Chinese police visited US management consultancy Bain & Co’s office in Shanghai and questioned staff, a company spokesperson said on Wednesday.
“We are cooperating as appropriate with the Chinese authorities,” the spokesperson told Reuters by e-mail. “At this time, we have no further comment.”
The US embassy in China and the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Police took away computers and cellphones, but did not detain any employees, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing people briefed on the surprise visit two weeks ago.
The police made more than one visit to Bain in Shanghai, it said, adding that the purpose was not immediately clear, nor whether the raids were connected to the firm or its clients.
RETALIATION
US companies worry that China could be stepping up retaliatory action due to measures taken against Chinese firms by US President Joe Biden’s administration.
Chinese authorities last month raided the office of US corporate due diligence firm Mintz Group in Beijing and detained five local staff.
US businesses operating in China are increasingly pessimistic about their prospects in the world’s second-largest economy, a survey released this month by the American Chamber of Commerce in China showed.
China has said it welcomes foreign trade and investment, but stressed that security comes before development.
CRACKDOWN
Beijing has clamped down on antitrust contraventions, banned private tuition groups and reined in a debt binge by property developers, wiping hundreds of billions of US dollars off the market value of some of its largest companies, including e-commerce giant Alibaba (阿里巴巴) and social media giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊).
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
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