Bloomberg Chinese President Xi Jinping is dispatching a special envoy to visit North Korea this week, shortly after he hosted US counterpart Donald Trump in Beijing. Song Tao, head of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Liaison Department, will visit Pyongyang on Friday to brief North Korean officials about last month’s once-in-five-year leadership reshuffle, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. ...

Bloomberg Thailand said it remains on course for elections next year and that curbs on political parties will soon be eased, as pressure mounts on the military government to roll back restrictions on campaigning. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha said last month a vote will be held in November 2018, though analysts are concerned the military will seek to retain power. ...

Bloomberg Kenya is facing an economic storm in 2018 in the aftermath of two disputed elections. Saddled with the triple threat of austerity measures to pay for those votes, slowing credit growth and new accounting rules for banks, Kenya now risks missing the government’s forecast for 6 percent economic growth next year, according to lenders including Nairobi-based Stanbic Bank Kenya ...

Bloomberg The armed forces seized power in Zimbabwe after a week of confrontation with President Robert Mugabe’s government and said the action was needed to stave off violent conflict in the southern African nation that he’s ruled since 1980. The Zimbabwe Defense Forces will guarantee the safety of Mugabe, 93, and his family and is only “targeting criminals around him ...

American and other securities firms scored what looks like a big win when China announced new rules allowing them to own 51% stakes in joint ventures. It’s just the sort of market-opening move President Donald Trump was seeking on his first trip as president to Beijing. Except Trump didn’t know it was coming. He didn’t even ask for it in ...

How to make HK$700,000 ($90,000) in one day? It’s not as hard as you might think: More than 250 investors just did exactly that by buying into China Literature Ltd.’s initial public offering. IPOs are hot again in Hong Kong, underpinned by the enthusiasm of individual punters. The retail portion of China Literature’s sale was more than 600 times oversubscribed, ...

Ride-hailing companies like Uber Technologies Inc. will see demand boom between now and 2040, hobbling global auto sales growth, according to a new study from IHS Markit. As a growing number of consumers turn to ride-hailing in shared cars that rack up more miles than personal ones, new light-vehicle sales growth will slow to a crawl. The mobility-as-a-service industry will ...

The 11 governments that appear to have saved the Trans-Pacific Partnership deserve credit for persevering after President Donald Trump withdrew the US from their ambitious free-trade pact. They’ll deserve even more praise if they resolve to take the agreement further. South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines aren’t yet members — but all have expressed interest in taking part. ...

If India is to live up the expectations of its own people and become a successful middle-income country in a few decades, the country has multiple problems to solve—its sclerotic politics, its clogged infrastructure, its choked judicial system, its lack of investable capital, its interfering and inefficient state. But perhaps the greatest hurdle is its poor stock of human capital. ...

We’ve all heard that Apple Inc.’s iPhone X has been difficult to make. Add to that one word: the iPhone X is difficult to make profitably. Chief assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. just reported iPhone-quarter earnings that missed estimates. What’s more, third-quarter gross and operating margins were the worst in at least eight years. Apple’s late release of the ...