| The Tokyo Olympics will ban domestic spectators. China signals it's open to conducting tests on Boeing's 737 Max. Cantor Fitzgerald's CEO has choice words for burnt-out junior bankers. Here's what you need to know. The Tokyo Olympics will ban domestic spectators at events held in Japan's capital, as the resurgence of virus cases pushed the government to declare a state of emergency in the city. In the latest hiccup, several of Japan's biggest municipalities have stopped taking new reservations for Covid vaccinations. Meanwhile, Myanmar's Covid inoculation drive has ground to a near halt due to a shortage, forcing the military government to hunt for new supplies. Growing concern that non-mRNA vaccines, including those made by Sinovac and AstraZeneca, aren't capable of thwarting the delta variant is prompting some countries to offer booster shots. Asian stocks look poised to fall after the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 retreated from records. Futures are down in Japan and Australia, and a key gauge of Chinese stocks is near a bear market. Traders in Asia will be focused on the release of China producer and consumer prices today. Chinese aviation officials have signaled they are open to conducting flight tests on Boeing's 737 Max, a step toward lifting the plane's grounding in that nation after more than two years. Details of a validation flight for the Max in China are still being worked out, but the discussions are a sign of possible progress in what has become a lengthy standoff over the plane. It could still take many months after such a flight before China's air regulators wrap up their work and lift the flying ban. Boeing shares jumped on the news, closing 2% higher. China's crackdown on Didi comes down to two words: Big Data. The Communist Party is just now expressing alarm at how all that data could be used by its adversaries if they fell in the wrong hands. For President Xi Jinping, that trove is key to maintaining political control — to snuff out dissent and unlock a new economy. But the challenge is doing so without stifling the innovation that created more wealth over the past decade than any other sector. Zeng Yuqun, the founder of the world's biggest electric-vehicle battery maker, is now wealthier than Jack Ma, a symbolic moment in the rise of China's green billionaires. Zeng's fortune has jumped to $49.5 billion, pushing him into the ranks of Asia's five richest for the first time, as shares of CATL surged this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. What We've Been ReadingThis is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours: And finally, here's what Tracy's interested in todayOne of the weird things about China's Didi crackdown is the lack of response from Washington. Given ongoing tensions between the world's two biggest economies, you might expect China hawks in the U.S. administration to immediately seize upon an upset of a major IPO that's wiped away billions of dollars' worth of value for American investors in just a few days. Chinese companies raising money in U.S. capital markets through opaque variable interest entities (VIEs) have already been the subject of much criticism, and the notion of China "ripping off" American investors would at first glance seem to have innate appeal to a certain portion of the U.S. political establishment.  Instead, there's a slow drip of U.S. political commentary, with Republican Senator Marco Rubio firing the first shot and lambasting the "reckless and irresponsible" Didi listing in an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday. Then on Thursday, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen called on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the listing. When asked about Didi on the same day, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said "it is essential that companies that list in the U.S. adhere to high standards of transparency and disclosure" but not much else. It could just be that Washington is still trying to wrap its head around what happened. But it's also notable that reining in some of the excesses of Big Tech is one of the few shared political positions of the U.S. and China (and Europe, for that matter). It's tricky for U.S. politicians to complain about China officially bidding farewell to "the stage of barbaric growth," as a Global Times op-ed put it, while preparing their own steps to curb the biggest tech companies. You can follow Tracy Alloway on Twitter at @tracyalloway. | 
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