• Asia is catching up in vaccinations: Japan’s vaccination rate has overtaken that of the United States. South Korea is not far behind.

• Thailand re-opening: Thailand is re-opening to foreign tourists. It will scrap quarantine requirements for all pilot areas this year

• Macau casinos: The government plans to increase local ownership of Macau casinos. A new gaming law proposes for the sub-concession system to be removed. US casinos’ 2022 Macau concession renewals might be at risk.

• Chinese anti-trust regulation: WeChat and AliPay are opening up their platforms to third-party links

• Hong Kong tycoons: Early signs of a crackdown on Hong Kong tycoons, compelling them to contribute to Beijing’s Common Prosperity drive

• Mainstream stock ideas: This table with 1-year returns for the favourite stocks on Finance Twitter shows that popular stocks tend to underperform

Company-specific reports

($ = behind a paywall)

• I wrote a deep-dive on Indonesian dairy company Ultrajaya Milk (IDX: ULTJ — US$1.1 billion)

• I wrote a post weighing the bull & bear cases for Ping An Insurance (SEHK: 2318 — US$81 billion) ($)

• Punch Card Investor on e-commerce stock Sea Ltd (Part 1) (NYSE: SE — US$188 billion)

• A quick note on Kazakhstan uranium miner KazAtomprom from the “searching 4 value” blog (LSE: KAP — US$10.2 billion). Also note this comment from the company’s Chief Commercial Officer.

Long-form writing

(estimated reading time) ($ = behind a paywall)

• Bank analyst Daniel Tabbush on how Thai banks are likely to benefit from Thailand’s re-opening (2 mins)

• Variant Perception: EM local currency debt underperforms in hiking regimes (1 min)

• Harvard Business Review & Bain: Founder-led companies outperform the rest (5 mins)

• John Authers: Executives using complex language produce lower returns (8 mins) ($)

• Adam Tooze summarising the news flow on property developer China Evergrande (9 mins)

• Anne Stevenson-Yang of J Capital weighs in on China Evergrande, discussing what a restructuring of the company might look like (7 mins)

• Niall Ferguson: Will Xi move on Taiwan? History warns he might (13 mins)

• Semi-Literate Substack: Mapping US chip company exposure to China (9 mins)

Podcasts and videos

(listening time) ($ = behind a paywall)

• Howard Marks discussing market cycles (1:08 hours)

• Ex-housing bear John Paulson interviewed by David Rubinstein (24 mins)

• Mark Spitznagel is bearish (and selling a new book) (26 mins)

• China-based tech analyst Dan Wang explains the tech crackdown (49 mins)

• SCMP tech journalist John Artman discussing China’s tech regulation (1:05 hours)

• Angelica Oung from the Taiwan-focused Taipology Substack on the Compounding Curiosity podcast (45 mins)

• Asianometry: How Chinese state-owned Tsinghua Unigroup tried to roll up overseas semiconductor IP (15 mins)

• Peter Zeihan: Why has the PRC not taken Taiwan? (5 mins)

• Mike Green interviewing Louis Gave discussing Chinese politics on Real Vision TV (1:25 hours) ($)

Chart of the week – China’s excess reserve ratio has started ticking up

Thanks for reading, and I wish you a great week ahead!

If you enjoyed this post, consider joining 166 Asian Century Stocks subscribers by pressing the button below. You will then have immediate access to the archive of past articles, 20+ deep-dives per year, thematic industry reports and access to our subscriber chat group on Telegram.