EU-China Summit; Revising the Pricing Law to battle involution; Taiwan recall; Nvidia chip smuggling; Crackdown on rare earths-related smuggling
It has been a long week and the “三伏天 Three Fu Days”, similar to the dog days of summer” started July 20th, so today’s commentary is a bit thin. For those keeping track, here are the dates for this year’s 三伏天:
Initial Fu (初伏): July 20, 2025 to July 29, 2025
Middle Fu (中伏): July 30, 2025 to August 8, 2025
Final Fu (末伏): August 9, 2025 to August 18, 2025
Summary of today’s top items:
1. EU-China meetings - European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had a bilateral meeting with Xi Jinping and then held the EU-China Summit with Premier Li Qiang. As lots of people have discussed, expectations were low, and they appear to have been met. The two sides did issue a joint climate statement and agreed to some sort of upgraded export supply mechanism mechanism for rare earths and permanent magnets, but that in no way means the PRC will remove those export controls.
In the bilateral meeting Xi offered three proposals for EU-China relations:
First, uph…