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☆ White House backs Senate bill to boost US ability to ban TikTok
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( David Shepardson | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The bill gives the Commerce Department the ability impose restrictions up to and including banning TikTok and other technologies that pose national security risks, said Democratic Senator Mark Warner, who chairs the Intelligence Committee. He said it would also apply to foreign technologies from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. TikTok said in a statement that any "U.S. ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide." Warner said it was important the government do more to make clear what it believes are the national security risks to U.S. from the use of TikTok. McCaul said he thinks the full U.S. House of Representatives could vote on bill this month.

☆ Push to give Biden new powers to ban TikTok moves ahead in Congress
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( David Shepardson | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/2] TikTok app logo is seen in this illustration taken, August 22, 2022. A White House spokeswoman told Reuters the administration is "working with Congress" but declined to say if it would endorse the Senate legislation. Last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted along party lines on a bill sponsored by Representative Michael McCaul to give Biden the power to ban TikTok after then President Donald Trump was stymied by courts in 2020 in his efforts to ban TikTok and WeChat. TikTok and CFIUS have been negotiating for more than two years on data security requirements. TikTok said it has spent more than $1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts and rejects spying allegations.

☆ Here's how a serial founder and former US diplomat raised $25 million to create a crypto superapp — and why it's gotten backing from investors like JetBlue and the Winklevoss twins
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Kresus, which is building a crypto superapp, has raised $25 million led by Liberty City Ventures. Traina's company, Kresus, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Liberty City Ventures, the company's first round of financing, to bring that vision of a crypto superapp to fruition. JetBlue Ventures, Craft Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and Gemini cofounders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss also participated in the round. That track record helped win over Liberty City Ventures, whose portfolio includes the Web3 companies Animoca Brands, BlockApps, BitGo, and The Sandbox. James Lang, a managing director at Liberty City, told Insider that the quality of Kresus' team stood out among similar companies he'd reviewed.

☆ Mark Mobius: Investor says he cannot get his money out of China
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

Mark Mobius has said he cannot take his money out of China due to the country’s capital controls, cautioning investors to be “very, very careful” about investing in an economy under a tight government grip. The government is restricting flow of money out of the country,” Mobius, founder of Mobius Capital Partners, told FOX Business in an interview published on March 2. They don’t say: No, you can’t get your money out. Mobius led emerging market investment at Franklin Templeton Investments for three decades and is known for his bullish view on China. Mobius and HSBC could not be reached at the weekend.

☆ Billionaire investor Mark Mobius says he cannot take money out of China -FOX Business
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SHANGHAI, March 5 (Reuters) - Billionaire investor Mark Mobius told FOX Business he cannot take his money out of China due to the country's capital controls, cautioning investors to be "very, very careful" about investing in an economy under a tight government grip. I can't take my money out. The government is restricting flow of money out of the country," Mobius, founder of Mobius Capital Partners, told FOX Business in an interview published on March 2. Mobius led emerging market investment at Franklin Templeton Investments for three decades and is known for his bullish view on China. Mobius, who calls himself "the Indiana Jones of Emerging Market investing", told FOX Business he's increasing exposure to alternative markets such as India and Brazil.

☆ Global asset managers in China grapple with fraudulent investor schemes
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Such scams have become so widespread that China's securities regulator issued a rare statement on Thursday cautioning investors against fund-raising schemes purporting to be from foreign asset managers. The online rackets add reputational risks for global asset managers already suffering from trademark disputes, geopolitical worries, and cut-throat competition in China. "Swindlers mushroom when the economy is bad," said an executive at a consultancy that serves global asset managers in China. "Cheaters and life-long learners ... some tech-savvy ones would even copy the programming of a foreign money manager's website," he said. Scams using Van Eck's brands first emerged in China's southern Guangdong and Southwestern Guangxi provinces, and later sprung up in central Sichuan province, the source said.

☆ A South Korean telco giant has its own A.I. chatbot — and says it's a 'super app' version of ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Arjun Kharpal | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The company has integrated its various service from music streaming to e-commerce into A. and is planning to launch it fully in 2023. Download our app, and we'll do basically everything you want us to do and more," Davis said. A "super app" is a concept pioneered by Chinese technology giants, such as Tencent with its WeChat messaging service. The idea is that a person only needs one app, and that several third-party services are accessible via that app. Super apps are popular in China and in parts of Asia, but haven't taken off in Europe and in the U.S.

☆ Young VCs thought the good times would never end. They did, and now they're pissed.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Insider's Stephanie Palazzolo and Madeline Renbarger have a fascinating report on how young venture capitalists who came from investment banking and consulting are not having a good time. I encourage you to read Stephanie's and Madeline's story, which has all the juicy details about the current environment for young VCs. I've written a lot about how young investment bankers view their jobs as a means to an end, as opposed to an actual career. Timing has a lot to do with why young VCs are feeling like they've gotten such a raw deal. Click here to read more about why some young investment bankers are regretting their move to venture capital.

Hong Kong CNN —Several popular Chinese apps have removed access to ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot that has taken the world by storm even as major Chinese tech companies race to develop their own equivalent. Two other apps, ChatgptAiAi and Chat AI Conversation, said their ChatGPT services went offline due to “relevant business changes” and policy changes. Meanwhile, Hanwang Technology and Beijing Deep Glint Technology, both developers of AI products and services, closed 10% and 5.5% lower respectively. Despite these concerns, the success of ChatGPT has spurred a global AI race. In the absence of foreign competition within the domestic market, Chinese tech companies have since grown into major international players — many of which are now revving their gears with an eye toward AI.

☆ A Chinese resident used ChatGPT to produce a viral government notice. Many were shocked to learn it was fake.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Chinese residents were shocked to learn that ChatGPT wrote a viral notice, per Sixth Tone. But some Chinese residents have gotten access to the chatbot — even using it to spread misinformation. Chinese residents across social media were shocked to learn that a notice they thought was published by the city of Hangzhou's municipal government was actually generated by ChatGPT, Sixth Tone, a Chinese media outlet, reported. When the post went viral, many Chinese residents thought it was real. The incident spooked many Chinese residents, some of whom went to Weibo — a Chinese social media platform — to express their concerns.

☆ Beijing pulls the plug on ChatGPT over fears it could help spread US 'disinformation,' reports say
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

China has reportedly clamped down on access to ChatGPT by its citizens, Nikkei Asia reported. The bot is not officially available in China but some have found ways to use it. Regulators have instructed major Chinese tech firms to cut off such access, per Nikkei Asia. Beijing uses its "Great Firewall" to block many foreign websites and applications, including the full version of Google Search. Earlier this week, China Daily, a state-controlled media outlet, released a video called "How the US uses AI to spread disinformation," according to Forbes.

☆ Singapore ride-hailing firm Grab beats on revenue, pulls forward profitability timeline
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Sheila Chiang | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2022 grew 310% to $502 million, up from $122 million a year ago. We should be getting back to pre-Covid levels by fourth quarter this year. The company said that it is bringing forward its group adjusted EBITDA breakeven guidance to the fourth quarter of 2023, half a year earlier than its previous guidance. Deliveries reboundDeliveries revenue increased to $268 million in fourth quarter 2022, up from $1 million in the same period in 2021. Incentives dropped to 8.2% of gross merchandise volume in the fourth quarter from 9.4% in the previous quarter.

☆ Baidu's ChatGPT-like app will revolutionise its search engine, says CEO
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Eduardo Baptista | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

BEIJING, Feb 23 (Reuters) - China's Baidu Inc (9888.HK) will use its ChatGPT-like app Ernie Bot to create a "revolutionary" version of its popular search engine, the company's CEO said on Wednesday. Ahead of Ernie Bot’s launch in March, Baidu CEO Robin Li told reporters on a conference call to discuss fourth-quarter results that users would be more dependent on the Baidu search engine once it was embedded with the chatbot. He added that online advertising, the company's main source of revenue, would also be boosted by the integration of Ernie Bot into the search engine. Since early February, more than 400 companies have signed up to join the Ernie Bot community as early users of the app, Baidu has said. He also said Ernie Bot was "state of the art" among large AI-driven language models in terms of understanding China's language and culture.

☆ China's millennial managers are confronting a pissed-off wave of Gen-Z staff out to 'rectify' the workplace
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Cheryl Teh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

China's Gen Z is out to "rectify" the workplace, and they want their millennial bosses to give in. The Weibo hashtag "The post-2000s generation is rectifying the workplace" is a forum filled with Gen Z rage. The hashtag documents Chinese Gen Z rage in all its varied formsIt is unclear exactly how the hashtag started. At times, the posts on the Gen Z workers' threads devolve into rants about their "evil" millennial bosses. The rumblings from Gen Z, however, stand in stark contrast to narratives about Chinese millennials that have dominated popular culture.

☆ An ex-Instagram employee says Meta's 'impatience' has hurt its shopping efforts
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Sydney Bradley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

But as Instagram axes shopping products, ex-staffer Meghana Dhar points to Meta's "impatience." The moves have left many asking: What's going on with Instagram shopping? While at Instagram, Dhar worked on Instagram's early shopping features, from onboarding brands to getting John Mayer to host a live shopping event with laundry company The Laundress. But it's also had a tendency to launch and then axe shopping products, like Instagram (and Facebook) live shopping and affiliate marketing. Scaling back on shopping, for now, could also be a blessing in disguise for Meta, Dhar added.

Though the reasons for Bao's disappearance are unclear, his case follows a series of incidents in which high-profile executives in China have gone missing with little explanation during a sweeping anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by President Xi Jinping. China Renaissance said on Thursday in a stock exchange filing that it had no information that Bao's "unavailability" was related to its business, and that its operations were continuing normally. A spokesperson for Beijing-based China Renaissance declined to comment on specific details and referred Reuters to its exchange filing made on Thursday. "What happened to China Renaissance highlighted the key man risk with some Chinese companies," Li Nan, professor of Finance at Shanghai Jiaotong University, said. key man risk generally refers to the threat posed to a company from over-reliance on a limited number of personnel for decision making.

☆ NBA, Ant Group launch strategic partnership in China
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

SHANGHAI, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Chinese fintech giant Ant Group (688688.SS) said on Tuesday it has entered a strategic partnership with the NBA league in China that will see the two cooperate in areas such as video content, program broadcasting and membership. Ant made the announcement on its official WeChat account. Reporting by Brenda Goh and Roxanne Liu; Editing by Tom HogueOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ China Renaissance CEO Bao Fan goes missing
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Michelle Toh | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Hong Kong CNN —One of China’s top investment bankers has become unreachable, according to his company. China Renaissance, an investment bank and private equity firm based in Beijing, said in a Thursday filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange that it “has been unable to contact” Bao Fan, its chairman and CEO. Shares of the company plunged as much as 50% in Hong Kong on Friday following the news. Bao did not immediately respond to messages from CNN on WeChat on Friday, while China Renaissance hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment. Chinese authorities detained Cong Lin, the company’s president, in September, it reported, citing unidentified sources.

☆ China’s property crash is prompting banks to offer mortgages to 70-year-olds
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Laura He | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Some banks in the cities of Nanning, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Beijing have extended the upper age limit on mortgages to between 80 and 95, according to a number of state media reports. China’s property market is in the midst of a historic downturn. The mortgage borrower’s age plus mortgage length should not usually exceed 70 years, according to previous rules published by the banking regulator. Separately, a branch of Citic Bank has extended the upper age limit on its mortgages to 80, the paper said, citing a bank client manager. Other than Beijing, some banks in Nanning, the provincial capital of Guangxi province, have raised the upper age limit on mortgages to 80, according to the city’s official newspaper Nanguo Zaobao.

But retail investors are haunted by the regulatory purges, volatility and losses since 2021. With 212 million retail investors, equal to Brazil's population, the conservatism of China's retail army has implications for the viability of the rally. Individual retail investor transactions accounted for about 60% of the total A-shares turnover in late 2022, China Securities Regulatory Commission Chairman Yi Huiman said in November. But data shows barely any investor accounts being opened and the margin financing that retail investors typically use has plateaued. Retail investors are waiting for clearer policy signals, said Lei Meng, China equities strategist at UBS Securities.

☆ Morgan Stanley is bullish on this Chinese tech giant — giving it upside of nearly 20%
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Zavier Ong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Chinese tech giant Tencent is ramping up its efforts to monetize its fast-growing short video function, and Morgan Stanley is bullish on that. Other key growth drivers Morgan Stanley said it believes global gaming will be another key growth driver for Tencent, though it will be a "much longer-term growth story." Another longer-term growth driver is Tencent's software-as-a-service products, namely Tencent Meeting, Tencent Docs and Tencent Cloud. "We believe it will take 2-3 more years for Tencent to reach breakeven in cloud businesses and for them to become a long-term growth driver," the bank said. Morgan Stanley has raised its price target on Tencent to 450 Hong Kong dollars ($57.30) from 420 Hong Kong dollars — an implied upside of about 20% to the stock's closing price on Feb. 13.

HONG KONG/SHANGHAI, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Chinese chip design company Unisoc (Shanghai) Technologies Co is seeking to raise 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) in a new funding round that will value the firm at about 70 billion yuan ($10.3 billion), three people with knowledge of the deal told Reuters. Unisoc has approached several state-backed investment funds for the round, tapping increased local investor interest in China's domestic chip industry, which is gearing up to be more self-sufficient in the face of U.S. pressure, the people said. Unisoc is controlled by private equity firm Wise Road Capital, which took over the company in 2022 after Tsinghua Unigroup, its former parent company, faced bankruptcy. In its statement from Feb. 8, it added it had reached revenue of 14 billion yuan in 2022. A statement in July 2022 said it had revenue of 11.7 billion yuan in 2021.

☆ ChatGPT frenzy sweeps China as firms scramble for homegrown options
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-11 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Microsoft -backed OpenAI has kept its hit ChatGPT app off-limits to users in China, but the app is attracting huge interest in the country, with firms rushing to integrate the technology into their products and launch rival solutions. OpenAI or ChatGPT itself is not blocked by Chinese authorities but OpenAI does not allow users in mainland China, Hong Kong, Iran, Russia and parts of Africa to sign up. Dozens of bots rigged to ChatGPT technology have emerged on WeChat, with hobbyists using it to make programmes or automated accounts that can interact with users. ChatGPT supports Chinese language interaction and is highly capable of conversing in Chinese, which has helped drive its unofficial adoption in the country. SleekFlow, a Tiger Global-backed startup in Hong Kong, said it was integrating the AI into its customer relations messaging tools.

☆ Factbox: Chinese tech firms working on ChatGPT-style technology
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/2] A response in Chinese by ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, is seen on its website in this illustration picture taken February 9, 2023. Like Microsoft and Google，Chinese tech giants such as Baidu and Alibaba (9988.HK) as well as smaller start-ups have been working on AI projects for years. The e-commerce giant said large language models and generative AI have been areas of focus since it formed its research institute Damo Academy in 2017. NETEASEGaming firm NetEase (9999.HK) plans to deploy large language models technology to serve its education business, a source familiar with the company told Reuters on Feb. 8. 360 SECURITY TECHNOLOGY INC360 Security Technology Inc (601360.SS) said on Feb. 8 it possessed language model technology but that it could not give a clear indication on when it would launch any related products.

☆ ChatGPT frenzy sweeps China as firms scramble for home-grown options
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Josh Ye | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

[1/2] A response in Chinese by ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, is seen on its website in this illustration picture taken February 9, 2023. OpenAI or ChatGPT itself is not blocked by Chinese authorities but OpenAI does not allow users in mainland China, Hong Kong, Iran, Russia and parts of Africa to sign up. Dozens of bots rigged to ChatGPT technology have emerged on WeChat, with hobbyists using it to make programmes or automated accounts that can interact with users. ChatGPT supports Chinese language interaction and is highly capable of conversing in Chinese, which has helped drive its unofficial adoption in the country. CENSORSHIPReuters' tests of ChatGPT indicate that the chatbot is not averse to questions that would be sensitive in mainland China.

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