Tech News: China
In September 2019
- ICYMI: China’s LuxCreo secures $30M with patented LEAP technology, enabling 3D-printing speeds 100x faster than traditional 3D printers
- China Telecoms reveals plans for a 5G Mobile SIM card that can participate in a mobile-focused Ethereum blockchain
- China: Vendors in August sold 291K 5G phones – less than 1% of the country’s overall mobile phone shipments
- US Secretary of Defense urges NATO to block China’s 5G tech – “every Chinese company has the potential to be an accomplice…to steal technology”
- China: Playing videogames with robots – just one way technology is reshaping elderly health care
- China: Government orders online platforms to use AI to recommend only ‘approved material’
- China: YI Tunnel secures $25M with AI-driven retail technology spanning vending machines, check-outs, unmanned stores and more
- China: Evolver secures $71M and partners Qingdao local government around Fabo, AI-backed teaching robot
- China: HiScene augmented reality firm secures $35M with sights set on AI and big data moves
- China: PlusAI self-driving vehicles tech startup to JV with FAW Jiefang, China’s oldest and largest truck manufacturer, to develop autonomous trucks
- China: Chinese K-Car fully solar-powered vehicle completes road-testing, claiming 20km daily charged under sunlight, for 30 days without pole-charging
- China: Mercedes-Benz joins PlatOn blockchain firm’s Vehicle Residual Value Management Platform to store data and calculate pricing of used business cars
- China: Weibo’s Instagram competitor, Oasis, was reportedly to offer decentralized token rewards as incentives, ‘water droplets’ that ‘evaporate’ after 3 days
- China: Sinochem Group state-owned oil/gas giant subsidiary to launch blockchain platform with Shell and Macquarie
- Binance publishes first-look analysis of China’s soon-to-launch central bank digital currency – in part a digitalization and internationalisation move for the RMB
- People’s Bank of China to issue first round of state-backed digital currency to Alibaba, Tencent and 5 others as distributors
- People’s Bank of China digital currency team now working in closed-door isolation in bid to beat Facebook Libra to market
- China: Mars Finance, Chinese-language cryptocurrency and blockchain news website, backed by Binance crypto exchange, creating $200M valuation
- China: “Of the first 25 companies…on the STAR Market, at least 16 receive investment by state-affiliated funds and research institutions, while 6 have ties to the military.”
- China: Plum e-commerce platform for second-hand luxury goods raises $20M on the back of claimed 5-fold growth
- China: A quick look at subscription-based services – from music and video streaming to tangible consumer goods like clothing, bicycles, cosmetics and flowers
- China’s Singles Day this year processed $45BN of goods and services in 24 hours – 3 times Black Friday plus Cyber Monday combined – and 90% of it via mobile devices
- China: “The post-2000 generation accounted for 15.8% of online fraud victims in 2018, surging from just 0.7% in 2014”
- China: Eight years of huge changes to the world’s biggest internet population, visualized by @AbacusNews
- CEO of high-growth electric vehicle startup Byton quit due to Chinese government interference, following state-backed investment
- China: Female esports professionals turn to other forms of e-celebrity to boost their career prospects in the face of gender discrimination
- Michigan State University faces criticism after computer research scientist gives keynote speech at China’s largest biometrics conference
- China: Tencent reportedly to launch FenFu credit service to offer credit and small loans to WeChat Pay’s huge user base and to compete with AliPay’s Huabei service
- China: Huimei Healthcare raises $30M with AI-based clinical decision support system
- ICYMI: Huawei launches AI chip focused on data centers, potentially pitting it against US tech companies like Qualcomm and Nvidia
- US State Dep’t official: “Firms such as Huawei, Tencent, ZTE, Alibaba, and Baidu have no meaningful ability to tell the Chinese Communist Party ‘no'”
- From the recent MAST Conference: Huawei and its siblings, the Chinese tech giants: National security and foreign policy implications
- An overview of the Huawei Mate 30’s launch without Google apps and services
- China: Antwork aims to improve last-mile deliveries by using drones instead of delivery drivers and couriers, gains China’s first approval for trials as first step
- China’s Meditool gains high-Euro funding from Germany’s Evonik with 3D printed neuro and spine surgery implants
- China: An intro to Ximalaya FM podcasting platform, serving the country’s 425M listeners last year
- China: Alibaba’s AI-powered ‘Bus Brain’ calculates number of buses needed and optimal route for Shanghai service, allowing commuters to plan quickest trips
- China: Weibo’s Instagram-clone app, Oasis, disappears from app stores just two days after launch due to copied logo
- China now has no specific launch date in mind for digital currency, central bank has said in fresh comments contradicting previous statements
- China: A collection of just some of the country’s tech, startup, crypto and mobile news from the month past, via Startup News Asia
- China: Bytedance pushes new online reading platform as regulators clamp down on content
- China: ZAO video app lets users swap faces with celebrities, sports stars or anyone else goes viral, but swiftly sparks privacy and identity concerns
- China Pharmaceutical University deploys facial recognition, responds to privacy concerns: ‘classrooms are considered public spaces where it is free to capture data’
- China: A dive into the country’s 4 facial-recognition giants
- China’s new generation of tech startups – Insta360, SIVGA and Huami, upcoming market leaders in action cameras, premium headphones and fitness trackers
- China: Catering service robots become an appealing option for restaurants struggling to find waiting staff
- China: “In Kyrgyzstan, facial recognition…is being introduced by a Beijing-based defense equipment supplier whose technology was used to subdue…Xinjiang”
- China: ‘Cyber-dissident’ sentenced to 12 years for website reporting on topics including human rights, the Tiananmen Square massacre and earthquake victims
- China: Against a backdrop of increasingly-restricted internet access, Zoom video-conferencing app is blocked
- China: Government regulators to expand social credit blacklists to include online platforms and users, aiming to punish ‘untrustworthy conduct’
- China: Huawei launches laptops with Deepin, China-produced Linux-based OS, pre-installed
- China: A look at how power-bank sharing startups are proving skeptics wrong, with an expected 150M user base this year
- ICYMI: Footage of China’s Hikvision cameras monitoring a concentration camp in Xinjiang, as covered in a BBC segment, alongside forced rote-learning
- ICYMI: US Senate passes the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act
- China: Kuaishou, fast-growing short-video startup, reportedly aiming for $1BN fundraise on $25BN valuation in move to maintain competition with ByteDance
- China: The top web browser on PC? Google Chrome, with 45.19%. The top home-grown browser? QQ, built on Google’s Chromium
- China: Government officials to be placed inside 100 private companies, including Alibaba and Geely, adding to concerns about state direction of technology
- ICYMI: China Tech City, an intro to the country’s major technology players
- China: Shouyue, state-owned ride-hail startup, challenges Didi Chuxing’s dominance with state contacts, high-end service, regulatory compliance and profitability
- China: Trifo’s advanced robot vacuum includes sensor and vision tech for home-security monitoring – 3d mapping, voice recognition, AI-based learning and more
- Everledger blockchain-backed supply chain startup from the UK gains $20M Series A led by China’s Tencent
- China: 7invensun unveils new eye-tracking module designed to support all of HTC’s VR headsets, past and present
- Alibaba unveils Hanguang 800 AI inference chip, claiming dramatic machine learning improvements – 1-hour categorization of 1BN images cut to 5 minutes
- ICYMI: Coders detail how Huawei’s Ark Compiler is ‘not even half-finished’ and unable to port Android apps to Huawei’s new HarmonyOS – even its own demo
- Although funding data make China appear to be a global leader in AI, funding…is significantly concentrated in…computer vision and natural language processing
- China: Deepexi startup providing big data and AI-powered enterprise digitization solutions secures $35M Series A
- China: DeepRoute self-driving vehicle solutions provider secures near $50M pre-Series A
- China: Alibaba’s Ant Financial to expand collaboration with Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger open-source blockchain project to develop ‘cross-blockchain’ tech
- …the cost of restricting Huawei and ZTE is minor to Europe. However, the benefit in reduced risk and increased security and network resilience is tremendously high
- China: TikTok launches in-video search function, allowing users to identify people via facial recognition tech, alongside e-commerce uses like identifying clothing
- China: 13 presentations from Alibaba Investors Day 2019, covering TMall, Ant Financial, FreshHippo, Taobao and more
- China: Pix Moving auto-tech startup sets sights on trade war tariff dodge – 3D printer car blueprints, cloud-shared with US team to print components in-country
- China: “This year, online retail sales are expected to swell to $1.5 trillion”, from McKinsey’s digital consumer report
- China: 10K reporters and editors in Beijing to take ‘pilot tests’ on loyalty to President Xi Jinping using Xuexi Qiangguo mobile app
- China: DT Dream cloud computing and big data services provider secures $84M, valuing at $1.5BN, with enterprize and government focus
- China: Xpeng Motors’ P7 becomes the first smart car to implement Alibaba In-Car Mini App tech, initially with driver focus but aiming for broader in-car use
- China: ‘Private’ sector concerns grow as tech giant CEOs resign, and CCP sends officials to private companies to insert Party direction
- South Africa’s rain network implements 5G in parts of Johannesburg and Tswane, in partnership with China’s Huawei
- Hong Kong protestors turn to Bridgefy Bluetooth-based app for ‘mesh messaging’ that the CCP can’t block, communicating using no persistent managed network
- Tweeting through the Great Firewall: Preliminary Analysis of PRC-linked Information Operations on the Hong Kong Protests
- Hong Kong: “In recent days, China has more aggressively stirred up nationalist and anti-Western sentiment using state and social media…to undermine the protesters”
- China’s UCWeb to launch e-commerce service in India, focusing on content platforms to build on browser’s 120K bloggers and 700 media outlet partners
- India: China’s Oppo signs MoU with Kerala Gov’t to boost startup and mobile tech ecosystems
- A brief intro to the 15 startups competing in Rabobank’s SustainableAg Asia Challenge
- Japan: NTT Data partners China’s CloudPick for smartphone-based, cashier-free solutions for retailers to address labor shortages
- Philippines arrests 277 Chinese nationals running cryptocurrency investment scam aimed at mainland China
- JD Digits, fintech affiliate of China’ e-commerce giant JD com, partners Central Group, Thailand’s biggest retailer, to launch Dolfin digital wallet app
