If telecoms equipment giant Huawei was trying to convince the world it’s not closely linked to Beijing, then its new campaign to root out internal corruption certainly looks like a bad strategic move. Of course I’m being just slightly facetious, as any good corporation should always be vigilant against corruption within its workforce. But in terms of public perception, this new internal anti-corruption campaign seems strikingly similar to the much larger and high-profile campaign being waged throughout China by the 2-year-old administration of President Xi Jinping. Read Full Post…
Two new strikes, one in Shanghai and another in Guangdong, are shining a spotlight once more on the constant challenge of labor unrest in China, following a similar wave of such strikes earlier this year. One of the latest strikes saw thousands of workers go off the job at Wintek (Taipei: 2384), a Taiwanese maker of touch screens and a supplier to gadget giant Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). The other saw employees walk off the job at a warehouse owned by recently listed e-commerce JD.com (Nasdaq: JD) in Shanghai. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on September 12. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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China Misses Out On First Wave Of New iPhone Releases (English article)
Tech Factory Workers Strike In China Over Mooncakes, Benefits (English article)
FAW, Volkswagen (Frankfurt: VOWG) Fined 248 Mln Yuan After Antitrust Probe Of Audi (Chinese article)
McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) August Sales Metric Hurt By China Scandal (English article)
JD.com (Nasdaq: JD) Responds To Reports Of Strike, Says Has Made Necessary Preparations (Chinese article)
What nearly became a blockbuster marriage between China’s 2 leading online travel sites has instead ended in divorce, with word that industry leader Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP) has formally yanked its hotel listings from the site of the second largest player Qunar (Nasdaq: QUNR). My use of the divorce metaphor here isn’t completely appropriate, since the 2 companies came close but never formally consummated a marriage. Still, the final split in this tie-up is probably the best ending for everyone, since it would have been a rocky road even if the 2 companies had agreed to merge their operations. Read Full Post…
This week’s tech round-up from the microblogging realm is a flurry of interesting but unrelated news bits, as the world gets back to work following the end of the summer holidays. Leading the list is the latest effort by Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) to find a backdoor into China, which comes in the form of a new Weibo account that isn’t verified but has at least one tech executive spreading the word and encouraging people to follow the page.
Meantime, online search leader Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) generated some microblogging buzz when it unveiled an unusual pair of high-tech chopsticks in Beijing. Last but not least there’s Xue Manzi, a tech investor also known as Charles Xue, who was busy hyping a tech start-up on his microblog. Xue is a man I came to dislike over the years for his largely empty talk, even as he built up a base of more than 10 million followers on Weibo (Nasdaq: WB). But then he got sent to prison for becoming too influential and political, making me more sympathetic, before his release in April and quick return to vacuous blogging. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on September 11. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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3 Domestic Cement Firms Probed By NDRC For Antitrust Violations (Chinese article)
Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP) Removes Hotel Products From Qunar (Nasdaq: QUNR) (English article)
Xiaomi Invests In P2P Lending Platform Jimu Box (Chinese article)
Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone 6 To Go On Sale In China On September 26 (Chinese article)
Phoenix New Media (NYSE: FENG) Makes Strategic Investment In News Feed App Yidian (PRNewswire)
This week I paid personal visits on 2 of our city’s biggest parks, which have been in the news due to different controversies. I’ve come to expect such colorful controversies from China’s parks, which seem to act as a major ground for socializing. By comparison, in the west such parks are quieter places where people often go to relax and escape from fast-paced city life.
In the north end of the city, I visited Lu Xun Park, named for one of China’s greatest novelists of the 20th century. But what should have been a moment for celebration during the park’s recent reopening after a year-long renovation instead turned ugly, as 2 groups of retirees clashed over territorial claims in a popular area for performers. Read Full Post…
A new report on the resignation of the head of Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) huge Asia R&D labs to take a job at homegrown Internet giant Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) is shining a spotlight on the growing challenges that multinationals may soon face in retaining some of their top Chinese employees. Just a decade ago, jobs at foreign companies were highly coveted by ambitious Chinese in the high-tech sector, mostly because China didn’t have any of its own big names in the space.
But the emergence of companies like Baidu, Tencent (HKEx: 700) and Lenovo (HKEx: 992) have created a whole new set of opportunities for these workers. What’s more, improving working conditions at Chinese-owned firms, combined with Beijing’s subtle anti-foreign bias against high-tech multinationals, could ultimately lead many of China’s brightest tech workers to abandon their jobs at the multinationals for domestic names. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on September 10. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) China Chief Visits NDRC 4 Times, Antitrust Fine May Reach 10 Bln Yuan (Chinese article)
The final countdown has just begun for e-commerce giant Alibaba’s highly anticipated New York IPO, allowing us to see just how much the company might be worth, how much money it might raise and whether it might be the biggest US or even global IPO of all time. The final answer to all of those questions will remain a mystery until Alibaba actually prices the deal, but at least we can speculate now what the chances are of it meeting some of the lofty goals that market watchers have set for the company. I’ll start by giving my view that the deal should price relatively strongly, and make some conclusions from that later in this post. Read Full Post…
The year 2014 could well go down as the “Year of the Crackdown”, as evidenced by 2 more such crackdowns in the headlines as we head in autumn. The first and larger of the pair comes in the online video space, where media are reporting the broadcasting regulator is finalizing rules that would severely limit the amount of foreign content on online video sites. Meantime, a more mild crackdown is also coming in the e-commerce space, where separate reports are saying another regulator is rolling out rules that will punish companies that overstate their transaction volumes. Read Full Post…
