Top news of the week:

• Alleged assault at Alibaba sparks social media storm

  August 9, 2021

  Over the weekend, a scandal at Alibaba was exposed related to the alleged rape and sexual assault of a female employee. The female employee published an 8000-word statement alleging that she was assaulted while on a business trip with her direct supervisor. It quickly led to a storm on Chinese social media. The incident involved the Ali Taoxianda North China business team. Despite reporting the incident immediately to the local police and HR on 27 July, the alleged assailant was not suspended for over a week. The scandal triggered discussion of Alibaba’s corporate values and China’s business dinner drinking culture. Alibaba’s stock price dropped over 3% when the Hong Kong market opened on 9 August.

• PBOC releases second quarter monetary policy review

  August 10, 2021

  On 9 August, People’s Bank of China published the second quarter’s monetary policy execution report of China. The report proposed that the central bank should insist on implementing normalised monetary policy while designing a through-the-cycle policy. The report urged the PBOC and Ministry of Finance to ensure general stability of prices and continue to strengthen building basic rules for the capital market, better protecting the interest of investors, and promoting stable and healthy development of the capital market.

• MOFCOM urges high quality development in business logistics

  August 11, 2021

  On 10 August, Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) along with 8 other ministries and departments published an action plan to urge high quality development in business logistics for 2021-2025. The plan specified that the government supports and encourages qualified trade and business logistics companies to optimise resources, expand business operations, encourage innovation through merge and acquisition, listing, and cooperation through alliances.

• 2021 negative list dropping soon

  August 12, 2021

  Amendment of the 2021 negative list for foreign capital entrances is reaching an end and expected to be published soon. Experts believe the negative list will be further shortened, especially in the service sector. Analysts commented that China has been shortening the negative list for foreign investors for the past four years from 2017 to 2020, with two thirds of the limitation measures removed in sectors including finance, automobile, and manufacturing. Experts believe that culture, medical services and aviation may become major areas to further open up to foreign investors through shortening of the negative list.

• Focus on data security remains in MIIT opinion

  August 13, 2021

  The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) published an opinion on 12 August, aiming to strengthen management for artificial intelligence enabled cars for both manufacturing and market entry. The opinion requires companies to enhance capabilities for data and internet security. This is yet another regulatory change in the name of data security released in the past few weeks.