On March 13 and 14, Alibaba and Tencent layoffs appeared on Weibo trends, the Chinese social media platform. As per the reports, Alibaba and Tencent employees are expecting around 30 per cent job cuts. There was internal speculation among employees, that Tencent expects to lay off 10 percent to 30 percent of its employees, and Alibaba will lay off 30 percent of its employees.
Alibaba's community group-buying business unit MMC is reportedly planning to lay off about 20 percent of its employees, reported Chinese media publication Yilanshangye. The reported layoffs come amid an ongoing crackdown on tech in Beijing. While iQiyi is reportedly letting go of around 20 per cent to 40 percent of its current workforce, Kuaishou is looking to lay off 30 percent of its staff. Tencent started layoffs within small business departments in September 2021.
The posts on Weibo showed that the current economic situation is being reflected in the following things: internet tech layoffs; real estate debt crisis; salary cuts for government services and negative growth of residents' medium and long-term loans.
According to the latest data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics, China has recorded the lowest economic growth in four decades as it grew by 2.3 per cent.
The Hong Kong Post reported that rising crude oil prices and hurdles in the development of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are going to worsen China's economic woes. China's GDP had grown by 8.1 per cent in 2021. However, it would not be easy for China to even reach 5.5 per cent growth this year.
Rising unemployment is another major problem China is facing as unemployment among fresh university graduates increased to 0.88 in the fourth quarter of 2021 from 0.79 in the second quarter of 2020, as per reports.
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