In fact, the Hang-Seng-Tech-Index is China's pride and joy.

The index shows the performance of the 30 largest technology companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

With the apps they offer, the majority of the billion-dollar Chinese people get up in the morning and go to bed with them in the evening.

The social media and games giant Tencent is among them, whose all-rounder Wechat app is used by around 80 percent of all Chinese between the ages of 16 and 64.

In over 1000 Chinese cities, Meituan brings the food ordered on the app up to the 60th floor, to the apartment door or to the office in half an hour.

Hendrik Ankenbrand

Business correspondent for China based in Shanghai.

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The Hang-Seng-Tech-Index contains such illustrious names as the computer manufacturer Lenovo and China's best-known Internet company Alibaba. If there is one industry in the second-largest economy that is already a technological leader in the world and has already overtaken the competition from America in many criteria (in Europe this usually does not exist at all), then it is China's Internet industry. Still, the index on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which was only set up last summer, has fallen 43 percent since its high in February. Has a tech bubble burst in the People's Republic? Or have the Chinese suddenly stopped going online, are ordering their food from the waiter in the restaurant again and buying their clothes in the store like they did 20 years ago?

Government pressure for "long-term rule"

Nothing like that. The government is responsible for the disastrous development of China's tech stocks. Around a year ago, it began to put private Internet companies under regulatory barrage. Monopoly behavior, the threat to national security, the exploitation of workers and Chinese consumers alike, the dumbing down of the youth - there is hardly an evil that Beijing does not accuse the tech corporations, which until recently were revered as heroes in China. When the Communist Party met for its 6th plenary session in November, it was preparing not only the third and probably by no means the last term of office of President Xi Jinping. The party declared that its power over the Internet was essential to its "long-term rule",which requires tough regulation.

Beijing has already impressively shown what that means in concrete terms.

Alibaba, Tencent and Meituan have been fined, some of them heavy.

The Chinese chauffeur service Didi, which allegedly went public against the party's will the day before its 100th anniversary celebrations in New York, has to say goodbye to government pressure.

But even in Hong Kong, where the company wants to be listed instead, Didi obviously meets with resistance - because the government probably thinks that the transport service provider must first fundamentally reform itself, separate the taxi business from its financial division and pay its drivers better and insure them.

A black list from America

An initial public offering in Hong Kong will not do anything for Sense Time, a leader in the commercialization of Artificial Intelligence that has become known the world over for its facial recognition products. They not only filter criminals out of the daily crowds at train stations in Shanghai and Beijing, but are also reported to be involved in the persecution of the Uyghur Muslim minority in Xinjiang Province. Sense Time wanted to sell 1.5 billion shares for 3.85 to 3.99 Hong Kong dollars each on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which would have generated the equivalent of up to 680 million euros - which is only a third of what the company is at his first issue had actually wanted to take.

The fact that Sense Time canceled its stock exchange plans in Hong Kong for the time being on Monday is justified by the Beijing provider with a black list of the American government, which lists companies in China in which American investors - whether private or institutional - are not allowed to invest.

The company did not say on Monday whether and when Sense Time will go public on the island.

It was just said that the initial listing should continue to be followed.

The regulatory thunderstorm from Beijing continues

What is clear is that the Hong Kong stock market is facing tough times in the short term, given the fact that its tech heavyweights, both abroad and at home, are blowing a sharp wind in their faces from politics. The American government has just passed new rules according to which Chinese companies in America are thrown off the stock exchange if they do not submit their auditors' reports for three years in a row - which China's laws forbid as a threat to national security. So that could wash a wave of Chinese titles to the Hong Kong coast by 2024 at the latest, maybe even before that, if the companies voluntarily or under pressure from Beijing turn their back on the USA before the deadline.

However, the fact that the return of tech companies does not necessarily have to result in a triumphant advance for the Hong Kong stock market could be indicated by the poor development of the past few months.

Investors who hoped that the regulatory thunderstorm from Beijing would soon be over and that the track would be free again for China's formerly prosperous tech industry, would be “disappointed”, writes Thomas Gatley of the Beijing analysis company Gavekal Dragonomics.

After all, Beijing obviously wants to determine the business models of Internet companies down to the last detail, with the highest political priority being the control of cross-border data flows.

As a result, a sharp fluctuation in the exchange rate in Hong Kong is "the norm for the foreseeable future".