EU investigates JD.com’s $2.6 BN bid for Germany’s Ceconomy

The European Commission is launching an in-depth investigation into Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com’s €2.2 billion ($2.6 billion) bid to acquire German electronics retailer Ceconomy, reports the South China Morning Post. This comes amid mounting tensions between Brussels and Beijing.

A preliminary investigation showed that the Chinese firm could have received foreign subsidies that distorted the EU internal market, including “financing, tax incentives and grants” from China, the European Commission said in a statement.

“In particular, the commission preliminarily identified concerns that the potential foreign subsidies have enabled JD.com to offer conditions that potentially distorted the negotiation process related to the acquisition of Ceconomy,” the statement said.

Flights between China and Japan faced even more cancellations in March, with further cuts expected during the coming Labour Day holiday, reports the South China Morning Post. This comes as political tensions between the two countries continues.

A total of 2,691 China-Japan flights were scrapped last month, according to figures from the data platform DAST cited by Chinese media outlet Yicai. That brought the cancellation rate to nearly 50%, 1.1 percentage points higher than February. 

Only 2,711 flights between the two countries took place last month, down from 5,512 in March 2025, according to aviation intelligence firm OAG. The number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan also plunged 55.9% year-on-year to 291,600, data from the Japan National Tourist Organisation showed.

Trade tensions between the US and China have made companies around the world less keen to invest in either country, reports the South China Morning Post citing a report from Allianz Trade. The report found the United States almost twice as unpopular as its rival.

The report, based on an annual survey by the Paris-based international insurance company, said US-China decoupling had not materialized, but investment intention towards China had dropped “significantly” to 24% of survey respondents, down from 53% a year ago. The survey tracked corporate expectations for exports, global trade and supply chains by collecting views from 6,000 companies in 13 markets before and after the US-Israel strikes on Iran in February and March.

Amid an overall decline in outbound investment appetite globally due to heightened geopolitical tensions, the US and China had “suffered the most” from the loss of potential future investment, the survey found, with the number of firms that considering the US an export growth platform dropping to 13%, down from 17% last year.

People talk a lot about AI and the huge impact that it is going to have on all of our lives, and this week has suddenly seen one possible way in which that happens. The key word is OpenClaw, which is an AI agent which can control and coordinate all your apps, data, calendars, emails and social media accounts and… everything… and execute a wide range of instructions on your behalf automatically using all these data and apps. And inevitably bank accounts and investments too. Obviously, this all promises an enormous saving of time and also obviously presents enormous risks. The indications are that OpenClaw is being embraced particularly enthusiastically in China, and this has all sorts of implications, for Chinese society, for potential scammers, and for the system itself.

AI is a huge priority for organizations, governments and companies around the world, and huge numbers of people too. But China systemically is probably placing more emphasis on AI development than any other country, including the United States. This is a reflection of the hierarchical nature of China but also probably reflects the presumed concerns of the system with regard to AI. There are indications, certainly in terms of DeepSeek, that the China-based LLMs are filtered and constrained in certain ways that is not true of systems elsewhere. That is presumably because the system has a view and a concern about the potential impact that AI could have on the system and its future. If OpenClaw or something like it looks like it is going to become widespread, then we can expect measures to be implemented to make sure they operate firmly within the purview of the system. But then LLMs can be downloaded and operated offline…. We really are heading into totally uncharted territory in terms of so many things right now, AI and the Middle East being just two of the most obvious examples.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world we have the Iran war, and all the disruption that is causing. Is the Trumpist US going to have to “occupy” the Strait of Hormuz as part of this? Who knows? A US$500 drone can incapacitate military hardware worth billions. One hopefully not significant consequence of all this is that the United States is reassigning THAAD interceptor systems from South Korea to the Middle East, and according to one estimate, the number of Patriot missiles fired by US forces in the last two weeks exceed the number provided to Ukraine in the past four years, and it could be later next year before stockpiles can be fully replenished. Does this have any implications for the island? The US being this distracted could be a factor in some calculations.

Have a great spring-filled weekend.

China is a big player these days in many global issues, but in this new Iran war it is to a large extent a bystander, feeling the effects and trying to work out how this is going to play out. The initial consequences are a sharp cut in seaborne oil supplies from the Gulf, a gathering global logistics nightmare, many cancelled Chinese flights and stranded people, and Chinese companies that are struggling to rearrange their businesses to meet this new situation. The markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai are in rollercoaster mode, as are markets around the world, and gold is a buy. It could be that in the longer term the US and Israeli attacks on Iran will be to the geopolitical advantage of Beijing, but it is also possible that the opposite turns out to be the case. It’s a weird war, and the Trumpists have had great difficulty explaining the attack, which started by taking out the supreme leader. Chinese people traditionally respect a show of force, but only when it is effective, and that relates to clear goals being met. The world is waiting.

All this will for sure have a significant impact on China’s economy, but the GDP growth target for this was ratified on Thursday by the NPC at 4.5 to 5%, a new low target range set by the party last October, long before a lot of other things happened.

It was noted that there have been not PLA planes flying around Taiwan over the past six days. It could be an olive branch, but probably more likely to conserve aviation fuel in light of tight supplies. You cannot run a military operation on solar power and a significant portion of China’s oil imports come via the Strait of Hormuz, currently basically shut down. There has been speculation that all these actions, including Venezuela, are ultimately aimed, indirectly, at China, but that seems to be an overly conspiratorial guess. Is the goal simply to make Iran chaotic in the same way the Syria and Iraq are relatively failed states? But if that is the case, how would it make the world safer for Israeli and US billionaires? It’s all very puzzling. Fortune tellers who predicted a rough ride for the year of the horse can feel smug right out of the gate.

Have a great weekend regardless.