Tag: Shutdowns (Institutional)

Near-Daily Covid Tests, Sleeping in Classrooms: Life in Covid-Zero China

Chin@Strategy

The southwestern Chinese city of Ruili is small, remote and largely unknown internationally. It is also, when it comes to the coronavirus, perhaps the most tightly regulated place on earth. In the past year, it has been locked down four times, one lasting 26 days. Homes in an entire district have been evacuated indefinitely to create a “buffer zone” against imported cases. Schools have been closed for months, except for a few grades — but only if those students and their teachers do not leave campus. Many residents, including 59-year-old…

LinkedIn to End Service in China, Citing ‘Challenging’ Environment

Chin@Strategy

Since Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016, revenue from the business has tripled. Mr. Nadella told investors in July that LinkedIn’s revenue had surpassed $10 billion in annual sales, up 27 percent from the previous year. LinkedIn declined to comment beyond its announcement. While Microsoft has tried to build a market in China for more than a decade, it has had only modest success. Last year, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said the country accounted for less than 2 percent of its revenue. Microsoft Windows and Office are common…

China Power Outages Close Factories and Threaten Growth

Chin@Strategy

DONGGUAN, China — Power cuts and even blackouts have slowed or closed factories across China in recent days, adding a new threat to the country’s slowing economy and potentially further snarling global supply chains ahead of the busy Christmas shopping season in the West. The outages have rippled across most of eastern China, where the bulk of the population lives and works. Some building managers have turned off elevators. Some municipal pumping stations have shut down, prompting one town to urge residents to store extra water for the next several…

The Economy Looks Solid. But These Are the Big Risks Ahead.

Chin@Strategy

The low-hanging fruit of the pandemic economic recovery has been eaten. As a result, the expansion is entering a new phase — with new risks. For months, the world economy has expanded at a torrid pace, as industries that were shut down in the pandemic reopened. While that process is hardly complete — numerous industries are still functioning below their prepandemic levels — further healing appears likely to be more gradual, and in some ways more difficult. Reopening restaurants and performance arenas is one thing. Fixing extraordinary backups in shipping…