A deputy head at China’s securities regulator is being investigated for suspected “serious breaches of discipline,” the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s anti-graft watchdog said yesterday, using the usual euphemism for corruption.
The brief statement by the Chinese Central Commission for Discipline Inspection gave no further details of the probe into Yao Gang (姚剛), a vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC).
It was not possible to reach Yao for comment and unclear if he has a lawyer or what the detailed accusations are against him.
The move comes as authorities work to restore confidence in the stock market after a fumbled intervention and suspicions of irregular trading following market turmoil which began in June.
Since then, authorities have swept up market participants, journalists, fund managers and social media commentators in a crackdown on alleged market manipulation.
Yao, 53, is the second senior CSRC official to come under investigation following the market turmoil. He has a doctorate in economics and took up the job in 2008, according to his official resume.
In September, the graft watchdog began a probe into an assistant chairman at the securities regulator, Zhang Yujun (張育軍), also for suspected serious violations of discipline. Another high-profile official who came under scrutiny the same month was Former Chinese Supreme People’s Court vice president Xi Xiaoming (奚曉明).
Beijing said yesterday that it had asked financial regulators to improve their supervision of market players to better protect investors’ rights.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained