AFP

China has granted tech giant Tencent its first licence for a video game in 18 months, ending a dry spell that had threatened its position as the world’s top game maker.

Beijing moved against the country’s vibrant gaming sector last year as part of a sprawling crackdown on big tech companies, including a cap on the amount of time children could spend playing games.

Officials also froze approvals of new titles for nine months until April.

China’s gaming regulator, the National Press and Publication Administration, on Thursday said it had approved 70 new titles in November including Tencent’s action game “Metal Slug: Awakening” and a role-playing game “Journey to the West: Return” by rival NetEase.

Licences are mandatory for video games to be published and sold in the Chinese market.

The last time Tencent obtained a major licence was in May 2021.

A Tencent subsidiary received a licence in September but it was for a free educational game.

Shares in the Hong Kong-listed company closed up more than 0.5 percent on Friday after the licensing announcement, while NetEase gained more than 3.6 percent.

The approval signals a relaxing of China’s strict attitude towards tech companies.

During the crackdown, hundreds of game makers pledged to scrub “politically harmful” content from their products and enforce curbs on underage players to comply with government demands.

Restrictions announced last year allow players under the age of 18 to play for three hours a week.

Swedish officials confirmed Friday that the September blasts which destroyed sections of the Nord Stream pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea were acts of sabotage.

“The analyses conducted found traces of explosives on several foreign objects” found at the sites of the blasts, prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist who is leading the preliminary investigation said in a statement.

Ljungqvist added that technical analyses were continuing in order to “draw more reliable conclusions regarding the incident.”

Sweden’s Prosecution Authority said that the “continued investigation will show if anyone can be formally suspected of a crime.”

Four large gas leaks were discovered on Nord Stream’s two pipelines off the Danish island of Bornholm at the end of September, with seismic institutes recording two underwater explosions just prior.

Investigators had already said that preliminary inspections had reinforced suspicions of sabotage.

While the leaks were in international waters, two of them were in the Danish exclusive economic zone and two of them in Sweden’s.

At the end of October, Nord Stream sent a Russian-flagged civilian vessel to inspect the damage in the Swedish zone.

The pipelines, which connect Russia to Germany, have been at the centre of geopolitical tensions as Russia cut gas supplies to Europe in suspected retaliation to Western sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Although the pipelines were not in operation when the leaks occurred, they both still contained gas which spewed up through the water and into the atmosphere.

Washington and Moscow have both denied any involvement and each has pointed the finger at the other.

Asian markets were mixed Friday as caution permeated trading floors and investors tried to gauge the outlook for Federal Reserve monetary policy after several officials tried to temper optimism over signs that inflation is slowing.

While the week has been broadly positive for equities following softer-than-expected US consumer and wholesale price figures, a strong reading on retail sales and jobless claims showed plenty of resilience to higher interest rates.

With that in mind, St Louis Fed President James Bullard warned more hikes were needed to bring inflation down from four-decade highs, adding that they might need to go as high as seven percent.

That was followed by Minneapolis Fed boss Neel Kaskari saying he had not witnessed much evidence that underlying demand was cooling and did not want to forecast when the tightening would end.

The comments came after a similar message from other policymakers, who have sought to calm markets, which soared in the wake of last Thursday’s consumer prices reading.

They also fuelled fears among traders that the sharp tightening campaign — including four straight bumper 0.75-point increases in a row — would tip the world’s top economy into recession.

On Wednesday, Kansas City Fed chief Esther George said it was unclear how the bank can douse inflation “without having some real slowing” or even a contraction.

“Bullard’s comments are all the more surprising given that there is clear evidence that inflationary pressure is starting to slow more than expected,” said CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson.

“Consequently, Bullard’’s views may well be a minority view at this point, but it still shows how sensitive markets can be when it comes to the eventual destination of the terminal rate.”

– ‘Fundamental disconnect’ –

Wall Street’s three main indexes ended in the red, and Asia struggled to hold on to the morning’s momentum.

Hong Kong turned negative after a strong start, even as tech firms rallied and after China indicated it would ease back on some of its strict Covid restrictions and help its troubled property sector.

Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei and Mumbai were also down, though Sydney, Seoul, Wellington, Manila, Bangkok and Jakarta edged up.

London, Paris and Frankfurt all rose at the open.

There was a fear among analysts that the recent rally may have run a little ahead of itself.

“The market believes that inflation is on the downtrend. We also believe that, but the fact of inflation having peaked is not a reason for the Fed to turn and cut rates,” Paul Christopher, at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, told Bloomberg Radio.

“That’s the fundamental disconnect that still exists between the Fed and the market.”

And SPI Asset Management’s Stephen Innes added: “Things can turn on a dime, primarily when the fear of missing (out) drives sentiment.

“However, the odds of a pre-Thanksgiving rally are giving way to the hawkish Fed drumbeat and pushback on China reopening plays.”

The pound clawed back some of the losses suffered Thursday after Britain unveiled a budget with 55 billion pounds ($65 billion) of tax hikes and spending cuts that traders fear will deepen a cost-of-living crisis and a recession that could last two years.

– Key figures around 0810 GMT –

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.1 percent at 27,899.77 (close)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.3 percent at 17,992.54 (close)

Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.6 percent at 3,097.24 (close)

London – FTSE 100: UP 0.4 percent at 7,372.20

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.1910 from $1.1867 on Thursday

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0373 from $1.0370

Dollar/yen: DOWN at 140.00 yen from 140.20 yen

Euro/pound: DOWN at 87.08 from 87.34 pence

West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.5 percent at $82.01 per barrel

Brent North Sea crude: UP 0.3 percent at $90.01 per barrel

New York – Dow: FLAT at 33,546.32 points (close)

Digital currencies need more regulation to stamp out funding for terror operations, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Friday at a major international forum to combat financing of extremist groups.

India has laboured to rein in cryptocurrency transactions after years of phenomenal growth, backed by burgeoning local trading platforms and glitzy celebrity endorsements.

Modi last year said that bitcoin presented a risk to younger generations and could “spoil our youth” if it ended up “in the wrong hands”.

On Friday, he went further and told delegates at the Conference on Countering Financing of Terrorism that “private currencies” posed a grave security risk. 

“New kinds of technology are being used for terror funding and recruitment. Challenges from the dark net, private currencies and more are emerging,” Modi said. 

“There is a need for a uniform understanding for new finance technologies,” he added. 

“From a uniform understanding, a unified system of checks and balances and regulation can emerge.”

Delegates from dozens of countries are in the capital New Delhi for the two-day conference, which follows a special session of the UN’s Counter Terrorism Committee held in India last month.

Cryptocurrencies have been under the scrutiny of Indian regulators since first entering the local market nearly a decade ago, with a surge in fraudulent transactions leading to a central bank ban in 2018.

India’s Supreme Court lifted the restrictions two years later and the market surged, growing by nearly 650 percent in the year to June 2021 — second only to Vietnam, according to research by Chainalysis.

The government also proposed banning “all private cryptocurrencies”, but ultimately held back and later taxed profits from “private currencies” at 30 percent.

Globally, the crypto market has been thrown into upheaval by this month’s collapse of FTX, a major exchange used for digital transactions. 

Once valued at $32 billion, FTX filed for bankruptcy last week.

Its downfall sent major cryptocurrencies plunging and further undermined investor confidence in the young and turbulent sector.

Vice President Kamala Harris told Asian leaders on Friday that the United States is committed to the region for the long haul, rejecting doubts about its engagement as China expands its clout.

Addressing a summit in Bangkok, Harris called the United States a “proud Pacific power” and said that the longstanding US network of security alliances has allowed Asia to prosper.

“The United States is here to stay,” Harris told business leaders on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, also attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Our message is clear: The United States has an enduring economic commitment to the Indo-Pacific, one that is measured not in years, but in decades and generations,” she said, using the preferred US term for the Asia-Pacific region.

President Joe Biden’s administration has focused on rallying behind allies and Harris will head from Thailand to the Philippines, where she will visit an island near waters increasingly contested by Beijing.

While the United States has taken a firm tone on China, some Asian officials have questioned the level of US economic engagement.

Biden has largely followed his predecessor Donald Trump in turning the page on the era of free-trade agreements, seeing them as unpopular among working-class US voters.

Harris insisted that economic partnerships in Asia were “a top priority” for the Biden administration and pointed out that the US private sector invests around $1 trillion a year in the region.

“America is a strong partner to the economies and companies of this region because America is and will remain a major engine of global growth, reinforced by our administration’s approach,” she said.

She said that goal had bipartisan support, with Washington set for greater gridlock after the rival Republican Party won control of the House of Representatives in elections last week.

Biden on a trip to Tokyo earlier this year launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which brings together countries to set common standards on technology and trade in the face of China’s rapid advances but stops short of lifting tariffs like a traditional free-trade deal.

“We are all feeling the discomfort and the anxiety of the global economy today,” US Trade Representative Katherine Tai told reporters Thursday.

“We need different outcomes, and that means that we also need to be innovating in how we engage each other in trade and economics and across the board,” she said.

Despite US vows of engagement, Biden skipped the APEC summit to attend his granddaughter’s wedding at the White House on Saturday.

He attended two other summits in Asia over the past week, however, in Cambodia and Indonesia.