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☆ Asia shares slip, testing times for UK bonds
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Wayne Cole | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Concerns about financial stability added to the corrosive mix with all eyes on UK bonds now that the Bank of England's (BoE's) emergency buying spree is over. "Monday's market action will provide a test, not only for the survival of Truss' low-tax vision, but also her political future." Sterling was quoted up 0.6% at $1.1233 , but trading was sparse with little liquidity in Asia. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) eased 1.2% and back toward last week's 2-1/2 year low. read moreIn currency markets, the dollar remains king as investors price in U.S. rates peaking around 5%.

☆ Oil bounces higher as U.S. dollar's strength eases
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Florence Tan | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SINGAPORE, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Oil prices rose in thin trade in early Asian hours on Monday as the U.S. dollar's strength eased while investors awaited data from China to gauge demand at the world's top crude oil importer. Brent crude futures rose 85 cents, or 0.9%, to $92.48 a barrel by 0019 GMT, recovering from a 6.4% fall last week. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was at $86.34 a barrel, up 73 cents, or 0.9%, after a 7.6% decline last week. read moreRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register"U.S. dollar index futures were lower today, which also provided a rebounding opportunity for the oil markets," she added. A weaker dollar makes oil more affordable for holders of other currencies.

☆ Asia shares slip, make or break day for UK bonds
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Wayne Cole | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Concerns about financial stability added to the corrosive mix with all eyes on UK bonds now that the Bank of England's (BoE's) emergency buying spree is over. "Monday's market action will provide a test, not only for the survival of Truss' low-tax vision, but also her political future." Sterling was quoted up 0.6% at $1.1240 , but trading was sparse with little liquidity in Asia. In equity markets, MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) eased 0.5% and back toward last week's 2-1/2 year low. read moreIn currency markets, the dollar remains king as investors price in U.S. rates peaking around 5%.

☆ Xi's call to win tech race points to new wave of Chinese state-led spending
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Josh Horwitz | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The term "technology" was referred to 40 times, up from 17 times in the report from the 2017 congress. Iris Pang, chief economist for Greater China at ING, said Xi's remarks addressed "the urgent need for talent and promoting self-sufficiency in technological advancement". "As such research spending on semiconductor technology should increase. On Monday, shares in Chinese information technology companies (.CSIINT) rose more than 1%, while semiconductor stocks (.CSIH30184) rose 0.7%. Venture capital (VC) has been allowed to invest in Chinese chip companies, with such firms receiving over $30 billion in VC cash between 2020-2021, according to Chinese investment research firm CVInfo.

☆ I didn't think Xi's speech was fiery or bellicose at all, says Matthews Asia Fund's Andy Rothman
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailI didn't think Xi's speech was fiery or bellicose at all, says Matthews Asia Fund's Andy RothmanAndy Rothman of Matthews Asia Fund joins 'Power Lunch' to discuss the China Party Congress and Xi's third term as the country's leader.

☆ Beijing focuses on security to draw attention from U.S. semiconductor sanctions, says researcher
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailBeijing focuses on security to draw attention from U.S. semiconductor sanctions, says researcherGeorge Magnus, economist and research associate at Oxford University's China Centre, weighs in on Chinese President Xi Jinping's message for his country at the opening of Communist party congress.

☆ China delays GDP data because of bad numbers, says one top China watcher
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Melissa Lee | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailChina delays GDP data because of bad numbers, says one top China watcherThe Atlantic Council's Fred Kempe discusses China's decision to delay its GDP report as the Party Congress kicks off. With CNBC's Brian Sullivan and the Fast Money traders, Tim Seymour, Karen Finerman, Dan Nathan and Guy Adami.

☆ As Xi opens congress, China's state hands keep markets steady
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

SHANGHAI, Oct 17 (Reuters) - As Chinese President Xi Jinping opened the landmark Communist Party Congress, the country's vast financial bureaucracy has been busily tamping down ripples of turmoil across its currency and stock markets. Scores of companies have announced share buybacks or executive share purchase plans since Friday, when regulators unveiled plans to ease share buyback rules. Investors and analysts believe government pressure on China's largely state-controlled fund sector may have played a role in the stock market rebound. Xia Chun, chief economist at wealth manager Yintech Investment Holdings, said this follows a pattern of China stocks typically rising before a party congress and then likely falling afterwards. On Monday, several state-controlled asset managers including E Fund Management Co, China Southern Asset Management Co and Zhongtai Securities Asset Management said they were investing their own money to buy products, echoing an identical refrain of confidence in China's capital markets.

“My forecast is for a further decline of 1.2% [on a quarterly basis for China’s GDP]. China’s GDP declined 2.6% in the second quarter from the previous one, reversing a 1.4% growth in the January-to-March period. Economists polled by Reuters have expected China’s GDP to expand by 3.4% in the third quarter from a year earlier. Many international organizations, including the IMF and World Bank, have recently downgraded China’s GDP growth forecasts for this year. Bennett expected the third-quarter GDP data to be released after the Party Congress.

☆ Xi Jinping's Party Congress speech: yes to zero-Covid, no to market reforms?
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Laura He | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Priorities presented at the political gathering of more than 2,000 party members will also set China’s trajectory for the next five years or even longer. In his speech Sunday, Xi struck a confident tone, highlighting China’s growing strength and rising influence under his first decade in power. China's President Xi Jinping speaks during the opening session of the 20th Chinese Communist Party's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on October 16, 2022. And China’s economy is in bad shape. Meantime, a comparison between this year’s speech and the last one delivered by Xi in 2017 at the 19th party congress revealed a potentially worrying trend.

☆ South Korea kicks off military drills amid talk of North Korean nuclear test
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Hyonhee Shin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SEOUL, Oct 17 (Reuters) - South Korea's troops kicked off their annual Hoguk defence drills on Monday, designed to boost their ability to respond to North Korea's nuclear and missile threats amid simmering tension over both sides' military activities. The drills, due to end on Saturday, are the latest in a series of military exercises by South Korea in recent weeks, including joint activities with the United States and Japan. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterPyongyang has angrily reacted to the South Korean and joint military activities, calling them provocations and threatening countermeasures. Joined by some U.S. forces, the South Korean troops will focus on maintaining readiness and improving the troops' ability to execute joint operations during the Hoguk drills, the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said. But the North accused the South's military of escalating tension with its own artillery firing.

HONG KONG, Oct 17 (Reuters Breakingviews) - President Xi Jinping has just made clear that he has bigger worries than the flagging economy. He opened the twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress on Sunday with a speech more focussed on national security and stability than in the past. That means state-led, inward-looking policies like self-sufficiency and zero-Covid will trump economic growth. Follow @ywchen1 on TwitterCONTEXT NEWSPresident Xi Jinping on Oct. 16 delivered a two-hour-long speech on the opening day of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterEditing by Antony Currie and Thomas ShumOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

There is still scope for positive economic news to come out of the gathering, but the main impact is that there is little immediate upside to China's demand for commodities. China is also likely to be looking at ways of reducing its reliance on imported crude oil, and the energy transition does offer some answers. Rising sales of electric vehicles likely means China's demand for battery metals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel is likely to increase over the longer term. Iron ore, battery metals, copper and natural gas are commodities where China's demand is likely to substantially exceed available domestic supply. An accelerated energy transition is also likely to boost demand for these commodities, while cutting demand for crude oil and coal.

REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File PhotoHONG KONG, Oct 18 (Reuters) - As Xi Jinping consolidates power at China's 20th Communist Party Congress this week, Chinese women are not holding their breath for progress in gender equality. Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People's Republic, famously said "women hold up half the sky" and gender equality is enshrined in the country's constitution. "The trend (now) is usually women serve as a deputy or more symbolic position," he said. The sole current female member, Sun Chunlan, who has spearheaded China's zero-COVID policy, is 72 and expected to retire. The Chinese government body in charge of women's rights, the Women's Federation, did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

☆ EU set to train 15,000 Ukrainian troops, provide more arms funding for Kyiv
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Sabine Siebold | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

BRUSSELS, Oct 17 (Reuters) - European Union foreign ministers are expected to agree on a mission to train 15,000 Ukrainian troops from next month and an extra 500 million euros worth of funding for arms deliveries to Kyiv when they meet in Luxembourg on Monday. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterSeveral EU countries have already been instructing Ukrainian troops on how to use specific weapons and this will continue. Unlike earlier tranches, the additional money will also cover costs for repair and maintenance of weapons already delivered to Ukraine. EU foreign ministers will also discuss the transfer of Iranian drones to Russia, opening the way for potential further sanctions that could be agreed at a later date. He said the bloc's leaders would discuss China policy at a summit on Thursday and Friday, and the EU would also monitor closely the Communist Party Congress that opened on Sunday.

☆ Sterling rebounds on UK fiscal policy U-turn; yen struggles
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

In this photo illustration, British GDP £1 coins and bank notes are pictured in Bath, England. The news came hours after she sacked former finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng, with Jeremy Hunt replacing him. All eyes are now on how the UK government bond market will trade, after the Bank of England on Friday concluded its emergency gilt market support. The U.S. dollar index , which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen, firmed at 113.02. Elsewhere, the euro gained 0.26% to $0.9748, while the Australian and New Zealand dollars bounced mildly from recent losses.

☆ Xi Jinping has silver linings for rest of world
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Hugo Dixon | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters Breakingviews) - A third term for Xi Jinping would risk a cold war, or even a hot one. Until recently, most analysts agreed it was only a matter of time before China’s economy, which was three-quarters the size of America’s in dollar terms last year, became the world’s largest. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterSTUCK IN SECONDBut China’s economy is running into all sorts of problems. But Beijing-based Dimitri De Boer, of the environmental organisation Client Earth, thinks that’s very unlikely because the target is binding and China’s president has positioned himself as an environmental champion. But Germany challenged Britain in World War I when its economy was still powering ahead, according to Allison.

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterAsian markets on Monday will likely get clobbered. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Fed will not stop raising rates until it sees hard evidence that inflation is falling. It's safe to say September's inflation report was not what policymakers - or investors, businesses or households - were hoping for. Analysts expect third-quarter earnings per share growth for the broader index excluding energy to fall 2.6%, Refinitiv data shows. All in all, it is an extremely challenging backdrop for investors, even if many assets might seem extremely cheap.

☆ China's Xi defends zero-Covid policy and warns Taiwan at opening of Communist Party Congress
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-16 | by ( ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

Chinese President Xi Jinping called for accelerating the building of a world-class military as he kicked off a Communist Party Congress by touting the country's “zero-Covid” strategy and reiterating policy priorities. Xi described the five years since the last party congress as “extremely uncommon and abnormal”, during a speech that lasted less than two hours — far shorter than his nearly three-and-a-half-hour address at the 2017 congress. Chinese President Xi Jinping, bottom, centre, is applauded by senior members of the government and delegates after his speech on Sunday. The son of a Communist Party revolutionary, Xi has reinvigorated a party that had grown deeply corrupt and increasingly irrelevant, expanding its presence across all aspects of China, with Xi officially its “core”. The day after the congress ends on Saturday, Xi is expected to introduce his new Politburo Standing Committee, a seven-person leadership team.

☆ China is about to hold the most important meeting in its political calendar. Here’s what you need to know.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-16 | by ( Rhoda Kwan | Rhoda Kwan Is A Taipei-Based Journalist. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

China is about to hold the most important meeting in its political calendar, the five-yearly Communist Party congress, where President Xi Jinping is expected to gain an unprecedented third term as the country’s leader. What is the Communist Party congress? State media report that these representatives were "elected" but all of them were carefully vetted and no open campaigning is allowed. A Central Committee of around 200 voting members will also pick 25 members for the Politburo, the highest policy-making body in the world's second largest economy. “It’s not just about ideas, it’s really about signaling a leader’s power and legacy,” David Bandurski, the co-director at the China Media Project, a research program that analyses the country’s media landscape, said.

☆ China’s Xi Jinping Hails Communist Party’s ‘Self-Revolution’ in Bid to Extend Rule
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-16 | by ( Chun Han Wong | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

HONG KONG—Chinese leader Xi Jinping shook off concerns over Covid-19, a sluggish economy and troubled ties with the U.S. to offer a robust defense of his decadelong rule, calling on his Communist Party to battle through adversity and reclaim China’s place as a major force in human development. In a Sunday speech, opening a Communist Party congress in Beijing where he is set to defy recent norms and claim a third term as party chief, Mr. Xi recalled his efforts to curb corruption, rally public support for the party and champion China’s political system as a counterweight to Western liberal democracy.

☆ Hear the grim warning that got Xi Jinping a roaring applause during speech
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-16 | by ( ) edition.cnn.com time to read: 1 min

Xi Jinping vowed to steer China through grave challenges toward national rejuvenation during his two-hour speech at the opening ceremony of the Communist Party Congress. CNN's Selina Wang reports on the significance of the speech.

☆ Here's why Xi's subtle gestures during speech worries people
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-16 | by ( ) edition.cnn.com time to read: 1 min

During Xi Jinping's almost two-hour speech at the opening ceremony of the Communist Party Congress, the Chinese leader paused several times to clear his throat and sip tea. CNN's Beijing Bureau Chief Steven Jiang explains why the subtle gestures have some observers concerned.

☆ China's Xi says full control over Hong Kong achieved, determined on Taiwan
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

BEIJING, Oct 16 (Reuters) - China has achieved comprehensive control over Hong Kong, turning it from chaos to governance, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a speech on Sunday at the opening of the once-in-five-year Communist Party congress in Beijing. China has also waged a major struggle against Taiwan separatism and is determined and able to oppose territorial integrity, Xi said. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterReporting by Yew Lun Tian and Eduardo Baptista; Writing by Martin Quin Pollard; Editing by William MallardOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Xi says China will unwaveringly support private economy
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

BEIJING, Oct 16 (Reuters) - China will unwaveringly support the private economy and let the market play decisive role in resource allocation, President Xi Jinping said in a speech on Sunday at the opening of the once-in-five-year Communist Party Congress in Beijing. China will aim for high-quality economic growth and the next five years will be crucial for building a modern socialist power, Xi said. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterReporting by Yew Lun Tian, Writing by Kevin Yao; Editing by William MallardOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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