China’s technology news across October 2024 for obvious reasons covered a wide range of items and articles, successes and challenges. These included, for instance: China’s many moves into cross-border payments, with global partners; development moves towards a national blockchain infrastructure in China; the country’s vehicles-to-grid experiments, connecting energy from electric vehicles to local energy grids as mobile power banks; and many more.
Hit the links below to read each China tech news item in full.
China market reference:
- China’s population (2023): 1.4 billion
- China’s online population: 1.1 billion / 77.3%
- China’s median age: 40.2 years
Also, don’t miss: Asia’s Tech News, Weekly newsletter >
NBR: Asia’s Space Ambitions – Next chapter in global space competition
- China: Intel is planning a $300M investment to expand chip packaging and testing in Chengdu, expected to bolster the Chengdu plant’s role in Intel’s global supply chain / full item
- China: BeiDou sat-nav system gained $1.78BN in commitments for new projects, deepening competition with GPS and targeting integration with vehicles, agriculture and more / full item
- China: Xpeng e-car manufacturer breaks ground on construction of facility focused on Aeroht brand eVTOLs, electric vertical take-off aircraft, targeting production capacity of 10,000 units / full item
- China: Greater Bay Technology unveils Phoenix EV battery, claiming superconducting materials enable charging and functioning within 6 minutes, regardless of temperature / full item
- China: Zeekr auto-maker unveils new Mix model, spacious ‘people mover’ capitalizing on an electric vehicle’s longer wheelbase, and featuring limited elements of autonomous driving / full item
- China: Deep Blue Aerospace offers first 2 tickets for seats on a vehicle taking passengers into space in 2027, priced around $210K and with plans for more ticket sales in November / full item
- China: Domestic firms dominate state-owned China Telecom $2BN server procurement shortlist, likely continuing moves to eliminate foreign hardware from its networks / full item
- China: Sales of Apple iPhone 16 are up 20% in their first three weeks compared with 2023’s iPhone 15 model, tho local rivals are set for end-of-year challenger product releases / full item
- ICYMI: More semiconductor and chip-manufacture exports to China face restrictions, including NVIDIA A800 and H800, and impacts likely on those sold by Intel and AMD / full item
- China’s Lenovo Group to partner Meta and NVIDIA to boost its AI offerings in markets outside China, alongside implementing Meta’s Llama LLM for PC chatbots / full item
Destination Southeast Asia: Trends, Founders, Startups
- Binance crypto exchange has expanded reach in West and Central Africa, integrating mobile money payments for cryptocurrency purchases in 6 countries / full item
- China’s Huawei and Saudi Arabia’s Alinma Bank, a Shariah-compliant banking and financial services institution, partner for digital infra growth, and possible cloud banking / full item
- Apple Music inks partnership deal with China Mobile, hoping to monetize China Mobile’s more than 1BN subscribers with app- and retail-based subscription offerings / full item
- China: AutowiseAI gains license for unmanned road cleaning vehicles in Hangzhou, using LiDAR, machine vision, vehicle-to-cloud tech and more / full item
- China: Alibaba invests in Robot Era, aka Xingdong Jiyuan, in $42M Pre-A round, looking at further development of humanoid robots and ’embodied intelligence’ technologies / full item
- China Aerospace Science & Tech Corp’n launches 2nd group of 18 satellites for 14,000-sat ‘Thousand Sails’ mega-constellation, aka ‘G60 Starlink’ / full item
- China: Fifth Gaofen-12 satellite enters orbit for China’s Earth observation system, with stated focus areas including land surveys, urban planning and road network design / full item
- “…it is likely that China will become as innovative as foreign robotic producers in the midterm at the latest, while also enjoying a significant cost advantage.” / full item
- China Mobile unveils plans for low-altitude economy and generative AI, targeting 100 low-altitude demo projects by 2025 alongside Jiutian AI’s 30 industry-specific AI models / full item
- China: Huawei’s MateXT triple-fold smartphone is reportedly facing significant hinge durability issues just weeks after release, exacerbated for users by high price point / full item
- China: A broad overview of the many steps taken to implement a national blockchain infrastructure / full item
- China launches trial of cross-border payments CBDCs with Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Thailand and UAE with International Monetary Fund and others as observers / full item
- “Chinese scientists have mounted what they say is the world’s first effective attack on a widely used encryption method using a quantum computer.” / full item
- China: ByteDance, TikTok parent firm, launches $170 AI-enabled earbuds linked to ByteDance Doubao chatbot / full item
- China: Baidu looks to expand Apollo Go robotaxi unit overseas, entering talks with foreign automakers, ride-share firms and tech companies / full item
AXA Future Risks Report 2024
- China is to launch 2-3 quantum communications satellites in 2025, and one in 2027, connecting with ground-based networks in pursuit of global coverage / full item
- China: “Temu is looking to turn the costs of Amazon’s full range of logistics, order processing, transport, delivery and customer relations services into a weakness it can exploit…” / full item
- China: “…this was the place to be for ambitious merchants hoping to strike gold in the country’s booming livestreaming e-commerce industry – until the competition simmered to a boil…” / full item
- China: CRRS Corp Qingdao Sifang unveils hydrogen train capable of 200kmph, claiming 745 miles on a single charge, capable of refueling in 15 minutes and emitting only water / full item
- An overview of China’s growing interest in vehicle-to-grid technologies – V2G – wherein EVs double as mobile power banks, sending stored energy back to the grid / full item
- US Dep’t of Commerce issues preliminary duties on solar energy imports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, addressing competition from China-owned manufacturers / full item
- China: TikTok parent firm, ByteDance, is to develop an AI model trained primarily using Huawei chips as ‘tech war’ pressures grow on access and supply chain / full item
- China: Shijian-19 reusable satellite launches to research low Earth orbit radiation’s impact on seeds, potentially generating beneficial mutations such as short breeding cycles / full item
- China: A brief intro to Cofe+ from Hi-Dolphin Robot Tech, a fully-automated coffee kiosk / full item
- China Telecom has trained LLMs using domestic-only AI chips – most likely Huawei Ascend chips – with one model reportedly using 1 trillion parameters / full item
- “Sophgo was founded by Micree Zhan… Zhan is also the co-founder and chair of Bitmain, the largest Bitcoin ASIC designer and a provider of water-cooled crypto mining systems.” / full item
- Australia-China research identifies new method for lithium extraction from saltwater, with lower environmental impacts and faster processing, and freshwater as a by-product / full item
- Taiwan’s TSMC suspended shipments reportedly for Sophgo, a China-based chip designer affiliated with Bitmain crypto-mining firm, after chip made for Sophgo appeared on a Huawei AI processor / full item
- HSBC Hong Kong unit has joined China’s worldwide interbank renminbi payment system, CIPS, as a direct offshore participant, with Beijing pushing to internationalise the yuan / full item
Lazard: The Geopolitics of Supply Chains
- Australia-linked Ioneer gains US federal permit for Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron mine, potentially supplying lithium for 370K EVs a year and quadrupling US production / full item
- Hong Kong: Civil service is now banned from using messaging and cloud services including WhatsApp, WeChat and Google Drive on work computers due to ‘severe internet safety risks’ / full item
- “TSMC halted shipments to the client around mid-October after it realised semiconductors fabricated for that entity had found their way into Huawei products…” / full item
- Taiwan’s TSMC has notified US commerce department over customer orders for chip resembling Huawei Ascend 910B, potentially an attempt to circumvent tech restrictions / full item
- Thailand: Prime Minister invites China to build a satellite launch base for providing 6G technology in Thailand / full item
- Indonesia: Government orders Apple and Google to remove Temu e-commerce app from app stores, alongside plans for similar block on Shein, citing MSME protections / full item
- Indonesia’s gov’t-owned Battery Corp and China’s CATL battery-tech giant enter $1.2BN battery production JV, adding to Indonesia’s recent Hyundai and LG deals / full item
- Vietnam’s National Payment Corporation inks MOU with China’s UnionPay International for cross-border QR code interoperability, allowing QR payments between the two networks / full item
- Cambodia: Central bank partners China’s Ant International for Alipay+ cross-border mobile payments via the KHQR system, facilitated by Cambodia’s Bakong CBDC / full item
Lowy Institute Asia Power Index 2024 – Key findings
- China’s ByteDance, TikTok parent firm, has laid off more than 700 workers from its Malaysian unit, shifting focus towards greater use of AI in content moderation / full item
- Hong Kong Science & Tech Parks Corp’n unveils 12 new partner organisations, working in international data, health tech, artificial intelligence and more / full item
- US & UAE: “The agreement was formalised last Monday, with the two countries’ national security advisers endorsing ‘common principles for cooperation on AI’…” / full item
- South Korea’s SK On preps for mass production of prismatic batteries for the first time, supplying to China’s Geely electric vehicles maker / full item
- Malaysia’s Sipjoy takes win at most recent Alibaba Cloud Startup Demo Day with digital solutions for coffee shops / full item
- ICYMI: Democratic Republic of Congo sets sights on ‘better investors, more investors and diversified investors’ for critical mineral deposits and infra, see security in diversification / full item
- Philippines: Ayala Corp to sell 50% of shares in Mynt, parent of GCash – and JV between China’s Ant Group, Philippines’ Globe Telecom and Ayala – to Japan’s Mitsubishi in $318M deal / full item
- “Indonesia and Vietnam are currently leading the manufacturing and trade flow shifts… In 2023, Indonesia received about $33BN in greenfield manufacturing FDI and Vietnam about $16BN…” / full item
- Philippines: StB Giga Factory Inc launches to produce advanced lithium iron phosphate batteries, with plans to export 70% / full item
3rd Quarter: Critical technologies in the news, globally
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