Alibaba and Tencent Suffer from US Attack
#Alibaba #Tencent #PresidentTrump
Shares in China's two biggest companies Alibaba and Tencent tumbled in Hong Kong Thursday in response to the media reports that the Trump administration plans to press ahead with a ban on Americans investing in them.
e-Commerce titan Alibaba sank more than four percent and internet powerhouse Tencent shed 3.3% in morning trade after the Wall Street Journal said officials in multiple government departments were assessing the impact of an investment ban.
Such a move would be another blow to Alibaba, which has come under pressure from Chinese officials with regulators last month launching an anti-monopoly probe into it, while its fintech giant Ant Group was ordered to drastically change its business model.
The moves come as the government puts the squeeze on the once unbridled empire of tech tycoon Jack Ma.
The Wall Street Journal report came the same day the New York Stock Exchange reversed course once again and said it would delist three Chinese telecom equities from trading owing to new US government guidance.
Wednesday's announcement capped a dizzying few days of confusing flip-flopping in which the stock exchange announced the removal at the weekend before making a U-turn Monday, and then saying it would go ahead once more Wednesday.
The latest decision came after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin disagreed with Monday's reversal.
The three state-owned telecom giants plunged, with China Unicom shedding nearly 8% while China Telecom was down seven percent and China Mobile slipped 5.7%.
President Trump issued an executive order in November banning Americans from investing in Chinese companies deemed to be supplying or supporting the country's military and security apparatus, earning a sharp rebuke from Beijing.
Tuesday night he signed an executive order banning transactions involving Alipay, WeChat Pay and other apps linked to Chinese companies, drawing strong criticism from Beijing.
Alipay is owned by Alibaba and WeChat is owned by Tencent.
The Wall Street Journal's report said officials at the State Department, Department of Defense and Treasury Department had all discussed how to implement an investment ban on the two Chinese e-commerce giants.
Any ban could have a profound effect on US markets.
While the 3 Chinese telecoms firms are comparative small fry for the New York Stock Exchange, Alibaba and Tencent are China's 2 largest companies.
At $1.4-T, the combined market value of their primary listings is twice the size of Spain's stock market.
"If the bans are implemented then it'd be a huge thing for the market," Steven Leung, executive director at Uob Kay Hian (Hong Kong) said.
"It's still too early to say. After the Biden administration starts, the policy could change again.
AI is the Neat Handwriting of the Illiterate
A model in the hands of someone who has read the filing and walked the plant is a clerk. The same model, speaking for someone who has done neither, is a disguise. On AI slop, phantom citations and factslop, why finish stopped being evidence of work, and the containment layer KXCO built so a machine cannot speak as the institution until a source is attached.
Worthship: Do Not Conform to the Age
Worthship is the older English word for worship, and it means to ascribe worth. Bishop Robert Barron preached Romans 12 on 30 August. This essay follows the text into the prison letters, and puts two questions to a graph: do the four readings of that Sunday agree, and was Paul free or in chains when he wrote about despair?
The Truth in All Its Ugliness Must Survive
A majority vote does not determine the truth. Consensus is a mood, gossip is a sport, and a model will write the pretty version for free. Why the ugly number has to survive, why a record beats a dashboard, and what KXCO was built to keep standing when the room changes its mind.
Don't Be the Best, Be the Only: Winning in an AI World
AI is repricing competence downward. What it cannot reproduce is a life. The case for remaining non-fungible, why friction still produces the best ideas, and what it means to build AI systems that keep the human intellect in them.
Every story, signed and delivered.
Subscribe to the kxco channel and get the headline, the AI-written key takeaways, and the chain-anchor link the moment we publish. Audio versions and per-ticker subscriptions arrive in the next iteration.