The Beijing auto show and Apple in China

Hello, this is Kenji from Hong Kong.

We just had a day off on Wednesday to observe the May Day labor holiday. Many other places in the region also mark the day, but in mainland China, it is the start of a five-day "golden week." The term originated from a long holiday season in Japan at this time of year, though the holidays are for different reasons and fall on different days.

For several thousand mainland-listed companies, their golden week only arrived after they published their annual reports by the April 30 deadline. That made the first half of this week in particular a rush of financial disclosures.

Spending hours going through the ocean of documents, as I have been doing for decades, can feel like a punishment, but there are occasional rewards in the form of news stories to report and leads to follow up on.

Annual reports contain a wealth of corporate information in a specific format and governed under a set of rules. This has extra significance in China, as a majority of mainland-listed companies rarely answer reporters' questions or hold press conferences to discuss their results. And while enforcement depends on the will of the local authorities, listed companies and their management are liable to penalties if they are caught falsifying information in their disclosures.

Some of the stories that we feature this week are the direct result of what we found out about Chinese automakers, rare earth miners and supply chains from listed companies' annual disclosures.

The Beijing International Automotive Exhibition, or Auto China, is back after a four-year hiatus. The show, which runs through most of the golden week break until May 4, has given industry players impetus to announce new models, partnerships and investment