Foxconn cuts jobs

APPLE Inc.’s biggest iPhone assembler Foxconn Technology Group has let around 50,000 contract workers go in China since October, months earlier than usual, Nikkei reported Friday.

The scale of the cuts is not necessarily deeper than previous years, it is simply significantly earlier, the report said, quoting an industry source familiar with the situation. “It’s quite different this year to ask assembly line workers to leave before the year-end,” the source told Nikkei.

Discount vouchers

ONLINE group discounter Pinduoduo Inc. said yesterday that an online collective exploited a loophole on its platform to “steal” tens of millions of yuan worth of discount vouchers.

In a statement on its official Weibo account, Pinduoduo said it immediately rectified the bug and reported the incident to police. The fast-growing NASDAQ-listed online marketplace allows consumers to group together to get better discounts from merchants selling goods as varied as clothes, kitchenware and gadgets.

Exchange rate

THE government will increase the flexibility of the yuan’s exchange rate, the head of China’s foreign exchange regulator said.

China will promote two-way opening of its financial market and the opening of the country’s capital account in an orderly way, Pan Gongsheng said. Beijing will also push forward the launch of the Shanghai-London Stock Connect program, Pan added.

E-bike tariffs

THE European Union has started imposing duties from Saturday on Chinese electric bicycles to curb cheap imports which European producers say benefit from unfair subsidies and are flooding the market.

E-bikes coming from China will be subject to tariffs of between 18.8 and 79.3 percent, a filing in the EU’s official journal said Friday, in line with European Commission proposal on which EU countries voted in December.