Day: September 27, 2023

IBM’s former IT services group plans to separate its China business

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Receive free Kyndryl Inc updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Kyndryl Inc news every morning. IBM’s former IT services unit is planning to split off its China business in the latest sign of how geopolitical tensions and Chinese data laws are forcing multinationals to rethink their global footprint. US-based Kyndryl, which was spun out of IBM in 2021 and says it is the world’s largest provider of IT infrastructure services by revenue, has told some employees about the decision to split, according to…

Evergrande halts share trading as woes mount for China’ property giant

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Embattled Chinese property giant Evergrande has suspended share trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange only a month after it resumed trading after a 17-month suspension. Trading in its two other units – the property services and electric vehicle groups – also stopped at 9am on Thursday, according to notices posted by the stock exchange. The halt in trading comes a day after reports that the chair of Evergrande had been put under police surveillance. Hui Ka Yan, who founded Evergrande in 1996, was taken away earlier this month and…

India hits fantasy sports sector with back taxes in escalating battle

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Receive free Indian business & finance updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Indian business & finance news every morning. Indian tax authorities have sent notices to fantasy sports and gaming companies for hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes in a stand-off that is threatening to disrupt the fast-growing industry. Dream11, the country’s largest fantasy sports company backed by Tiger Global, received a tax demand note this month for approximately Rs12bn ($144mn) from 2017 to 2019, according to a court filing challenging…

South Korea’s Dilemma: Is North Korea the Only Threat?

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washington —  Seoul should be ready to deal with threats beyond North Korea as Beijing’s belligerence toward Taiwan and Pyongyang’s threats to South Korea keep growing, analysts said. South Korea’s military readiness has long been directed to the north, as was displayed in a parade of its modern military hardware through Seoul on Tuesday to mark the 75th Armed Forces Day commemorating the founding of the country’s armed forces. The route marched through the main commercial and business district and ended at the Gwanghwamun area, which is the gate into…

UN experts: Xinjiang expanding forced separation of Uyghur children

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Experts from the United Nations have expressed “grave concern” over allegations that Chinese officials in Xinjiang have expanded a government-run boarding school system that forcibly separates Uyghur and other minority Muslim children from their families and communities. The experts were also concerned that the boarding schools teach almost exclusively in China’s official language of Mandarin “with little or no use of Uyghur as medium of instruction,” according to a statement released by the U.N.’s human rights office on Tuesday. “The separation of mainly Uyghur and other minority children from their…

China’s top developers lost close to $3bn due to weakened renminbi

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Top Chinese property developers recorded almost $3bn in foreign exchange losses, mainly on their US dollar borrowings, during the first half of the year as the renminbi weakened, adding pressure to their struggle to secure cash to service mounting debts. The aggregate net foreign exchange losses for 24 of the top 30 mainland-listed Chinese developers by contracted sales before the Covid-19 crackdown in 2020 totalled Rmb21.25bn ($2.75bn) for the first six months of this year, according to research by Nikkei Asia. The foreign exchange losses are on paper only and…

Malaysia to double palm oil exports to China in effort to dodge EU restrictions

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Receive free Palm oil updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Palm oil news every morning. Malaysia has said it will double palm oil exports to China to half a million tonnes annually as the south-east Asian nation moves against European restrictions on a commodity used in everything from cookies to cosmetics. The plan was made public on September 17 at the 20th China-Asean Expo in the southern Chinese city of Nanning, where representatives of the countries signed investment deals worth 19.8bn ringgits ($4.2bn)…

Apple missing from China’s list of 26 registered app stores after requirement to submit information to government

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China has published the country’s first batch of 26 mobile app stores that have submitted business details to regulators, but Apple’s app store is absent from the list. The other registered platforms include Alipay, the payment platform run by Ant Group, ZTE, Coolpad, Nubia and Lenovo. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. China’s small app developers fear innovation being stifled by Beijing’s new rule The CAC published a regulation in August 2022 asking app distribution platforms – covering app stores and mini program platforms…

Buying up American farmland not part of China’s agricultural investment strategy, US panel told

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Buying American farmland is not part of China’s current agricultural investment strategy, US lawmakers heard at a hearing by the Senate Agriculture Committee on Wednesday. “We’re seeing investments in farmland in places in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, as well as Russia. But by and large, China’s foreign investments in farmland have bypassed North America,” said David Ortega, a professor and economist at Michigan State University. There was also “no clear evidence” that foreign land ownership was causing American farmland prices to rise, Ortega said. Nor did such ownership…

In China pull-out, more South Korean firms are heading to Japan for the first time since 1980s

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China’s sluggish economic recovery, along with its heightened social controls, were the “direct or indirect contributing factors” behind the trend, the Yonhap News Agency reported, citing the bank. South Korean companies have attached greater importance to the security and resiliency of their supply chainZhang Huizhi, Jilin University As for Korean companies that have already been operating in China, Zhang Huizhi, a professor of northeast Asian studies at Jilin University, said there is an obvious trend of these firms withdrawing capital from China or moving to Southeast Asia. Korean-funded labour-intensive enterprises…