Tag: E-Commerce

Ant Group Says Its Founder, Jack Ma, Will Relinquish Control

Chin@Strategy

One of China’s most influential tech titans, Ant Group, said on Saturday that its founder, Jack Ma, plans to relinquish control of the company. Ant Group is the fintech sister company of the e-commerce behemoth Alibaba, one of China’s most valuable private companies and the bedrock of the business empire of Mr. Ma, the country’s most famous tycoon. This is a developing story. Chang Che contributed reporting and Zixu Wang contributed research. NYT

Job cuts and falling shares: how did it all go so wrong for the US tech sector?

Chin@Strategy

Amazon announced 18,000 job cuts, Apple’s share price fell below $2tn (£1.7tn) and there was more bad news from Tesla: it has been another tough week for big US tech firms. But this has not been a one-off. The ongoing drama at Twitter since its takeover by Elon Musk in October has taken place against a backdrop of global economic uncertainty, retrenchment from aggressive expansion plans and China’s disruptive transition from Covid lockdowns to rocketing case numbers as restrictions ease. In fact this week’s events have been a continuation of…

Chinese behemoth Pinduoduo to take on Amazon in US – with even worse labor practices

Chin@Strategy

Americans addicted to Amazon could soon be wooed by a Chinese tech giant most of them have never heard of. Pinduoduo is planning to expand its reach to the US next month, according to reports in Bloomberg and Reuters. The company is known for delivering goods at rock-bottom prices – while putting its employees through conditions that a prominent labor activist says should horrify Americans. Described by its founder, the former Google employee Colin Huang, as a cross between “Costco and Disneyland”, Pinduoduo has ridden a wave of meteoric Chinese…

A Game Designer in Beijing Bought Toy Guns. China Imprisoned Him.

Chin@Strategy

China’s strong gun controls mean that fatal shootings are rare, and many citizens support the laws to keep it that way. But there has been a growing debate over the legal definition of a firearm. Experts say China’s regulations — which ban buying, selling or owning weapons above a very low threshold of force — are vague and hard for laypeople, even judges, to understand. The result, critics say, is that unsuspecting buyers of compressed-air and spring-powered toys are turned into criminals. China’s gun control law of 1996 states that…

India to ban private cryptocurrencies and launch official digital currency

Chin@Strategy

The Indian government is preparing to ban private cryptocurrencies and allow the country’s central bank to launch an official digital currency. The proposed legislation follows a crackdown on cryptocurrencies in China, where financial regulators and the central bank have made all digital currency transactions illegal. The Indian proposals were flagged in a parliamentary bulletin listing upcoming legislation which included one paragraph on “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021”. The accompanying description of the bill appeared to leave some room for using cryptocurrencies, however. “To create a…

Alibaba Faces Reckoning Over Harassment

Chin@Strategy

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…

Luxury’s Gray Market Is Emerging From the Shadows

Chin@Strategy

Imagine you are hunting online for a pair of square-toed slides from Bottega Veneta, one of the most-hyped luxury brands of the moment. A new season pair can cost more than $550 from the brand’s website, an old-guard department store like Neiman Marcus or a newer e-commerce player like Net-a-Porter. But what if you chose to buy from Cettire, a website offering discounts of up to 30 percent on the latest fashion styles? You would be a player in the multibillion-dollar luxury “gray” market, a fast-growing sales sector that has…