The future looked bright to all parties when Alphabet Inc.’s Google joined with Facebook Inc. and a Hong Kong partner in 2016 to build an 8,000-mile-long undersea fiber-optic-cable line connecting Los Angeles to Hong Kong on an information highway between superpowers. Then the tech giants went their own way, routing their pieces of the cable line to the Philippines and Taiwan without the Hong Kong connection. In other words, global economic ties haven’t ended; they are being rerouted, with widespread implications. National-security concerns originally drove Google’s planned Pacific Light Cable Network away from Hong Kong. The share price of Dr. Peng Telecom & Media Group, the Beijing-based controlling shareholder of the Hong Kong partner, has dropped more than 90% since 2015.

Source: Wall Street Journal January 16, 2023 12:32 UTC