Axios

Meituan-Dianping, which bills itself as China’s largest provider of on-demand online services like group buying, food ordering and ride hailing, has selected the investment banks to take it public in Hong Kong later this year, per DealStreetAsia.

Why it matters: Bloomberg believes the expected valuation could be as high as $60 billion. China may have the most competitive and well-funded internet market in the world, in spite of the increasing Communist Party controls.

Foreign Policy published Thursday an explosive story, "The Disappeared," examining the mysterious vanishing of Chinese citizens over the last several years. Some of the cases are well-known, like those of financier Xiao Jinhua and bookseller Gui Minhai, who were both taken from Hong Kong.

North Korea leader Kim Jong-un’s journey to Beijing this week appears to have come as a surprise to the Trump administration but the White House seems to be spinning it as a positive development.

What's happening: Per the Washington Post, administration officials, who were thrown off balance when China announced it had held its own summit with Kim, debated the implications of the meeting but ultimately decided to declare it a positive result of its “maximum pressure” campaign against North Korea.

Since the standoff over a nerve agent attack on British soil began, some two dozen countries have expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats, with Russia responding in kind. But despite the expulsions, Russia’s diplomatic cupboard is far from bare.

By the numbers: Russia has 242 diplomatic posts in 145 countries around the world, according to the Lowy institute. Only the U.S., China and France have more. While Russia doesn’t release comparable data, the U.S. has 9,400 diplomats posted to its 273 overseas posts, per the BBC.

"It seems to me that atmosphere in Washington is poisoned — it's a toxic atmosphere," he said. "It depends upon us to decide whether we are in Cold War or not. But ... I don't remember such [a] bad shape of our relations."

Here's a rare satellite view of North Korea's Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center, where increased activity has renewed the concern of analysts ahead of a proposed summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. [Go deeper]

The Trump administration may be trying to exert “maximum pressure” on Kim Jong-un, but it doesn’t appear that North Korea’s young leader is feeling it.

Throughout 2018, Kim has been on the diplomatic offensive — reestablishing a high-level dialogue with South Korea, creating a shining moment at the Olympics, extending the invitation for an unprecedented meeting with President Trump and just this week meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, on his first foreign trip after six years in office.

Department of State spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Thursday that that U.S. "reserves the right to respond" after Russia announced a retaliatory expulsion of U.S. diplomats. Nauert said Russia has decided to "further isolate itself diplomatically and economically." While the U.S. wasn't surprised by Russia kicking out 60 U.S. diplomats, it's "unjustified" she said, adding that Russia "should not be acting like a victim."

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, summoned the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, to the foreign ministry Thursday where he was informed Russia is expelling 60 U.S. diplomats — the same number as the U.S. expelled stateside — and will close the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg, per the AP. Russia will take similar action in the 25 other countries that expelled Russians, expelling 150 diplomats in total.

The bottom line: This was the expected reaction and is part of the Russian playbook. A European diplomat tells Axios the response from the U.S., U.K. and others has been far stronger than the Kremlin expected over the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent on British soil.

iQiyi, a Netflix-style service in China that is owned by Baidu, raised $2.25 billion in its IPO. It priced 125 million shares at $18 (middle of range), for a filly-diluted market value of $13.7 billion, and will trade on the Nasdaq under ticker IQ.

In context: iQiyi is hitting the U.S. markets at the exact same time that FANG stocks, including Netflix, are getting hammered. It doesn't face the same threats of U.S. regulation or American privacy concerns, but it does have serious censorship and competitive challenges.

U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman issued today a clarification about comments he made against Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Friedman wrote this morning in a tweet:

"The United States is not seeking 'to replace' Mahmoud Abbas. It is for the Palestinian people to choose its leadership."

The Trump administration's decision to expel 60 Russian diplomats from the U.S. and shut down the Russian consulate in Seattle was an important expression of solidarity with the U.K., which had expelled 23 Russian diplomats in response to the nerve agent attack against a former Russian spy. More than 20 countries have now jointly responded, expelling more than 100 Russian diplomats worldwide.

What's next: Russia has vowed to retaliate, but the scope of its response remains unknown. One thing is clear: The downward spiral in relations will not abate as long as the Kremlin continues its confrontation course with the West.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a summit at the Korean border village of Panmunjom on April 27, per the AP. Their meeting could set the stage for a meeting between Kim and President Trump, which is currently projected to take place in May.

The big picture: It'll be just the third time that the leaders of the two Koreas have sat down face-to-face since the Korean War ended in 1953. The last two summits occurred in 2000 and 2007.