Jodi Xu Klein

A US judge on Sunday ordered the Trump administration to delay its ban of the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok, temporarily suspending a restriction set to go into effect on Sunday night. On August 6, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening to ban TikTok and WeChat, a Chinese-owned messaging app. The government said the companies pose a national security risk and could be required to turn over users’ personal data to Beijing.  The ruling comes within a week of a federal judge in California ruling on September 19 that the US government failed to provide enough evidence that WeChat posed enough of a security threat to justify a proposed ban. TikTok is a wildly popular s

Sweeping legislation that could remove publicly traded Chinese companies from US stock exchanges has the potential to trip up businesses and investors at home as Chinese firms move to other countries for capital. The bill – the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act – aims to address a thorny issue US securities regulators have had with Beijing for decades: its refusal to allow audit inspections of their companies.  If it becomes law, Chinese companies will be required to comply with the rules or face being delisted, which would put $1.3 trillion of US-listed Chinese firms, including behemoths Alibaba Group and Tencent, at risk of losing access to the world’s largest capital markets. Pol

US President Donald Trump has to decide what actions to take after the US state department told Congress on Wednesday that Hong Kong was no longer considered autonomous from China, an assessment that could threaten the city’s long-standing special trading status. “It’s a one-two action,” said David Stilwell, assistant secretary of the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the state department, on Wednesday evening. “One being the state department making the assessment that Hong Kong no longer enjoys autonomy,” he told reporters, referring to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement earlier in the day. “And then, [the second action will be] the determination by the White House as to h

Despite the spread of the coronavirus that has infected 1.5 million people and devastated economies around the world, the United States and China have proven unable to work together at the government level to battle the human crisis.  But researchers and scientists from both countries – as well as others – are locking arms in an effort to find vaccines and treatments for Covid-19. In March, US tech giant Intel and Hong Kong-headquartered Lenovo teamed up to offer supercomputing capacity to support scientists at BGI Genomics, a mainland Chinese company, who were analyzing the virus’s genome.  The tech boost will speed up the sequencing from 150 hours to five and a half hours from the previou

The British government approved the limited use of Huawei Technologies’ equipment in the country’s roll-out of 5G mobile infrastructure on Tuesday, opening the door to rival European telecommunications gear suppliers Ericsson and Nokia. While that action imposes a cap on Huawei’s market share in Britain, it throws a lifeline to the embattled Chinese telecoms giant amid the Trump administration’s accusations that the company’s equipment poses a national security threat. It could also serve as a model for other European governments, including Germany, as they prepare to make similar decisions over their deployment of 5G – the next-generation mobile technology that will help power advances such

When President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports last year, the move was supposed to bring jobs back to the US. That hasn’t happened. US manufacturers in China are indeed packing up and heading elsewhere as trade tension continues to rise. Trump has just announced new tariffs to take effect on September 1. Companies including Nike, Crocs, Roomba and GoPro are now producing most of their products outside China, having set up operations in Vietnam, India, Bangladesh and Mexico.  Dell, Sony, Nintendo and HP are reportedly considering such moves. But very few are moving back to the US. “Trump’s tariffs may have sent the message to ask US companies to consider reshor

Three more American universities have issued statements in support of ethnic Chinese researchers, a group that has been increasingly targeted for scrutiny over suspicions of spying for Beijing. The University of Pittsburgh, California Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University recently joined 12 other leading schools – including Yale, Columbia and Stanford – to issue statements supporting the scientists. The pledges come amid fears that the group is being unfairly singled out and is a victim of the feud between Beijing and Washington that has now extended to trade, economic issues, technology and national security. In a letter issued on Monday by the University of Pittsburgh, Chanc

Chinese wealth manager Jupai Holdings started trading on the New York Stock Exchange in July 2015. A large firm investing money for well-off Chinese and managing $8 billion in assets, Jupai was touted as a growth story for US investors – a way to tap the budding but fast-growing Chinese financial market. It did not turn out as promised. Just two years later, the Shanghai firm was sued by Ninespot, a California-based video live streaming start-up, for fraud and breach of contract. According to court documents, Jupai failed to execute on a signed contract to invest $18 million in Ninespot. The start-up was forced to close shop and decided to take Jupai to court. Since then, Jupai’s stock began

After a string of dismissals, some Chinese-American researchers say they're increasingly worried about being caught between Beijing and Washington as they feud over technology and trade. In May, the husband-and-wife neuroscience research team of Li Xiaojiang and Li Shihua was fired by Emory University in Georgia after being accused of failing to disclose funding ties to China. In April, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston ousted three Chinese-American researchers who were allegedly conducting espionage on behalf of the Chinese government. Other Chinese-American scientists say they have received FBI calls and visits, without being accused of any crime. Visiting scholars and science-major stu

A Chinese government-owned telecoms company has been blocked from operating in the United States over fears of spying amid escalating tensions between the two countries. US communications regulators on Thursday voted against China Mobile’s application to provide phone service in the US, citing national-security risks.  The ruling came as a Chinese delegation arrived in Washington for talks to end the US-China trade war. China Mobile, the world’s largest wireless network operator, sought approval in 2011 to provide interconnection services for phone calls between the US and other countries. The Federal Communications Commission rejected the application in unanimous 5-0 votes across party line