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Hello and welcome to TechCrunch’s China roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people around the world.
A sexual assault case at Alibaba has sparked a new round of #MeToo calculations in China. Industry watchers believe this is a watershed moment in the fight against China’s allegedly misogynistic tech industry. Meanwhile, social media operators still don’t know how to deal with the unprecedented public outcry against the powerful internet giant.
In other news, more and more Chinese tech companies have delayed plans to go public overseas after Didi’s fallout with Chinese regulators over its rushed IPO, including the Tencent’s music streaming empire and one of China’s most beloved self-driving startups.
Call for justice
Just after midnight last Sunday, an Alibaba employee posted a detailed account on the company’s internal forum claiming that her manager and a client sexually assaulted her while on a business trip. She went public after failing to gain the support of her superiors and human resources.
The post quickly toured Chinese social media platforms. People stood up to speak out against Alibaba’s ignorance, the use of toxic alcohol in business, and the pervasive objectification of women in China’s “tech industry”, which has grown to such an extent that it has never been seen. it only concerns the contemporary business world.
A day later, on August 9, Alibaba quickly fired the alleged perpetrator. Two managers resigned and the firm’s human resources director received a “disciplinary warning”. Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said he felt “shocked, angry and ashamed” about the incident and called on the company to work with police to investigate the case.
This is arguably the most high-profile #MeToo case involving a large Chinese tech company by far and appears to have elicited the toughest response from the company involved. Alibaba makes company policies to prevent sexual assault, which surprises many people that the global tech giant doesn’t already have them in place.
The case managed to gain the attention of the Chinese public through social media. During the first few hours, it appeared that the discussion around the incident was spreading organically and uncensoredly on the Weibo microblogging platform, in which Alibaba has a controlling stake.
But people soon noticed that despite the gravity of the event, it took days for the case to reach the top of Weibo’s trend chart, an indicator of the most discussed topic on the Chinese internet. The perceived delay is reminiscent of Weibo’s censorship of an extramarital affair involving Alibaba executive Jiang Fan last year.
Talang Qingnian, roughly “Surfing Youth,” a social media column in the state People’s Daily newspaper, lambasted in an article:
The slow build-up of talks has once again raised suspicion as to whether Alibaba has manipulated public discourse.
Since the Jiang Fan affair, the country’s attitude has been very clear: capital should not control the media.
As the basic infrastructure for truthful information in China, Weibo should not be a tool for a stakeholder to manipulate public opinion.
The article stoked public outrage but was quickly withdrawn, possibly because the wording was too strong. China’s state-owned media apparatus is large, and only a few media, such as Xinhua, routinely convey the official views of high-level leaders. It is not uncommon for less authoritative state-affiliated publications to pick up on reports that have elicited backlash. Last week, an article in a state-affiliated business newspaper deleted an article labeling video games “spiritual opium,” a loaded description that previously blew up Tencent and NetEase shares, and reposted the story. article with a softer tone.
Small war chests
Regulatory uncertainties have always been flagged as a risk by Chinese companies seeking to be listed overseas, but it was largely up to foreign investors to decide whether these investments were worth it. However, China’s recent regulatory attack on its tech darlings has become a real obstacle to Chinese companies’ IPO dream.
This week, reports emerged that NetEase Music, a popular music streaming service, and Pony.ai, an autonomous vehicle startup last valued at $ 5.3 billion, respectively postponed their plans to listing in Hong Kong and New York.
Beijing has become more suspicious of the scrutiny of its data-rich businesses by U.S. regulators. Last month, the US securities regulator said that Chinese companies wishing to raise capital in the United States must provide information about their legal structure and disclose the risk of Beijing interference in their activities.
Many Chinese tech companies have learned of Didi’s fallout with the government, which allegedly told the rideshare company not to be on its list until it finalizes a data protection framework. Didi went ahead regardless, triggering a government investigation into his data practices and racking up his shares, which now stand at $ 8 apiece from $ 16 around his debut in early July.
Beijing’s crackdown has hit every major player in China’s consumer tech industry, wiping out as much as $ 87 billion from the net worth of the country’s tech billionaires, including Tencent’s Pony Ma and Pinduoduo’s Colin Huang, according to the report. Financial Times. The government wants “hard technologies” like semiconductors and clean energy, so it has made it clear to would-be entrepreneurs where they should allocate their energy. The new generation of startups are listening.
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