diversification

No Turning Back the Clock for TikTok and its Broader Business Ramifications

The United States (U.S.) government (USG) has long wanted to enervate TikTok, which hosts short-form videos and whose owner is China’s ByteDance. USG and subnational efforts have come in the form of Presidential Executive Orders, Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) divestiture orders, proposed legislation in the US Congress, limitations by states like Montana and Texas, and restrictive measures at universities.

Dr. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard's picture

Circling around China’s Dual Circulation Policy, part II-Implications for Inward FDI

In my December blog, I overviewed China’s Dual Circulation System (DCS). To reiterate, foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) are concerned about the DCS’s emphasis on self-sufficiency, indigenous technology, and insulating China against the international market’s vagaries. Foreign MNCs, though, also see opportunities to satiate anticipated growth in domestic demand and the needs of a presumptively wealthier population, facilitate China’s efforts to promote high-quality development through inter alia the provision of “technology-focused products and services” (as one Michelin China CEO put it), and to supply the materials needed for China’s ramped up domestic infrastructure and production.

Mr. Naoyuki Haraoka's picture

The Coronavirus Reveals Inconvenient Truths

The spread of international supply chains has played a key role in advancing globalization as well as enabling greater production efficiencies at multinational corporations (MNCs) because it has facilitated the division of labor. This has especially been the case where manufacturing industries, an engine of the global economic growth, such as automobiles, are concerned.

Dr. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard's picture

De virus, Decoupling, De-globalization, Downsizing, and FDI in China

China’s coronavirus epidemic has had profound economic effects including dramatically reducing travel within and outside China, severely suppressing business activity in the education, entertainment, food & beverage, and leisure and recreation industries, among others, and disrupting or freezing manufacturing and the delivery of production i