Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it has invested US$119.86 million to acquire a 0.36 percent stake in China’s Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc (小桔快智), which is the parent company of Didi Chuxing Technology Co (滴滴出行).
Didi Chuxing is a dominant ride-hailing service provider in China, and its acquisition of Uber Technologies Inc’s Chinese business early last month is likely to reshape the landscape of the ride-hailing sector in Asia.
Uber’s deal to fold its China operations into Didi Chuxing would allow it to invest more in India, where it has recorded rapid growth this year, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing a Uber letter to investors.
In a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Hon Hai said its acquisition of the stake in Xiaoju Kuaizhi at US$38.22 per share was made via its subsidiary Foxteq Holdings Inc.
The company’s move comes after its largest client, Apple Inc, invested US$1 billion in Didi Chuxing in May. Hon Hai, known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康) outside of Taiwan, is the primary assembler of Apple’s iPhones and iPads.
Hon Hai said in a filing that the latest deal is a long-term investment. As the company faces a saturated global smartphone business, it is under pressure to seek potential revenue drivers in other emerging fields.
Didi said in a statement that investments from Foxconn and others would help the start-up advance its technology, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site.
Didi Chuxing’s other investors include Chinese firms Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) and Baidu Inc (百度).
Shares of Hon Hai, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, lost 1.26 percent to close at NT$78.5 in Taipei trading yesterday, before the announcement of its latest investment in Didi Chuxing.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last