In today’s focus: A senior executive from Wells Fargo Bank is stranded in the mainland, with the US Embassy stating they are closely monitoring the situation; lacking chips and software, China’s industrial ten-year plan falls through; even big cities can’t keep up, with rent plummeting across the board in 2025, with Shanghai experiencing the sharpest decline!
On Monday, July 21, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson confirmed at a routine press conference that Chenyue Mao, Managing Director of Wells Fargo Bank in Atlanta, was restricted from leaving the country due to being suspected of involvement in a criminal case. However, the spokesperson did not provide further details or clarify the nature of Mao’s involvement.
A spokesperson for the US Embassy stated on Monday that for years, the Beijing government has imposed exit bans on American citizens and other foreign citizens in China without a clear, transparent judicial process. Currently, the US is “closely” monitoring situations where American citizens in China face exit bans. The US has “expressed to the Beijing authorities concerns about the impact of arbitrary exit bans on bilateral relations and urged them to allow affected American citizens to return home.”
Additionally, Washington advised Americans preparing to travel to China to exercise caution, warning that law enforcement in the mainland is arbitrary, making the entire trip unsafe.
Chenyue Mao is an expert in the field of international factoring, serving as the Managing Director of Wells Fargo Bank in Atlanta and the current Chairperson of the International Factoring Industry’s organization FCI. However, she is currently under investigation in the mainland.
International factoring refers to when an exporting country’s seller sells unpaid invoices to a third party, who then collects payment from an importing country’s buyer. It is alleged that Ms. Mao has collaborated and interacted with Chinese companies and industry groups on trade financing and international factoring matters. It’s unclear if her current situation is related to her work.
Regarding this matter, Wells Fargo Bank has refused to comment. Prior to this, the bank had stated that they were assisting Ms. Mao in returning to the US through “appropriate channels.” Additionally, the bank had suspended employee travel to China.
The incident involving Chenyue Mao has sparked international attention. Experts point out that with current tensions between China and the US, exit bans hinder business professionals from traveling to the mainland, especially those with foreign passports who were born in China. Furthermore, this incident further undermines foreign institutions’ confidence in conducting business in China.
The US State Department stated that in recent years, the Chinese Communist government has increasingly imposed “exit bans” on foreign individuals, including American citizens, without clear judicial procedures. Sometimes, those restricted only find out they are “stuck” in China when they attempt to leave.
For instance, in 2023, Charles Wang Zhonghe, a senior executive from Nomura Securities, was on a business trip in China and found out he was banned from leaving when he tried to depart the mainland. Several months later, he was able to return to Hong Kong.
Additionally, according to The Wall Street Journal, in September 2023, Michael Chan, an executive from the US risk management company Kroll holding a Hong Kong passport, was banned from leaving mainland China due to a case from a few years prior. As of May this year, Chan still couldn’t leave the mainland.
The Financial Times reports that China’s so-called exit bans are usually not formally announced nor explained publicly. In China, individuals can be prohibited from leaving for various reasons, including suspected espionage, corruption investigations, or commercial disputes.
In similar cases, foreign individuals who are restricted from leaving are mostly not directly charged with crimes by the Chinese Communist Party but are claimed to be involved in civil/business or criminal cases, being asked to cooperate in investigations. Sometimes, these bans are perceived by the outside world as a means to deter dissenters or used by the Chinese government as leverage in negotiations with foreign companies or governments.
Last week, the Chinese Communist Party imprisoned an executive of a Japanese pharmaceutical company on charges of espionage for three and a half years. However, Chinese authorities did not publicly present evidence for these charges. The Japanese embassy in Beijing strongly objected, criticizing China’s opaque judicial process.
Recently, US tech giant “NewTech” spent $35 billion to acquire industrial software giant Ansys, sparking external interest. These two companies—one being the global leader in electronic design automation software (EDA) and the other a top engineering software company ranking among the top three Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) providers in the world—have established a higher technological barrier in chip design and engineering software field through this merger.
Many are asking, what does this mean for China?
In one sentence, this indicates that China’s path to catch up with Western advanced levels in the chip industry is getting longer.
Why is that? Lin Xueping, Visiting Researcher at the China Quality Development Research Institute, points out that currently, Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE), and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software are entering a period of major convergence. Simulations around chip design and chip system have become the most fiercely competitive area in industrial software.
In fact, a decade ago, the Chinese government stated in the “China Manufacturing 2025 Key Areas Technology Roadmap (2015 edition)” that by 2025, they aimed to master the key technologies of core industrial software and chip manufacturing and establish China’s own technical standard system. It specifically mentioned that the market share of domestic industrial software should exceed 50% to break free from foreign reliance.
Clearly, these goals have not been achieved.
According to the “China Industrial Software Industry Development Research Report (2024)”, the market share of domestically developed design-based industrial software is only 10%.
Experts claim that China’s industrial software lags behind developed countries by 15 to 20 years. Not to mention that foreign companies have made further progress through acquisitions and technical accumulation, while Chinese companies are still at the stage of core technology breakthroughs.
Reported by the Instrumentation Industry Association, at the “2024 National Large Industrial Software Ecological Development Conference”, experts from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology pointed out the difficulties in existing products and the systemic development of domestic industrial software, including a lack of key breakthrough technologies such as geometric modeling, physical simulation, weak industrial knowledge accumulation, and incompatibility of software between upstream and downstream companies, making data exchange difficult.
Similar issues also exist in the chip sector; although China has its chip companies, most EDA software, manufacturing equipment, and materials for designing and manufacturing high-end chips still rely heavily on countries like the US and Japan.
This means that the issue of “lacking chips and souls” in China has yet to be resolved. There is still a long way to go to surpass the world’s advanced level.
Mainland housing prices have dropped significantly, and now even rents are struggling to keep up. Compared to 2024, in the first half of 2025, out of 35 major first- and second-tier cities in mainland China, rent has decreased in 32 cities, with only 3 cities showing slight increases. In this wave of “rent plummeting”, the city with the largest decline turns out to be the economically developed Hangzhou and Shanghai.
Data compiled by the “Financial Magazine” shows that Hangzhou saw a 10% decrease in rent, ranking first, while Shanghai saw an 8.1% decline, ranking second, and Nanjing saw a 6.8% drop, ranking third. The cities ranking fourth to tenth are Fuzhou, Wuhan, Beijing, Zhengzhou, Xining, Changsha, and Xi’an.
The only cities where rent slightly increased were Urumqi, Tianjin, and Harbin, with increases of 2.3%, 0.9%, and 0.7%, respectively.
A Shanghai property blogger with over 100,000 followers known as “Master Mei” revealed that first-tier cities are the barometer of the mainland’s property market. Surprisingly, the city with the most ludicrous year-on-year decline in rent is China’s largest city, Shanghai, which saw a staggering 8.1% drop in just one year.
“Master Mei” disclosed that in April this year, a friend of his rented a flat near a school in Shanghai for their child. Over three months later, the friend learned through the agent that other properties introduced to him hadn’t been rented out yet. Because it had been three months without renting, the landlord proactively lowered the price, decreasing it by a thousand yuan per month. The friend regretted not knowing about the situation, as by waiting, he could have saved over a thousand yuan each month on a house that costs over ten thousand, saving an entire twelve thousand in a year.
The report states that rent has dropped so much because people simply don’t have money. Overall, among these 35 cities, Shanghai residents have the highest income, yet rent has plummeted by as much as 8.1%, indicating that with the current economic downturn, there is immense market pressure in Shanghai.
Hangzhou’s situation is even more complex. The average rent has dropped by 10%, from 69.5 yuan per square meter to 62.5 yuan, while the recent foul-smelling tap water incident in Hangzhou’s Yuhang district has sparked panic and dissatisfaction among the public. Some analysts believe that such public service crises could further undermine residents’ confidence, even prompting some to consider “escaping Hangzhou”. “Master Mei” noted that with the foul-smelling tap water, rents in Hangzhou might have to decrease further.
Furthermore, it’s not just the residential rental market that is bleak; the office rental market is even bleaker. Compared to the same period last year, out of the 35 cities, except for a 0.1% slight increase in office rents in Shenyang, the rents in the offices of the other 34 cities have decreased year-on-year, with Beijing and Shanghai experiencing shocking declines of 17.3% and 17.8%, almost nearing 20%.
To make matters worse, there are increasingly more “empty offices” in Shanghai. According to a report by international real estate consulting firm Savills, Shanghai’s office market saw an additional supply of 302,000 square meters, raising the overall vacancy rate by 0.3% compared to last year, reaching a high of 22.4%. This means nearly one-fourth of offices are vacant.
Huang Zhen, Director of the Shanghai Commercial Real Estate Department at Colliers International, stated on July 10 that tenants are now negotiating with landlords to lower rents wherever possible.
A Shanghai netizen explained that tenants now feel their previous rent was too high, wanting to discuss lowering the rent with landlords. Traditionally, a signed three-year lease meant stable rent for the duration. However, current tenants are willing to breach the contract to negotiate rent. Previously, such situations were unheard of.
– “Good News Moments” Production Team