Bytedance is negotiating the sale of popular video streaming app Tiktok with Microsoft, now it became into hot water with an executive ban by US President Donald Trump. Business analyst Arnold Ma tells CGTN why that might be a good deal for Bytedance, since it has 60 apps in China, not just a few like most tech companies, and might focus on those other apps. Even the price, 10 billion US dollars for a company valued at 120 billion, is not bad for an app that only exists for three years, he adds.Read More →

Observers got alerted when internet giant Tencent said it wanted to take search engine Sogou private, even tough Soguo is smaller than market leader Baidu. Marketing specialist Ashley Dudarenok explains to KR-Asia why the move makes sense, “Sogou lacks Baidu’s larger market share but possesses better search technology and algorithms, allowing for better user experience,” she says.Read More →

Donald Trump’s plan to ban Tiktok from the US is straight-up Sinophobia, says former Baidu communications director Kaiser Kuo to Slate. Most successful apps in China will not make a decent following among consumers in the rest of the world, he argues, just because they are too much adjusted to China’s internet rules and customs, he adds.Read More →

India has been one of the hotspots of investments from China, but that might end now the hostilities between both countries increase, says business analyst Shaun Rein to AP. Chinese apps have already been banned by the Indian government, and startups seem to be next. Anti-Chinese feelings among consumers might be putting Chinese investors also off.Read More →

Many industries have to rethink the way their business and business models are organized when they resume action as the coronavirus crisis subsides. The travel industry is one of them, says Shanghai-based VC-veteran William Bao Bean, at WebInTravel. “Travel needed to solve a very big problem – high customer acquisition costs – and he said it needed a new model in which everyone wins, and not like now “where everyone loses but the platform”.Read More →

Chinese listings at US stock markets got recently under fire. Former US assistant trade representative Harry Broadman looks with some amazement at this market at the International Finance Law Review (IFLR). “After decades of working in China intensively on financial accounting, there is not a single state-owned enterprise I’ve worked on that I can think of that abided by international accounting standards,” Broadman says.Read More →

China’s government has been trying to phase out shadow banking as a risky form of lending money. But now the country’s economy is hit by a trade war, COVID-19 and other mischiefs, shadow banking might make a return, says financial analyst Sara Hsu at the East Asia Forum.Read More →