The US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed legislation that would penalize banks doing business with Chinese officials who implement national security legislation that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called a “brutal, sweeping crackdown” on Hong Kong.
The measure passed by unanimous consent, reflecting concern in Washington over China’s enactment of security legislation seen as ending the autonomy that allowed the territory to thrive as an international financial center.
The US Senate last week passed similar legislation, but under congressional rules, the bill must return to the Senate and be passed there before being sent to the White House for US President Donald Trump to sign it into law or veto.
Photo: Reuters
Earlier, Pelosi made an unusual appearance at a committee hearing on the situation in Hong Kong to say that the security legislation marked the death of the “one country, two systems” model.
“The law is a brutal, sweeping crackdown against the people of Hong Kong, intended to destroy the freedoms they were promised,” Pelosi said at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the security law was an affront to all nations and Washington would continue to implement Trump’s directive to end the territory’s special status.
The US has already begun eliminating Hong Kong’s special status, halting defense exports and restricting the territory’s access to technology products.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) founder Jack Ma (馬雲) has been living in Tokyo for almost six months after disappearing from public view following China’s crackdown on the tech sector, the Financial Times reported yesterday, citing multiple unnamed sources. The billionaire has kept a low profile since the crackdown, which has included Chinese regulators scrapping the initial public offering of Ma’s Ant Group Co (螞蟻集團) and issuing Alibaba with record fines. However, the Times said he has spent much of the past six months with his family in Tokyo and other parts of Japan, along with visits to the US and Israel. The
‘REVOLUTION’: Elon Musk complained over a 30 percent fee Apple collects on Apple Store transactions and said the technology company has stopped advertising on Twitter Twitter Inc owner Elon Musk on Monday opened fire against Apple Inc over its tight control of what is allowed on the App Store, saying the iPhone maker has threatened to oust his recently acquired social media platform. Musk also joined the chorus crying foul over a 30 percent fee Apple collects on transactions via its App Store — the sole gateway for applications to get onto its billion-plus mobile devices. A series of Twitter posts fired off by Musk included a meme of a car with his first name on it veering onto a highway off-ramp labeled “Go to War,” instead
‘COMPETITIVE EDGE’: The local semiconductor sector would continue to outstrip the global industry, whose revenue is expected to contract 3.6 percent, ITRI said The production value of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry would expand 6.1 percent annually to about NT$5 trillion (US$161.5 billion) next year, as demand for advanced chips used in high-performance-computing and artificial intelligence devices are less prone to mounting inflation and external uncertainties, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) said yesterday. That means the local semiconductor sector would continue to outstrip the global semiconductor industry, whose output is expected to contract 3.6 percent annually to US$596 billion next year, Gartner Inc has said. However, ITRI’s latest forecast represents a downgrade from its previous projection of 10 percent growth, as demand for PCs,
GLOBAL EXPANSION: The manufacturer said it increased its stake in the Chinese unit to 1.5 billion yuan and started rolling out electric Lordstown trucks at its Ohio plant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) has increased its investments in the Czech Republic and China by more than NT$6 billion (US$196 million) as part of its global expansion. The company, known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) internationally, has also begun shipping electric pickup trucks produced for US brand Lordstown Motors Corp. In a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing on Friday, Hon Hai said it has raised investments in its Czech subsidiary Foxteq CZ by US$58.98 million through its PCE Paragon Solutions Kft unit. In the Czech Republic, Hon Hai has a research-and-development center and a product design center, and it assembles monitors, cellphones,
RSS