Flash News

TREE NEWS update: China’s Foreign Ministry said there is no gray zone on the Taiwan issue, urging the Philippines to uphold the one-China principle through concrete actions. Spokesperson Mao Ning made the remarks at a regular press briefing in response to a question about the Philippines seeking deeper cooperation with Taiwan on protecting submarine cables and addressing so-called gray-zone activities. Mao said Taiwan’s external exchanges must be handled strictly in accordance with the one-China principle.

TREE NEWS update: China’s Foreign Ministry said on October 22 it has no information to provide on a possible trilateral summit between the leaders of China, Russia and the United States. Spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular press briefing that the question had been raised repeatedly in recent days, and declined to say whether Beijing is in communication with Moscow or Washington or open to such a meeting.

TREE NEWS update: Beijing released its “Implementation Plan for Comprehensively Improving the Financial Business Environment” at the 2026 Financial Street Forum annual meeting, the Beijing Municipal Financial Office said. The plan aims to build a market-oriented, law-based, convenient and internationalized first-class financial business environment, tailored to the capital’s industrial direction and market entities’ needs, to support high-quality development.

TREE NEWS update: Barclays said it will cut 5,000 jobs, about 5% of its roughly 93,000 employees at the end of 2025, to reduce costs, adding that artificial intelligence is beginning to improve efficiency. The London-based bank said it is “structurally reducing” costs to free up room for investment and is committed to simplifying its organization, with AI cited as a driver.

TREE NEWS update: The Three Gorges Reservoir reached its normal full storage level of 175 meters on the afternoon of the 22nd, the 15th time it has completed the fill target, the Ministry of Water Resources said. The milestone marks the annual storage task for the upper Yangtze reservoir group, centered on the Three Gorges project, with effective storage in the basin’s key reservoirs again exceeding 100 billion cubic meters.

TREE NEWS update: China has signed 26 free trade agreements with 33 countries and regions since reaching its first such pact with ASEAN in 2002, the State Council Information Office said at a briefing on the 15th Five-Year Plan on May 22. Free trade partners, including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, account for 45% of China’s total foreign trade and 70% of its foreign investment, forming an initial global free trade network.

TREE NEWS update: Russia launched a large-scale combined strike on Ukraine using multiple missile types and 210 drones from 18:00 on Oct. 21, with Kyiv as the main target, Ukraine’s Air Force said on Oct. 22. By 09:00 on Oct. 22, Ukrainian air defenses had shot down or suppressed 181 drones, including 87 jet-powered drones, with 10 still airborne. Strike weapons hit 32 locations and debris was found at 8 sites.

TREE NEWS update: China’s inbound foreign direct investment exceeded $750 billion over the five years of its 14th Five-Year Plan period, while non-financial outbound direct investment surpassed $800 billion across nearly 190 countries and regions, the State Council Information Office said at a briefing on the 15th Five-Year Plan. The same period saw retail sales of consumer goods pass 40 trillion and 50 trillion yuan, goods trade exceed $6 trillion and services trade top $1 trillion.

TREE NEWS update: A senior Iranian security official said on the 21st that Iran is prepared for a full-scale, multi-layered and comprehensive war as regional tensions continue to escalate. The official said Tehran has made a clear decision to respond without restraint or limits if enemies launch aggression, and that Iran’s armed forces are fully ready to destroy all strikeable targets of aggressors and their supporters in the region. The official also said Iran judges that neither the United States nor Israel would start a war against Iran without acting jointly with the other.

TREE NEWS reports: The ChiNext Index fell 4.37% to close below the 2,600-point mark, down more than 40% from its June record high, as Chinese equities broadly retreated. The Shanghai Composite dropped 1.48% and the Shenzhen Component lost 2.96%, with nearly 5,000 stocks declining across the three mainland exchanges on turnover of 1.54 trillion yuan. Bank shares bucked the trend, with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank setting new highs, while robotics concept stocks stayed active.

TREE NEWS reports: European equities opened lower on the session, with the Euro Stoxx 50 down 1.2%. Germany’s DAX fell 0.7%, France’s CAC 40 dropped 0.9%, and the UK’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.3% at the open.

TREE NEWS update: Japan’s largest labor union confederation RENGO is seeking a 6% wage increase in the 2027 wage negotiations, the organization said. The demand marks a key test for the country’s wage-growth momentum as the Bank of Japan watches pay trends for inflation and policy cues.

TREE NEWS reports: Caustic soda’s main futures contract fell more than 5% at the close of Chinese commodity trading, leading losses. Apple dropped over 4%, while lithium carbonate and palladium each fell more than 3%, and Shanghai silver declined nearly 3%. Styrene rose more than 3%, with methanol, fuel oil, LU fuel oil and pure benzene gaining over 2%.

TREE NEWS reports: The dollar slid 0.7% against the yen to 157.04, its third consecutive daily decline and a three-week low. The move extends a run of losses for the greenback against the Japanese currency.

TREE NEWS reports: Trading volume in major Chinese equity ETFs surged late in the session, with the Huatai-PineBridge CSI 300 ETF (510300) recording 12 billion yuan, the Harvest CSI 300 ETF (159919) 8.2 billion yuan and the ChinaAMC SSE 50 ETF (510050) 6.1 billion yuan. Several other SSE 50, SSE Composite and CSI 300 ETFs also saw volumes rise.

TREE NEWS reports: The Bank of Japan may announce that inflation has reached its 2% target, Nikkei reported. The declaration would mark a formal acknowledgment that sustained price growth has met the central bank’s long-standing goal. No timing or further details were given in the report.

TREE NEWS reports: France’s INSEE manufacturing confidence index rose to 105 in October, up from 101 in September and above the 101 forecast. The reading, released by the national statistics agency, signals stronger-than-expected sentiment among French manufacturers at the start of the fourth quarter.

TREE NEWS update: Saudi Arabia said the death toll from an attack on Dammam airport has risen to two. The updated figure was announced for the incident at the airport in the kingdom’s Eastern Province. No further details on the victims or the circumstances of the attack were provided.

TREE NEWS reports: The Philippine stock index fell 0.9% after the country’s central bank raised interest rates by 50 basis points. The rate hike, announced on the same day, weighed on equities and drove the benchmark lower.

TREE NEWS update: The Panama Canal Authority said on the 20th that cargo volume through the waterway hit a record 521 million tons in the last fiscal year, with nearly 14,000 ships transiting between October and September. The authority attributed the record to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz caused by conflict in the Middle East. The previous high was 518 million tons in fiscal 2022. The canal carries about 5% of global maritime trade.