Taipei City council has come under fire after admitting that a robot dog it bought to help patrol city streets using surveillance cameras was made by a Chinese companylinked to the Chinese military. Hammer Lee, the deputy mayor of Taiwan’s capital, introduced a “new patrol partner” for the management and repair of pedestrian areas in a post on Facebook on Tuesday. “This robot, equipped with an optical panoramic survey system, can create 360-degree images, accurately locate facilities, and even automatically report missing items,” Lee said, noting its ability to “accumulate…
Tag: Business
Tesla sales in Europe slump 40% as BYD new car registrations more than triple
Tesla sales slumped 40% across Europe in July compared with a year earlier as Elon Musk’s electric car company faces increasingly tough competition from its Chinese rival BYD. There were 8,837 sales of Tesla cars last month across the EU, the European Free Trade Association and the UK, according to figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA). That compared with 14,769 at the same point last year. New car registrations for BYD across Europe rose to 13,503 last month, compared with 4,151 a year earlier. BYD now has 1.2%…
Final arguments conclude in Jimmy Lai national security trial in Hong Kong
Final arguments have concluded in the national security trial of the pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong. Government-picked judges are retiring to consider their verdict in the case, seen internationally as a crucial test of the rule of law in the city. Lai, 77, has been in prison since 2020, when he was charged with two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one count of conspiracy to publish seditious material. The charges were brought under a sweeping national security law (NSL) imposed by Beijing after…
Nvidia sets fresh sales record amid fears of an AI bubble and Trump’s trade wars
Nvidia is set to report its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, in a first test of investor appetite since last week’s mass AI-stock selloff. All eyes will be on the chipmaker’s latest financials as the company sets the tone for the rest of the AI industry after a turbulent week in the sector. Several tech stocks saw shares tumble last week amid growing questions over whether AI-driven companies are being overvalued, including an MIT report that said 95% of AI pilots fail to grow company’s revenues and statements from the OpenAI…
TikTok owner set to launch share buyback valuing company at $330bn
ByteDance, the owner of the short-video app TikTok, is set to launch a new employee share buyback that will value the Chinese technology giant at more than $330bn, driven by continued revenue growth, said three people with knowledge of the matter. The company plans to offer current employees $200.41 per share in the repurchase program, the people said, up 5.5% from $189.90 each it offered them about six months ago which valued ByteDance at roughly $315bn. The buyback is expected to be launched in the autumn. The latest buyback at…
Kmart faces legal action in Australia over potential forced labour links – podcast
Earlier this month an Australian-based Uyghur group launched legal action against Kmart in the federal court. The case has put the retailer’s supply chain under scrutiny for potential links to forced labour in China’s Xinjiang province. Nour Haydar speaks with senior reporter Ben Doherty about the legal action against Kmart and the warnings that Australia could become a dumping ground for products linked to forced labour The Guardian
Evergrande: China’s property giant delisted from Hong Kong stock exchange
Evergrande, formerly one of China’s biggest property developers, has been delisted from the Hong Kong stock exchange, capping the end of a long fall from grace. The company was removed from the exchange on Monday after an 18-month freeze on trading, imposed when the developer – once valued at more than HK$400bn (US$50bn) – was put into liquidation. Liquidators had told investors earlier in August the listing was set to be cancelled and they would not seek a review, after the stock exchange warned the company it had passed the…
The Guardian view on rural China: urbanites contemplate an escape to the country | Editorial
“People gone; buildings empty: this is the fact of daily life in the countryside,” lamented the author Liang Hong in her bestselling account China in One Village. It was a grim portrait of her home town – its vitality ebbing as the forces of modern life drained it of young people, polluted its water, exploited its resources and even turned the local school into a pigsty. Its quarter of a million sales reflected not just her distinctive writing, but the familiarity of the story. As urban China prospered with the…
Kmart supply chains under scrutiny for potential Uyghur forced labour links in Australian court case
The letter was effusively polite, the allegations anything but. “We have the honour to address you,” the seven United Nations special rapporteurs began their correspondence to the head of Jiangsu Guotai Guosheng garment factory in China’s Xinjiang province. The 2021 letter then detailed allegations of brutal working conditions for members of China’s Uyghur minority, reportedly forcibly transported hundreds of kilometres and arbitrarily detained for re-education and forced labour. “Workers are reportedly required to work in fenced-in factories … allegedly exposed to intimidation, coercion, threats, and restriction on their freedom of…
Shein looks at moving back to China for Hong Kong listing after London IPO stalls
The online fashion retailer Shein is understood to be considering moving its base back to China from Singapore to pave the way for a Hong Kong listing. The business, which was founded in China and moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2022, had been considering a £50bn float in London after failing to win approval from regulators in the US for a New York flotation. However, Chinese authorities have not given the nod to a UK listing and the fast-fashion group has faced questions about conditions in its supply chain…