IBM and China go back a long way – 1936 to be exact. That’s when the US computing giant opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia. After the formation of the communist-ruled People’s Republic of China in 1949, capitalists like IBM were not welcome. But IBM came back three decades later when China started to open up to the world under new leadership. From its headquarters in New York, the company nicknamed Big Blue has had a long list of technology breakthroughs, from tabulating and computing in the early 1900s, to artificial intelligence and memory storage in the latter half of the 20th century, and quantum computing more recently. This week we learned that IBM plans to cut more than 1,000 jobs at two of its mainland Chinese R&D labs. Local employees expressed dismay when the move was announced in a terse conference call with top management on Monday. The call had been scheduled to go for half an hour but ended after only three minutes, according to an internal meeting transcript seen by SCMP. During the meeting, US-based executives told staff that IBM had decided to shift some Chinese operations overseas, citing market dynamics and fierce competition in the infrastructure business on the mainland. They did not take questions. scmp.com/tech/big-tech/ar.. #A Glance of China 行摄中国