Chinese consumers “are edgy, they’re worried about the future,” Mr. Dunne said. “It’s a double whammy that Tesla confronts in China.” Tesla shares are reacting in part to the same forces that are roiling stock markets around the world: war in Ukraine, rising interest rates, the threat of recession, supply chain chaos and surging inflation. But Tesla shares have fallen much more than other Silicon Valley giants like Apple or Alphabet, the company that owns Google. Tesla accounted for three-quarters of the electric cars sold in the United States last…
Tag: Discrimination
Justice Dept. to End Trump-Era Initiative to Deter Chinese Threats
ARLINGTON, Va. — The Justice Department said on Wednesday that it was ending a contentious Trump-era effort to fight Chinese national security threats that critics said unfairly targeted professors of Asian descent. A top Justice Department official, Matthew G. Olsen, said in remarks at George Mason University’s National Security Institute that the agency would instead introduce a broader strategy meant to counter threats from hostile nations, which would extend beyond China to include countries like Russia, Iran and North Korea. “By grouping cases under the China Initiative rubric,” Mr. Olsen…
Your Monday Briefing: South Africa’s Parliament Burns
Good morning. We’re covering a fire in South Africa’s Parliament, a breach in the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea, and possible changes to women’s rights in China. South Africa’s parliament burns A large fire damaged much of the Houses of Parliament on Sunday. Officials warned that the damage to the historic complex would be extensive. Officials said the fire spread from an office space on the third floor of a building adjacent to the old National Assembly building. Cape Town’s Fire and Rescue Service spokesman warned that…
China Moves to Overhaul Protections for Women’s Rights, Sort Of
The announcement was presented — in official news reports, on social media — as a major victory for Chinese women. The government was set to overhaul its law governing women’s rights for the first time in decades, to refine the definition of sexual harassment, affirm prohibitions on workplace discrimination and ban forms of emotional abuse. For many women in China, the response was: Hm, really? The proposed revisions are the latest in a series of conflicting messages by the Chinese government about the country’s growing feminist movement. On paper, the…
Can #MeToo Survive Chinese Censorship?
It’s a musical that follows Georges Seurat, the French 19th-century artist who was best known for his pointillist painting “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.” The musical is about what you gain and sacrifice as an artist, and how to be an artist when you don’t feel like there’s anything left for you to make. After watching the first act, I’ll be honest — I wasn’t sold on Sondheim. I went out for intermission, and I start talking with friends who felt the same way. We just didn’t get it,…
As Chinese Women Seek to Crack Male Professions, Schools Stand in the Way
When Vincy Li applied to a prestigious police academy graduate program in China, she knew her odds of success were low. After all, the school set quotas, typically capping the number of female students at no more than a quarter of the student body. But her chances were even lower. When the school released admissions results earlier this year, just five out of 140 students who had tested into the program — less than 4 percent — were female, even though more than 1,000 women had applied. And the lowest-scoring…
Alibaba Manager Not Charged in China’s Latest #MeToo Moment
The police in China released a former Alibaba manager who had been accused of rape by a co-worker after prosecutors declined to charge him, deepening debate about an episode that has shaken the Chinese technology industry and prompted a reckoning for the fledgling #MeToo movement in the country. In a statement issued late Monday, the authorities in the eastern Chinese city of Jinan said that the behavior of the manager — referred to by his surname, Wang — did not constitute a crime and that his arrest had not been…
Alibaba Faces Reckoning Over Harassment
At an employee dinner, women were told to rank the attractiveness of the men at the table. During a team-building exercise, a woman was pressured to straddle her male co-worker in front of colleagues. Top executives traded lewd comments about male virility at company events and online. The e-commerce giant Alibaba, one of China’s most globalized internet companies, has often celebrated the number of women in its senior ranks. In 2018, the company’s billionaire co-founder, Jack Ma, told a conference in Geneva that one secret to Alibaba’s success was that…
A Century After the Titanic Sank, a Film Tries to Rescue 6 Survivors’ Stories
Much about the Chinese sailors’ lives was influenced by the currents of history, including their presence on the Titanic to begin with. Labor strikes in Britain had left them without work, so their employer reassigned them to a North American route. The Titanic was supposed to take eight sailors as third-class passengers from Southampton, England, to their new ship in New York. When the liner struck an iceberg late on April 14, the eight men acted quickly. Five made it into lifeboats, but the other three fell into the subzero…