• China reportedly extends iPhone ban to more workers as tensions with US rise
• China’s military seeks to exploit U.S. troops, veterans, general warns
• Chinese law to ban things that ‘harm feelings’ of country prompts concern
• [World] Hong Kong and southern China battles widespread flooding from record rains
• In the shadow of U.S.-China rivalry, a new world order is emerging
• Isabel Crook devoted her long life to making a new China | Obituary
• [Business] Apple shares slide after China government iPhone ban reports
• China“s widening iPhone curbs roil US technology sector
• In photos: Flooding from heavy rain inundates China

China reportedly extends iPhone ban to more workers as tensions with US rise

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/08/china-iphone-ban-government-state-owned-firms-workers-apple-us

China’s government has reportedly expanded its ban of iPhones to local government workers and state-owned companies, a day after it emerged central government employees were forbidden from bringing the devices to work.

Several agencies had begun instructing employees not to bring iPhones to work and the ban was expected to be further extended, Bloomberg reported. Nikkei reported at least one state-owned company had told its employees that anyone working with trade secrets could not bring their iPhones, Apple Watches or AirPods into work from next month.

The ban on the use of Apple products is believed to be a sign of Beijing pushing back on its reliance on US tech. China has more than 150,000 state-owned companies, according to state media, employing more than 56 million people in 2021.

China’s central government has imposed some restrictions on the use of foreign-made tech in workplaces linked to government since at least 2018, but this week it was reported the rules were expanding to smartphones. Many Chinese employees of affected organisations have a separate phone for work.

On Thursday the Wall Street Journal and Reuters reported that China had widened existing curbs on the use of iPhones by state employees, telling staff at some central government agencies to stop using their Apple mobiles at work. Officials at central government agencies were given the instructions by their superiors in workplace chat groups or meetings.

In response to the news, Apple shares have fallen more than 6% in the past two days. China is one of Apple’s biggest markets and generates nearly a fifth of its revenue. Greater China – including China, Hong Kong and Taiwan – is Apple’s third largest market and accounted for 19% of its $394bn (£316bn) in sales last year.

The Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring said Apple’s share losses were “overdone” as he did not believe the curbs would lead to something broader. Woodring predicted the worst-case scenario was a 4% revenue hit for the company.

“China is critical to Apple‘s success, but Apple is also critical to the Chinese economy,” he said.

“While the potential for a broad decoupling between Apple and China in this multipolar world clearly exists, we don’t believe recent headlines are necessarily foreshadowing this ‘worst case’ scenario.”

Apple production remains centred in China, with about 90% of its products made in the country. Among others, the Taiwan-founded Apple supplier Foxconn has its megafactories in China, employing more than 1.2 million people. But after political instability and pandemic disruptions, Apple has accelerated plans to move some production elsewhere, including Vietnam and India. IPhone 14 production was moved to India.

The move was the first time Apple had assembled an iPhone model outside China the same year it was released and was widely seen as the big step in moving manufacturing operations from the Chinese state. India is the world’s second-largest smartphone market.

Apple has found itself the latest tech industry victim of geopolitical tensions between the US and China.

Some analysts suggested Beijing’s bans on Apple were part of tit-for-tat measures, after Huawei bans by the US and others – including Costa Rica last week – from national 5G networks. The US continues to restrict China’s access to vital equipment needed to keep its chip industry competitive.

The US government has banned approvals of new telecommunications equipment from Chinese telecoms firms Huawei and ZTE because they pose “an unacceptable risk” to US national security. It has also banned the Chinese-owned video app TikTok from government-issued phones and has imposed restrictions on the export of some sophisticated computer chips to China.

Beijing has told operators of important infrastructure in China to stop buying products from the US chipmaker Micron Technology, while ramping up efforts to be more self-sufficient in making semiconductors – known as the “brains of electronic devices”.

Apple was contacted for comment.

China’s military seeks to exploit U.S. troops, veterans, general warns

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/09/08/china-military-exploit-us-troops-veterans/2023-09-07T17:07:39.862Z

China’s military is conducting a sophisticated exploitation campaign designed to “fill gaps” in its capabilities by targeting current and former U.S. service members and harvesting specialized knowledge they’ve gained, a top general warned in a message obtained by The Washington Post.

The document was distributed to Air Force personnel on Friday. It marks the Pentagon’s most direct attempt yet to call out and counter what U.S. officials characterized as an aggressive ploy by Beijing to leverage international firms that hire Americans to teach advanced military skills and tactics.

Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who heads the Air Force and is President Biden’s nominee to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in the message that foreign companies doing business with the Chinese government are “targeting and recruiting U.S. and NATO-trained military talent across specialties and career fields.”

“By essentially training the trainer, many of those who accept contracts with these foreign companies are eroding our national security, putting the very safety of their fellow servicemembers and the country at risk,” Brown wrote, appealing to the recipients’ sense of responsibility, even after leaving the armed forces, to protect “our national defense information.”

Officials declined to identify how many U.S. troops and veterans are thought to have been targeted by the Chinese, saying only that they have seen a worrisome rise in such activity.

A special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigation, who like some others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive national security matter, said that attempts by China’s military to exploit Americans have included marketing job openings to them that initially appear innocuous and approaching them directly at defense industry events.

While pilots are targeted routinely, the special agent said, veterans who’ve held a variety of other roles also are in demand. He cited former aerospace ground equipment maintainers and landing-signals officers as examples, jobs that entail handling specialized equipment and guiding pilots and their aircraft to safety.

The offers come from a mix of privately owned companies and those backed by the Chinese government, and are contracted by the Chinese government, officials said. The solicitations often include language that sounds customary in the defense sector, with references to consulting, advising or training.

A chief concern, the special agent said, is that some will rationalize that the work is legitimate even after they discover the connection to China’s military.

“We want to make sure that people understand: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is,” he said, describing the effort as “insidious.”

Officials are urging current and former military personnel to report if they have been recruited to train foreign militaries.

Relations between Washington and Beijing have been strained for years, with the two powers divided on matters such as economic competition, climate change and, more recently, the war in Ukraine. U.S. security support for Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that China considers a breakaway province, and other recent steps by the Biden administration to expand military ties in the Pacific have deepened the tension.

The Pentagon’s warning to U.S. personnel and veterans comes as senior leaders there have identified China as the United States’ “pacing threat,” expressing alarm over Beijing’s military advancements, and efforts to expand its global footprint and influence.

It follows, too, a move by the U.S. government in June to blacklist dozens of companies across the world for alleged ties to the Chinese government, including several aviation training firms.

Among them are Frontier Services Group, a Chinese state-owned company founded by Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide, and the Test Flying Academy of South Africa, which has faced scrutiny after reports it had hired Western military pilots to train Chinese aviators.

Frontier Services denied in June that it has used U.S. military personnel to train Chinese pilots. It did not respond to questions from The Post about whether it had hired former service members to do so.

The Test Flying Academy of South Africa said in a statement in June that it was “disappointed” in the decision by the U.S. Commerce Department and alleged that larger U.S. companies also train Chinese pilots. It did not respond to requests for comment.

An Air Force colonel with experience flying F-16 fighter jets said in an interview that he first received an email in 2019 seeking seasoned test pilots. His first thought, he said, was to ask his wife if she wanted to go to South Africa someday.

“It did not look particularly suspicious to me,” he said.

Two years later, he recalled, the message came to mind when he was briefed by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations ahead of a professional conference and warned that such recruiting was happening.

The pilot shared with The Post a second recruitment pitch he says he received from the South African company in 2021. It sought helicopter and jet pilots for work in “Far East Asia,” requiring six years of experience as a test pilot and familiarity with teaching students whose first language is not English.

“They can appear very legitimate, to the point that I didn’t catch it until I had a little bit more background knowledge,” the officer said. “I would just say that I was kind of humbled that it basically escaped my detection for almost two years.”

Chinese law to ban things that ‘harm feelings’ of country prompts concern

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/08/chinese-law-to-ban-things-that-harm-feelings-of-country-prompts-concern

Proposed changes to a Chinese public security law to criminalise comments, clothing or symbols that “undermine the spirit” or “harm the feelings” of the country have triggered the concern of legal experts, who say the amendments could be used arbitrarily.

The changes were first made public last week as part of a mandatory “soliciting opinion” process, as concerns mount about the increasingly authoritarian and nationalistic rule of China’s president, Xi Jinping.

This week, several legal scholars and bloggers wrote editorials and social media posts calling for the removal of certain articles in the draft.

One by Zhao Hong, a law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, criticised the new draft for its lack of legal clarity and the potential for abuse of public authority. By Wednesday, Zhao’s article was taken down from the Paper, an online state media outlet, but other discussion remains online.

The scholars and commentators encouraged the public to submit feedback on the draft, and so far about 39,000 people have done so via the website of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC).

“Who confirms the ‘spirit of the Chinese nation’ and according to what procedure? Who recognises the ‘feelings of the Chinese nation’ and according to what procedures?” wrote Tong Zhiwei, a constitutional studies scholar at the East China University of Political Science and Law, on his Weibo social media account.

“If the NPC standing committee adopts this article as it is now drafted, law enforcement and judicial work will inevitably lead to the practical consequences of arresting and convicting people according to the will of the chief, and there will be endless harm,” Tong added.

The parliament’s standing committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Many people took to Chinese social media to express their worries that the amendments could lead to more censorship. Comments remained online on the Twitter-like platform Weibo, suggesting the varied feedback was still tolerated by authorities. Related hashtags recorded hundreds of thousands of impressions.

“Today they can prevent you from wearing certain clothes, tomorrow they can prevent you from speaking, then the day after they can prevent you from thinking,” said one person on Weibo.

“I don’t understand why anyone would support this law, don’t we already have enough pocket crime?” said another. “This is another satirical joke.”

In a post with more than 40,000 likes and 4,000 comments, Beijing News Radio, a state-controlled radio station, acknowledged there were “those who openly oppose the change” while also citing Zhao’s censored article. It urged the NPC to “pay attention to the concerns of the public and safeguard the rights of the citizens.”

The 2005 public security administration punishment law, which mainly covers minor offences, is being revised to make it more applicable to prevailing social realities, the state-owned Global Times newspaper said, without giving details.

An op-ed by the paper’s former editor, Hu Xijin, called for clarification of the legal terms. However, Hu also endorsed the “value orientation” of the law, saying “the spirit and the sentiments of the Chinese nation should not be hurt”.

Additional reporting by Tau Yang

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[World] Hong Kong and southern China battles widespread flooding from record rains

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-66748239?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

In the shadow of U.S.-China rivalry, a new world order is emerging

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/09/08/g20-china-us-india-cold-war/2023-09-06T19:02:51.250Z

You’re reading an excerpt from the Today’s WorldView newsletter. Sign up to get the rest free, including news from around the globe and interesting ideas and opinions to know, sent to your inbox every weekday.

Outside India, there are subdued expectations for the leaders summit of the Group of 20 major economies, hosted in New Delhi this weekend. The absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping has dimmed the geopolitical spotlight on the event; still, it has done little to smooth over the political differences within this diverse bloc over issues ranging from climate change to the war in Ukraine. As President Biden and other world leaders made their way to India, there were even suggestions that the meetings could conclude without a formal joint declaration — an outcome that would mark a blow to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government wants the summit to be the latest sign of India’s arrival as a force on the world stage.

Fourteen years ago, the understandings forged between the powers of the West and the developing world at the G-20 helped lift the global economy out of the morass of an epic financial crisis. At the time, the bloc was hailed by then-British prime minister Gordon Brown as the vehicle of a “new world order,” one leading the way to a “new progressive era of international co-operation.”

That “progressive” era has not come about. The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine has deepened the chasm between the Kremlin and a galvanized geopolitical West. The toll of the pandemic and climate change keep exposing, in ways big and small, the grim inequities between the world’s haves and have-nots. The United States and other Western countries have soured on the free-trading enthusiasm of an earlier era of globalization and are increasingly beholden to once-fringe reactionary nationalist movements at home. Outside the West, liberal democracies in myriad countries, including India, are ailing in the face of entrenched, illiberal, majoritarian ruling parties.

India’s ruling Hindu nationalists push ‘Bharat’ as country’s name

Then there’s the rivalry between the United States and China. Biden described Xi’s no-show in New Delhi as “disappointing,” but U.S. officials are expected to use the forum as a way to tout how Washington, rather than China, can best help with the development of low- and middle-income nations in what’s broadly referred to as the “Global South.” For the White House, the summit is more a backdrop for a clearer geopolitical agenda — after New Delhi, Biden will go to Vietnam for a state visit, during which a slate of major cooperation deals is expected to be announced. That trip, along with the United States’ efforts to deepen ties with India, showcase how the Biden administration is trying to secure potential Asian bulwarks against China.

“The U.S. is courting India ferociously. Paradoxically, the best comparison to make of this courtship is with the ferocious courtship of China by the U.S. to counterbalance the Soviet Union in the 1970s,” said former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani in a recent interview. “Little of substance will emerge from the summit,” he added, referring to the weekend’s meetings. “It may well prove to be, like many G-7 meetings, a photo opportunity for the leaders attending it.”

The G-20 meetings come in the wake of the recent BRICS summit in South Africa, where Xi did make an appearance. It seems Beijing may view that bloc, which does not include the United States and many top Western allies, as a more useful platform for its international agenda. BRICS appears set to expand its ranks next year, raising new questions about the relevance of an institution like the G-20, which may no longer be the principal forum for the major powers of the developing world.

“While China cannot win a battle against a U.S.-led bloc, President Xi Jinping seems convinced that it can take its place as a great power in a fragmented global order,” observed Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, arguing that the arena upon which Beijing and Washington are exercising their rivalry is altogether different from the context that surrounded the binary clash of the Cold War in the previous century.

“The picture that emerges is of a world in which the superpowers lack sufficient economic, military, or ideological clout to force the rest of the world — in particular, the increasingly confident ‘middle powers’ — to pick a side,” Leonard wrote. “From South Korea to Niger to the new BRICS members, countries can afford to advance their own goals and interests, rather than pledging fealty to the superpowers.”

With wary eye on China, U.S. moves closer to former foe Vietnam

The growing influence of the “middle powers” is changing how we think of global politics. “Welcome to the a la carte world,” wrote Alec Russell in a smart piece for the Financial Times. “As the post-cold war age of America as a sole superpower fades, the old era when countries had to choose from a prix fixe menu of alliances is shifting into a more fluid order.”

Russell pointed to countries like Kenya, which are, “with alacrity and increasing skill,” engaging a host of regional and world powers, from Washington to Beijing, London to Tehran, on their own terms: Participating in a naval exercise here, an infrastructure deal there. This week, Nairobi hosted an inaugural African summit on climate to set the continent’s “common position” ahead of U.N.-backed climate meetings later this year. Kenyan President William Ruto has been outspoken about both the West and China’s obligations to help Africa cope with a climate crisis not of its own making, as well as to redress an inequitable global lending structures that have saddled African economies with huge public debts.

“Don’t focus on U.S.-China competition, as they are not going to be able to discipline fragmentation as Russia and America did in the Cold War,” Ivan Krastev, a prominent Bulgarian political scientist, told the Finatial Times. “The middle powers may not be big enough or strong enough to shape the international order, but their ambition is to increase their relevance.”

It all may seem a bit confusing, a bit chaotic. But out of this geopolitical muddle, a new world older is lurching into motion.

Isabel Crook devoted her long life to making a new China | Obituary

https://www.economist.com/obituary/2023/09/07/isabel-crook-devoted-her-long-life-to-making-a-new-china

From the start, Isabel Crook was at the heart of things. In October 1949, riding in an army truck, she celebrated the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in Tiananmen Square in newly liberated Beijing. She and her husband David were almost the only Westerners; it was the most joyful moment she had ever watched. The processions of soldiers and civilians went on for six hours. Every two hours or so she had to dart through the marchers to feed her new baby, Carl, and dart back, eager not to miss too much.

China was her home, and Communism was her cause. From her late teens she had needed to find one, even asking her mother to send religious books in case they would help. No cause came that way. Friends lent her books on Marxism; she began to get her ideas sorted. Then she met David, ardently Communist, a spy for the Soviets and a fighter for the Republicans in the Spanish civil war. And that was that. She was “Comrade Isabel” from then on.

She had meant to return to the West, to her native Canada or to Britain, but neither she nor David could keep away from China. As an anthropologist, minutely studying daily life in remote villages in Sichuan, she slipped naturally into Chinese ways: sleeping on a kang or heated brick bed, wearing homespun clothes, devouring buckwheat noodles and travelling by mule cart, foot or bicycle. When she taught English from 1949 to 1981 at Beijing Foreign Studies University, schooling generations of Chinese diplomats, she and David had a small peasant’s house on campus with paper in the windows, rather than glass, and helped with outdoor labour. With revolution always in the air, they could not leave. From 1947 her long life was spent in China.

It had also begun there, in 1915. Her parents were Canadian missionaries in Chengdu when the last emperor, though forced to abdicate, still lived in the Forbidden City. Within a few years, though, in her local church hall, young Communists were beginning to meet. By the time she returned from her studies in Toronto, in 1938, Japan had invaded China and the Nationalist government was weakening. Two years later she went with a team to her first village, Prosperity, to take notes on the progress of the Nationalists’ agrarian reforms. After the second world war had deflected her she studied a second village, Ten Mile Inn, in 1947, to see how it was managing under new, Communist, rule.

Her first sight of Prosperity was breathtaking: curved terraces of shimmering rice paddies set among steep mountains. The main street, however, was repulsive, a pig-pen and a garbage dump. Every few days this street became a market where farmers sold whatever they could scrape from their tiny pockets of land, to get salt or oil, or a haircut. Most of the villagers, 55% by her team’s reckoning, were destitute or poor. Another 35%, middle peasants or shopkeepers, were “getting by”. The remaining 10%, rich estate-owners, controlled everything, renting out land in exchange for 60-70% of the crop and running the lucrative opium trade in opium. The village was plagued in spring by “bandits” who, she discovered, were just farmers desperate with hunger. Meanwhile the Nationalist government was press-ganging men to fight the Japanese, raising swingeing taxes and appointing unknown outsiders as officials. Nothing was working.

At Ten Mile Inn, seven years later, she found a quite different picture. Although this too was a place of grinding poverty, with lean corn-cobs piled in its muddy streets, the atmosphere was charged with enthusiasm. This village had been one of the first to be freed from Nationalist rule. A slogan on the main gate proclaimed Mao Zedong the saviour of the people, and red posters on gateways proudly marked the homes of willing volunteers for the PLA. Fully 70% of the villagers no longer paid tax; only the rich paid. These “objects of struggle” also had to give back any land or goods they had taken, or their fathers or grandfathers had taken, for non-payment of debts or rents. Thus feudalism was destroyed and wealth shared. Peasants now had a union, and middle-peasants ran the village. The PLA helped to “purify the Party” by conducting tough, though not lethal, public shaming.

She recorded some missteps. The new cadres liked perks as much as the old, wanting the first pick of potential wives and feasting on meat dumplings. Innocent people were accused and humiliated, and these proceedings divided the village, turning neighbours against each other. In general, though, she was happy to report that Ten Mile Inn had become—as Mao had wanted all villages to become—”a revolutionary bastion”. People naturally asked whether her work was sound when she was so committed to one side, even helping with harvest and hoeing. She was sure she could be. Life, for most, was simply better under Communism. It showed clearly in the data she and her team had gathered, interviewing all day and typing most of the night, tirelessly.

If she ever doubted, David soon set her straight. The Great Leap Forward in 1958-60, in which perhaps 15m people died, was like surgery, he said, for some acute disease. Wouldn’t she rather have that, than go on suffering? And any revolution had its mistakes. David did not complain, so she did not, when he was jailed during the Cultural Revolution from 1967 to 1973, and she was put under house arrest. She spent the time studying Mao’s works, enjoying his sense of humour. The most difficult point came in 1989, when she and David took water and plastic sheets to the student protesters in Tiananmen Square and wrote to the People’s Daily, appealing to the government not to use force. The government used it mercilessly. Still, they stayed in China, because they belonged.

The country she watched now was increasingly market-driven, consumerist and prosperous, unleashed by Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the late 1970s. She had no love for capitalism, but to her Deng’s choice was valid. In the early days, to quote Bertolt Brecht, “The house was built with the stones that were there.” Perhaps, now, it could be built differently. She was too old now to heave stones herself; but not too old to hope, fervently, for whatever China’s people needed most. If the Party called, she was there. ■

[Business] Apple shares slide after China government iPhone ban reports

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66748092?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

China“s widening iPhone curbs roil US technology sector

https://reuters.com/article/apple-stocks-china/chinas-widening-iphone-curbs-roil-us-technology-sector-idUSKBN30D119

Beijing's widening curbs on iPhone use by government staff raised concerns among U.S. lawmakers on Thursday and fanned fears that American tech companies heavily exposed to China could take a hit from rising tensions between the countries.

Apple (AAPL.O) fell more than 3% and was on track for its worst two-day decline since November after news that Beijing has told employees at some central government agencies in recent weeks to stop using their Apple mobiles at work.

Several Wall Street analysts said the curbs show that even a company with a good relationship with the Chinese government and a large presence in the world's second-largest economy was not immune to rising tensions between the two nations.

Sino-U.S. friction has worsened in recent years as Washington tries to restrict China's access to key technologies including cutting-edge chip technology, and Beijing looks to reduce its reliance on American tech.

Apple supplier Qualcomm (QCOM.O), one of the U.S. companies with the largest China presence, tumbled nearly 7% to lead losses among major tech firms.

Lawmakers of both major U.S. parties have been vocal in their concerns about national security risks allegedly created by China's products, pressuring the Biden administration to get even more aggressive with Beijing.

The wider ban is not surprising and shows how China is trying to limit a Western company's market access to the nation, said U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher, the chairman of the House panel on China.

"This is textbook Chinese Communist Party behavior - promote PRC (People's Republic of China) national champions in telecommunications, and slowly squeeze Western companies' market access," Gallagher, a Republican, told Reuters.

U.S. Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat and the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also shared similar concerns and said, "as the Chinese economy stalls, we can potentially anticipate more aggressive moves against foreign businesses".

China has curbed shipments from prominent U.S. firms including planemaker Boeing (BA.N) and memory chipmaker Micron (MU.O).

Other suppliers of the iPhone maker including Broadcom (AVGO.O), Skyworks Solutions (SWKS.O) and Texas Instruments (TXN.O) were also lower, falling between 1.8% and 7.3%. The drop in the technology sector weighed on the three main U.S. stock indexes, particularly the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which lost 0.9% in afternoon trading.

"This announcement seems to have just refocused investors that the relationship between the U.S. and China is a big risk to current equity prices, particularly in technology," said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments.

China has been a bright spot for Apple in an otherwise tough period for iPhone sales.

"China is a crucial market for Apple, not just because it's a super-important manufacturing hub, but because the country is an increasingly important source of revenues," said Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown.

Apple gets nearly a fifth of its revenue from the country.

"Already rivals are closing the gap in high-end smartphone sales, and if the situation were to escalate this could potentially allow competitors to have a greater chance of stealing Apple's crown," Streeter said.

China's Huawei last week launched its new Mate 60 Pro smartphone, which is powered by an advanced chip made by Chinese contract chipmaker SMIC (0981.HK) and marks a breakthrough for the duo hit by U.S. sanctions.

Those sanctions cut Huawei's access to chipmaking tools essential for producing the most advanced handset models, hammering the company's business and allowing Apple to take some market share from the national favorite in China.

"If Huawei has the capability to supply and scale its home-grown Kirin 9000S (chips), we see the Mate series phone as an opportunity for Huawei to increase its shipments and regain its market share," analysts at BofA Global Research said.

Apple could, however, see a demand boost after an event next week where it is expected to unveil its iPhone 15 line-up, as well as new smartwatches.

In photos: Flooding from heavy rain inundates China

https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2023/china-hong-kong-flooding/2023-09-07T22:16:41.818Z

Hong Kong experienced the most rainfall in an hour since records began 140 years ago, leading to flash flooding that turned streets into raging rivers that looked better suited to white-water rafting than city living.

Heavy rain was also reported in southern China, including in Shenzhen, which was reportedly readying to discharge water from its reservoirs, potentially worsening flooding in parts of northern Hong Kong.

The region has been battered by two typhoons in two weeks, with Saola and Haikui wreaking havoc across southern China and Taiwan.

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