Broke LeEco Co-Founder To Sell Beijing Flat
Gan Wei, the wife of Faraday Future and LeEco founder Jia Yueting, has put her real estate properties up for bidding in a public auction after she became mired in debt, owing to the financial unraveling of her and her husband's companies.
Gan was barred from leaving China earlier this month because of a loan default of US$76 million by LeEco media subsidiary LeView, of which Gan is the co-founder with her husband.
The online public auction platform zc-paimai.taobao.com shows Gan's 200-square-meter Beijing apartment, with an estimated value of RMB22.06 million (US$3.15 million), will be auctioned to the public from August 28 to 30, at a starting price of RMB15.45 million (US$2.21 million) – a discount of 30%.
Bidders have to pay a RMB1.55 million (US$220,000) security deposit in advance, and bids will increase in increments of RMB70,000 or more. About 13,000 people are interested in the auction, according to the auction platform.
Sources said that three other real estate properties owned by Jia Yueting and Gan Wei in Beijing have been seized by authorities and will also go up for public bidding.
Another LeEco subsidiary, LeTV, delisted from the Shenzhen stock exchange on Tuesday with a final stock price of RMB0.18 per share, a drastic plunge from its RMB170 billion peak valuation in 2015.
Pork Industry Turns Bullish In First Half
The nation's pork industry experienced unprecedented revenue increases in the first half of the year, despite the presence of African swine fever, while many domestic pork producers turned losses into profits, China News Network reported.
Some leading pork producers, including Muyuan Shares, Wenshi Shares and Xinxiwang, recently released their fiscal reports for the first half of 2020. The biggest winner, Muyuan Shares, reported revenues of RMB21.033 billion (US$3 billion), an increase of 193.76% year-on-year, while the parent company's net profits reached RMB10.784 billion (US$1.538 billion), a rise of 7026.08%.
The national average pork price hit RMB33.90 (US$4.83) per kilogram in the first half, a rise of 136.96% year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
There are about 3000 domestic-listed pork-producing companies. As of Wednesday, animal husbandry industry-related stocks have increased by 30.36% year-on-year, with Muyuan Shares increasing the most, at 79.88%. Xinxiwang ranked second with an accumulative increase of 61.76%, according to the Wind financial database.
Negative List For Foreign Investment Pared
The 2020 negative list for foreign investment, the fourth amendment since 2017, came into effect on Thursday, with the list pared to 33 areas of investment forbidden to foreign investors, down from 40 in 2019.
The list refers to special administrative measures for the access of foreign investment across China and in the Pilot Free Trade Zones. For the 18 Pilot FTZs, the list has been pared to 30.
According to China's National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce, the list is aimed at enhancing openness and optimizing the foreign-investment environment,
This year's changes include relaxation on the limit of foreign ownership in commercial vehicle manufacturers. In addtion, limits on foreign investment in the wheat cultivation and seed production sectors have been increased to 66%, and foreign entities will no longer be prohibited from investing in smelting and processing of radioactive minerals and nuclear fuel production.
In the Pilot FTZs, which hold a pioneering role in China's reform and opening-up strategy, regulations prohibiting foreign investment in prepared doses of traditional Chinese medicine have also been lifted. Exclusively foreign-invested enterprises are also now allowed to run educational institutions.
China Construction Bank Defrauded
An Inner Mongolia branch of China Construction Bank (CCB) was found to have been defrauded by an auto trading company of over RMB30 million and suffered a direct loss of over RMB3.6 million.
Xinyuan automobile trading company in Wuhai city illegally falsified invoices, receipts and insurance documents and defrauded the Wuhai branch of China Construction Bank of RMB 34.41 million (US$4.9 million) so it could buy various vehicles, according to "China Judgments Online", a website where all the Chinese courts' judicial documents are published.
The judgment documents revealed that from 2012 to 2014, Xinyuan had bribed CCB Wuhai staffers on multiple occasions, and three bank employees even joined in the crime scheme, approving falsified documents for loans and receiving high-rate "operation fees."
Other residents of Wuhai apparently joined the Xinyuan scheme to obtain fraudulent car loans from the CCB, and within two years, 96 local people had taken out a total of RMB34.41 million in loans.
As of April, 78 people had paid off their ill-gotten automobile loans, but there are still 18 people on the lam who owe a total of RMB36 million to CCB.
The People's Procuratorate of Wuhai determined that the operator of Xinyuan should be sentenced to three-to-seven-year jail term and pay additional fines.
Aerospace Stocks Skyrocket Following Mars Mission Launch
China's first fully homegrown Mars mission, the Tianwen-1 Mars rover mission, launched aboard a Long March 5 rocket from Hainan Island's Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Thursday, but that wasn't the only thing to go skyborne.
The launch was followed by a general increase in aerospace stocks. According to statistics released on eastmoney.com, 46 of 47 aerospace stocks on the aerospace board increased on Thursday, with eight of the companies showing an increase of 5% or more.
The Tianwen-1 mission aims to undertake a variety of scientific objectives, including mapping morphology and geological structures, investigating the surface soil characteristics and water-ice distribution. It also has sensors to examine the physical fields and internal structure of Mars. If all goes according to plan, Tianwen-1 will arrive on Mars in February 2021.
This means China will possibly become the third country to operate a Mars rover mission. The Soviet Union had an operating rover on the red planet for 20 seconds in 1971 before communications were lost. NASA has launched four successful rover missions since 1997 – Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and most recently, Curiosity, launched in 2011.
