Bottom line: Cars from Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory could pose a short-term challenge to luxury brands like Audi and BMW, and could help to revive the nation’s flagging NEV market longer-term if they move into more affordable terrain. Tesla charges into China with new factoryThis week I’m taking a few steps outside my usual comfort zone and exploring the high-tech realm of new-energy vehicles with a closer look at global superstar Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) I’ve actually followed this company’s drive into the world’s biggest car market for some time, starting with its earliest days when it tang ..read more

Bottom line: Weibo and its stock could remain under pressure for some time to come, potentially a long time if its new Oasis platform doesn’t provide the kind of relief that it is hoping for. Weibo looks to Oasis for reliefWith corporate earnings in the spotlight, I’ve decided to zoom in this week on the Twitter-like Weibo (Nasdaq: WB), following the release of its quarterly results a week ago. As a long-time China tech watcher, I particularly like Weibo for its ability to reinvent itself, and like to think of it as “The little company that could, then couldn’t, then could again, then couldn’t ..read more

Bottom line: WeChat’s growing hubris, reflected by increasingly aggressive content filtering, could open the door to a more user-friendly competitor. WeChat gets overly agressive with word filteringThese days the following exchange seems to happen with growing frequency at companies around China. Person 1, yelling across the office: “Did anyone see my message about [insert name of any random subject]?” Colleague, yelling back: “Uh, don’t think we saw that one. Maybe it was blocked.” Many in China will probably recognize what I’m talking about, but for those outside perhaps a bit more explanati ..read more

Bottom line: The current wave of US and Hong Kong IPOs by Chinese tech firms may still have some power, but should peter out by the first quarter of next year. I’ve been trying for quite some time to call the end of the current wave of China tech IPOs, which is the longest I can recall in my nearly two decades of covering the sector. That wave recently passed a major milestone with the second anniversary of the Hong Kong IPO for ZhongAn (HKEx: 6060), the online insurer backed by Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and Tencent (HKEx: 700), which I consider the first major listing in the current wave. But desp ..read more

Bottom line: Baidu’s massive ad cleanup in May and shuttering of a site for travelers reflects ongoing pressure on its core ad-dependent search business while spotlighting its inability to branch into non-search areas. Baidu search cleanup continues Search giant Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) is in a couple of headlines as we head into the latter part of the week, reflecting two major challenges the company is facing. The larger headline says the company has just removed millions of ads, a whopping 237 million to be precise, for reasons including being misleading and promoting unhealthy topics like porn ..read more

Bottom line: Shares of recently listed loss-making Chinese tech firms like Mogu are likely to languish as long as they post losses, but could gain some new life if and when they can show sustained profits. Wall Street tells China tech firms to “Show me the profits” “Show me the profits.” That seems to be the message coming from Wall Street these days to a group of profit-challenged Chinese tech companies whose shares are languishing following IPOs over the past year. We’ll look at one such case involving online fashion site Mogu (NYSE: MOGU), which seems to typify the trend of shares that have ..read more

Bottom line: China’s telcos won’t accelerate their 5G network building even if licenses are issued earlier than expected this year, though foreign equipment suppliers could benefit if Huawei is hobbled by the US-China trade wars. 5G coming to China sooner than expected? What a difference a decade makes. That’s about how long has passed between China’s issuing of 3G wireless licenses and the upcoming issue of 5G licenses two generations later. I remember in the 3G era how China dragged its feet forever, and finally issued licenses several years after the rest of the world. This time around it a ..read more

Bottom line: The US decision to force a sale of gay dating app Grindr by its Chinese owner reflects a new environment where Washington is almost certain to veto China purchases of local firms with access to sensitive user information. US forces sale of gay dating app Grindr by Chinese owner A new report on the unhinging of a Chinese purchase of US gay dating app Grindr is shedding some interesting light on how Washington sees such deals, and offers insight into how far Chinese tech firms might be allowed into the country going forward. The picture isn’t exactly too encouraging, though perhaps ..read more

Bottom line: Baidu’s first-ever loss since going public reflects a long-anticipated decline for its core search business, which could mark the start of a longer-term decline due to lack of a strong new business lines. Baidu in search of search replacement It seems that profits are increasingly hard to come by these days on China’s Internet. That’s the major takeaway coming in the latest results from search giant Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU), which has just posted its first loss since becoming a publicly listed company 14 years ago. Perhaps most worrisome, the biggest issue appears to lie in Baidu’s co ..read more

Bottom line: Meituan’s opening of its delivery unit to more customers looks smart but will require execution to succeed, while shares of money-losing Starbucks challenger Luckin will move steadily downward in the months after its super-sized IPO.  Meituan opens up delivery service A couple of money-losers are in the headlines these last few days, casting a spotlight on how profits continue to evade many of China’s hottest tech companies and what they’re doing to try to change that. This kind of loss-making isn’t all that uncommon for such startups. But in at least one of the cases we’re lookin ..read more