Regulation currently employs “about 40 people”. Only on Saturday, the authority had imposed a record fine against Alibaba in the amount of the equivalent of €2.3 billion. The background was the result of an investigation according to which Alibaba abused its dominant position.
Beijing’s plan to strengthen the regulator comes at the same time as it revamps China’s competition law. Proposed changes include significantly higher fines and new criteria for assessing whether a company dominates the relevant market, Reuters reported. nib
Domestic policy of the CP China
Trade
Chinese loan: Montenegro asks EU for help
Montenegro plans to ask various EU organizations for help in repayinga $1 billion loan to China, the Financial Times reports with reference to Montenegro’s Finance Minister Milojko Spajić. According to the report, the loan was granted for a highway project that is being built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation but has not yet been completed. According to the FT, the project is considered one of the most expensive highways in the world and is unprofitable. The country would have to start repayments in July. If Montenegro defaults, the terms of the contract give China the right to access Montenegrin land as collateral, the report adds.
Spajić argued that it would be an “easy win” for the EU in the geopolitical contest if it helped Montenegro refinance itself. It was the first time a Western Balkan state had made such an approach to Brussels to curb Chinese influence, the FT quoted an analyst at the think-tank Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence as saying. The EU is ready to help, an EU Commission official said, according to the FT report. However, the size of the loan was disproportionate to Montenegro’s economy. The “right financial instruments” must now be found, the official said. nib
Finance
Montenegro
New Silk Road
CATL acquires stake in cobalt mine in DR Congo
The world’s largest maker of batteries for EVs, China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL), is taking a $137.5 million stake in a cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Reuters reports. Previously, the mine was 95 percent owned by China Molybdenum, the world’s largest cobalt producer. A subsidiary of CATL is now taking a 23.75 percent stake in the mine.
The investment gives CATL access to one of the world’s largest undeveloped sources of cobalt, according to Reuters, an ingredient in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. CATL had previously invested in companies that extract battery raw materials such as lithium and nickel to secure its own supply. The DR Congo government holds a five percent stake in the mine. nib
Adjustments for carbon offsets are discriminatory and against the principles of the CBDR-RC (Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities) set out in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the statement said.
The declaration does not criticize any concrete plan for CO2 limit compensation. However, the EU is currently working on a corresponding instrument (China.Table reported). The European Parliament had already given the green light for this, the proposal of the EU Commission is expected for the second quarter. ari
Geopolitics
Sustainability
Profile
Mareike Ohlberg
Senior Fellow German Marshall Fund Asia Program
Mareike Ohlberg has given up brooding. Whether or not she has actually been sanctioned by the Chinese government is basically irrelevant to her. The sinologist is pretty sure that she will not be allowed to enter the People’s Republic again until further notice – official sanctions or not.
Evidence for their assumption: an article in the Global Times, a Chinese daily newspaper that is fully aligned with the state announcements. The medium recently introduced its readers to those individuals and institutions that were sanctioned by name by the People’s Republic of China. The personal punishments were part of a retaliation for concerted sanctions from the EU and the USagainst Chinese officials. Ohlberg herself found mention as a former employee of the sanctioned Berlin-based Mercator Institute (Merics). As such, she had signed an open letter in April 2020 sharply criticizing China’s COVID policy. The Global Times referred to this letter and defamed Ohlberg as well as her former Merics colleague Kristin Shi-Kupfer.
But what does that mean in concrete terms? Ohlberg doesn’t know. No one has officially told her that she is no longer welcome in the country. But the 36-year-old puts one and one together. Her work reflects a critical stance on Chinese domestic and foreign policy and has been a thorn in Beijing’s side for a while. In 2017, despite an invitation from the German embassy in Beijing, she was denied a visa for the first time, shortly after she had researched and published on ideological currents in China.
“Are you a purebred German?” she was asked at the time of her application. “It was bizarre, but it seemed like they were looking for a reason to deny me entry,” says Ohlberg, whose family is partly from Russia and whose mother was born in the US. The Chinese embassystresses to China.Table that visas are issued on the basis of citizenship. “The Chinese embassy and consulates general in Germany process visa applications of foreign citizens in accordance with international law and relevant Chinese laws,“ its statement said.
Mareike Ohlberg’s book causes a stir
And then there’s this book that came out last year, in 2020, “Hidden Hand“ which Ohlberg co-authored. There she describes Chinese structures that are designed to undermine and subvert the world’s democracies. The book is causinga stirbecause it is awake-upcall and shows the means by which the People’s Republic intensively seeks to makeitsauthoritarian policies acceptable in other states. China would therefore prefer to silence voices like Ohlberg’s. However, because the dictatorship lacks arguments against scientific work, it categorically banishes all disagreeable counter-positions to the realm of lies. Evidence to the contrary? Not a thing.
“The Chinese government’s strategy is to unsettle and scare the other side. I don’t read comments on social media because it doesn’t make any sense to me. But sometimes friends send me messages asking if I’m scared,” Ohlberg says. Then she knows that someone must have threatened her again on the internet. But the attempt to intimidate her also goes through her employer, the German Marshall Fund (GMF), a US foundation that seeks to improve the transatlantic relationship with Europe. “Occasionally, there are complaints against me to my employer and to others who might hire me in the future. So critics try to block my professional future,” Ohlberg says.
While this doesn’t impress the researcher, she says, it does show the Communist Party’s objective: “Beijing wants to dry up the sources of fact-based and critical analysis of Chinese politics and replace them with their own narratives.” Merics and GMF are described by state media in the People’s Republic as anti-Chinese tools of the US government.
Helmut Schmidt’s questionable view of China
Ohlberg is used to making a splash. Authorities have never made a lasting impression on her, she says. You can believe that. The other day she sat with Jörg Thadeusz on Talk from Berlin in the RRB television studio and was supposed to explain the content of her book. The moderator confronted her with a quote from what he called the “saintly” former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on the subject of China from 2013.
Schmidt said at the time that dictatorship was culturally theright form of rule for the Chinese people. A classic argument from the propaganda forge of the Chinese Communist Party. The former SPD politician liked to talk about his friendship with former top politician Deng Xiaoping. Many of his conclusions were based on conversations with Deng. Ohlberg took a slightly annoyed breath in front of the camera and said, “Helmut Schmidt had relatively many questionable ideas about China.” Of course, there were negative reactions to that as well, this time from Germans.
How does she explain the highly emotional nature of the China debate in Germany? Ohlberg believes that many advocates of the Beijing autocrats are simply ill-informed. Some people drive through Xinjiang for a few weeks and believe that they can see that the human rights crimes against the Uyghur minority are by no means as bad as they are portrayed in the West because they have seen nothing of the sort themselves. Others, on the other hand, know better but are acting in their own self-interest: “There are certainly some who really believe that the portrayals of what is happening in Xinjiang are exaggerated. But there are also many who very deliberately want to score points with the Chinese government by speaking out against it.”
In her research, Ohlberg has been intensively involved with Chinese propaganda since her doctoral thesis. When she studied in Beijing for a year in 2004, she became acquainted with an enormous diversity of opinions in the country, from which she abstracted an essence over many years that today bitterly offends friends of the Communist Party. Early on, she was of the opinion that one should be allowed to study Sinology and, at the same time, stand up for the rights of oppressed Tibetans. Ohlberg remembers fellow students who preferred not to sign anything because they were afraid that they would be denied entry to China afterwards.
Such concessions are deeply suspect to the author. She says she has always been willing to pay the price for critical China research. The vituperations in the Global Times are part of that price. She is also unwilling to risk entry into Hong Kong because of new legislation there. Lawyers have told her that they would definitely find something against her that violates the vaguely worded National Security Law (China.Table reported).
Lively Discussions with her Lecturers
Ohlberg got to know Chinese culture from many perspectives. As an exchange student in Beijing, as an employee of the Cheng Shewo Institute for Journalism in Taiwan, or through a friend from Hong Kong whom she met in the USA when she was 16. During her studies, at a time when a breeze of liberalization was blowing through the country under former President Hu Jintao, she had lively discussions with her lecturers about authoritarian structures or minority policies. She learned about the critical attitude of many academics in the People’s Republic towards their own government, but also about the arguments of those in favor. That was almost 20 years ago. Such discussions are unthinkable in China today. Fear rules the minds of intellectuals. Even Ohlberg is cautious. “It should not be traceable in the text about me who these critical minds were. That can get them into trouble again today,” she says.
And then there were also Uyghur friends, some of whom she misses today because she doesn’t know what happened to them. Ohlberg accepts that she is accused of bias because of these personal relationships. She says, “Anyone who has gained personal experience should not be excluded from a debate because of perceived bias.” Marcel Grzanna
China wants to become the world market leader in battery-powered EVs. However, this does not mean that hydrogen technology will be neglected, as Frank Sieren reports. It is to be used in commercial vehicles and buses. However, green hydrogen has hardly played a role so far.
No other country in the world produces billionaires as rapidly as China. According to the latest Forbes ranking, there are now 626 of them. Beijing is the world capital of billionaires and has overtaken New York. Gregor Koppenburg and Jörn Petring analyze how the ten most important newcomers in the Forbes ranking have earned their fortunes.
China’s recent sanctions against ten Europeans and four EU organizations leave much unclear. Marcel Grzanna spoke with sinologist Mareike Ohlberg. She says: “The Chinese government’s strategy is to unsettle and frighten the other side.” This applies to critical minds abroad as well as at home.
In November last year, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) presented a development plan that envisages the country becoming a “hydrogen nation” over the next 15 years. By 2035, the Chinese state wants to have one millionEVs with fuel cell propulsion on the roads, with an initial focus on commercial vehicles, trucks, and buses.
The 2022 Winter Olympics is the first major showcase project. At the venues, 1800 buses with fuel cells will already be on the road.
According to a white paper by the China Hydrogen Alliance (NAHC), fuel cell vehicles could account for between seven and fourteen percent of Chinese commercial vehicle sales by 2030. This would correspond to 360,000 to 720,000 vehicles.
This is in line with Beijing’s targets to be climate neutral by 2060 and to have reached the peak of CO2 emissions before 2030. Today, two-fifths of all climate-damaging transport emissions are caused by trucks. In this sector, hydrogen drives make more sense than e-batteries since e-batteries in trucks would have to weigh tons, take a long time to recharge, and achieve only a short-range according to the current state of the art. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is lighter. The tanks can be better accommodated in a large vehicle. There is also no need for a huge network of hydrogen filling stations; strategic refilling stations at motorway junctions, for example, are sufficient. By 2035 China wants to have installed more than 1000 such filling stations.
Eye on the Chinese growth market
The Chinese truck market accounts for around 40 percent of global sales. It is still dominated by national manufacturers such as FAW Jiefang and Dongfeng. SAIC Motor from Shanghai is one of the companies with its own fuel cell technology. The country’s largest vehicle manufacturer announced last year that it would launch at least ten new hydrogen models by 2025. The company has invested the equivalent of €7370 million in the research and development of hydrogen drives over the past 20 years. With the SAIC Hongyan, the company presented a promising hydrogen truck at the end of last year.
Brussels is also demanding that European truck manufacturers reduce their CO2 emissions by an average of 15 percent by 2025 and by as much as 30 percent by 2030.
In December, Daimler Truck AG, Iveco (CNH Industrial), the oil companies OMV and Shell, and the Volvo Group, therefore, presented a new syndicate called H2Accelerate, which aims to help hydrogen trucks achieve a breakthrough. “The fuel cell is a crucial CO2-neutral solution for trucks in heavy-duty long-distance transport,” explains Martin Daum, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler Truck AG.
Foreign manufacturers build factories
It is all but certain that China will soon become even more of a focus for foreign truck builders. VW truck subsidiary Traton, which has a strategic partnership with Chinese truck manufacturer Sinotruk, is currently building a truck factory in Jiangsu province, with series production scheduled to begin in early 2022. Traton’s MAN brand holds a 25 percent stake in Sinotruk. “The technological requirements for commercial vehicles are increasing worldwide and are converging more and more on international markets,” explains Traton CEO Matthias Gründler.
Toyota and Hyundai, the two companies whose fuel cell cars have currently reached the highest market maturity, are also active in China. Together with the Chinese car manufacturers FAW, Dongfeng, GAC, and BAIC, as well as Beijing SinoHytec, a company specializing in stationary fuel cell systems, Toyota has founded the United Fuel Cell System R&D, which aims to advance the development of cost-effective fuel cell systems. Toyota holds a 65 percent stake in the joint venture.
Hyundai, in turn, is building its first fuel cell plant outside Korea in Guangzhou, southern China, at a cost of around $1 billion. The South Koreans had already begun delivering their Xcient Fuel Cell hydrogen truck last year as part of a pilot project in Switzerland.
Beijing is also tempting with subsidies. Every region that promotes technologies for fuel cell vehicles can be reimbursed up to €200 million. That means: Money is only given to those who can already deliver. In the case of heavy-duty trucks, subsidies of up to €133,000 per vehicle were recently possible.
Green hydrogen hardly plays a role so far
China is already the world’s largest producer of hydrogen, with an annual production of 20 million tons. However, the technology is not yet truly green. Over 90 percent of hydrogen is produced from coal and chemical by-products. CO2-neutral “green hydrogen” from energy sources such as water, wind, and solar energy has hardly played a role so far. For the time being, Chinese hydrogen promotion is primarily focused on technological leadership.
However, several large-scale projects for the production of hydrogen from solar and wind power are planned, for example in Inner Mongolia, where a gigantic hydrogen production plantisto be built. One thing is clear: Developments in the Chinese market will be decisive. With its size and the growing influence of its industrial policy, the country is potentially the largest market for hydrogen technology worldwide.
Car Industry
Electromobility
Renewable energies
Truck
China’s new billionaires
The new Forbes billionaire ranking can be quickly summarized from a Chinese perspective: It was a super year for China’s super-rich. The People’s Republic has gained 202 billionaires, bringing their number up by a good third to 626. Beijing alone is now home to 100 billionaires, making the Chinese capital the city with the most billionaires, ahead of New York. Jack Ma is no longer the richest man in China. He has been replaced by mineral water king Zhong Shanshan. Tencent founder Pony Ma and Colin Zheng Huang, founder of online retailer Pinduoduo have also passed Ma.
More interesting than the familiar faces at the top of the list are the entrepreneurs who have just become billionaires. Among the new names on the list, 59 alone have made their fortunes through IPOs in the past year. Others have benefited from the fact that the value of their already listed companies has multiplied. An overview of the ten most important Chinese newcomers in the Forbes ranking:
Chen Zhiping, whose fortune not only topped the billion-dollar mark for the first time last year but catapulted directly to $15.9 billion, is the founder ofSmoore International, the world’s largest e-cigarette maker, which he floated on the Hong Kong stock exchange last July.
Li Hua ($7.1 billion) is the founder ofFutu, a popular financial platform in China. Similar to the US provider Robinhood, Futu is made for private investors who simply want to trade on the stock market on their smartphone. The shares of the trading platform, which is traded in New York, rose by almost 1400 percent last year.
Wang Junlin ($6.3 billion) revived two state-owned companies as a manager before joining then struggling liquor maker Sichuan Langjiu in 2001. Wang restructured and privatized the historic brand, which has its roots in the Han dynasty. Last year, the company announced its plan for an IPO.
Wang Ning ($6.3 billion) started building toymaker Pop Mart shortly after graduating from university in 2010. A decade later, he floated the company on the Hong Kong stock exchange in December 2020. The company is famous for its collectible figures. Similar to surprise eggs, customers do not know beforehand which figure is hidden in the package.
Jian Jun ($5.6 billion) is the founder ofShenzhen-basedImeik Technology Development, making medical cosmetic products such as advanced anti-aging face masks. Jian took the company, founded in 2004, public in Shenzhen last September. The share price has more than doubled since then.
Cao Renxian ($5.3 billion) founded the company Sungrow Power Supply back in 1997 when he was still working as a university professor. Its products, used in 150 countries, convert direct current from solar panels into alternating current for the power grid. In addition to commercial and residential applications, Sungrow also supplies components for floating solar farms, which is a huge business in China.
Kate Wang ($5 billion) has become rich, just like Chen Zhiping with e-cigarettes. Wang also “earned” her billions on the stock market when her company RLX Technology was first listed last year.
Liu Fangyi (4.2 billion) is the big winner of the COVID crisis. Shares in his company Intco Medical Technology, which makes disposable medical products such as masks and gloves, soared more than 650 percent last year amid the pandemic. Liu started his business selling disposable gloves back in the 1990s when he was studying at the University of California, according to Forbes, before returning to China in 2003 to found Intco.
Steven Meng Yang (4.2 billion) used to work as a software developer at Google in the US. In 2011, he then foundedthehardware developer Anker Innovations in Shenzhen. Initially, the company specialized in replacement batteries for laptops. After some time, the focus changed to chargers for smartphones. Its products are shipped from China and sold primarily through Amazon. When it went public last year, Anker Innovations was valued at $8 billion. Founder Yang holds 44 percent of the shares.
Li Xiang (4 billion) is the founder ofthe ChineseEV startups Li Auto, which went public in New York last July. Li Auto says it sold 33500 vehicles in its home market last year. Its biggest rivals are Chinese EV makers Nio and XPeng, which are also listed in New York. Gregor Koppenburg/Jörn Petring
Finance
Society
News
Xpeng plans a third EV factory
Electric start-up Xpeng has announced the construction of a third factory for electric cars. The planned plant in the central Chinese city of Wuhan is to have an annual capacity of 100,000 EVs, also produce powertrains and have a development laboratory, as Xpeng recently announced. To this end, the company is cooperating with the provincial government – which probably means that it will receive benefits or even subsidies. However, the company, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, did not initially disclose an investment sum or a production start date.
Xpeng is currently emerging as one of the leading EV start-ups. Founded in 2014, the company had long been overshadowed by glamorous competitors in the media – some of which have already disappeared from the scene or are struggling with financial problems. In 2020, Xpeng ranked third among start-ups in China, including Tesla, with 27,042 EVs sold. These brands mainly attract private customers. In the first quarter, Xpeng sold 13,340 EVs of its two models, the P7 and G3 – a whopping 487 percent more than the same period last year. A third model is to be presented at the Shanghai auto show, according to local media reports.
“Smart electric vehicles are becoming increasingly popular in China,” Xpeng founder and chief executive He Xiaopeng said in the statement. “Expanding our capacity in key hubs like Wuhan plays a crucial role for us.” Wuhan is one of China’s auto clusters, so it is likely to already have suppliers of interest to Xpeng.
The recent strong boom in the electric market is causing renewed euphoria in the segment. In 2020, despite the COVID pandemic, 1.3 million EVs were sold, 24 percent more than in 2019. Analysts at the Bloomberg news agency even expect an increase of 54 percent for 2021.
Most start-ups produce with only one plant – so far, this is also the case for Xpeng, whose electric cars roll off the production line in Zhaoqing in the southern province of Guangdong. A second factory is under construction in the provincial capital of Guangzhou – similar in size to the now announced plant. Production in Guangzhou is scheduled to begin in late 2022. ck
Car Industry
Electromobility
Guangdong
Beijing wants to strengthen competition authority
The Chinese competition authority wants to increaseitsstaff by 20 to 30 employees. In addition, the authority is to be provided with more financial resourcesto take actionagainst anti-competitive behavior, Reuters reported, citing informedcircles. According to the report, the State Administration for Market Regulation currently employs “about 40 people”. Only on Saturday, the authority had imposed a record fine against Alibaba in the amount of the equivalent of €2.3 billion. The background was the result of an investigation according to which Alibaba abused its dominant position.
Beijing’s plan to strengthen the regulator comes at the same time as it revamps China’s competition law. Proposed changes include significantly higher fines and new criteria for assessing whether a company dominates the relevant market, Reuters reported. nib
Domestic policy of the CP China
Trade
Chinese loan: Montenegro asks EU for help
Montenegro plans to ask various EU organizations for help in repayinga $1 billion loan to China, the Financial Times reports with reference to Montenegro’s Finance Minister Milojko Spajić. According to the report, the loan was granted for a highway project that is being built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation but has not yet been completed. According to the FT, the project is considered one of the most expensive highways in the world and is unprofitable. The country would have to start repayments in July. If Montenegro defaults, the terms of the contract give China the right to access Montenegrin land as collateral, the report adds.
Spajić argued that it would be an “easy win” for the EU in the geopolitical contest if it helped Montenegro refinance itself. It was the first time a Western Balkan state had made such an approach to Brussels to curb Chinese influence, the FT quoted an analyst at the think-tank Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence as saying. The EU is ready to help, an EU Commission official said, according to the FT report. However, the size of the loan was disproportionate to Montenegro’s economy. The “right financial instruments” must now be found, the official said. nib
Finance
Montenegro
New Silk Road
CATL acquires stake in cobalt mine in DR Congo
The world’s largest maker of batteries for EVs, China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL), is taking a $137.5 million stake in a cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Reuters reports. Previously, the mine was 95 percent owned by China Molybdenum, the world’s largest cobalt producer. A subsidiary of CATL is now taking a 23.75 percent stake in the mine.
The investment gives CATL access to one of the world’s largest undeveloped sources of cobalt, according to Reuters, an ingredient in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. CATL had previously invested in companies that extract battery raw materials such as lithium and nickel to secure its own supply. The DR Congo government holds a five percent stake in the mine. nib
Adjustments for carbon offsets are discriminatory and against the principles of the CBDR-RC (Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities) set out in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the statement said.
The declaration does not criticize any concrete plan for CO2 limit compensation. However, the EU is currently working on a corresponding instrument (China.Table reported). The European Parliament had already given the green light for this, the proposal of the EU Commission is expected for the second quarter. ari
Geopolitics
Sustainability
Profile
Mareike Ohlberg
Senior Fellow German Marshall Fund Asia Program
Mareike Ohlberg has given up brooding. Whether or not she has actually been sanctioned by the Chinese government is basically irrelevant to her. The sinologist is pretty sure that she will not be allowed to enter the People’s Republic again until further notice – official sanctions or not.
Evidence for their assumption: an article in the Global Times, a Chinese daily newspaper that is fully aligned with the state announcements. The medium recently introduced its readers to those individuals and institutions that were sanctioned by name by the People’s Republic of China. The personal punishments were part of a retaliation for concerted sanctions from the EU and the USagainst Chinese officials. Ohlberg herself found mention as a former employee of the sanctioned Berlin-based Mercator Institute (Merics). As such, she had signed an open letter in April 2020 sharply criticizing China’s COVID policy. The Global Times referred to this letter and defamed Ohlberg as well as her former Merics colleague Kristin Shi-Kupfer.
But what does that mean in concrete terms? Ohlberg doesn’t know. No one has officially told her that she is no longer welcome in the country. But the 36-year-old puts one and one together. Her work reflects a critical stance on Chinese domestic and foreign policy and has been a thorn in Beijing’s side for a while. In 2017, despite an invitation from the German embassy in Beijing, she was denied a visa for the first time, shortly after she had researched and published on ideological currents in China.
“Are you a purebred German?” she was asked at the time of her application. “It was bizarre, but it seemed like they were looking for a reason to deny me entry,” says Ohlberg, whose family is partly from Russia and whose mother was born in the US. The Chinese embassystresses to China.Table that visas are issued on the basis of citizenship. “The Chinese embassy and consulates general in Germany process visa applications of foreign citizens in accordance with international law and relevant Chinese laws,“ its statement said.
Mareike Ohlberg’s book causes a stir
And then there’s this book that came out last year, in 2020, “Hidden Hand“ which Ohlberg co-authored. There she describes Chinese structures that are designed to undermine and subvert the world’s democracies. The book is causinga stirbecause it is awake-upcall and shows the means by which the People’s Republic intensively seeks to makeitsauthoritarian policies acceptable in other states. China would therefore prefer to silence voices like Ohlberg’s. However, because the dictatorship lacks arguments against scientific work, it categorically banishes all disagreeable counter-positions to the realm of lies. Evidence to the contrary? Not a thing.
“The Chinese government’s strategy is to unsettle and scare the other side. I don’t read comments on social media because it doesn’t make any sense to me. But sometimes friends send me messages asking if I’m scared,” Ohlberg says. Then she knows that someone must have threatened her again on the internet. But the attempt to intimidate her also goes through her employer, the German Marshall Fund (GMF), a US foundation that seeks to improve the transatlantic relationship with Europe. “Occasionally, there are complaints against me to my employer and to others who might hire me in the future. So critics try to block my professional future,” Ohlberg says.
While this doesn’t impress the researcher, she says, it does show the Communist Party’s objective: “Beijing wants to dry up the sources of fact-based and critical analysis of Chinese politics and replace them with their own narratives.” Merics and GMF are described by state media in the People’s Republic as anti-Chinese tools of the US government.
Helmut Schmidt’s questionable view of China
Ohlberg is used to making a splash. Authorities have never made a lasting impression on her, she says. You can believe that. The other day she sat with Jörg Thadeusz on Talk from Berlin in the RRB television studio and was supposed to explain the content of her book. The moderator confronted her with a quote from what he called the “saintly” former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on the subject of China from 2013.
Schmidt said at the time that dictatorship was culturally theright form of rule for the Chinese people. A classic argument from the propaganda forge of the Chinese Communist Party. The former SPD politician liked to talk about his friendship with former top politician Deng Xiaoping. Many of his conclusions were based on conversations with Deng. Ohlberg took a slightly annoyed breath in front of the camera and said, “Helmut Schmidt had relatively many questionable ideas about China.” Of course, there were negative reactions to that as well, this time from Germans.
How does she explain the highly emotional nature of the China debate in Germany? Ohlberg believes that many advocates of the Beijing autocrats are simply ill-informed. Some people drive through Xinjiang for a few weeks and believe that they can see that the human rights crimes against the Uyghur minority are by no means as bad as they are portrayed in the West because they have seen nothing of the sort themselves. Others, on the other hand, know better but are acting in their own self-interest: “There are certainly some who really believe that the portrayals of what is happening in Xinjiang are exaggerated. But there are also many who very deliberately want to score points with the Chinese government by speaking out against it.”
In her research, Ohlberg has been intensively involved with Chinese propaganda since her doctoral thesis. When she studied in Beijing for a year in 2004, she became acquainted with an enormous diversity of opinions in the country, from which she abstracted an essence over many years that today bitterly offends friends of the Communist Party. Early on, she was of the opinion that one should be allowed to study Sinology and, at the same time, stand up for the rights of oppressed Tibetans. Ohlberg remembers fellow students who preferred not to sign anything because they were afraid that they would be denied entry to China afterwards.
Such concessions are deeply suspect to the author. She says she has always been willing to pay the price for critical China research. The vituperations in the Global Times are part of that price. She is also unwilling to risk entry into Hong Kong because of new legislation there. Lawyers have told her that they would definitely find something against her that violates the vaguely worded National Security Law (China.Table reported).
Lively Discussions with her Lecturers
Ohlberg got to know Chinese culture from many perspectives. As an exchange student in Beijing, as an employee of the Cheng Shewo Institute for Journalism in Taiwan, or through a friend from Hong Kong whom she met in the USA when she was 16. During her studies, at a time when a breeze of liberalization was blowing through the country under former President Hu Jintao, she had lively discussions with her lecturers about authoritarian structures or minority policies. She learned about the critical attitude of many academics in the People’s Republic towards their own government, but also about the arguments of those in favor. That was almost 20 years ago. Such discussions are unthinkable in China today. Fear rules the minds of intellectuals. Even Ohlberg is cautious. “It should not be traceable in the text about me who these critical minds were. That can get them into trouble again today,” she says.
And then there were also Uyghur friends, some of whom she misses today because she doesn’t know what happened to them. Ohlberg accepts that she is accused of bias because of these personal relationships. She says, “Anyone who has gained personal experience should not be excluded from a debate because of perceived bias.” Marcel Grzanna
