Chinese cloud giants eye South-East Asia

CHINA’S TECHNOLOGY giants are having a torrid time. At home, a is intensifying. In the latest move, on August 17th the authorities released draft antitrust rules that would hurt the business models of titans like Alibaba and Tencent. In the West, meanwhile, governments want to make it harder for Chinese companies to do business in their countries and, in America’s case, to list shares. Some global asset managers are calling stocks “uninvestable”.The firms are thus casting around for friendlier climes. Foreign markets account for a relatively small share of the Chinese groups’ sales. Tencent made around $5bn in revenues outside mainland China last year, less than 8% of the total. So little of Alibaba’s income is derived from abroad that the company doesn’t bother publishing a geographical breakdown. If it were to start, however, no place would feature more prominently than South-East Asia.