Microsoft discovered a high-severity vulnerability in the TikTok Android application, which could have allowed attackers to compromise users’ accounts with a single click. The vulnerability, which would have required several issues to be chained together to exploit, has been fixed and we did not locate any evidence of in-the-wild exploitation. Attackers could have leveraged the vulnerability to hijack an account without users’ awareness if a targeted user simply clicked a specially crafted link…
July 2022 | August 2022 | September 2022
Asia’s tech newsletter, weekly on Substack
in September 2022
Accenture Chinese Consumer Insights 2022
- Microsoft discovered high-severity vulnerability in TikTok Android app, potentially allowing hackers to compromise users’ accounts with just one click
- US tech firms receiving gov’t funding face ban from building advanced tech facilities in China for a decade as part of plan to boost domestic semiconductor industry, reduce reliance on China-produced components
- China: Social media firm increasingly adding hidden watermarks to screenshots, making images traceable wherever shared, likely a bid to identify users posting censored content outside the ‘Great Firewall’
- Overseas WeChat users notified ‘personal data [including] likes, comments, browsing and search history…uploads etc’ will be transmitted to China, 12 months after data-storage separation claim
- In just one day in October 2021, two of China’s top live-streamers, Li Jiaqi and Viya, sold $3BN worth of goods. That’s roughly three times Amazon’s average daily sales.
US-China: Mid-Decade Challenges to National Competitiveness
- Foreign investment vs sanctions: “Chinese investment in Mexico jumped from $154 million in 2016 to $271 million the following year, when Donald Trump took office threatening a trade war.”
- China: 3 autonomous driving companies to trial 10 robocars on Henqin island in Guangdong province, with major backers including Baidu, Meituan, Softbank and Bytedance
- China: Shiseido cosmetics giant launches Fibona Co-Creation with Startups program, delivered by Plug and Play China, seeking startups in ‘medical beauty tech’ and ‘holistic beauty tech’
- China: Huawei unveils new flagship Mate 50-series smartphones, minus 5G capability due to sanctions on the company, but instead featuring ability to connect with BeiDou satellite navigation system
- China’s third-party payments business is withering, with at least 20 operators reselling or giving up their licences, which once fetched billions of yuan in the second-hand market.
Bain & Co: 2022 Technology Report
- China: Baidu’s text-to-image AI is unveiled, claiming better Chinese-focused generation than other AIs – but built-in censorship filters out politically-sensitive words, places, individuals and events
- ICYMI: “…in China…housing price-to-income ratio is ‘much higher’ than the international average of 3 to 6 times. In 2021, average housing prices were 12 times more than average incomes…”
- China: Huawei boosts moves from core business activities with release of ‘Digital First Economy Whitepaper – Asia Pacific’, aiming for ICT infrastructure and policy role
- ICYMI: US Federal Comm’s Commission adds China’s Pacific Networks, ComNet subsidiary and China Unicom to ‘Covered List’, citing national security concerns over company control, data access and more
- China: “As many as 3,470 [chip-related] firms…deregistered between January and August…That number surpassed the 3,420 such firms that closed in 2021 and the 1,397 that went defunct in 2020…”
- China: & big tech: Local gov’t authorities and Communist Party propaganda offices for cities, provinces, districts buying ads on Twitter – banned in China – pushing propaganda to global audiences
- Following China’s lead…majority of SCO members, as well as other authoritarian states, are quickly trending toward more digital rights abuses…mass digital surveillance…censorship and controls on individual expression.
- China: Nio electric car firm moves on Europe’s growing EVs market, launching network of battery leasing and swapping stations, seeing opportunities in swapping vs on-site charging
- China: TechCrunch takes a brief look at aspects of the country’s semiconductor and chip manufacturing moves
- China: Central bank completes digital yuan trial, handling 160+ cross-border payments and for-ex transactions totalling over $21M, with Hong Kong, Thailand and UAE taking part
- ICYMI: Binance recently held a workshop for the Securities and Exchange Regulator of Cambodia, aiming to ‘deepen SERC officials’ understanding of the digital asset space’
- ICYMI: UK’s Imperial College to shut down two major research centres sponsored by Chinese aerospace and defence companies over concerns over China military use of research
- India: Tata Group is reportedly in discussions with US-based Wistron to establish a manufacturing JV for assembling iPhones in India, continuing trend of moving production away from China
in August 2022
US-China: Mid-Decade Challenges to National Competitiveness
- China: Xinjiang’s woes deepen with introduction of 20 driverless electric patrol vehicles, each fitted with eight 360-degree facial recognition-capable surveillance cameras
- China’s virtual influencers: “…behind the perfect faces of China’s $16BN virtual celebrity industry is an angry, overworked labor force.”
- China’s driverless vehicles: “In Shenzhen, the capital cost is one third to California, because we have the battery suppliers..sensors…integration. But the revenue is one-twelfth to California…”
- China: Alibaba e-commerce giant and Xpeng electric vehicle firm partner for Mongolia center for driverless car software, aiming to bring core software ‘training’ time down
- China: Agricultural Commerce Bank of Zhangjiagang issues 500K ‘digital yuan’ loan with intellectual property as collateral, adding to 15-province e-CNY testing site moves
Southeast Asia’s digital consumers / Meta and Bain & Co (pdf)
- China: 70/30 Foodtech preps to debut mycelium-based alt-meat meal products focused on mimicking shredded chicken, with sights on bid for Series A funding
- China: More on gov’t expansion of digital yuan loans to businesses and individuals, potentially allowing real-time monitoring, tracking and recording of every transaction
- China: Baidu gains approval for 5 fully driverless robotaxis in districts in two cities, covering 13km in Wuhan and 30km in Chongqing
- China: ByteDance, parent of security red-flagged TikTok, steps further into healthcare with acquisition of Amcare, network of high-end children’s and women’s hospitals
- China: Biren Technology launches its first graphics processing chip, claiming a peak hash rate higher than Nvidia’s products
- “Based on the number of cameras per 1000 people, these cities are the top 10 most surveilled in the world…”
- Musk takes backlash after writing column for China’s censorship agency, the Cyberspace Administration, adding uncomfortable counterpoint to Musk’s recent ‘free speech’ bid for Twitter
- Sequoia China establishes new accelerator program, YUÈ, providing courses and resources for Chinese entrepreneurs from angel-round to A-round, with graduates potentially in line for $1M Sequoia backing
- “When TikTok users enter a website through a link on the app, TikTok inserts code that can monitor much of their activity on those outside websites, including their keystrokes and whatever they tap on the page…”
Protect Your Democracy / Tools from Google and Jigsaw
- Deloitte and Alibaba partner for Deloitte-Alibaba Cloud Auto Industry Center in Hangzhou to focus on computing aspects of driverless vehicles
- China: Tech majors including Huawei, Tencent and Epic Games partner universities for Joint Research Institute of Metaverse and Virtual-Real Interaction
- China: Nreal AR glasses firm gains $15M from South Korea’s Licombined, parent of Gentle Monster sunglasses brand, in likely move towards partnership rather than single investment
- China: Digital Yuan payments trials roll out in public transport sector, with expansion of subway transport payment trials and first addition of road transport payments
- China: Beijing launches metaverse development plan requiring municipalities to track NFT trends and integrate metaverse-related tech into education and tourism
- China: Country’s largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing Int’l Corp, inks agreement for new $7.5BN foundry in Tianjin despite US sanctions, on back of near-7-nanometer chip production success
Chinese Cybercrime in Neighboring Countries / Report
in July 2022
- Hang Seng Indexes Company recently launched the Hang Seng China Metaverse Index, and Genomics and Oncology Index, focusing on performance of Chinese companies
- US Federal Communications commission member requests Apple, Google remove TikTok from app stores over China-related data security and policy compliance concerns
- China and NFTs: “…should hold relevant regulatory permits…enforce user real-identity checks…resolutely ban financial speculations and promote rational consumption…”
- China: Pinduoduo social e-commerce platform expected to overtake rivals JD and Alibaba in terms of gross merchandise value growth by 2024
- ICYMI: China’s TikTok preparing to launch warehousing plan called ‘Aquaman’ for UK e-commerce business, aiming shorten the time needed for cross-border logistics
- China: Meitu beauty app anticipates near $52M in crypto investment losses for H1 2022 alone, resulting from crypto crash
- China: Tencent begins testing NFT avatars for use in QQ music app, minus ability to trade NFTs due to government regulations around speculation
- China: Internet regulator amps up crackdown on online scams, removing 42,000 counterfeit financial service apps and adding to fraud blacklist of 3.8M sites and 514,000 apps
- China: An overview of the increasing, and often undefined, restrictions on content, behaviour and even dress being placed on the country’s livestreamers, leading to bans and self-censorship
- China: TikTok parent firm ByteDance to launch Kesong social media app, stepping up competition with Xiaohongshu social e-commerce rival
- China: Tencent News shuts NFT trading feature following gov’t ban on secondary trading of digital collectibles; Tencent’s Magic Core NFT trading firm also suffers
- China: Geely automaker launches Radar Auto electric pickup, claiming a range of 595km and stepping into direct competition with Rivian electric vehicle range
- China: Weibo, the country’s Twitter clone, to further boost censorship, regulating deliberately misspelt words used to discuss state-censored topics and events
- China: Syrius Robotics lands $7.4M Series B with advanced autonomous warehouse robots capable of planning routes and reacting in real time
- ICYMI: China’s Huawei under investigation in the US over concerns that cell towers fitted with its gear may capture information from military bases and missile silos
- China’s digital yuan: “…full launch of the currency remains elusive as a population used to mobile payments such as Alipay and WeChatPay sees no reason to abandon their familiar apps.”
- Malaysia: Huawei Spark Accelerator 2022 competition launches, aiming to identify, incubate, accelerate and boost the innovation of Malaysia’s startups and deep tech firms
- ICYMI: France to build major microchip facility, boosting capacity from 10,000 to 22,000 wafers per week, partly in EU move to minimize China supply exposure
- Myanmar: Military junta is now installing cameras with facial recognition technology from Huawei, Hikvision and Dahua, claiming ‘smart city’ move and not protestor identification
- Australia: Telstra completes acquisition of Digicel Pacific in Au$2.4BN deal, in part a geopolitically-astute move to counter China’s influence activities in the region
- SNA round-up: Twitter vs the Indian government; earned-wage-access fintech in Indonesia; China’s Weibo boosts CCP censorship efforts; Taiwan’s EVs in Thailand; Australia’s Intersekt fintech conference; agri-tech in Cambodia…
The Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States
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