China-EU friction in spotlight, excessive dining austerity measures: SCMP daily highlights
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China's central bank is launching a new connect programme with Hong Kong to facilitate cross-border payments – Beijing's latest move to open up its financial sector and also leverage the southern financial centre to better connect with the rest of the world.
Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen
Decades of overinvestment and state subsidies in China, weak domestic consumption, an addiction to manufacturing, crashing corporate profits, zombie companies that the state does not let die and a superpower trade war have, the EU believes, created a perfect storm.
Chinese and Philippine vessels have clashed again in the South China Sea, with Beijing saying its coastguard used a water cannon to expel a Philippine government vessel near Scarborough Shoal on Friday. China Coast Guard spokesman Liu Dejun said on Friday afternoon that Philippine vessel 3006 had 'ignored repeated warnings and insistently intruded' into Chinese waters near the strategic shoal.
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