Gigabyte products are boycotted in mainland China (Image: Handout) In an advertisement for its latest laptop model, Gigabyte Technology Co., which specializes in motherboards and graphics processing equipment, claims that it manufactures its products in Taiwan, where Quality control is very strict. “Unlike other brands that choose low-cost and low-quality manufacturing contracts in China, Gigabyte Techonology is committed to producing high-quality and high-configuration laptops” – the advertisement said – “As a Taiwan-based laptop and components manufacturer, we make sure that 90% of our laptops are made in Taiwan.” The ad immediately caught the attention of the Communist Youth League of China. They posted a screenshot of the ad on Weibo on May 11, with the words: “Gigabyte, what makes you so brave?”. The Youth Union, which has nearly 16 million followers on Weibo, in March also criticized the Swedish brand H&M for refusing to buy cotton from Xinjiang, after several Western countries raised many accusations. human rights obligations in this region. Gigabyte, which has operated a factory in China’s industrial center Ningbo since 2003, immediately apologized after the ad. The company said in a statement that it has always supported the “One China” principle – Beijing’s political stance that recognizes mainland China and Taiwan as part of China. “Some of the content recently posted on our official website goes against reality, an incident that happened due to lack of management from within the company” – Gigabyte wrote on Weibo on May 11 – “We I have production lines all over mainland China, accounting for 90% of our production. Gigabyte prides itself on quality made in China.” However, this quick apology was not enough to calm the anger of the Chinese online community. “You don’t have a chance anymore” – a Weibo netizen commented on Gigabyte’s post – “Seriously, don’t waste your energy. You have crossed the red line.” By the end of May 11, Gigabyte products had disappeared from most Chinese e-commerce platforms. The search term “Gigabyte” returned no results on JD.com and Suning. Gigabyte’s official store on Tmall – an online sales platform operated by Alibaba Group Holding – no longer catalogs products. Alibaba, JD.com and Suning were not immediately available for comment. Gigabyte’s share price fell nearly 20% between May 11 and 12.

Meituan is China’s largest food delivery app. (Photo: QZ) A big storm hit after Meituan founder and CEO Wang Xing posted a poem from the Tang Dynasty on social media last week. The article on the Fanfou website has since been deleted, but Meituan confirmed it contains the poem “The Book Burning Pit” by author Zhang Jie written more than 1,100 years ago to satirize Qin Shi Huang. According to historical records, Qin Shi Huang quelled dissent in the country by digging huge holes, burning books not approved by the government, and burying scholars to prevent people from condemning him. Some comments on social media suggested that Wang may have posted the poem to implicitly criticize the Chinese government, which is holding back the country’s largest technology firms. Others compared the post to Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s speech last year, when he smacked China’s central banks and financial regulators for using outdated methods. Jack Ma’s speech seems to have angered the authorities. Ant Group’s historic IPO was also suspended at the last minute. Meituan and many other “big players” such as Alibaba and Tencent have been fined or investigated and monitored for several months now for violating monopoly or affecting consumer rights. The poem, which is more than 1,100 years old, further reveals the predicament that awaits companies like Meituan. Meituan stock fell 13% from May 6 to May 11, wiping out nearly $30 billion in market capitalization. Currently, the stock recovered slightly, gaining 2.5% at the close of the session on May 12. CEO Wang later posted an explanation, saying that the poem was about Meituan’s competitors. “The Qin Dynasty was afraid of scholars, but Liu Bang and Xiang Yu – the people who overthrew the Qin Dynasty – were not educated. That reminds me that the most dangerous enemies are not the people expected. Alibaba focused on JD.com and then Pinduoduo surpassed in terms of users. Similarly, Ele.me is seen as Meituan’s biggest competitor, but what really shocks the entire industry might be a certain business, business model that hasn’t caught our eye yet.” In April, Meituan and dozens of other companies were warned when Alibaba received a record $2.8 billion fine. Chinese authorities said Alibaba was fined for behaving like a monopolist. They also tell businesses that if they don’t address monopolistic behavior, they will be similarly punished. Later, China’s State Market Regulation Authority opened an antitrust investigation against Meituan for “exclusive trading arrangements”. The company was summoned by many agencies, including the Shanghai authorities, about the interests of customers. According to analysts Fitch Ratings, regulatory risks with China’s internet sector tend to escalate. The agency has not ruled out any fines with other companies after what happened to Alibaba. One netizen commented: “The poem is very suggestive. Wang Xing posted it at a critical period of the Big Tech crackdown. This is clearly inappropriate action. Wang may mean his rivals, but investors don’t think so. This is a very sensitive moment.” Du Lam (According to CNN)

Over time, gamers and computer users have suffered from a shortage of high-end graphics cards due to the need to buy GPUs from cryptocurrency operators. Now, a new cryptocurrency called Chia will most likely cause similar problems for the storage drive market. According to the South China Morning Post , hard drive prices in China have risen sharply as miners rushed to mine and sell this cryptocurrency. “The price of hard drives keeps going up” Unlike Bitcoin, which consumes a lot of electricity and energy to process complex algorithms, Chia is mined based on a consensus algorithm and is one of the currencies advertised as being environmentally friendly. A Bitcoin mining facility in China. Cryptocurrency Chia aims to reduce environmental impact. Photo: Bloomberg. The founder of Chia is Bram Cohen, who is also a BitTorrent developer. Cohen said he would usurp the outdated industry with increasingly slow and costly documentation capabilities. Although Chia has not been officially traded on the market and only came into operation on May 3, the “miners” have rushed to buy and stock up a series of HDDs and SSDs. According to SCMP, panic purchases can lead to hard drives shortages, high prices and scarcity. On China’s Taobao and JD.com e-commerce platforms, large enterprise hard drives have been sold out. “There have been a lot of people asking to buy a large number of hard drives to exploit Chia in the past few days,” said a customer care worker at the online store Taobao of two major brands Seagate and Western Digital said. Hard drives were sold out on Chinese e-commerce sites. Photo: Weibo. Most business-class hard drives with more than 8TB of storage have already been sold, not sure when new products will be available, the vendor says. According to the manmanbuy.com A Chinese website that evaluates and compares product prices on popular e-commerce platforms, the price of a Western Digital hard drive with 12 TB of storage in February before The increase was 2,188 yuan (about $ 337). On April 8, the corresponding drive price increased to 3,499 yuan ($ 538) on JD.com. Seagate’s hard drive with 8 TB of storage before April 14 cost 1,150 yuan, but has since risen to 2,160 yuan, according to manmanbuy.com . Cryptocurrency miners Chia in China buys bulk hard drives in bulk at the store. In Huaqiangbei, the world’s largest electronics market in southern China, Shenzhen, some vendors said that they now only have a hard drive with less than 4 TB of storage and they don’t know when This situation has just changed. This person also confirmed that the price of a 4 TB hard drive will be a bit higher than the 700 yuan she used to sell before, because the demand from customers is growing. “At peak times, the prices of hard drives will be at least 60% higher than normal. The prices have come down a bit recently, but for now they are still around 50% higher, ”said a supplier named Chen. The topic of hard drive scarcity has become a hot topic, attracting a lot of attention and discussion on Chinese social networking site Sina Weibo, with tags attached to articles such as “rising hard drive prices” and ” Hard drive prices doubled in 10 days. ” “That’s it all, first the graphics card craze, then you guys switch to the hard drive. Now I can only buy one computer case,” said one netizen. on Weibo. Chia’s further goal In recent years, the increasing popularity and demand for computation has increased the value of virtual currencies like Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency mining has become popular and familiar to many people with knowledge of technology and computers. Although the Chinese government does not recognize Bitcoin as a legal currency, the country does not completely ban Bitcoin mining. According to an article recently published in Nature in April, China accounts for about 70% of all Bitcoin mining activities worldwide. Bitcoin mining currently consumes a lot of energy, leading to concerns about overuse of coal-fired electricity. Photo: DW. The increase in electricity consumption related to cryptocurrency mining has also caught the attention of Chinese regulators, as the country is making efforts to save energy and reduce pollution. environment. The leader of Inner Mongolia, the major Bitcoin producing region in northern China due to cheap electricity prices, said they would close all Bitcoin mining pools by May. The global Bitcoin mining network consumes about 113.88 TWh of electricity per year. If ranked as a country, Bitcoin would be the 33rd electricity consumer in the world, out of total consumption by the Netherlands and the Philippines, according to Cambridge’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.

ByteDance, Baidu and CTrip are committed to ensuring fair competition. Photo: Reuters More than 20 leading Chinese technology companies have publicly pledged to adhere to antitrust principles, after regulators asked them to pay attention to the record penalty for the “giant” e-commerce. Alibaba. In a series of separate statements published by the China Market Regulatory Authority on April 14-15, some of the country’s biggest tech brands – including ByteDance, Baidu and CTrip – pledged will “ensure fair competition”, “do not abuse a dominant market position” and “do not conduct unfair pricing practices”. The pledges come after regulators summoned 34 technology companies on April 13 and asked them to “rectify” any unfair non-competitive practices, and pay attention to in the case of Alibaba. Companies have one month for full reform, after conducting internal audits and adjusting practices that compromise fair competition. Ride-hailing service Didi, video streaming platforms Kuaishou and Bilibili, as well as e-commerce company JD.com were among the parties that have made a public commitment since that meeting. JD.com said it will not force “choose one of the two” behavior on its retailers – where merchants are required to work on only one platform, not on a competitor platform. . This is the policy that Alibaba used to apply. In its statement, Didi pledged that unless necessary for regular business operations, the company will not illegally collect or misuse customers’ personal information. Last weekend, Chinese regulators fined Alibaba up to $ 2.78 billion after a months-long investigation found the company abused its dominant position in the market. Alibaba and JD.com, along with games and messaging app giant Tencent, have greatly benefited from the increasingly technological lifestyles in China and the absence of major U.S. competitors. But as these platforms with hundreds of millions of regular users are growing, public opinion is increasingly concerned about the problem of user data that these companies collect over the long term. According to observers, China has put domestic technology companies on the target to limit the reach of private companies to the daily financial activities of its people. That move could curb their dominance.

Alibaba was fined $ 2.8 billion for alleged monopoly.

JD.com, Meituan and ByteDance lead China’s first group of Big Tech companies to commit to complying with the law after China Market Surveillance Agency (SAMR) asked them to “learn lessons” from Alibaba. Group Holding in Beijing’s latest antitrust investigation.

On April 14, 12 out of 34 tech companies released a public statement pledging to do business in compliance with the law after SAMR warned of Alibaba’s recent antitrust sanctions and conducted self-testing. next month.

Earlier, e-commerce giant Alibaba was fined a record $ 2.8 billion for forcing small businesses to sell exclusive products on the platform. Monopolistic behavior is understood as how businesses eliminate competition of competitors by forcing customers to choose “one of two”.

JD.com has made eight promises including “never taking measures to force sellers to choose either and never abusing a dominant market position or making any exclusive deals. “. The e-commerce group also said it will “never publish illegal advertisements and never sell products of substandard quality”.

Meituan’s delivery staff.

Meituan promised not to impose unreasonable measures forcing sellers to “choose one of the two” and would not abuse its market position to limit competition. In addition, the company is committed to providing full support to the Chinese regulatory authorities. “Once we find evidence of illegal conduct, we will report it to regulators in a timely manner and readily cooperate with any investigation,” Meituan said.

ByteDance, the owners of short video apps TikTok and Douyin, made 13 promises in its public statement. China’s most valuable unicorn company says it will “not illegally collect and misuse user data” and adhere to “minimum guidelines” in collecting data from users. E-commerce platform Pinduoduo said it will “proactively assume more social responsibility”, as well as comply with legal and regulatory requirements.

The rest of the companies are expected to announce their public commitment over the next two days

Beijing’s targeting of key Big Tech firms including Kuaishou, Bilibili and Didi Chuxing comes at a time when the Chinese government is resolutely using antitrust laws and other regulatory methods to halt. out-of-control expansion.

SAMR has accused major tech companies of misconduct such as forcing sellers to choose only one trading platform, abuse of market dominance, abuse of big data to unfair pricing. for certain customers, ignoring poor quality products, leaking customer data, and tax evasion.

“No one is allowed to cross the regulatory lines and not touch the legal red line,” SAMR said on Tuesday.

34 Internet service providers are on the spot, many of which are listed on US and Hong Kong exchanges. Companies were asked to “raise responsibility and give priority to the national interests”.

“Companies must absolutely avoid disordered capital expansion to ensure China’s economic and social security, you must absolutely avoid monopolies to ensure fair competition,” according to Beijing’s statement towards Internet service platforms.

SAMR says companies have one month to do a “self-check and self-repair”, after which the government will conduct follow-up and “severely punish” those companies that fail to address the misconduct.