China’s technology news in August 2023 spanned a range of items, applications, developments and issues in the tech space, including: Shanghai’s satellite mega-constellation moves; China’s online time limits on under-18s, curtailing gaming amongst other activities; boosted investments in RISC-V chips, seen as a way around Intel and Arm reliance; Huawei’s self-created problems in Denmark; and many more.
Hit the links below to read each China tech news item in full.
You can also get Asia tech daily, and weekly – daily updates go out via social media, and our weekly newsletters go out via Substack and LinkedIn.
CSIS: Securing Indo-Pacific Semiconductor Supply Chains
- Proposed People’s Republic of China Patriotic Education Law ‘codifies existing practices, but more importantly…expands…to include Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, overseas Chinese and the internet’
- UAE Ministry of Economy partners Huawei Cloud for Huawei Cloud Startup Program as part of UAE ‘The Entrepreneurial Nation’ initiative, aiming to lift the local startup ecosystem
- China: A brief look at recent policy issued to boost car sales, focusing on New Energy Vehicles such as electric cars and plug-in hybrids, with measures concerning infrastructure as well as financial incentives
- China: Cyberspace Admin proposes ‘minor mode’ programs to smart device providers, to bar under-18s from internet access on mobile devices from 10pm to 6am; instantly impacting share prices
CSET: An examination of China’s cyber ranges
- China: Intel partners Nanshan district government in Shenzhen, and local tech firms, for chip innovation, AI and edge computing centre, despite deepening US chip-related restrictions
- China’s proposed cyber limits: “Users aged 16-18 would be allowed 2 hours a day, children aged 8-16 would get 1 hour while children under 8 would be allowed just 8 minutes.”
- China: Tencent expands testing of Hunyuan AI model, integrating with Tencent Games, Tencent Advertising, QQ Browser, WeChat Search and Tencent Fintech
- China: GalaxySpace launches Lingxi-03, its 1st satellite with ultra-thin, flexible solar wings, 5% the thickness of standard panels, seeking large-scale, stackable launch of sat constellations
- China: Japan’s Toyota and China partner PonyAI ink JV to mass produce robotaxis using PonyAI autonomous drive tech and ride-hail services
WEF: Green hydrogen in China – A roadmap for progress
- China: Alibaba Cloud open-sources 2 large-language AI models, Qwen-7B and Qwen-7B-Chat, aiming for multi-platform integration
- China: Spacemit CPU startup completes Series A funding of ‘several hundred million RMB’ backed by Lenovo, with focus on RISC-V chips, open-source architecture seen as workaround to restricted Intel and Arm chips
“While US rules…slowed down China’s development of advanced chipmaking…they left largely untouched the country’s ability to use techniques older than 14-nm. That has led Chinese firms to construct new plants faster than anywhere else in the world.”
China: “Though…tested in 25 cities, and 260M unique wallets hold a total of [$1.9 billion], last year e-CNY accounted for only 0.13% of the supply of central bank reserves and cash in circulation.”
- China: NIO EV firm to release its first smartphone, ‘NIO Phone, in Q3 2023 – running on Android tech
- China: Shenzhen to push Huawei support with move for gov’t bodies and state-owned enterprises to use HarmonyOS and EulerOS, Huawei’s Android and Linux alternatives, in bid to reduce foreign technology use
- China: “…traders conducted $90BN in transactions on Binance despite a crypto trading ban in the country. [This] makes China Binance’s biggest market, accounting for 20% of global volume.”
- “TikTok Shop’s GMV, or total value of goods sold, skyrocketed more than four times to US$4.4 billion in Southeast Asia in 2022. This year, TikTok Shop reportedly aims for a GMV target of US$12 billion.”
China: “Dozens of companies feed a quantum-computing supply chain that did not exist a few years ago… The district is hardly a decade old; not long ago the most modern tech in the area was farming equipment”
- China: State-run Nat’l Natural Science Foundation launches $6.4M program for chiplets tech, adding to country’s bid for semiconductor self-sufficiency
- Thailand: An overview of Huawei Thailand Education Summit 2023, recently held in Khon Kaen province, building on goals set in Thailand National Digital Talent Development White Paper
- Malaysia: China’s EVE Energy lithium battery manufacturer breaks ground on new manufacturing facility – its 53rd – in Kedah, with initial investment of $422M
- India reportedly has barred domestic manufacturers of military drones from using China-made components over security concerns across communication functions, cameras, radio transmission and software
- India-produced equipment for China’s Tiangong space station hits export license delay, seen as likely in part due to border clashes and national security concerns
RAND Corp: Political Geography of the South China Sea disputes
Taiwan is “…positioned to create…’red-free’ or ‘China-free’ defense supply chains that friendly countries, such as Australia and Japan, could leverage for their own military logistics”
- ICYMI: “New York City is banning TikTok from city-owned devices and requiring agencies to remove the app within the next 30 days.”
- OPPO 2023 Inspiration Challenge Regional Demo showcases winners in Bangkok, working on pain management, speech disorders, paper batteries and more
- South Korea’s NGeneBio, next-gen sequencing-based diagnostics firm, inks MOU with China’s MGI gene sequencing firm, aiming to grow NGeneBio cancer testing products globally
- Huawei, Denmark and a $200M Battle Over 5G, via Bloomberg: “…equipment deal spiraled into a saga of hidden microphones, drone encounters and covert surveillance, according to investigators…”
Taiwan: ‘…Flax Typhoon, “a nation-state actor based out of China”, has since mid-2021 mainly “targeted government agencies and education, critical manufacturing, and [IT] organizations…”‘
- “Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent & Alibaba have made orders worth $1BN to acquire about 100K A800 processors from [NVIDIA] to be delivered this year… further $4BN worth…to be delivered in 2024…”
- China: Switzerland’s Energy Vault announces commissioning of their first grid-scale energy storage system outside Shanghai, ‘storing’ electricity by elevating concrete blocks and lowering them to power turbines
- China: Control on apps tightens with requirement to file business details with gov’t, in part meaning overseas developers must have a company in China or work with a local publisher
- China: Shanghai Gov’t unveils ‘G60 Starlink’ project, constellation of upwards of 12000 satellites, with phase 1 seeing 1296 satellites in orbit – adding to 13000-satellite Guowang project, seen as SpaceX StarLink competitor
Decoding China: Terms, meanings, framing
- China: Xingji Meizu, smartphone/consumer-tech firm from Geely EV firm founder, to discontinue chip design and development business
- China: Xiaomi smartphone giant now blocking Telegram from devices using its MIUI system and firmware, raising concerns over attempts to control access to information
- ‘The European Commission will analyse the US ban on new US investment in China in sensitive technologies as the issue is also important to [EU] economic security…’
- China: Galactic Energy hits multi-payload success with mobile launch system delivering 7 satellites spanning camera and imaging tech and space-ground comm’s, with sights on sea-based launches
- ICYMI: China’s Baichuan Intelligent Tech AI firm, just 4 months after formal launch, released its 3rd large language model, with this release its first ‘closed-source’ model, equipped with 53BN parameters
CSIS: Pulling back the curtain on China’s maritime militia
- ICYMI: Biden administration inks ‘executive order…block and regulate high-tech US-based investments going to China [on] advanced computer chips, micro electronics, quantum info tech and artificial intelligence’
- China: OPPO and Huawei add AI-driven voice-based assistants to products, including Huawei’s HarmonyOS
- China: Two lithium mine auctions in Sichuan province received near 7K bids with prices hundreds of times higher than starting levels
- Defaulted property firm, China Evergrande Group, gains $500M backing for EV unit from Dubai’s NWTN green mobility startup, delivering a 27.5% stake in China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group
- China: State bodies including government-backed chip fund to invest $1.7BN in Shenzhen’s CR Micro wafer production firm in ongoing bid to boost tech capacity and independence
The Escalating Global Risk Environment for Submarine Cables
- “China accounts for 90% of all blockchain patent applications in 2023 and 68% of all blockchain patents granted since 2009”
- China to establish recycling system for ageing wind turbines and solar panels, drawing industrial standards to decommission, dismantle, and recycle materials
“China continues to dominate the blockchain patent landscape, with 43,937 filings since 2009 and 68% of all blockchain patents granted. However, even China has not been immune to the global downturn…”
- China: Xiaomi smartphone maker gains state auto industry body approval to produce electric vehicles in move away from main smartphones business amid slumping demand
- China’s domestic e-CNY struggle: “…last year e-CNY accounted for only 0.13% of the supply of central bank reserves and cash in circulation.”
- China: Hangzhou Data Exchange launches, a blockchain-based platform to ‘facilitate the trading of enterprise information technology data using distributed ledger technology’
- China: TikTok to discontinue Storefront feature, no longer allowing merchants on Shopify etc to sync product catalogues to TikTok, in move to push TikTok Shop e-commerce platform
- China: Online platforms including Tencent Music removed live-streaming ‘lucky draws’ to minimize risks in state crackdown on illegal online gambling, taking a profits hit in the process
CSIS: China’s progress towards space resilience and responsive launch
- Huawei and Ericsson ink deal providing rights to use each other’s cellular tech in network gear and consumer devices, in part a further move by Huawei to boost income from patents
- China’s hyper-subsidised domestic electric cars market hits the same problems the country’s e-bikes market struck in the past
- ICYMI: China’s Nanjing University in 2022 launched a metaverse-focused major, renaming its Info Engineering Dep’t to Metaverse Engineering Dep’t, signaling the space’s expected importance
- China’s Shein ‘fast fashion’ giant takes 1/3 stake in Forever 21’s SPARC Group, bringing 150M users to Shein’s platform and opening Forever 21 US retail locations for Shein growth
- China: XPeng to buy out Didi smart electric car division with sights on 2024 new mass-market EV brand launch, with VW recently investing $700M
Europe in the Crosshairs: PRC United Front Targets Semiconductor Sector
- ICYMI: Synthetaic gains 5-year Microsoft partnership and near 1M hours of cloud computing with AI-backed imaging used recently to track surveillance balloon
- Macau’s Zence Object gains $2.5M from Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund with tech turning organic waste – mainly tea leaves – into plastic and paper alternatives
- China: Inceptio driver-assist tech firm sees 2024 growth for very long-distance trucking, aiming to allow firms to run 1 driver rather than 2, reducing costs by 5-7%
- China: Shanghai sets sights on the metaverse as key driver of economic development, establishing a $1.4BN fund to create 30 culture and tourism metaverse projects by end of 2025
- Japanese gov’t to build Indo-Pacific information network in bid to counter cyberattacks, providing equipment and training to Pacific island countries that lack countermeasures
ASPI: Derisking authoritarian artificial intelligence
ASIA TECH DAILY
All-day tech news updates from across South & Southeast Asia and the broad Indo-Pacific region:
Unfortunately, our mobile app updates are currently offline, ‘thanks’ to the ongoing devolution of what was Twitter (now X); we pulled our content feed directly from Twitter to the app, but tech changes at X have closed this down for the time being.
National Bureau of Asian Research: China’s Digital Ambitions
Asia tech weekly
Startup News Asia’s weekly newsletters go out via Substack and LinkedIn, giving you a single snapshot of the past week’s tech news headlines from across Asia and the Indo-Pacific.
