英文摘要

《财经》杂志   

2018年03月05日 19:45  

本文3467字,约5分钟

Medical AI Companies in 2018; Institutional Reform on the Horizon; New Rules on Equity Management in Insurance Companies; Reform of the Listing of H-shares; Future of Data Exit

Medical AI Companies in 2018

Medical treatment is considered to be the next area where AI (artificial intelligence) will surpass humanity. However, medical AI still has a long way to go towards large-scale deployment. China, with its huge population, boasts a massive amount of medical data that could supercharge medical AI. Industry insiders generally believe that domestic enterprises have an opportunity to overtake foreign competitors.

However, new waves of technology would inevitably go through bubbles. The final winners will be technologies and products that really create value. Many medical AI companies are determined to survive 2018 and make it through the difficulties most startups face before C-round financing.

 

Institutional Reform on the Horizon

A new round of institutional reform is on the horizon. Prior to this, an institutional reform of the State Council in 1998 cut the number of administrative staff from 32,300 to 16,700, or by 47.5 percent, which marked the biggest cutdown in staff number in history of institutional reform.

Chief Economist of China Center for Urban Development Li Tie, as a participant of the 1998 reform, believes that the central goal of the reform is not to cut personnel, but to reduce red tape and to better handle the relationship between the government and the market. If the upcoming institutional reform could curtail administrative power through reducing red tape and truly consolidate functions, it would play a significant role in resolving problems including overstaffing, bloated institutions, excessive administrative expenses, and government inefficiency.

 

New Rules on Equity Management in Insurance Companies

Equity is the foundation of corporate governance. The China Insurance Regulatory Commission started a crackdown on irregularities in equity stakes in the insurance industry since last year, dismissing and taking over delinquent equity stakes. The revised version of the Approaches for Equity Management in Insurance Companies, which will be officially released soon, has attracted much market attention. The new rules are about effective regulation of corporate governance from the source and hence about the future pattern of the insurance market.

Insiders in the insurance industry and the legal profession believe that what has been called the most stringent equity management regulation in history, once promulgated, would block the path capital predators currently take to control insurance companies.

 

Reform of the Listing of H-shares

HKEX recently released a consultation paper named, “Rules for the Listing of Companies in Emerging and Innovative Industries,” providing the “theoretical basis” for the biggest reform of the listing rules for H-shares since the introduction of H-shares in 1993. The market is mainly concerned about how to deal with possible risks that could be brought about by allowing tech companies to get listed with a dual-stock structure in which a company issues shares with either high or low voting rights at the same time.

The reform also involves the exchange of capital markets between Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland. Currently, nearly 100 new technology companies in the Chinese mainland are about to get financing. H-shares could play the role of a mainland fund-raising platform, so as to reduce the number of overseas listings and to disperse capital flow.

 

Future of Data Exit

Legislation on the exit of domestic data based on the Cyber Security Law, which is in progress, will establish a tight law enforcement system for the exit of Chinese data and apply to all controllers of data. Technology companies like Apple Inc., which provide key infrastructure services such as cloud services, have already taken action.

These supporting laws and regulations will demarcate the boundaries of Cyber Security Law for data exit. The strictness of the regulation on data exit will greatly affect compliance and business adjustments of multinational companies, in particular consumer-oriented multinationals and Internet firms, in the Chinese mainland.