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Hi there, reader,

Chinese state media today reported on a Communist Party symposium on the economy, but did not mention the trade war with America. We’ve got you covered below, in one of four items at the top, plus our usual collection of links at the bottom.

If you’re in Washington, D.C., on August 8, you might enjoy the Definitive China-D.C. Happy Hour, organized by a variety of China-focused organizations. This year, the Happy Hour features author and NPR reporter Scott Tong.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief

1. Who is allowed to report the news in China?

Earlier this month, Q Daily 好奇心日报, a Shanghai-based website, was ordered to halt original news reporting, which the authorities called “illegal news information services.” Founded in 2014, Q Daily is known for its relatively progressive coverage on public issues.

Permits for online news and information services are required by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). While — technically — any website that publishes news or information about anything requires such a permit, enforcement has traditionally been spotty.

But in these tightening times for media, we can expect “illegal online news and information services” to be a more frequent charge against companies or people who publish information the Party does not like. There are three types of permit for legal online news and information services in China:

• Editing and publishing (采编发布服务 cǎibiān fābù fúwù) — required for original reportage. Although this permit is technically required for any original reporting, fashion websites are unlikely to get into trouble for reporting on new designs — unless that reportage is in some way objectionable.
• Forwarding and reposting (转载服务 zhuǎnzǎi fúwù) — news aggregation, such as found on commercial news portals, including Sina, Tencent, Netease, and Phoenix. Words of the aggregated stories may not be modified if stories are reposted.
• Information dissemination (传播平台服务 chuánbō píngtái fúwù) — this is for user-generated content and social media such as Weibo, WeChat, and any site and app that allows individual users to create and aggregate content.

A state media insider has written a guide to these permits and how to get them for SupChina: Click through for more on the rules for legal news in China.

—Jeremy Goldkorn

2. Trade war, day 26: Gloomy outlook despite private talks

In our last update on the trade war (day 21), official talks were frozen, and American and Chinese officials were bashing each other at multiple public forums, including the World Trade Organization.

Now, the two sides are “having private conversations as they look for ways to re-engage in negotiations,” according to Bloomberg (paywall). “U.S. stocks rose, Treasury yields edged higher, the offshore yuan erased an earlier drop and the dollar pared gains” upon the news, Bloomberg reports.

But the public bashing has not ended.

• Apple was furiously attacked in state media — in “Xinhua and at least four state-supported media outlets” — for “not doing enough to filter banned content on its iMessage service,” the Wall Street Journal reports (paywall).
• “Porn, gambling, medicines! Apple, you don’t even care to manage this?” is how one article from Xinhua’s public WeChat account was headlined (in Chinese).
• “State broadcaster CCTV joined in Tuesday on another front, saying Apple’s app store allowed illegal gambling apps disguised as official lottery apps,” the Journal notes.
• Though the criticism is conspicuously timed with the trade war, users of Apple’s iMessage program in China have been dealing with an unusually large amount of spam recently, according to Abacus.
• The attack on Apple can be seen as a “qualitative measure,” or non-tariff punishment to reciprocate American tariffs that the Chinese Ministry of Commerce threatened back in June.

Other news from the trade war:

• Beijing’s nixing of a $44 billion chipmaker merger last week, between U.S.-based Qualcomm and Netherlands-based NXP, has rubbed American officials the wrong way. The Bloomberg article linked above reports that “[Treasury Secretary] Mnuchin was among the Cabinet officials involved in a last-minute effort early last week to get the Qualcomm-NXP deal approved,” and that “the U.S. has privately expressed dismay to the highest levels of the Chinese government that the deal fell through.”
• The mayor of Los Angeles fears a “stupid” full-blown trade war would doom his city’s growth, the South China Morning Post reports. The city is “the busiest US container port and the No 1 hub for ocean trade with China. The port handled US$284 billion worth of goods last year, including US$145 billion with China,” the SCMP notes.
• “We hope to be the leading Chinese city in America for investment, tourism and students,” LA mayor Eric Garcetti said, the Financial Times reports (paywall).
• “U.S. almond farmers are getting crunched from all sides,” the Wall Street Journal reports (paywall), as a 50 percent tax from China on almond imports has coincided with a bumper crop and the closure of a loophole whereby almonds could be funneled through Vietnam to China.

Do you find the trade war “perplexing,” like Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi? Here’s two things to read:

• “The Chinese view: Ten truths about U.S.-China trade” is an article in the LA Times by Wang Yong, a professor at the School of International Studies at Peking University.
• “Made in China 2025: The domestic tech plan that sparked an international backlash” is SupChina’s own explainer breaking down the chief point of contention for Washington, and how China has responded to it.

—Lucas Niewenhuis

3. A censor for the Internet of Things?

My curiosity was piqued this morning by a headline on CoinDesk, a website that reports on Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain: China's government censorship agency is hiring a crypto expert.

The headline somewhat mischaracterizes the identity of the recruiting organization and the nature of the job advertised, although I have repeated the sin above — mea culpa. It is, however, natural to associate cryptocurrency and censorship after recent news stories about #MeToo activists in China using blockchain to dodge censorship.

The recruitment ad itself is interesting. It was published on SAPPRFT.gov.cn (in Chinese):

• State Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film, and TV (SAPPRFT) was formed by departmental merger in 2013 as the super-regulator in charge of all newswires, newspapers, and magazines, as well as all audio, video, and broadcast media.
• SAPPRFT’s death was announced (in Chinese) in March this year, when it was again restructured.
• Most of SAPPRFT’s duties — and its domain name — seem to have remained with the newly formed SART (State Administration of Radio and TV — 国家广播电视总局 guójiā guǎngbò diànshì zǒngjú), which posted the recruitment ad to the SAPPRFT website.
• Regulation of cinema will apparently fall to the Party’s Publicity (née Propaganda) Bureau, while the Cyberspace Administration of China seems to have become the major regulator for online news and information, but I have not seen any statements clarifying new roles.

SART’s ad does not mention censorship specifically, and given the recent organizational changes, one can only guess at the purpose of the new hires, but this is what we know from the ad:

• A research institute affiliated to SART is looking to fill three specialized applied research roles.
• Big data, Internet of Things (IoT), and cryptography (including blockchain) are the focus areas.
• Candidates must have a “relatively high ideological and political level” (较高的思想政治水平 jiàogāo de sīxiǎng zhèngzhì shuǐpíng), a master’s degree, and Beijing residency. The first two roles require previous study overseas.

—Jeremy Goldkorn

4. The ‘happiest Muslims in the world’ and their GPS trackers

• “How the ‘Happiest Muslims in the World’ are coping with their happiness” is the caustic title of a grim account of ordinary Uyghurs’ lives rights now by Gene A. Bunin, a Uyghur-speaking scholar and longtime resident of Xinjiang.
• The testimony of an ethnic Kazakh woman who fled from Xinjiang to Kazakhstan after working in a re-education camp was published to YouTube with English subtitles on July 14. The Financial Times now reports (paywall), “Deliberations were scheduled to end last week but have been extended to begin again on Wednesday after the judge rejected Ms Sauytbay’s plea bargain to face criminal charges in Kazakhstan rather than be deported to China.”
• “About 11,500 Chinese Muslims are joining the Hajj this year, fewer than the 12,800 last year,” according to nationalist rag the Global Times. About 3,300 of them will carry a GPS device that will “help Chinese organizers” see their real-time location. The Hajj is the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that observant Muslims try to attend at least once in their lives.

—Jeremy Goldkorn

Viral on Weibo: Free refreshments as a show of gratitude in Shanghai

Actions speak louder than words, and in one Shanghai neighborhood, here’s how people are thanking their sanitation workers and couriers. 

The SupChina Quiz: Women in China

This month’s SupChina Quiz is here! Twelve questions to test how much you know about notable Chinese women from the ancient past to the modern age. Let us know how you do — tweet your score to @supchinanews

TechBuzz China: Bike Sharing in China, Part 2: Mobike and the Future of Personal Transportation

Ying-Ying Lu and Rui Ma tell the story of the rest of China’s bike-sharing industry beyond Ofo, focusing on major players Mobike and Hellobike. Guest speaker Karl Ulrich, the vice dean of entrepreneurship and innovation at the Wharton School, gives macro-level predictions about the global impact of new solutions for personal transportation.

Subscribe to TechBuzz China on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or Stitcher, or click here for the RSS feed.