Yahoo Inc. said Tuesday it has pulled out of China, citing an increasingly challenging operating environment. The withdrawal was largely symbolic, as many of the company’s services were already blocked by China’s digital censorship. But recent government moves to expand its control over tech companies generally, including its domestic giants, may have tipped the scales […]
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The ruling Communist Party is tightening political control over China’s internet giants and tapping their wealth to pay for its ambitions to reduce reliance on U.S. and European technology. Anti-monopoly and data security crackdowns starting in late 2020 have shaken the industry, which flourished for two decades with little regulation. Investor jitters have knocked more […]
Hugely popular online games and celebrity culture in China are the latest targets in the ruling Communist Party’s campaign to encourage the public to fall in line with its vision for a powerful, more wholesome country. The message? Play less, study and work more. Rules that take effect Wednesday cut the amount of game time […]
South Korean developer of Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds’ (PUBG), Krafton, initial public offering recorded a 20 percent drop on Tuesday following a crackdown due to a state-led media attack on the gaming industry. This is considered the biggest initial decline of a South Korean IPO after LG Philips LCD collapse in the same market 17 years ago. Krafton’s loss came after it reduced its IPO target by more than 10 percent last month following regulatory demands […]
Some of China’s biggest gaming firms experienced a 10 percent decline in shares on Tuesday, after being labelled as “spiritual opium” by a state-owned media outlet. China’s largest social media and video games firm Tencent recorded a plunge of 10 percent during early trade, while NetEase lost as much as 14 percent in Hong Kong; […]
The White House dropped Trump-era executive orders intended to ban the popular apps TikTok and WeChat and will conduct its own review aimed at identifying national security risks with software applications tied to China, officials said Wednesday. A new executive order directs the Commerce Department to undertake what officials describe as an “evidence-based” analysis of […]
Two amateur computer coders taken by police from their Beijing homes last year were standing trial Tuesday in a case that illustrates the Chinese government’s growing online censorship and heightened sensitivity to any deviation from the official narrative on its COVID-19 response. Authorities have not said specifically why Chen Mei, 28, and Cai Wei, 27, […]
Chinese regulators have ordered Ant Group, a financial affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, to become a financial holding company to ease financial oversight amid stepped up scrutiny of technology firms. In a meeting Monday, the central bank and other financial regulators also ordered Ant to cease anti-competitive behavior in its payments business and […]
Alibaba Group, the world’s biggest e-commerce company, was fined 18.3 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) by Chinese regulators on Saturday for anti-competitive tactics, as the ruling Communist Party tightens control over fast-growing tech industries. Party leaders worry about the dominance of China’s biggest internet companies, which are expanding into finance, health services and other sensitive areas. […]
Encrypted messaging app Signal appears to have been blocked in mainland China, the latest foreign social media service to cease working in a country where the government tightly controls the flow of information. As of Tuesday, users of the app within China had to connect to a virtual private network (VPN) that allows them to […]