china

0

The White House is considering applying sanctions against companies and individuals in China it believes have benefited from Chinese hacking of U.S. trade secrets, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. The newspaper, citing several unidentified Obama administration officials, said a final determination on whether to issue the sanctions was expected soon, possibly as early as the next two weeks. Suspicions that Chinese hackers were behind a series of data breaches in the United States have been an irritant in relations between the world's two largest economies as President Xi Jinping prepares to make his first visit to the United States next month.

0

By Paul Carsten and Engen Tham BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Uber Technologies Inc's China arm has closed its $1 billion fundraising round early, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, with investors still hopeful for the U.S.-based ride service despite strong domestic competition. Investors in Uber's Chinese unit include Internet giant Baidu Inc, China CITIC Bank Corp Ltd and China Life Insurance Co Ltd, among others, said one of the people, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Chinese financial conglomerate Ping An Group's investment arm and Hillhouse Capital, which has a stake in the main U.S.-based Uber business, also took part, the person said.

0

By Gerry Shih BEIJING (Reuters) – China's Lenovo Group Ltd will lay off 10 percent of white-collar staff after sales of Motorola handsets fell by a third, raising doubts over the personal computer giant's bet that a money-losing brand it bought for nearly $3 billion will help it become a global smartphone leader. Lenovo, which uses the U.S. dollar in operations rather than the recently devalued Chinese yuan, said it plans to cut about 3,200 non-manufacturing jobs with a one-time cost of $600 million. Beijing-based Lenovo said the restructuring would yield savings of about $1.35 billion on an annual basis.

0

By Se Young Lee SEOUL (Reuters) – For four years Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has basked in the success of its Galaxy smartphones, making billions of dollars competing with Apple Inc in the premium mobile market. The coming years are set to be more somber for the South Korean tech giant, as it is forced to slash prices and accept lower margins at its mobile division in order to see off competition from rivals including China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Xiaomi Inc in the mid-to-low end of the market. Behind Samsung's reality-check is the fact it is stuck with the same Android operating system used by its low-cost competitors, who are producing increasingly-capable phones of their own.

0

China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Wednesday it would invest $1 billion into its Aliyun cloud computing arm to challenge Amazon.com Inc's lucrative Web Services division, opening a global front in the battle between the two e-commerce giants. With the global cloud computing market estimated by analysts to be worth about $20 billion, Alibaba said in a statement the investment would go toward setting up new Aliyun data centers in the Middle East, Singapore, Japan and Europe. Although Alibaba and Amazon have so far avoided competing directly in their core business of e-commerce outside China, Aliyun's international expansion takes aim squarely at Amazon Web Services (AWS), an increasingly central and profitable division of the Seattle-based company.

0

U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper said on Thursday that China was the top suspect in the massive hacking of a U.S. government agency that compromised the personnel records of millions of Americans. The comments from Clapper, the director of National Intelligence (DNI), were first reported in The Wall Street Journal and marked the first time the Obama administration has publicly accused Beijing of the hacking attacks on the Office of Personnel Management. “You have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did,” given the difficulty of the intrusion, the Journal quoted Clapper as saying at a Washington intelligence conference.

0

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd will launch an online video streaming service in China in about two months, hoping to emulate the U.S.'s Netflix Inc and HBO, the firm's head of digital entertainment said on Sunday. The service will be called 'TBO', or Tmall Box Office, with content bought from China and other countries, as well as in-house productions, Alibaba's Patrick Liu told reporters in Shanghai.

0

By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A massive breach of U.S. federal computer networks disclosed this week is the latest in a flood of attacks by suspected Chinese hackers aimed at grabbing personal data, industrial secrets and weapons plans from government and private computers. The Obama administration on Thursday disclosed the breach of computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management and said the records of up to 4 million current and former federal employees may have been compromised. U.S. officials have said on condition of anonymity they believe the hackers are based in China, but Washington has not publicly blamed Beijing at a time when tensions are high over Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea.

0

By John Ruwitch PUTIAN, China (Reuters) – Criticized and even sued by luxury brand Gucci and others for facilitating the counterfeit goods trade, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has been quietly piloting a scheme to try to curb fakes at source. In the coastal city of Putian, in Fujian province, Alibaba is working with 17 shoe manufacturers to cultivate home-grown brands online, revitalize a flagging industry and offer would-be counterfeiters an alternative source of livelihood. Critics say the scheme is misguided and Alibaba should instead focus on scrubbing its online marketplaces of widespread listings of fakes.

0

By Bill Rigby SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple's large-screen iPhones are a big hit in China, taking market share from Samsung and selling at a pace that may make China a greater source of revenue than the Americas for Apple in coming years, analysts said. The world's most valuable consumer electronics company reported on Monday a 71 percent increase in sales in China to $16.8 billion, driven by its new, bigger iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. In the first three months of the year, for the first time, Apple sold more iPhones in China than in the United States. Consumer demand for the newest electronics pushed sales in China to 29 percent of total global sales for Apple in the first quarter, compared with 21 percent a year ago.