Biden and Japan prime minister Suga confirmed their commitment to a US-Japan alliance to counter an increasingly assertive PRC.

Pfizer accepted Japan’s request to supply additional doses and Japan now has enough doses to vaccinate all residents 16 and older by the end of September.

China plans to approve its first foreign COVID-19 vaccine by July.

Thailand will limit alcohol, convenience store hours and shut down schools to combat the virus.

In Korea, the webtoons subsidiary of Kakao could be seeking a NASDAQ listing at an incredible US$18 billion valuation.

Korea will lift the short-selling ban on 3 May on a gradual basis.

And Apple is releasing new products from tomorrow onwards, which will a major impact across Asian tech supply chains.

Company-specific reports

• I wrote a report on Japanese conveyor belt sushi chain Genki Sushi ($) (TSE: 9828 — US$211 million)

• Alexander Eliasson’s Substack on Kazakhstan tech stock Kaspi (LSE: KSPI — US$15 billion)

• Columbia Business School Value Investing program student on Sea Ltd (NYSE: SE— US$129 billion)

• Teddy Okuyama on Japanese small-cap software stocks G-NEXT (TSE: 4179 — US$78 million) and Yappli (TSE: 4168 — US$567 million)

Longreads

• I wrote a report on the potential of a full Asian travel recovery ($) and gave advice to new investors

• Variant Perception: the reflation trade is overdone, retail investor sentiment is frothy but there is still a lot of skepticism in the market

• Ray Dalio continues to highlight the value in Chinese bonds

• Templeton Global Macro: China’s digital currency is a threat to dollar dominance

• Katsuji Nakazawa makes the case that Xi Jinping has shifted his anti-corruption campaign towards the private sector

• Ant Group explores ways for Jack Ma to exit by selling his shares to the government

• Wen Jiabao comments that China should be a “country of fairness of justice” censored, suggesting discontent in the upper echelons of the Communist Party

• Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group: China’s US$87 billion electric-car giant hasn’t sold a vehicle yet

• China's largest 'ghost city' booms again thanks to education fever

• British schools are retreating from China for fear their brands might be tarnished

• CNN: Beijing has a navy it doesn't even admit exists

• Doxa Substack discussing implications of a PRC invasion of Taiwan on the semiconductor industry

• Mainland China passes Taiwan as top market for chipmaking gear

• Christopher Seifel’s primer on the semiconductor packaging industry

• Vietnam is one of the best performing emerging markets over the past year

Podcasts and videos

• Leland Miller is optimistic about a strong economic recovery in China (4 mins)

• Famed short-seller Kurt Feshbach tells old war stories from the 1980s (1:26 hours)

• Ex Ziff Bro’s Yen Liow talks about how he’s structured his hedge fund (1:15 hours)

• Singaporean private investor Kelvin Seetoh discussing growth stocks (1:13 hours)

• China Tech Investor discussing newly listed Wikipedia-clone Zhihu (36 mins)

Chart of the week – Chinese corporate bond yields rising as investors worry Beijing may allow some SOEs to fail

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Fritz