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China’s technology crackdown: a year on

2021 marked a watershed moment in the development of China’s internet-related industry, when government regulators caught up with what was once a freewheeling sector and ring-fenced their unfettered expansion. In a four-part series, the Post looks at how the year-long regulatory scrutiny has changed the nature of the internet industry, its biggest companies, the country’s tech workers, and valuations of some of the world's largest companies.

Updated: 25 Dec, 2021
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[1]

China’s tech crackdown: surveying the aftermath a year on

Once a largely toothless watchdog, China’s anti-monopoly bureau was upgraded and let loose this year, bringing discipline to the corporate behaviour of tech giants that had been tolerated, if not encouraged, for years.

22 Dec, 2021
Almost overnight, China’s anti-monopoly bureaucrats became a force feared by Big Tech. Illustration by Lau Ka-kuen
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[2]

Under Beijing’s forceful clampdown, China’s tech giants fell in line

China’s tech giants fell in line with new national priorities that emphasised hard technologies and common prosperity, making it harder for companies to profit from the free-wheeling business practices that they once thrived on.

23 Dec, 2021
For China’s tech giants, whose ethos seemed to be “the sky is the limit”, 2021 saw their ambitions curbed by tightened regulations and increased government scrutiny. Illustration: Perry Tse
[4]

Tech stock rout provokes trillion-dollar question: has China gone too far?

The tumultuous year in China technology has not only wiped out billions of dollars in value, it also upended how some of the most promising start-ups are appraised, where assumptions of unfettered and symbiotic growth can no longer be taken for granted.

25 Dec, 2021
China’s tech crackdown erased more than US$1 trillion of market value since the Ant Group IPO episode. Illustration by Brian Wang