Wood's change of stance came amid a sweeping regulatory crackdown that has impacted almost every sector from technology to education. It started with ride-hailing app Didi Global's IPO debacle. Just two days after the juggernaut's landmark $4.4 billion IPO, the Cyberspace Administration of China launched an investigation into the company and forbade it from registering new users.
Last September, Ark had hired analyst Yulong Cui to cover next-generation innovation themes across Asia. And in previous Ark webinars, Wood highlighted how increased corporate and capital-gains taxes in the US could drive innovations offshore to geographies like China. ."In fact, I have to say, it opened our eyes in 2017 to see WeChat pay and Alipay, their mobile payments, exploding.
"What I think, especially for the mega-cap companies, in order to sustain their growth rates, they need to start moving outside China and scale in the rest of the world," she said in the July webinar."They may be able to do that in Southeast Asia, but even there the political dynamics are such that there's going to be some fear of China.