Exclusive: Alibaba, China Mobile weigh $443 million investment in blacklisted Dahua - sources

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and China Mobile Communications Group Co Ltd [CHNMC.UL] are considering investing 3 billion yuan ($443 million) in Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co Ltd, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

Dahua, China’s second-largest surveillance equipment maker, is among Chinese tech firms that Washington last year placed on a blacklist of companies it said helped Beijing monitor and detain Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. Those blacklisted cannot buy U.S. technology without U.S. government approval.

E-commerce leader Alibaba and top telecommunications group China Mobile plan to jointly invest in Shenzhen-listed Dahua - which has a market capitalisation of $10.3 billion - via a private share placement in coming weeks, the people said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSKBN2670I4

#Asia #China #Alibaba #investment

Vietnam is importing the worst of Chinese-style online censorship

Vietnam is monitoring online speech.

One of the problems with China’s extensive and invasive internet control and censorship is just how efficient it is, thus “inspiring” many other countries around the world to either try to copy, or implement it in one way or another, to serve their particular situation and goals.

This appears to have manifested in Vietnam, whose authorities are said to be invested in fostering nationalism online, but also carefully monitoring social media in the hope of controlling content and narratives.

In 2016, Vietnam put to work 10,000 people making up the Force 47 cyber unit that is supposed to maintain a “healthy” online environment and, since late 2018, the country has had a unit whose task is to monitor the internet, sifting through up to 100 million news items every day in search of “misinformation”.

https://reclaimthenet.org/vietnam-is-importing-the-worst-of-chinese-style-online-censorship/

#Asia #Vietnam #censorship