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TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd. is relaunching its Hong Kong listing plan by early next year, even as Chinese authorities step up their crackdown on the country’s tech companies, the Financial Times reported.
Registration could take place either in the next quarter or in early 2022, the newspaper said in a report on Sunday, citing three unidentified people with knowledge of the plans.
ByteDance has worked to address data security concerns raised by Chinese regulators, the FT reported. It goes through a review process and has submitted cases to Chinese authorities, and final guidelines are expected from ByteDance by September, one of the people quoted said. In July, Dow Jones reported that ByteDance had indefinitely suspended its intentions to register overseas earlier this year, after government officials told it to focus on managing data security risks.
Contacted by Bloomberg News, a spokesperson for ByteDance said the FT report was inaccurate, without further details.
The report comes at a tense time for Chinese tech companies. Last month, President Xi Jinping launched sweeping regulatory reforms targeting the $ 100 billion education technology sector, prompting a sell-off that at one point wiped $ 1.5 trillion from Chinese stocks.
This heightened official scrutiny from a corner of China’s vast tech sector came after Beijing proposed new rules requiring a cybersecurity review for nearly all companies seeking to register overseas. Since July, the Chinese government has effectively frozen overseas listings to protect data security following the controversial $ 4.4 billion IPO of rideshare company Didi Global Inc.
Officials also shocked investors with new guidelines ordering online food delivery companies to ensure workers earn at least the local minimum wage.
The scrutiny of Chinese tech companies has raised concerns about what could be next on Xi’s list. Last week, Tencent Holdings Ltd., China’s top-rated company, led a stock market debacle after Chinese state media denounced online gambling’s “spiritual opium”.
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