Tag Archives: Risks

Business

Biden to warn US companies on risks of operating in Hong Kong

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Joe Biden’s administration is poised to warn US companies of the rising risks of operating in Hong Kong as China asserts more control over the financial hub.

According to three people familiar with the plan, the state department will this week flag concerns about a range of threats, including China’s ability to obtain data that foreign companies store in Hong Kong.

It will also point to the risk of a new law allowing Beijing to impose sanctions against anyone enabling foreign penalties to be implemented against Chinese groups and officials.

The move, which the sources said would probably come on Friday, is the first time the US has issued a business advisory in relation to Hong Kong.

One of the people familiar with the matter said there had been dissent within the administration, with some officials concerned the warning would discourage US companies from operating in a critical financial centre. But more hawkish officials argued successfully that American companies needed to better grasp the nature of the risks.

The warning will mention recent events such as the forced closure of Apple Daily, the pro-democracy tabloid newspaper owned by Jimmy Lai. The US president may also impose more sanctions against Chinese officials in Hong Kong, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

In addition, the White House is considering a policy that will allow Hong Kong citizens in the US to remain after their visas expire if they face potential political persecution in Hong Kong.

But that measure is being debated and is not expected to be part of the package of actions to be announced this week.

The warning will reverberate in the sizeable US business community in Hong Kong. The American Chamber of Commerce in the city has more than 1,200 members and 282 US companies based regional headquarters there in 2020.

US companies have been unnerved about the passage of a national security law a year ago, partly because it would allow Beijing to access data stored on servers in Hong Kong. More recently, companies have become alarmed by the possibility that China could apply the counter-sanctions law, which allows for the seizure of assets, in Hong Kong.

While a decision on whether to provide asylum to Hong Kong citizens in the US had not been finalised, any such development would anger Beijing, which is hostile to foreign governments such as the UK and Canada offering shelter to those escaping political persecution.

Beijing has not prevented Hong Kong residents from taking up the British National (Overseas) visa programme, but it has made it harder for those who do so to redeem their retirement savings.

The White House and state department declined to comment on the imminent actions in relation to Hong Kong.

On Tuesday, the Biden administration updated a warning that the Trump administration issued on Xinjiang last year. The business advisory stressed the legal risks that US companies faced unless they ensured their supply chains did not use forced labour in Xinjiang.

It also warned companies that they faced potential criminal and civil enforcement actions if they undertook activities that helped China to conduct surveillance in Xinjiang.

The decision was driven partly by the view that companies were not taking the issue seriously enough.

“The point of the advisory is to stress [that] if you do not exit these supply chains you run a risk of violating US law,” a US official told the Financial Times. “The business community . . . need to be aware of reputational, economic and legal risk of their involvement with entities involved in human rights abuses.”

The Chinese foreign ministry said the US moves were “typical double standards” and that using Xinjiang as leverage was “doomed to fail”.

Follow Demetri Sevastopulo and Primrose Riordan on Twitter

Video: How the national security law is changing Hong Kong



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Technology

Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) – Snapchat Risks Apple’s Wrath With Attempts At Skirting New Privacy Rules: FT

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Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) is risking the wrath of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) over exploring ways to skirt the iPhone maker’s new privacy rules that are expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks, the Financial Times reported Friday.

What Happened: Snap, the parent of messaging app Snapchat, explored ways to gather data from companies that analyze whether people have responded to ad campaigns, according to the FT report, which cited internal company documents.

Snap reportedly hoped to cross-reference the data with its own user database and then track the users, in a technique known as “probabilistic matching.”

While Snap acknowledged it had run a probabilistic matching program for several months to test the impact of Apple’s new policies, the company indicated it planned to discontinue the program after Apple introduced the changes, as per the report.

See Also: Snapchat Parent To Launch AR Glasses And A Drone, Furthering Hardware Push: Report

Why It Matters: Apple’s upcoming privacy changes will give users more privacy from mobile advertising but is unpopular with app developers, many of which are small businesses. The new feature will require apps to obtain permission from users before tracking them, according to Apple.

Snap is not the only company to reportedly explore skirting Apple’s new privacy rules so as to continue tracking users without their permission. It was reported last month that Apple warned Chinese app developers and tech companies not to circumvent the new privacy rules.

Five of China’s biggest tech companies, including Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU), Tencent Holdings Ltd. (OTC: TCEHY) and ByteDance are said to be testing or implementing CAID, a system developed by the state-backed China Advertising Association, to identify and track users in the future. Other proposed workarounds reportedly use a process known as fingerprinting.

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) , the second-largest recipient of advertisement revenues after Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), had bitterly criticized Apple’s privacy rule changes for months, saying that the changes could impact targeted advertising on its platform. However, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last month that the rule changes could benefit his company if more businesses decide to sell goods directly through Facebook and Instagram.

Price Action: Snap shares closed 4.2% higher on Thursday at $54.49, while Apple shares closed 0.7% higher at $123.00.

Read Next: Microsoft Tightening Tentacles Around Pentagon With $22B AR Headset Deal, Says Analyst

© 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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World

BBC’s John Sudworth Leaves China, Citing Growing Risks

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At times, the propaganda campaign zeroed in on Mr. Sudworth, a longtime BBC correspondent who won a George Polk Award last year for his reporting on the internment camps in Xinjiang. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said on Wednesday that Chinese state media had posted videos of Mr. Sudworth online using footage obtained from police cameras.

Last month, The Global Times, a state-backed nationalist tabloid, published a widely circulated article attacking Mr. Sudworth for his Xinjiang reporting and accusing him of being an “anti-China” journalist backed by “foreign forces,” including the United States.

“In the past few years, the BBC and their China correspondent, John Sudworth, have been doing their best to demonize China as a cruel country without human rights by distorting the situation in Xinjiang,” said the article. “But today, their ‘crazy’ distortions have been exposed — the truth is that they are the clowns who violate human rights.”

Before the recent propaganda campaign, Mr. Sudworth had been repeatedly issued shortened journalist visas of as little as one month for nearly three years, part of an ongoing effort by the Chinese government to punish news organizations for coverage it perceives to be overly critical. Most resident foreign journalists are typically granted one-year visas.

In September, two Australian journalists fled China following a five-day diplomatic standoff that began when Chinese state security officers paid them unannounced visits, prompting fears that they would be detained. Australian news outlets now no longer have any correspondents on the ground in China at a time of fast-deteriorating relations between the two countries.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, whose members include many journalists working there, voiced concerns on Wednesday about the “increasing frequency of erroneous claims by Chinese state and state-controlled entities that foreign correspondents and their organizations are motivated by anti-China political forces to produce coverage that runs counter to the Communist Party’s official line.”

“Alarmingly, Chinese authorities have also shown a greater willingness to threaten journalists with legal measures, proceedings that could subject them to exit bans, barring them from leaving China,” the club added.

Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting.



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Business

Redlined US homes face higher flood risks from climate change, new study finds

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During the early 20th century, US consumer banks routinely engaged in a systemic lending practice known as redlining, which denied loans to people of color seeking to purchase houses outside areas of cities deemed “undesirable,” in part, because they were built on areas with higher flood risk.

Today, as a result, homes worth a combined $107 billion are now 25% more likely to be flooded than non-redlined homes, according to researchers from the real estate brokerage firm Redfin. The firm released the findings from its analysis of redlined and non-redlined communities facing climate change-related flood risks Monday morning.

The report, which examined flood plain data from 38 major US metropolitan areas, noted that modern US flood-risk maps look a lot like redlining maps from the 1930s.

In recent years, sea-level rise caused by climate change has increased the number of flood-risk areas across the nation.
Some of these places are already having to deal with floods annually. Black homeowners in Chicago, for example, have complained about increased rainfall fueled by climate change overwhelming the city’s sewer system and causing flood damage to homes that didn’t have the same flooding issues a decade ago, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“The discrimination that happened in the past may seem like it happened a long time ago, but it compounds,” Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather told CNN Business. “It’s not like the historical practices that were discriminatory diminished in effect. It seems like they actually increase in effect.”

Redfin’s researchers determined areas in the cities they examined that were not redlined were at risk of having $85 billion worth of homes damaged or destroyed by climate change-related flooding — $22 billion less than neighborhoods that were redlined.

In their report, the firm’s researchers said more than 58% “of households in neighborhoods that were once designated undesirable for mortgage lending are non-white” and “history has shown that when storms hit, communities of color in these formerly redlined areas often suffer the most.”

“[More than] 600,000 properties faced 100-year flood risk, which is risk of one of these really catastrophic floods hitting them,” Fairweather said.

Fairweather noted the disproportionate impact Hurricane Katrina had on people of color in New Orleans in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey had on Black and Brown Houston residents in 2017 to illustrate her point.

Four of the seven zip codes that suffered the worst flood damage from Katrina had Black populations of at least 75%, according to government records cited by Scientific American.
A 2017 Think Progress analysis found disproportionately Black and Brown low-income Houston neighborhoods were more damaged by Harvey than wealthier and Whiter communities.

Without public and private intervention, Fairweather said the damage future flooding may cause to redlined areas across the nation could further expand the already enormous racial wealth gap that exists between most White Americans and their Black and Latino neighbors.

“It would set us back for sure,” Fairweather said. “It really does depend on what the policy response is.”

To help solve the problem, the study authors recommend the federal government provide funds for some redlined homeowners to weather proof their homes and offer relocation assistance to homeowners in areas where weather proofing might not be enough.

“When we do provide assistance for people to move, we should encourage them or insist they move to places that won’t be as affected by climate change,” Fairweather said.

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Health

Declining a Covid-19 Vaccine Risks Penalties in Some Countries

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Some countries are sharpening their Covid-19 vaccination pitches to the public: Get a shot or face a potential penalty.

With vaccination campaigns ramping up globally and some supply shortages easing, governments are looking for ways to make sure that holdouts don’t undermine efforts to vaccinate enough people to achieve herd immunity.

The penalties range from fines and restricting access to public places to threatening the loss of priority access to vaccines.

Indonesia has already levied fines for refusing vaccination of around $356—or more than a month’s salary on average, according to the country’s per capita gross domestic product.

Israel, home to the world’s fastest Covid-19 vaccine rollout, drew a firm line between those who had and hadn’t received shots as it unveiled plans on Sunday to reopen society. Those with what are called green passports, which verify a vaccination, could enter gyms, hotels and eventually travel without quarantining. Holdouts, Israel’s health minister said, “will be left behind.”

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