China’s Good Week, Taiwan Power Crisis: Saturday Asia Briefing

Adam Majendie, Bloomberg News

Wind vs coal. Taiwan is struggling with the cost of a plan to green its energy mix. Photographer: I-Hwa Cheng/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- While China’s stocks had some rare good news, presidents, ex-presidents and soon-to-be ex-presidents have been having a tough week. Here’s your roundup for the weekend.

China stocks benchmark rose more than 3% over the week, as the central bank ramped up easing and the market anticipated a government rescue package. That will need to be convincing to revive belief for investors ruing a lost decade.

Profits at large Chinese industrial companies have been recovering in the past few months, but not enough to prevent an overall decline in 2023 stemming from falling prices and weak demand at home and overseas.

Across the strait, Taiwan is having a power struggle. Not a fallout from the recent election, but the precarious finances of its sole electricity supplier, which threaten to derail the island’s clean-energy effort and tarnish its attractiveness for chipmakers.

Wall Street is turning to its biggest brains to get a bigger slice of private equity and lending, with Ares and BlackRock among those deploying quants to crunch the data.

Nobody is going to stick themselves with a needle to lose weight, Eli Lilly’s management once said. Now its Zepbound treatment may become the bestselling drug of all time. Listen to the podcast.

Is Hong Kong really that boring? The new Amazon series Expats, starring Nicole Kidman, offers a bleak view of the city.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took a big political gamble by announcing a revised tax plan. He’s betting Australians will forgive him for breaking an election promise in return for tax relief for the vast majority of voters.

Donald Trump was ordered in a Manhattan court to pay $83.3 million to former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll for defaming her when he denied he sexually assaulted her, including $65 million in punitive damages to deter him from future defamation.

President Joko Widodo earmarked almost $800 billion on roads, railways and ports to bind Indonesia’s vast archipelago together. As he prepares to leave office, who will pay the bill?

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol has troubles of another kind. He is finding himself increasingly out of fashion with the public thanks to a Dior handbag.

PayPal has a storied past, where billionaires Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman collided before helping to establish Tesla, Meta Platforms and LinkedIn. There should be a movie.

China’s Zheng Qinwen faces a tough job today in the women’s final at the Australian Open in Melbourne. Zheng faced only unseeded players in her route to the final, while her opponent, defending champion Aryna Sabalenka, hasn’t dropped a set.

For baseball fans hoping to catch Shohei Ohtani and other MLB stars play at the league’s first-ever game in Seoul on March 20, you’re too late. Tickets sold out within minutes.

Finally, AI is being increasingly, if nervously, recruited by the spy world. But whose side is it on?

Have a discreet weekend.