Shrinking share: People walk outside an Apple
store in Beijing. Apple’s market share in China in the third quarter of
2018 was around 9, and has dipped from above 14 in 2015, overtaken by
local rivals like Huawei, Oppo and Vivo. — Reuters
https://youtu.be/iJfCBqPUKHQ
SHANGHAI: Apple Inc’s chief executive Tim Cook has his work cut out in China this year: the iPhone maker faces the looming threat of a court-ordered sales ban, the uncertain outcome of trade war talks and the roll-out of a new 5G network, where it finds itself behind rivals like Huawei and Samsung.
The complex outlook raises a challenge for Apple as it looks to revive its China fortunes after weakness there sparked a rare drop in its global sales forecast, knocked US$75bil from its market valuation and roiled global markets.
Cook told investors that the main drag on the firm’s performance in China had been a sharper-than-expected slowdown in the country’s economy, exacerbated by the impact of trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.
“We did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China,” he said.
Chinese shoppers told Reuters another element had been key: the high price-tag on Apple’s flagship phones.
Analysts said the firm faced a brewing storm of challenges: an economic slowdown, stronger rivals like Huawei Technologies Co Ltd bringing out comparable tech at lower prices and bubbling patriotic sentiment amid the trade war.
A Chinese court has also issued a preliminary injunction banning some Apple phones, part of a legal battle with chip maker Qualcomm Inc. This ban, potentially hitting iPhone models from the 6S through the X, has yet to be enforced.
Last Thursday a local industry body, the China Anti-Infringement and Anti-Counterfeit Innovation Strategic Alliance, called on Apple to heed the court order and not “trample the Chinese law by leveraging its super economic power and clout.” Apple declined to comment on the group’s statement but has previously said it believed its current phones complied with the Chinese court’s order.
“These are tough times for Apple in China,” said Neil Shah, research director at Counterpoint, adding the iPhone could see its market share slip to 7% this year in the face of stronger local rivals and worry about the sales ban.
Apple’s market share in the third-quarter of 2018 was around 9%, and has dipped from above 14% in 2015, overtaken by local rivals like Huawei, Oppo and Vivo.
Another question mark for Apple is its 5G strategy in China, where the US firm is not expected to have a 5G-enabled phone until 2020, behind rivals like Huawei, Xiaomi Corp and Samsung Electronics.
China is looking to push ahead with its rollout of a faster 5G network, with a pre-commercial phase this year and a commercial network in 2020.
Some are looking to make an early bet on the technology.
Huawei is planning a 5G phone mid-year, while Xiaomi is aiming for the third quarter. Samsung is expected to unveil a 5G phone in the first half of the year.
Industry insiders, however, said Apple would likely hold off until the fall of 2020 to have its own 5G-enabled phone, a strategy that would bypass the untested early period of the technology, but which could mean Chinese shoppers delay iPhone purchases or buy another brand that switched to 5G earlier.
“I’ll definitely be paying attention to 5G functionality when I buy my next phone,” said Wu Chengjun, a graduate student in Beijing who currently uses an iPhone X.
With the exception of Huawei, which makes it own 5G chips, Qualcomm is providing the technology to many of the major phone makers releasing 5G handsets this year.
“If you’re a (phone maker) looking for a ‘super cycle’ (of sales), if you don’t have 5G, your situation won’t get any better,” Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s president, told Reuters in an interview. ”
The carrier channel is going to be incentivised to start selling 5G phones in the second half of 2019, he said. — Reuters
This photo of Shanghai Bund is taken by Chinese Satellite with 24.9 billion
pixels of quantum technology. It's worth seeing! You can zoom in, zoom
out when you look at it. You can clearly see every gesture, even face of
pedestrians on the road. You can see the license plate. Photos can also
be moved up and down, left and right. It is said that this is the
latest development of China's military science and technology
achievements, hidden, indeed suffered harm!!! It can also be rotated.
Press'+'to zoom in and'-' to zoom out. Left and right rotation. It's too
clear!
Quantum
Technology will be used in 5G phone very soon. Europe and US are scared
to death now because this technology is monopoly in nature
Why did Canada arrest the CFO of Chinese tech giant Huawei? – Samsung surrendered its Chip IP right to US companies in order to survive
By Janus Dongye, Researcher at University of Cambridge
The detailed reason for this arrest has been revealed. Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng is suspected of conspiracy to defraud multiple financial US institutions. The US Judiciary found that there was a company called Skycom that traded with Iran during 2011–2014 and Huawei was suspected to control the company Skycom at that time.
So the accusation is about the old Iran sanctions 7 years ago. And you might wonder why someone brought this up at this particular time.
There is something else that you need to know to understand this incident.
Global 5G Battle
5G is the fifth generation of cellular mobile communications. It succeeds the 4G (LTE/WiMax), 3G (UMTS) and 2G (GSM) systems. 5G is the new critical node for the future global supply chain. This is the ultimate technology that determines the communication/mobile networks in the next 10 years. Therefore this is a big cake that everyone wants to get a slice from it.
The whole 5G framework can be divided into two key technology: the modem chipset and router infrastructure.
On one hand, the modem chipset is installed in your phones and other sensors that need to be connected to the Internet.
The current 5G modem chipset patent (IP) is held by:
Huawei (China), Qualcomm (US), Samsung (Korea), MediaTek (Taiwan), Intel (US), Apple (US) (rumoured).
On the other hand, the router infrastructure is placed in base stations all over the buildings and towers. It directly talks to the 5G modem in your mobile phones and translates your 5G requests to the Internet.
The current 5G router patent (IP) is held by:
Huawei (China), Nokia (Finland), Ericsson (Sweden), ZTE (China) Surprise Hah?, Cisco (US), Samsung (Korea).
There are two hidden traps from this 5G technology that other people might not tell you:
The router and the modem chipset must be compatible, and therefore a standard must be settled in order for them to talk.
The modem chipset is deeply coupled into the system on a single chip with CPU and GPUs. The system is normally shipped as a package.
If you hold the 5G modem IP in a SOC (System-on-chip), you can also bind your CPU and GPU IP in a package. That means whoever controls the 5G IP would also control the whole market of the CPU and GPU intellectual property. If you hold the 5G router standard, you can also control the modem standard and then control the whole system standard.
For example, if the US were to allow Huawei to sell its 5G router devices to Verizon or AT&T, then Huawei could make all of its base stations to only support its own modem standard. Then you could end up with the whole system package delivered by Huawei as well. Then the US might have to buy more devices made by Huawei in order to use 5G.
That’s how Qualcomm rose from a small company to the top simply based on its 3G patents. And you can see that Huawei and Samsung is the dominant player here that they both control the modem and router patents.
However, owing to the pressure of the US government, Samsung surrendered its chip IP right to US companies. This is the fundamental difference between Samsung and Huawei. Because the South Korean market is so small and therefore Samsung has to surrender to the US in order to survive.
Samsung Galaxy S10 Comes with Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC and 5G Service – Tech News Watch
You might wonder why Samsung does not use its Exynos processors in US but it has to use Qualcomm one? That is the pressure from the US government.
Meanwhile, Huawei gets the full cultivation in the Chinese market and does not fear the US government. It never intends to go to the US market as well. What it focuses on is the adoption in China and the rest of third-world countries. If you read the following recent news, you can get a feeling that China is really leading the global 5G battle in all three fields: technology, adoption and market.
Chongqing launches first 5G trial network
‘World’s first’ 5G call completed by Vodafone and Huawei
China Mobile and China Unicom to start 5G trials | TelecomLead
Briefing: China’s mobile operators granted nationwide 5G licenses · TechNode
The Chinese government said it would perform nationwide 5G adoption using Huawei technology around March 2019. Please note that this is a market of 1.4 billion people that is US population and Europe population combined. And the Chinese government is pushing this really hard, unlike the US stuck in legislation as you can imagine.
Meanwhile, the first adoption of 5G belongs to South Korea, which is four months ahead of China:
South Korean carriers set surprise commercial 5G launch for December 1 And compared to the US government, both Chinese and Korean government are very efficient in promoting 5G infrastructures. In this manner, US companies are really lagging behind. This could firstly cause wide-spread fears among the US companies. It is very likely that those companies would lobby the US Congress to ban Huawei at first. The arrest happens just before the Huawei 5G technology is going to be adopted commercially in China.
It is very likely that some people wanted to disrupt the growth of Huawei. Everyone talks about the Huawei arrest. But no one is talking about who initiated the investigation against Huawei and who filed the case in the US juridical system in the first place?
Another interesting side note during the incident:
Cisco temporarily bans employees from China
I suspect CISCO could be the one who actually filed the case to ban Huawei.
China’s business people, researchers, scholars say they ‘feel the chill’ in US
Growing China-US tensions have affected technology cooperation as Chinese scientists and researchers in cutting-edged sectors such as big data and artificial intelligence have seen rising obstacles in working with US counterparts this year.
Tensions have intensified after Canada announced the detention of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou at the request of the US.
This move is believed to be part of the US' intentions of dampening Chinese companies and investment, which aroused worries that McCarthyism is back in Washington.
"Some open-sourced platforms developed by American firms, such as in the machine learning algorithm sector, have started to limit access or charge fees for tapping into those platforms," a senior scientist in a Shenzhen-based AI company, who asked for anonymity, told the Global Times on Thursday.
"Some Chinese scientists were denied visas this year when they planned to attend academic meetings in the US, and the US' cautious attitude toward Chinese engineers has become more obvious," he said.
The Chinese academic community has felt the chill in relations since the beginning of this year, and the recent arrest of Meng has escalated conflict between the US and China. Some industry representatives even deemed the arrest as a long-term plan by the US to curb China's rise in high technology.
Meanwhile, the effects of the tension have also expanded to business. Hong Kong political risk consultancy SVA said they noticed a remarkable increase in inquiries from US-based companies about potential problems of traveling to China after Meng's detention for fear of China's retaliation, the Japan-based Nikkei Asian Review reported on Tuesday.
A Hong Kong-based financial technology company also moved two investor meetings from Shanghai to Manila to avoid being affected by Meng's case in consideration of its US co-founder, according to the Nikkei report.
The Trump administration has been restricting visas for the Chinese academic community studying in sensitive research fields to one year since June 11, reflecting its efforts to stop alleged intellectual property theft and hinder China's push for technological supremacy, the New York Times reported in July.
"The consensus of curbing China's influence has been forged inside the US government, and Chinese companies should be well prepared for confrontation in the long term," Sun Qingkai, partner of the major Chinese AI firm CloudWalk, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Sun's remarks are echoed by the tendency of Americans to habitually doubt anything related to China, particularly to Huawei at this moment.
The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, released a report in October 2017 on safe cities. The report, supported by Huawei, speaks highly of a new policing technology implemented in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi and the Chinese city of Lijiang but failed to mention that the technology was provided by Huawei.
An opinion piece of The Washington Post published on December 7 listed financial support from Huawei to Brookings and interactions between the writer of the report, Darrell M. West, who is also Brookings vice president, and Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei.
It then said that such relationship raises doubts over West's scholarship practices and represents "a worrying example of China's influence on one of America's leading think tanks" without providing any hard evidence.
China's cooperation with other countries was also negatively affected, especially those in high-tech sectors. An example is the Japanese government's recent ban on Huawei and ZTE from official contracts. The move followed an earlier warning from the US about security risks involved in using Chinese-made equipment, Washington Post reported on Monday.
McCarthyism warning
The current US strategy of blaming China for its own domestic economic and social problems reflects the country's anxiety and myopia facing these problems, which would only worsen the situation, Zha Xiaogang, a research fellow at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Zha warned that although it seems impossible for the US to return to the McCarthy-era "red scare," when the anti-communism campaign penetrated all aspects of US society, such risks remain if the situation continues to escalate.
"There is already a dire ripple effect from the US-China trade war, which will hurt the US itself and global technology collaboration," said the Shenzhen-based senior scientist.
However, technology companies have been urging more cooperation instead of confrontation, which would hurt global advancement in this sector.
Major tech giants such as US firms Google and Apple, and China's Huawei have highlighted the importance of global collaboration, which will be the driving force for technology advancement.
Google Vice President Jay Yagnik told the Global Times in an earlier interview in September that technology has been a greater "uniter" globally from a historical view. Instead of thinking about competition, companies should think about it in terms of bringing the world together and taking society to the next level.
It is in everyone's best interest that the US and China reach an agreement on trade and future intellectual property and technology collaboration, Chris Dong, global research director at International Data Corporation, told the Global Times on Thursday.
"A more open market with less government intervention, and with mutual respect and reciprocity, will benefit not only a healthier US and China trade relationship, but also the talent and knowledge exchanges," Dong said.- Global Times
Canada can end Huawei case, but will it?
The global business community has been alarmed by the
executive's arrest in Canada. This has created uncertainty over
international travel among corporate executives. Unconditionally freeing
Meng will allay such apprehensions.
China detains 2 Canadians
China has informed the Canadian government of the
detention of two Canadians who are under investigation on suspicion of
jeopardizing China's national security, saying their legal rights will
be protected.
https://youtu.be/eO4vHvd20EE
US act on Tibet visits interferes in internal affairs: experts
The US is on the verge of passing a law that would deny
the entry of Chinese officials who are involved in restricting
foreigners from visiting Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, with
Chinese experts slamming the move for using US domestic laws to
interfere in China's internal affairs, and called for a tit-for-tat
retaliation if it were implemented
In custody: A profile of Meng is displayed on a
computer at a Huawei store in Beijing. The Chinese government, speaking
through its embassy in Canada, strenuously objected to the arrest, and
demanded Meng’s immediate release. — AP
https://youtu.be/8Uxk0mEonTA
https://youtu.be/sAha76_6YQQ
China urges release of Huawei executive
- In violation of universal human rights
Chinese officials are urging the US and Canada to clarify why Meng Wanzhou, a senior executive of Huawei Technologies, has been detained and to immediately release her, slamming the arrest as a violation of her rights.
Experts said on Thursday that Meng's detention is a move by the US to heat up the ongoing trade war between China and the US.
Meng, who is Huawei's chief financial officer and the daughter of Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei, was detained as she was transferring flights in Canada, according to information provided by Huawei, one of China's tech giants.
Meng's detention was made following a request by the US, which is seeking her extradition on as yet unspecified charges made by prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, a Huawei spokesperson told the Global Times on Thursday.
Meng was arrested in Vancouver on Saturday, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing a spokesperson from Canada's Justice Department.
"China has demanded that the US and Canada immediately clarify the reasons for Meng's detention and to release her," Geng Shuang, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a daily press briefing on Thursday.
He noted that Chinese consular officials in Canada have already provided assistance to Meng.
Meng's detention, made without any clearly stated charges, is an obvious violation of her human rights, said Geng.
The Chinese Embassy in Canada also said on Thursday morning that it firmly opposes and has made strong protests over the action which has seriously curtailed the rights of a Chinese citizen.
"The Chinese side has lodged stern representations with the US and Canadian side, and urged them to immediately correct the wrongdoing and restore the personal freedom of Meng Wanzhou," the Chinese Embassy in Canada said in a statement published on its website.
A Canadian source with knowledge of the arrest was quoted in the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail on Thursday as saying that US law enforcement authorities allege that Huawei violated US sanctions against Iran but provided no further details.
Although Meng's detention stems from terms of the US-Canada extradition treaty, the US should not be taking such legal action without providing concrete evidence, especially when it has been trying to restore relations with China, Hao Junbo, a Beijing-based lawyer, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Chinese officials and experts criticized the US for its long-arm jurisdiction, which not only hurts individuals but also enterprises.
Rising obstacles
Huawei has been targeted by the US for many years, from patent infringement lawsuits to political pressure, Xiang Ligang, chief executive of the telecom industry news site cctime.com, told the Global Times on Thursday.
"As the Chinese company grew stronger, it faced more obstacles in foreign markets as it is considered as a threat to local players," he said.
Cisco Systems filed the first lawsuit against Huawei in 2003. Motorola filed a lawsuit accusing Huawei of theft of trade secrets in 2010, according to media reports. The company also faced investigation by the US Congress on security issues.
Since at least 2016, US authorities have been probing Huawei's alleged shipping of US-origin products to Iran and other countries in violation of US export and sanctions laws, Reuters reported in April.
The US also asked its major allies to say 'no' to Huawei equipment, as it was worried about alleged potential Chinese meddling in 5G networks, the Wall Street Journal reported on November 23.
While the company faces rising difficulties in the US market, it has been actively exploring other markets such as the EU and Africa.
It became the world's largest telecom equipment provider in 2017, surpassing Ericsson and ZTE, industry website telecomlead.com reported in March, citing IHS data.
Huawei has a 28 percent market share in the global telecom infrastructure industry, followed by Ericsson and Nokia, which have 27 percent and 23 percent respectively, said the report.
Escalating trade war
The US will not stop countering China's rise in the technology sector and will never drop its hostility toward China's "Made in China 2025" strategy, Wang Yanhui, head of the Shanghai-based Mobile China Alliance, told the Global Times on Thursday.
"Huawei has become another card for the US to play against China in the ongoing trade war," he said.
China and the US announced a trade truce following a meeting between the two countries' top leaders in Buenos Aires on Saturday.
But experts warned that China should be prepared for a long-lasting and heated trade war with the US, as it will continue to attempt to counter China's rising power.
"The latest Huawei incident shows that we should get ready for long-term confrontation between China and the US, as the US will not ease its stance on China and the arrest of a senior executive of a major Chinese tech company is a vivid example," Mei Xinyu, a research fellow with the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Huawei said there is very little information about specific allegations and that the company is not aware of any misconduct by Meng.
"The company complies with all laws and regulations in the countries in which it operates, including export control and sanctions laws applied in the UN, the US and the EU," Huawei said. - Global Times by Chen Qingqing
We hope that Canadian authorities handle the case
seriously and properly. We also hope that Ms Meng will be treated
humanely and will be bailed out. We would like to see Meng's case being
handled properly, so that she can regain her freedom as soon as
possible. Chinese society has always respected Canada, and it is
sincerely hoped that the way how Canadian authorities handle this matter
will live up to Chinese people's expectation and impressions regarding
the country.
The Chinese government should seriously go behind the US
tendency to abuse legal procedures to suppress China's high-tech
enterprises. It should increase interaction with the US and exert
pressure when necessary. China has been exercising restraint, but the US
cannot act recklessly. US President Donald Trump should rein in the
hostile activities of some Americans who may imperil Sino-US relations.
US takes aim at Huawei
Arrest of telecom giant's CFO escalates US-China tech battle
THE Trump administration’s efforts to extradite the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies Co over criminal charges mark the start of an even more aggressive phase in the technology rivalry between the United States and China and will increase pressure on Washington’s allies to shun the telecommunications company.
Armed with a US extradition request, Canadian authorities arrested Meng Wanzhou on Dec 1, the same day as President Trump was holding a summit with Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping. But White House officials said Trump had no advance knowledge of the arrest, indicating the action was on a separate track from trade talks currently under way between Washington and Beijing.
Meng’s detention underscores a sense of urgency, at the Justice Department and other US agencies, to address what they see as a growing threat to national security posed by China’s ambitions to gain an edge in the tech sector. For years, Washington has alleged the Chinese government could compel Huawei, which supplies much of the world with critical cellular network equipment, to spy or to disrupt communications.
Huawei has long said it is an employee-owned company and isn’t beholden to any government, and has never used its equipment to spy on or sabotage other countries. The Chinese government, speaking through its embassy in Canada, strenuously objected to the arrest, and demanded Meng’s immediate release.
US prosecutors made the extradition request based on a sealed indictment for alleged violations of Iran sanctions that had been prepared for some time, people familiar with the matter said. A federally appointed US overseer, formerly charged with evaluating HSBC Holdings PLC’s anti-money-laundering and sanctions controls, relayed information about suspicious Huawei transactions to federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, some of the people said.
Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, is now in custody in Vancouver, and a bail hearing has been scheduled for Friday, according to a spokesman for Canada’s justice department.
Some worried a lack of coordination on the various strands of the Trump administration’s China initiatives could be counterproductive, especially if Trump decides to use the detention of Meng as leverage to extract concessions in the trade talks. The two sides agreed on a 90-day window from the Dec 1 summit to settle a trade dispute that has seen the two sides exchange tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s goods.
“I’m very concerned that that’s just going to ratchet this trade war and make negotiations much more difficult,” said Gary Locke, former US ambassador to China. “This is I think a really hot-button, almost a grenade with respect to the 90-day negotiations.”
China has a long history of reading darker motives into US actions. “The risk is conspiracy theories in Beijing,” said China scholar Michael Pillsbury at Hudson Institute, who consults regularly with the Trump trade team. He compares the events to when China rejected US explanations that the United States had made a mistake when it bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 during the Kosovo war.
The arrest indicated the Justice Department had significant evidence against Meng, and that additional charges were likely, said Brian Fleming, a trade and national security lawyer at Miller & Chevalier. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
The arrest could also add ammunition to an extraordinary US government campaign to persuade wireless and Internet providers in allied countries to stop using telecommunications equipment from Huawei, said national security experts.
US officials say they are intensifying efforts to curb Huawei because wireless carriers world-wide are about to upgrade to 5G, a new wireless technology that will connect many more items—factory parts, self-driving cars and everyday objects like wearable health monitors – to the Internet. US officials say they don’t want to give Beijing the potential to interfere with an ever-growing universe of connected devices.
Tech rivalry: The high-tech trade war shows
that for all the hoopla over manufacturing jobs, steel autos and
tariffs, the real competition is in the tech sector. — Reuters
IF you only scan the headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking that the US-China trade war is mainly about tariffs.
After all, the president and trade-warrior-in-chief has called himself “Tariff Man”. And the tentative trade deal between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was mainly about tariffs, especially on items like automobiles.
But the startling arrest in Canada of a Chinese telecom company executive should wake people up to the fact that there’s a second US-China trade war going on – a much more stealthy conflict, fought with weapons much subtler and more devastating than tariffs. And the prize in that other struggle is domination of the information-technology industry.
The arrested executive, Wanzhou Meng, is the chief financial officer of telecom-equipment manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co (and its founder’s daughter). The official reason for her arrest is that Huawei is suspected of selling technology to Iran, in violation of US sanctions.
It’s the second big Chinese tech company to be accused of breaching those sanctions – the first was ZTE Corp in 2017. The United States punished ZTE by forbidding it from buying American components – most importantly, telecom chips made by US-based Qualcomm Inc.
Those purchasing restrictions were eventually lifted after ZTE agreed to pay a fine, and it seems certain that Huawei will also eventually escape severe punishment. But these episodes highlight Chinese companies’ dependence on critical US technology.
The United States. still makes – or at least, designs – the best computer chips in the world. China assembles lots of electronics, but without those crucial inputs of US technology, products made by companies such as Huawei would be of much lower quality.
Export restrictions, and threats of restrictions, are thus probably not just about sanctions – they’re about making life harder for the main competitors of US tech companies.
Huawei just passed Apple Inc to become the world’s second-largest smartphone maker by market share (Samsung Electronics Co is first). This marks a change for China, whose companies have long been stuck doing low-value assembly while companies in rich countries do the high-value design, marketing and component manufacturing.
US moves against Huawei and ZTE may be intended to force China to remain a cheap supplier instead of a threatening competitor.
The subtle, far-sighted nature of this approach suggests that the impetus for the high-tech trade war goes far beyond what Trump, with his focus on tariffs and old-line manufacturing industries, would think of. It seems likely that US tech companies, as well as the military intelligence communities, are influencing policy here as well.
In fact, more systematic efforts to block Chinese access to US components are in the works. The Export Control Reform Act, passed this summer, increased regulatory oversight of US exports of “emerging” and “foundational” technologies deemed to have national-security importance. Although national security is certainly a concern, it’s generally hard to separate high-tech industrial and corporate dominance from military dominance, so this too should be seen as part of the trade war.
A second weapon in the high-tech trade war is investment restrictions. The Trump administration has greatly expanded its power to block Chinese investments in US technology companies, through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
The goal of investment restrictions is to prevent Chinese companies from copying or stealing American ideas and technologies. Chinese companies can buy American companies and transfer their intellectual property overseas, or have their employees train their Chinese replacements.
Even minority stakes can allow a Chinese investor access to industrial secrets that would otherwise be off-limits. By blocking these investors, the Trump administration hopes to preserve US technological dominance, at least for a little while longer.
Notably, the European Union is also moving to restrict Chinese investments. The fact that Europe, which has opposed Trump’s tariffs, is copying American investment restrictions, should be a signal that the less-publicised high-tech trade war is actually the important one.
The high-tech trade war shows that for all the hoopla over manufacturing jobs, steel, autos and tariffs, the real competition is in the tech sector.
Losing the lead in the global technology race means lower profits and a disappearing military advantage. But it also means losing the powerful knowledge-industry clustering effects that have been an engine of US economic growth in the post-manufacturing age. Bluntly put, the United States can afford to lose its lead in furniture manufacturing; it can’t afford to lose its dominance in the tech sector.
The question is whether the high-tech trade war will succeed in keeping China in second place. China has long wanted to catch up in semiconductor manufacturing, but export controls will make that goal a necessity rather than an aspiration. And investment restrictions may spur China to upgrade its own homegrown research and development capacity.
In other words, in the age when China and the United States were economically co-dependent, China might have been content to accept lower profit margins and keep copying American technology instead of developing its own. But with the coming of the high-tech trade war, that co-dependency is coming to an end. Perhaps that was always inevitable, as China pressed forward on the technological frontier. In any case, the Trump administration’s recent moves against Chinese tech – and some similar moves by the EU – should be seen as the first shots in a long war.
After years of planning, the robotic Chang'e-4 mission will launch tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. EST.
Rising space power China is preparing to launch a ground-breaking mission to soft-land an unmanned spacecraft on the far side of ... China prepares mission to land spacecraft on moon's far side. By Christopher Bodeen | AP.
This photo taken on April 19, 2018 shows the ZTE logo on a building in Nanjing in China's eastern Jiangsu province.AFP/Getty Images
Ban on ZTE offers much food for thought
The US ban on sales of chips and components to China's telecommunications company ZTE shocked Chinese society. Some Chinese people are furious at US behavior, others think ZTE deserves it, while some advocate Beijing take it as a warning and boost the country's domestic semiconductor industry. Some are more pessimistic and feel China cannot beat the US in a trade war.
The ZTE case can be argued as a show of high-tech hegemony by the US. It is absurd for Washington to pull this maneuver at the eleventh hour simply because ZTE failed to cut bonuses for its 35 employees as promised. The logic works for US society and the West is watching the case for fun. But certain Chinese people are also taking pleasure in it. This is the reality.
It must be admitted that the US is powerful and it has started to punch China hard. The rise of China has reached a juncture where Beijing has prompted Washington to ponder its status as the world's No.1 and provided a somewhat disjointed West with a reason to strengthen its solidarity. The impulse to contain China's rise is emerging among Western elites. Radical and even risky policies toward China are gaining increasing support.
China needs a strong will, an open mind and the capacity to fight back. Through political solidarity and a robust economy, Beijing should be tough enough to withstand the slings and arrows. China needs to incubate and shape strategic technology research and development.
The reason why chip technology has experienced such limited progress despite years of advocacy is that the Chinese system has not yet formed a key driving force for it.
Beijing must develop its "nuclear weapons" in the field of economics to make the outside world fear strategic confrontation with China.
China should also make friends worldwide, including Western nations, so as to unite all the forces that can be united. It must not overly focus on gains and losses in friction with others. Beijing must protect its interests, but in the meantime it cannot isolate itself doing so.
China needs to accept diverse opinions on the internet, governing them but also adapting to them so as to prevent online opinions from impacting on society's overall judgment and confidence.
It is hoped that China will develop a greater core competitiveness which other countries cannot match. This is an expectation of all Chinese people.
American business to pain together in ZTE case
https://youtu.be/XgbspspyfLQ
The US government sales ban of American components to the ZTE Corporation will surely inflict significant damage to the company. However, the pattern of globalization shows that not only will the US not secure a victory, it will also suffer a harsh blowback. The US stock market came to a similar conclusion, and media from around the world calculated that the US' future losses will be significant.
Qualcomm is a major mobile chip supplier for ZTE mobile phones. According to Reuters, Qualcomm will be harmed during this strike because ZTE is an important client, and its competitors could benefit from ZTE choosing alternative manufacturers. Furthermore, Qualcomm might suffer more setbacks when China retaliates on the US for this ban.
According to studies by various media organizations, the full implementation of the seven-year sales ban on ZTE will amount to combined loss of $6.8 billion for Qualcomm, Acacia Communications, and Oclaro Inc. It will also affect more than 32,000 employees. Due to this estimation, Acacia Communications stocks dropped 35.95 percent this week. Additionally, Intel and Microsoft will be hit by shockwaves in the tech industry.
Over the years, China has grown to become the largest sales market for US electronic chips, providing US companies with substantial funds for research and development. Losing the Chinese market might cause these US companies to decline in quality, which could result in a bleak financial future.US semiconductor companies are facing real threats as they will likely be taken over by their opponents.
The US will also be hurt from increasing suspicions to its business environment. The US government ended ZTE's business dealings with American companies by force, due to "35 employees' bonuses issues" for the company with 80,000 employees. Is the American business environment still trustworthy? Does this not imply that the US government can bully whoever it wishes? Cooperation with American companies is already difficult and being reviewed by the US government for political correctness will not make matters easier.
Some Westerners criticize the risks of doing business with Chinese companies, but not one multinational company has experienced the same mistreatment ZTE has been subjected to. The proper name for ZTE's case could be called "35 people bonus crisis" and if this is what starts the cooperation breakdown between the US and China, or globalization in general, it will be one of the most bizarre jokes in history.
China will hit back in the best way it knows and inflict losses for American companies in China. Washington should not have any delusions of tolerance from China after causing such damage to its businesses.
With China and the US trading blows in this situation, the US economy and trade relations will delve into chaos. Investments of American companies in China far exceed Chinese companies in the US, meaning that the US has more to lose since these investments will not be spared during this fight.
Most importantly, Chinese society will lose faith in cooperation with American high-tech companies. The "35 people bonus crisis" will also serve as a push for China determination to develop its semiconductor industry to replace America's components.
China will endure a sting in the high-tech sector confrontation, but the US will suffer lasting pain. China has been slow to develop its semiconductor technology because it is cheaper to purchase American products in the past. Developing chips and operating systems will require massive market support and China's yearly import of $200 billion can definitely cover the funding for this research.
The consequences of punishing ZTE is now out of Washington's control. The intertwined economies of China and the US are like "conjoined twins" and separation will cause major pain for both sides. Washington's thinking that this is a unilateral punishment is naïve, and this short-sighted judgement will be paid at the expense of American companies and enterprises. - - Global Times
Washington has unrealistic fantasies about “balancing
China-US trade.” It tries to solve US economic issues with sticks and
threats rather than painstaking reforms. Simply put, it attempts to make
a hard sell. The world is required to buy whatever the US produces at
its convenience, and developing countries like China cannot make
technological progress in the process.
If Washington thinks China's upgrade of its opening-up
was triggered by US menaces, it is making a historic mistake in its
relationship with Beijing. Whether the Sino-US trade war is aggravated
depends on Washington. It is hoped US actions accord with Trump's
pleasant tweets rather than more old carrot-and-stick
The community with shared future for mankind is a goal of
China to lead the world forward into the future. The Belt and Road
initiative is one of the paths toward it. The world has never seen a
major power emerging with a peaceful and cooperative manner. Some people
say that China is only pretending to rise peacefully. After Beijing's
new measures were announced at Tuesday's forum, the world should have
gained a better understanding of China.
With the development of China's economic growth and
strength of science and technology, further opening-up and lowering of
tariffs will be the future trend. But how China will do this will be
decided based on WTO rules and China's own interests. This is China's
sovereignty. Beijing will never listen to the command of Washington.
In the clash of the smartphone operating system titans, we take a look at what Google has brought to the table.
BRINGING IT: A Google Android figurine sits on a welcome desk at the new Google office in Toronto. - Reuters
FANCY having a Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, or Jellybean?
While the list above seems like a mouth-watering spread of sinful desserts, it can refer to something else in the technological world today.
For the uninitiated, those are also the names of the different update versions of the Android smartphone operating system (OS).
Before we touch on the topic of Android, let's first start with smartphones and how they have become an integral part of our lives in this day and age.
It wasn't too long ago when the sheer mention of the word 'smartphone' brought to mind an image of a busy businessman holding a personal digital assistant (PDA) phone to check and send work e-mail messages on the fly.
Aside from businessmen and those with deep pockets, it was uncommon to see an average consumer owning a smartphone. Among my peers during my time as a student, anyone who owned a smartphone was deemed to be a rich spoilt brat.
Fast forward to today, the advancements of technology has made it so much easier to own a smartphone.
What is a smartphone? By Oxford dictionary's definition, a smartphone is a mobile phone that is able to perform many of the functions of a computer, typically having a relatively large screen and an operating system capable of running general-purpose applications.
The early smartphones came into existence in the 1990s, although the early incarnations of smartphones were basically mobile phones incorporating PDA (personal digital assistant) features, and not necessarily with large screens.
Throughout the years, there have been various operating systems supporting the vast multitude of smartphones that have reached the hands of consumers. Among the operating systems that we have come to know and love are Symbian, Palm OS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Android and iOS.
As the title suggests, this column will be all about Google's Android operating system.
Meteoric rise
The first ever smartphone sold running on the Android operating system was the HTC Dream, which was released in 2008.
Since then, Android has come a long way, climbing up the ranks and capturing the biggest share of the pie in the smartphone operating system market. Aside from smartphones, the operating system is also widely used on tablet computers.
With a whole plethora of Android devices being unleashed into the market, the operating system from Google overtook long-time leaders Symbian at the end of 2010 to be the world's most widely used smartphone operating system, according to online sources.
It is growing at an estimated 1.5 million activations per day. This means that everyday, 1.5 million Android devices are powered on by consumers for the first time. Android leads the smartphone OS world, with a market share of 75% during the third quarter of 2012.
Being a product of Google, Android smartphones come readily available with a staple of Google applications (apps), such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar, Google+ and Google Chrome browser.
Interestingly, every update version of the operating system is named after a form of dessert, and in alphabetical order. The first system version was named Donut (1.6), followed by Eclair (2.0 - 2.1), Froyo (2.2), Gingerbread (2.3), Honeycomb (3.1 - 3.2), Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0), and Jellybean (4.1 - 4.2).
Unlike the other main operating systems in the smartphone market, Google has made its Linux-based OS open source. This means that the software can be freely distributed and modified by device manufacturers, wireless carriers and developers.
This move has successfully attracted a large community of app developers, as can be proven by the whopping 800,000 apps available for download on the Google Play store as of January.
In October 2012, the Google Play store celebrated a milestone of 25 billion app downloads.
Tailor made
Android has become a favourite choice for manufacturers as it is easy to adopt and implement, rather than having to develop a whole new operating system from scratch. We can find this operating system from Google being adopted by a diverse range of manufacturers, ranging from big brand names such as Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG to smaller, upstart Chinese companies.
However, not every Android smartphone provides the same experience. Different hardware manufacturers have different "skins" or add-ons, above the base Android software, to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack. Samsung's Touchwiz user interface and HTC's Sense user interface are examples of the types of "flavoured" Android offerings by other manufacturers.
Google also collaborates with different hardware manufacturers to release their flagship Android smartphones under the Google Nexus line. The Nexus phones provide the original "vanilla" Android experience for users and are the first to receive the latest Android version updates.
Because of this diversity, we can find Android smartphones for every segment of the market. Aside from the pricier high-end smartphones, there is also a wide selection of mid- to low-end Android smartphones which are more affordable, hence making it easier for more consumers to own a smartphone.
Android has been so popular that we are seeing it in more and more electronic products and not just smartphones or tablets. There are even manufacturers who are starting to incorporate Android into their microwave ovens!
Among the advantages of the Android operating system are its ability to multitask, the huge amount of options for devices, the notification bar, homescreen widgets, and the connectivity to the Google brand. The advantages and disadvantages of the operating system will be delved into in future editions of this weekly column which will appear on TechCentral.my.
This weekly column will be a medium to share about everything Android. Expect to read about news on the operating system updates, app reviews or the new devices running on Google's operating system. Stay tuned!
(Donovan is a full-time auditor and big-time gadget lover who discovered the wonders of the Android world after a chance encounter with Samsung's Galaxy S back in October 2010.) Related post: Chinese smartphone innovators shrug off Android dominance.
