Xi Jinping’s big bang for Chinese stockmarkets

In a parallel universe CloudWalk might have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in Hong Kong or New York. The firm is one of the world’s leading facial-recognition outfits: its technology can recognise people in milliseconds with astonishing accuracy. But modern geopolitics pushed it in another direction. America has imposed sanctions on the firm for alleged human-rights violations, owing to reputed links with China’s military. So instead of listing on the nasdaq in New York, CloudWalk chose Shanghai’s star Market, a bourse set up in 2019 to attract China’s rising tech companies. The company’s share price is up by a fifth since its debut in May.