Opinion

For 30 years China has recycled more cardboard boxes, plastic bottles and old computers than any other nation. By doing so, it’s saved millions of tons of resources and indirectly funded thousands of recycling programs and companies globally. But now it wants to stop. In July, China notified the World Trade Organisation that it will soon prohibit the import of ...

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 ...

The Senate’s tax proposal would disrupt the disrupters: By taxing stock options at the time of vesting, rather than when they’re exercised, the change would push startups toward cash compensation. Venture capitalists say that would be expensive and harmful to innovation. But the reality is that changes in Silicon Valley financing culture over the last decade have made equity compensation ...

Donald Trump wants Obamacare to implode. That’s not a mischievous inference from his legislative misadventures; that’s a direct quote. “As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!” It’s thus somewhat surprising that on his watch, enrollment currently seems to be on track for its best year ever. In the first four days, 601,462 people signed up ...

Singapore’s housing market is ticking all the right boxes for revival. Except one. Private residential prices are up, quarter on quarter, after almost four years of continuous declines. Land prices are rising, both in government tenders and in bids to redevelop old condos — an activity known as en bloc sales that has picked up to the point where it’s ...