Tag: Regulation and Deregulation of Industry

Country Garden: Why Its Financial Crisis Poses a Risk to China

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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…

China Gym Roof Collapse Claims at Least 11 Lives

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Anger rose in China on Monday following the collapse a day earlier of the roof of a middle school gym near the Siberian border, killing at least 10 members of the school’s trophy-winning girl’s volleyball team who were practicing inside, as well as a coach. School safety has long been an emotional issue in China. The collapse of 7,000 classrooms during the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, which killed as many as 10,000 schoolchildren, triggered a national outcry. Shoddy initial construction of schools, widely described as “tofu” buildings, was widely blamed…

Looming U.S. Investment Restrictions on China Threaten Diplomatic Outreach

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Efforts to ease tensions between the United States and China through a series of diplomatic visits to Beijing could be undermined as the White House presses ahead with plans to impose new restrictions on American investments in Chinese companies involved in quantum computing, artificial intelligence and semiconductors. The looming restrictions were a central topic of discussion between Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and senior Chinese officials during her four-day trip to China, which concluded on Sunday. The Treasury Department has sought to narrow the scope of the restrictions, which target…

The Regulatory Questions Swirling Around Meta’s Threads

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Taylor Swift re-records her way onto the charts Taylor Swift on Thursday released the re-recorded version of one of her older albums, “Speak Now,” calling the move a “form of rebellion.” The singer is on a mission to re-record the first six albums in her catalog (she has done three) after the rights to the originals were sold in a contentious deal to the superagent Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in 2019 for north of $300 million. The investment firm Shamrock Capital Advisors bought the masters a year later for about…

China Hits Ant Group with $985 Million Fine

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Chinese authorities announced a fine of nearly $1 billion for financial technology firm Ant Group on Friday, nearly three years after regulators halted the company’s plan for a record-breaking public offering that ushered in a period of intense government scrutiny of technology firms. The fine announced by China’s top securities regulator is seen as a sign that the authorities are wrapping up investigations into technology firms, bringing to a close a period of tough regulation for the industry. Officials said earlier this year that they would start to relax oversight…

TikTok, Shein and Other Companies Distance Themselves From China

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As it expanded internationally, Shein, the rapidly growing fast fashion app, progressively cut ties to its home country, China. It moved its headquarters to Singapore and de-registered its original company in Nanjing. It set up operations in Ireland and Indiana, and hired Washington lobbyists to highlight its U.S. expansion plans as it prepares for a potential initial public offering this year. Yet the clothing retailer can’t shake the focus on its ties with China. Along with other brands like the viral social app TikTok and shopping app Temu, Shein has…

China Is Cracking Down on Bankers. Here Are Some of the Targets.

Chin@Strategy

For years, Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has railed against greed and corruption in the country’s financial sector, making an example of a few prominent figures along the way. But recently, the anti-graft campaign has kicked into overdrive, sweeping up a who’s who from the country’s financial and insurance sector as Mr. Xi and the Chinese Communist Party seek to consolidate control over a critical facet of the economy. China’s anti-corruption officials warned bankers in February that it would “investigate and deal with the people who neglect the party’s leadership.” They…

China Says Chatbots Must Toe the Party Line

Chin@Strategy

Five months after ChatGPT set off an investment frenzy over artificial intelligence, Beijing is moving to rein in China’s chatbots, a show of the government’s resolve to keep tight regulatory control over technology that could define an era. The Cyberspace Administration of China unveiled draft rules this month for so-called generative artificial intelligence — the software systems, like the one behind ChatGPT, that can formulate text and pictures in response to a user’s questions and prompts. According to the regulations, companies must heed the Chinese Communist Party’s strict censorship rules,…

Justice Dept. Investigating TikTok’s Owner Over Possible Spying on Journalists

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is investigating the surveillance of American citizens, including several journalists who cover the tech industry, by the Chinese company that owns TikTok, according to three people familiar with the matter. The investigation, which began late last year, appears to be tied to the admission in December by the company, ByteDance, that its employees had inappropriately obtained the data of American TikTok users, including that of two reporters and a few of their associates. The department’s criminal division, the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney for the…

To Rein in China’s Banks, Xi Uses Familiar Playbook

Chin@Strategy

To a man with a hammer, a renowned psychologist once posited, everything looks like a nail. For most of his decade in power, Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has usually arrived at the same conclusion for how best to deal with the country’s issues: get the Communist Party more involved. And now, as China is confronting an economy lacking the dynamism of the past and teetering from a real estate sector in crisis and local governments overrun with debt, Mr. Xi is again wielding his hammer. At the annual gathering of…