Tag Archives: china

Why China’s dominance in commercial drones has become a global security matter

Why China’s dominance in commercial drones has become a global security matter

Last week, my colleague James O’Donnell wrote about a report by the think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS) that analyzed the role of drones in a potential war in the Taiwan Strait. Right now, both Ukraine and Russia are still finding ways to source drones or drone parts from Chinese companies, but […]

What to know about this new Chinese text-to-video AI model

What to know about this new Chinese text-to-video AI model

The short-video platform, which has over 600 million active users, announced the new tool on June 6. It’s called Kling. Like OpenAI’s Sora model, Kling is able to generate videos “up to two minutes long with a frame rate of 30fps and video resolution up to 1080p,” the company says on its website. But unlike […]

The quest to type Chinese on a QWERTY keyboard created autocomplete

The quest to type Chinese on a QWERTY keyboard created autocomplete

If Huang Zhenyu’s mastery of a complex alphanumeric code weren’t impressive enough, consider the staggering speed of his performance. He transcribed the first 31 Chinese characters of Hu Jintao’s speech in roughly 5 seconds, for an extrapolated speed of 372 Chinese characters per minute. By the close of the grueling 20-minute contest, one extending over […]

OpenAI’s latest blunder shows the challenges facing Chinese AI models

OpenAI’s latest blunder shows the challenges facing Chinese AI models

In fact, among the few long Chinese tokens in GPT-4o that aren’t either pornography or gambling nonsense, two are “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and “People’s Republic of China.” The presence of these phrases suggests that a significant part of the training data actually is from Chinese state media writings, where formal, long expressions are extremely […]

Why the Chinese government is sparing AI from harsh regulations—for now

Why the Chinese government is sparing AI from harsh regulations—for now

Take Alibaba and Tencent as examples. Since the 2000s, the two tech giants have made hundreds of mergers and investments, as a result of which their business empires expanded to include almost every aspect of digital life in China. This insatiable expansion came at the expense of users, who faced higher prices and less choice, […]

Roundtables – How China Got Ahead on EVs

Roundtables – How China Got Ahead on EVs

How China Got Ahead on EVs Speakers: Zeyi Yang, China reporter, Amanda Silverman, Features & investigations editor, and Abby Ivory-Ganja, Sr engagement editor In the race to produce and sell more electric vehicles, China has emerged as the unexpected winner. If you visit Shanghai or Shenzhen today, it feels like half of the cars running […]

Why China is betting big on chiplets

Why China is betting big on chiplets

But this approach to chipmaking poses a bigger challenge for another sector of the semiconductor industry: packaging, which is the process that assembles multiple components of a chip and tests the finished device’s performance. Making sure multiple chiplets can work together requires more sophisticated packaging techniques than those involved in a traditional single-piece chip. The […]

Why the world’s biggest EV maker is getting into shipping

Why the world’s biggest EV maker is getting into shipping

Venturing out by themselves That’s why Chinese auto companies, which have become such prominent exporters thanks to the rise of EVs, are starting to form their own shipping businesses.  News that BYD was looking to buy or charter ships was first reported by the shipping outlet Lloyd’s List in late 2022. In December that year, […]

How 2023 marked the death of anonymity online in China

How 2023 marked the death of anonymity online in China

In reality, it’s already impossible to be fully anonymous online in China. Over the years, to implement a stricter regime of online censorship, the country has built a sophisticated system that requires identity verification to use any online service. In many cases, posting politically sensitive content leads to account removal, calls from the police, or […]

This Chinese map app wants to be a super app for everything outdoors

This Chinese map app wants to be a super app for everything outdoors

Amap, for example, is one of the most widely used map and navigation apps in China today. But when I open it on my phone, I can see over 30 functions that you wouldn’t find on Western-equivalent apps. Some of them still feel integral to the map experience, like recording when you last filled your […]