Technology

Hong Kong commentator Chip Tsao notes the “adulterous” relationship between Silicon Valley tech companies and China, the inevitability of technology transfer, and the US government’s naive demand for parity in all its dealings with China.

Senior military officers from India and China held the latest high-level talks to discuss border tensions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on 14 July. The talk which lasted for 15 hours took place at Chushul on the Indian side of the LAC, and contents of the discussion are yet to be made public. Although India and China have had their border disagreements, they are partners economically. Recently, the Indian government has banned 59 Chinese apps on grounds of national security, while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has deleted his Weibo account. India has also threatened to block Huawei's 5G system. What are the likely consequences? China academic Xu Hongbo examines the issue.

China launched the final satellite for the Beidou system on 23 June. Consisting of 35 satellites, Beidou is an impressive operational satellite navigation system significant for China in a number of ways. Most importantly, it removes China's reliance on the US GPS system. China's space programme started in the late 1950s with rocket technology transfer from the Soviet Union, while India's space journey began in the 1960s with support from the US and France. Both countries have come a long way and are now ratcheting up their efforts to secure a foothold in this frontier as the world’s geopolitical battles get launched into space.

Greater restrictions have been imposed by the US in recent months to choke off US-related chip-making supplies to Huawei. As the noose tightens around its neck, it has to think fast about how it can produce its own chips domestically to minimise the impact.

Technology specialist Yin Ruizhi points out that helped along by work-from-home orders and enterprises rushing to take their businesses online, e-commerce is growing faster than ever before, but this is leading to an unequal distribution of earnings and job opportunities, which governments have to look out for.

Associate professor Kenneth Huang from the NUS Business School observes that by 2012, China had overtaken the US in terms of the number of patents filed domestically. But this does not mean that all the innovations filed were truly novel or valuable. His recent study on Chinese state-owned enterprises shows that self-serving human factors are at play.

Yin Ruizhi says citizen journalism gone awry and the further erosion of privacy by governments in the name of tackling the Covid-19 pandemic are some of the risks brought about by the digital age.

In a product launch on 9 March, Huawei forecast that global 5G users will reach 250 million this year. Tech entrepreneur Yin Ruizhi takes a closer look at 5G. He says, while the most representative application of the 4G era is the short-form video, the next representative content creation application of the fast-approaching 5G era will be virtual reality and augmented reality.

Yesterday, British Conservative MPs‘ attempt to block "high-risk vendors’" such as Huawei from UK telecommunications networks failed. Amid the battle against coronavirus, China and the US continue their race in 5G technology. China is widely acknowledged to be a leader in 5G, but is the US really falling behind? Professor Zhu Ying weighs up opinions on both sides of the debate.