One of the biggest changes — along with better cameras, smaller borders around the screen and the ability to record 3-D video — is the phone’s new charging ports. Gone are the company’s signature Lightning versions. In their place are USB-C ports, which are nearly ubiquitous in non-Apple devices and are now required by European regulators with the aim of reducing electronic waste and saving customers money. Mark R Cristino/EPA, via Shutterstock NYT
An accountant in northeast China deposited her life savings and received a letter guaranteeing her investment in a trust firm. Workers at a state-owned utility pooled money from friends and relatives believing that their investments were backed by the government. A man sank $140,000 into an account that he was told would make a 10.1 percent annual return. They are among the hundreds of thousands of Chinese investors confronting a distressing reality: Their investments with Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, a financial giant managing $140 billion in assets, and its trust banking…
American companies doing business in China are less optimistic about the future than at any other time in more than two decades. Restrictions on economic data, like the extent of youth unemployment, is making investment decisions harder. Few of the many foreign executives who left China during the pandemic are returning. These are some of the takeaways from reports released Tuesday by organizations representing close to 2,000 European and American firms. The papers by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China…
In the gloom of China’s economy, one area of business is booming: cosmetics. After enduring nearly three years of mandatory masks and frequent lockdowns during the pandemic, many Chinese consumers, wary of big-ticket purchases like apartments, are now splurging on lipstick, perfume, moisturizers and other personal care products. But cosmetics companies from France, Japan, South Korea and the United States, which have invested heavily in China, are missing out on a lot of the action. As China’s cosmetics companies are booming, imports of cosmetics are wilting under regulations that the…
TikTok was fined roughly $370 million on Friday by European Union regulators for having weak safeguards to protect the personal information of children using the platform, a sign of increased scrutiny facing the social media service. TikTok’s default setting did not adequately protect children’s privacy, nor was the company transparent in explaining what it was doing with the data of users age 17 and younger, according to Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which issued the penalty on behalf of the European Union. The fine of 345 million euros is the first…
China’s central bank announced a policy change on Thursday that will allow the country’s banks to lend more money, but a nationwide economic slowdown has left many companies and households wary of borrowing. The move is the latest in a series of economic stimulus measures by the Chinese government as growth has failed to rebound strongly this year as many expected after nearly three years of stringent pandemic-control regulations. Other measures taken to strengthen borrowing and spending have included government-guided interest rate cuts in June and a round of rate…
In the midst of the U.S. commerce secretary’s good will tour to China last week, Huawei, the telecom giant that faces stiff U.S. trade restrictions, unveiled a smartphone that illustrated just how hard it has been for the United States to clamp down on China’s tech prowess. The new phone is powered by a chip that appears to be the most advanced version of China’s homegrown technology to date — a kind of achievement that the United States has been trying to prevent China from reaching. The timing of its…
Two years ago, as she walked through a hospital hallway in handcuffs and shackles to get tested for Covid, Sun Junli felt ashamed and defeated. At 45, she had come a long way. The poor village girl in northwestern China had become a successful businesswoman. Then she was crushed. In 2018, state-owned banks abruptly stopped lending to her business, a chain of cafe restaurants, and the pandemic destroyed her cash flow. By May 2021, Ms. Sun had lost her restaurants, and she was serving 16 days in detention for owing…
Once a beneficiary of China’s property boom, Lan Mingqiang is now an unwitting casualty of its unraveling. The financial troubles at one real estate company, Country Garden, have left him unable to pay the school fees for his son, who is starting seventh grade. Country Garden owes $21,000 to his company, which makes fences and billboards on construction sites. Now, with Country Garden days away from a default, this money is more out of reach than ever. “Nowadays, real estate is hard,” Mr. Lan said. He recently gave up on…
Country Garden, a Chinese real estate giant, has lost billions of dollars and racked up $200 billion in unpaid bills. It’s on the hook to deliver, by one estimate, nearly one million apartments across hundreds of cities in China. The privately owned developer, founded by a farmer three decades ago, is inching closer to default. In China’s housing market, there are plenty of deadbeat developers no longer paying their bills. The possible collapse of Country Garden is one to pay attention to. The company has tried to project confidence. “One…