From Xi and Zelenskiy finally chatting to a bunch of kids defacing ancient statues – Here are today's Headlines

To start off, we're looking into:

Xi and Zelenskiy talk

The backstory: Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year, China has stayed neutral on the war. But it’s also been friendly with Russia, especially when it comes to trade and economic ties. So, Western countries have been pressuring China to use its power and relationship with Russia to get a deal going for ending the war. China released a peace plan for the two countries earlier this year. Although the plan called for “restraint” from all sides and pushed for peace negotiations, it didn’t call on Russia to pull its troops out of Ukraine.

More recently: In March, China’s President Xi visited Moscow, where he talked with Russian President Putin about the war. With this visit came reports that talks were going on between China and Ukraine to get their leaders to speak.

The development: On Wednesday, Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy and Xi spoke on the phone for the first time since the war started. During the call, Xi said China would send representatives to Ukraine and hold talks on resolving the current crisis. According to Chinese state media, Xi also said that China would push for peace talks between Ukraine and Russia and work on figuring out a cease-fire.

BYD takes over Volkswagen's top spot in China

The backstory: Volkswagen's been on top of the auto game in China for pretty much as long as China has kept track of this data, with the automaker's chairman recently calling the country the "most important market for us." But, with the electric vehicle (EV) market in China blowing up and local car makers getting stronger and more sophisticated, foreign giants like Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda and Nissan are all feeling the pressure. With that, which local automakers are making a name for themselves, you ask? It's Chinese company BYD that's making waves in the industry big time.

More recently: Last year, BYD, which is backed by household name Warren Buffet, had a rockstar year, selling 1.86 million vehicles, which is more than what it sold in the past four years combined. In the backdrop, in 2022, China's retail sales of new energy vehicles, including fully electric and plug-in hybrids, nearly doubled to over US$5 million. Local giant BYD made up around 30% of those sales. But BYD wanted more and made its ambitions known, with Chairman Wang Chuanfu announcing his aim to beat Volkswagen by the end of this year.

The development: With that, BYD just snatched the crown from Volkswagen to become China's best-selling car brand in the first quarter of 2023, selling over 440,000 cars in China, according to Bloomberg industry data. On the other hand, Volkswagen sold 427,247 vehicles in the same period, with just 6% being EVs. BYD has said it aims to sell between 3 to 3.7 million cars this year.

Hong Kong's biggest IPO of the year

The backstory: Did you know that China is the biggest alcohol market in the world? And at the top of the Chinese alcohol industry is baijiu, a potent, clear spirit most commonly distilled from sorghum (although it’s sometimes made from other grains). Baijiu is super popular among Chinese drinkers, accounting for over two-thirds of the country’s alcohol market. And its popularity in China has given it the reputation of being the most-consumed spirit in the world by volume – even beating out common spirits like vodka and whisky.

More recently: One of the top players in the game is Wu Xiangdong, aka the Baijiu Godfather, who controls 12 different spirits brands. One of those is Vats Liquor Chain Store Management JSC, a distributor that went public in 2019. Wu first got to know private US equity firm KKR in 2010 when it initially invested in Vats (now exited). Then, KKR recently invested in ZJLD, a holding company for four of Wu’s spirits brands.

The development: The liquor giant ZJLD just shattered some records by becoming the first baijiu maker to go public outside of mainland China with an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong. And, no big deal or anything, but it raised a whopping HK$5.3 billion (US$676 million), making it the biggest IPO in Hong Kong this year. With this sale, Wu Xiangdong, who will own about 69% of ZJLD post-IPO,  is set to see his net worth also spike to over US$4 billion. And that’s a light estimate, considering Wu has eight other baijiu brands that are still private, including Jinliufu, and they don’t share financials.

To end, we'll look into:

Can AI replace coders?

The AI race is in full swing, with tech companies in a race to develop the most useful and marketable AI tools that they can. Not only can some of these tools create a never-before-seen image or write up a decent cover letter, but they can also generate usable code.

Back in March, ​​Google’s parent company, Alphabet, made a deal to provide AI to startup Replit, a web-based coding tool with over 20 million users. This AI helper tool will be used in Replit to recommend code and answer coding questions. Other companies, like Microsoft and GitHub, are already using AI to assist coders.  Meta has its own AI coding tool in the pipeline, and Amazon has developed its own tool, also.

Over at Amazon, the CodeWhisperer AI coding assistant is currently free for developers to use, and Microsoft’s version is US$10 a month. These tools can be used to generate lines of code from text prompts. It can also find potential vulnerabilities in existing code.

Adam Hughes, a software developer, tested ChatGPT’s code-writing abilities and was impressed. He said to Insider, “I never thought I would be replaced in my job, ever, until ChatGPT. I had an existential crisis right then and there. A lot of the knowledge that I thought was special to me, that I had put seven years into, just became obsolete."

While there’s been a lot of talk about AI coming for other white-collar jobs, the idea that it might be a danger to coders themselves has some people concerned.

But software development jobs aren’t necessarily in danger here.

Anthony Hughes, cofounder and CEO of Tech Elevator, writes for Forbes, “At its core, software development isn’t solely about writing lines of code—it’s about solving problems, and as technology use cases continue to expand as more business opportunities emerge, software developers will be needed more than ever to build the solutions.”

In other news ...

📉Stocks: MSCI’s global gauge of stocks is down 0.35% at 2,779.71 at the time of writing.

• Dow Jones lost 0.68% to 33,301.87.
• Nasdaq Composite added 0.47% to 11,854.35.
• S&P 500 slid 0.38% to 4,055.99.
• Hang Seng Index rose 0.71% to 19,757.27.

🧠Some quick factors to bear in mind:

• US stocks were a mixed bag on Wednesday, with only the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite staying in the green because investors were stoked about big tech's earnings week.
• First Republic Bank had a rough week, with a nearly 30% decline after already tumbling almost 50% the day before. It's all because the bank said on Monday that its deposits fell 40% in the first quarter, although they've stabilized since.
• Microsoft climbed more than 7%, hitting its highest level in over a year. The company beat Wall Street's expectations and had a huge revenue boost in its Intelligent Cloud business segment.
• Amazon also rose over 2%, and its quarterly report is due on Thursday, so stay tuned.
• In Hong Kong, stocks closed higher on Wednesday, recovering from the previous day's selloff in Chinese firms. The Hang Seng Tech index rose 1.5%.
• Tencent's stock saw a 2.9% boost on rumors that the WeChat operator might be planning to buy back some of its shares.
• On the data front, Hong Kong's total value of exports and imports both fell in March. Specifically, exports dropped by 1.5%, and imports went down by 0.6% year-on-year.

👄Some comments and chatter:

• "Markets are pretty quiet from a news standpoint; the data this morning wasn’t tremendously impactful. [Recession] is still out there as a pretty significant risk, but handicapping the timing of it is difficult," said Sal Bruno, chief investment officer at IndexIQ in New York.
• “Up to this point Fed officials have taken substantial comfort from indications that acute [bank] stress was contained and there was no immediate sudden stop to bank credit. That is a bit less firmly locked now, and we cannot rule out the possibility developments around First Republic could unfold in a manner that would lead the FOMC to skip [raising rates in] May while signaling a hike in June,” said Krishna Guha, Evercore ISI’s head of central bank strategy.

🛢Oil: Oil prices fell almost 4% on Wednesday, even with a report showing US crude inventories dropped more than anticipated. Some people are saying that recession concerns for the world's biggest economy were probably the cause. With that, US crude fell 3.8% to US$74.30, and Brent lost 3.6% to US$77.69 per barrel.

👛Bitcoin: At the time of writing, Bitcoin is up 0.02% at US$28,325.70.

🤝US to dock nuclear subs in South Korea: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is visiting the US to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the two countries' alliance. With tensions heightening between North and South Korea, US President Biden and Yoon unveiled a new plan for deterring a nuclear threat. The plan involves periodically docking US nuclear submarines in South Korean waters for the first time in decades but without stationing nuclear weapons on the peninsula.

👩‍⚖️Singapore executes man for cannabis charge: Yesterday, we covered the story of a man in Singapore who was set to be executed for allegedly conspiring to traffic a kilogram of cannabis. His family had petitioned for clemency, but he was executed on Wednesday. International rights groups are condemning this sentence.

💣Prison breakout in Sudan: A 72-hour ceasefire started in Sudan on Tuesday. Now, there are reports of a prison break, with suspected war criminal Ahmed Haroun, who faces charges by the International Crime Court, reportedly escaping along with others. On Tuesday, Haroun confirmed he'd gotten out of prison in a statement aired on Sudanese TV but also said he'd face the judiciary when it was functioning.

🚓Navalny faces new charges: Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who was the subject of this year's Oscar-winning documentary "Navalny," is in a Russian jail for fraud and contempt of court. Now, he's facing new charges of terrorism, which could land him life in prison. His team is calling these charges "absurd" and politically motivated.

⛪Papal progress: Current Pope Francis is seen as a more progressive leader of the Catholic Church since he took over in 2013. On Wednesday, he approved the right of women and lay people to vote at a major bishop meeting that will help him figure out the future of the church. The meeting will begin next October and include an additional 70 non-bishops that can vote, half of whom Francis wants to be women.

🏫School closures in Hong Kong: Hong Kong is still recovering from its population drop since the birthrate fell and many residents left the city over the last few years. Now, five schools in the city are set to close or merge over the next few years because of low enrollment numbers.

📄Trying out poverty: A Chinese blogger with about 59,000 followers on the mainland social platform Xiaohongshu came over to Hong Kong to live as if he were homeless so he could blog about the experience. He shared the details in a post called “A night sleeping on the streets of Hong Kong.” He usually posts funny vids, but this one has a lot of people talking.

👗Tom Ford send-off: Acclaimed fashion designer Tom Ford said he’d remain on as “creative visionary” for his brand until the end of 2023 after it was acquired last year by fashion and beauty giant Estée Lauder. He recently dropped his final collection – a curated roundup of some of his favorites looks from archives over the past 13 years – as he makes way for a new designer to take the helm. Instead of a runway show, he dropped the collection in short videos by photographer Steven Klein.

👩‍⚖️Elizabeth Holmes' sentence delayed: Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has been convicted of fraud but still hasn't begun serving her 11-year prison sentence. Now, her sentence is being delayed as her legal team appeals a lower court's decision not to keep her out of prison while she appeals her original fraud conviction.

🚗GM is losing the Chevy Bolt: The Chevrolet Bolt EV was launched by General Motors in the 2017 model year and was advertised as America's most affordable EV, quickly becoming one of the most popular out there. On Tuesday, GM CEO Mary Barra announced that the company would stop producing the Chevy Bolt by the end of this year. GM will instead focus its EV production on electric trucks.

🚫UK blocks Microsoft's Activision takeover: Earlier in 2022, Microsoft announced it would be taking over Activision Blizzard, a gaming company, for US$69 billion. But now, the UK antitrust regulator is blocking that takeover because of concerns about competition in cloud gaming. Other regulators are also concerned, with the US FTC suing to block the takeover in December and the EU currently evaluating the deal.

🚀SpaceX cancels Starlink launch: SpaceX was set to launch a new group of Starlink internet satellites from California on Wednesday. With T-16 seconds to liftoff for the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the satellites, the launch had to be canceled. This was because of the probability of landing failure.

🎨What did they expect?: In England on Monday, children at a conservation site were given activity packs with crayons. A nearby statue over two centuries old was later found with blue crayon scribbles all over it, and so was an old memorial. The crayon marks have been cleaned off, luckily.

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Written and put together by Joey Fung, Vanessa Wolosz, Krystal Lai and Christine Dulion