China’s Tech Giants Signal the First Steps in a Bumpy Recovery
Summary
But the financial results, the first issued since the end of “zero Covid” restrictions, also reflected the uneven pace of China’s economic rebound and signaled that the companies’ makeovers, while underway, are likely to be rocky. Tencent on Wednesday attributed its 11 percent revenue climb in part to a rebound in digital payments as Chinese consumers began to spend money again after a long dry spell. Data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics for April underwhelmed analysts: Chinese were spending more on food, but appeared to avoid items like cosmetics and cars. “People are going out on holiday, but they’re not spending compared to prepandemic levels,” said Bruce Pang, chief economist for Greater China at Jones Lang LaSalle, the global real estate and investment advisory firm. All three of China’s big internet companies are hoping to tell investors a new story, one pegged to artificial intelligence, the new technology underlying services like ChatGPT that are promising to unseat old ways of doing business.