Legal

Masayoshi Son, billionaire head of SoftBank Group Corp. may finally be able to push ahead with launching a US IPO for semiconductor and software design giant Arm Ltd., after wresting control of Arm China back from ousted CEO Allen Wu. It was no mean feat and a saga of twists and turns. But even now, some questions of Arm China’s shareholding and business remain unanswered.

An eight-storey building adjacent to the Changsha Medical University collapsed on 29 April, killing 54 people, mainly students. It turned out that the building was a "self-build" that had been modified by the owners rather than constructed by developers. Authorities are now clamping down on safety inspections of building structures, but is it a case of too little, too late?

Over the past three decades, China has implemented and revised its labour regulations in an effort to progress its market economy. Despite the strengthening of labour protection, young migrant workers have fallen through the cracks. Chinese economics professor Li Jingkui believes that the labour reforms have led to the social phenomenon of “Sanhe legends” — youths who are caught in an employment cycle characterised by poor working conditions, low wages and a lack of stability.

As one of the largest recipients of foreign investments, China has no shortage of publicly disclosed cases of corrupt business dealings. But transnational firms are still willing to take the risks and cultivate relationship-building strategies in their business activities. They are even prepared to face a “double jeopardy” situation when they are penalised in their home and overseas locations. But their operating environment could get even more challenging with the US and China clamping down on transnational crime, and the increasing use of domestic judiciaries to regulate extraterritorial legal matters.

Wu Guo notes that equality is very much a mirage, whether in the socialist or liberal democracy conception of the term. The sum total of one’s head start in life is often tied to his or her family background. And often, no amount of levelling up can change that. But this does not mean that equality is of no relevance or should not be aspired to. Adopting an attitude of equality can help ensure that people’s rights are protected, even if the ideal of equality may never be achieved.

Although the Chinese Communist Party believes in the great future of socialism, the basic contradictions of socialism that caused the demise of the Soviet Union are yet to be fully resolved in China, says Lance Gore. As a matter of fact, President Xi Jinping’s mantra of “returning to the party’s original mission” is inadvertently resurrecting some of the same problems that bedevilled classic communism.

Even as the pandemic created greater demand for internet companies like Kuaishou, Alibaba and Meituan, these companies are finding their large staff numbers unsustainable, leading to a wave of major retrenchments over the past year or so. This is not just due to overexpansion, but also operational pressures that come with new regulations to protect employment rights. Zaobao journalist Meng Dandan reports.

Temporary orders to halt the KAWS public art installation exhibition led Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre CEO Low Sze Wee to ponder the copyright issues of Chinese ink paintings. He notes that many of Singapore’s first-generation artists like Chen Wen Hsi and Fan Chang Tien were educated in Shanghai in the 1920s and were deeply influenced by the Shanghai School. Copying was a common mode of learning, and students like Henri Chen Kezhan and Chua Ek Kay did their best to copy the works of their teachers. While they eventually developed their own styles over time, Low says it could be argued that their achievements were made possible by their formative years spent on copying.

Analyst Luo Zhiheng compares China's distribution of national income with 20 major economies and concludes that among other things, there is a need to address a lower-than-average share of personal income in China, in order to achieve common prosperity. The Chinese government can work towards the goal of fostering an olive-shaped income distribution pattern by adjusting the tax structure, providing more investment options to its people, and developing its social security network.