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Ann Cao

Microsoft joint venture Wicresoft has put a halt to its China projects with the US technology giant, laying off around two thousand employees in the process, according to local media reports and some affected workers.
Employees at the Shanghai office of Wicresoft – a Bellevue, Washington-based business consulting venture founded by Microsoft and its Shanghai partners in 2002 – on Monday received emails that said their work related to the US company “will be terminated”.
According to the email, the decision to stop work on those projects was made because of “geopolitical shifts and changes in the global business environment”.
With expertise in information technology and telecommunications services as well as talent acquisition, Wicresoft provides advisory, solutions and operational support to various major brands.
A Wicresoft employee, Vincent Gao, confirmed the email’s authenticity. Gao, who joined the company in 2020, said Microsoft-related projects account for most of the firm’s business. He said Wicresoft has set Tuesday as their last working day.
Phone calls made to Wicresoft went unanswered.
“Reports that we may be ceasing operations in China are inaccurate,” a Microsoft representative said on Monday.
Wicresoft employees were seen moving out of the company’s premises in groups, carrying boxes packed with their personal belongings, when the South China Morning Post visited the joint venture’s Shanghai office on Monday.

Microsoft remains the third-largest shareholder of Wicresoft, with a 22 per cent stake, while a Shanghai-listed company from eastern Zhejiang province and a state-owned venture-capital firm in the city each owns a 23 per cent interest in the joint venture, according to Chinese corporate database Qichacha.
Wicresoft’s pullback from China marks a fresh sign of decoupling between the US and mainland tech markets, as the trade war between the world’s two largest economies intensified.
Beijing last Friday slapped Washington with a reciprocal 34 per cent tariff on American imports in retaliation to US President Donald Trump’s imposition of a similar tariff against Chinese imports.
The move by Wicresoft comes weeks after Microsoft closed its Internet-of-Things and artificial-intelligence Insider Lab in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang hi-tech zone,
Opened in May 2019, Microsoft’s Insider Lab was touted as a flagship collaboration between the US software giant and Zhangjiang, the innovation hub of Shanghai’s Pudong district, where numerous domestic and international tech companies have set up shop.

Wicresoft has 36 delivery centres around the world including in China, the US, Europe and Japan. The firm employs more than 10,000 staff from 74 countries, according to its website.
Across China, Wicresoft has a presence in about 20 cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
The company has around 2,000 employees dedicated to Microsoft-related projects in China, according to a report on Monday by Chinese financial media outlet Caijing. These are the workers affected by the firm’s pullback.
A Wicresoft employee from the Philippines, who declined to be named, said the email “was a shock” when he received it in the morning. This employee said he did not consider transferring to another country because he wanted to remain on the mainland.
There were more than 200 non-Chinese employees in the company’s Shanghai office, he added.
At Wicresoft’s office in Wuxi, a city in eastern Jiangsu province, the company also notified employees there to leave the firm’s premises at the latest by Tuesday, according to Tang Wei, a worker based in that office.


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Microsoft and its Shanghai partners founded business consulting joint venture Wicresoft in 2002. Photo: Shutterstock

Dismissed Wicresoft employees carry their personal belongings, as they move out of the company’s office building in Shanghai’s Minhang district on Monday. Photo: Ann Cao

One of Microsoft’s China campuses seen right across the street where Wicresoft’s Shanghai office is located. Photo: Ann Cao

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Wicresoft will cease work on Microsoft projects in China owing to ‘geopolitical shifts and changes in the global business environment’


Wicresoft will cease work on Microsoft projects in China owing to ‘geopolitical shifts and changes in the global business environment’.
