Viewpoint

04.23.19

Who Owns Huawei?

Christopher Balding & Donald Clarke
Who owns Huawei? American officials have long claimed the controversial telecommunications giant belongs to the Chinese state, while Huawei has long called itself a “private company wholly owned by its employees.” Huawei states that its founder, Ren...

Trump Moves to Block China Mobile's U.S. Entry on Security Concerns

Brenda Goh, Sijia Jiang
Reuters
The U.S. government has moved to block China Mobile (0941.HK) from offering services to the country’s telecommunications market, recommending its application be rejected because the firm posed national security risks.

China Is Building a $2 Billion Office Park in Beijing Just for AI

Quartz
Last year, China said it plans to be a world leader in AI by 2030. Now its capital is building a massive campus to house the AI firms that will power that rise, according to local media outlet Beijing News (link in Chinese).

China Telecom Picked to Become the Philippines' Third Telecoms Player

Reuters
South China Morning Post
China Telecom Corp could become the Philippines’ third nationwide telecommunications operator, officials of the Southeast Asian country said on Sunday, as the government sought to stir up competition to boost notoriously poor fixed-line broadband...

Depth of Field

11.20.17

Fake Girlfriends, Chengdu Rappers, and a Chow Chow Making Bank

Ye Ming, Yan Cong & more from Yuanjin Photo
Lonely dog owners in Beijing and a rented girlfriend in Fujian; the last Oroqen hunters in Heilongjiang and homegrown hip hop in Chengdu; young Chinese in an Indian tech hub and Hong Kong apartments only slightly larger than coffins—these are some...

China’s Huawei Could Overtake Apple This Year in Smartphones, Top Analyst Says

Arjun Kharpal
CNBC
In the second quarter of this year, Huawei held a 11.3 percent market share, shipping 38.5 million units, IDC data show. Apple meanwhile shipped 41 million iPhones and had a 12 percent market share in the same period.

Former State Department Security Officer Accused of Spying for China

Charlie Savage
New York Times
F.B.I. agents found top-secret documents on a device he brought back from Shanghai.

Why It Matters That Bill Gates Joined China’s Super App WeChat

Jordyn Dahl
Forbes
Microsoft founder Bill Gates is the newest member of WeChat, China’s most popular messaging app.

Books

01.23.17

China as an Innovation Nation

Edited by Yu Zhou, William Lazonick, and Yifei Sun
This volume assesses China’s transition to innovation-nation status in terms of social conditions, industry characteristics, and economic impacts over the past three decades, also providing insights into future developments.Defining innovation as the process that generates a higher quality, lower cost product than was previously available, the introductory chapter conceptualizes the theory of an innovation nation and the lessons from Japan and the United States. It outlines the key governance, employment, and investment institutions that China must build for such transition to occur, and examines China’s challenges and strategies to innovate in the era of global production systems. Two succeeding chapters explain the evolving roles of the Chinese state in innovation, and the new landscape of venture capital finance. The remaining chapters provide studies of major industries, which contain analyses of the evolving roles of investment by government agencies and business interests in the process. Included in these studies are traditional industries such as mechanical engineering, railroads, and automobiles; rapidly evolving and internationally highly integrated industries such as information-and-communication-technology (ICT); and newly emerging sectors such as wind and solar energy.Written by leading academics in the field, studies in this volume reveal Chinese innovation as diverse across industries and enterprises and fluid over time. In each sector, we observe continued co-evolution of state policy, market demand, and technology development. The strategies and structures of individual companies and industrial ecosystems are changing rapidly. The sum total of the studies is a great step forward in our understanding of the industrial foundations of China’s attempt to become an innovation nation. —Oxford University Press{chop}

China’s Controversial, Out-Sized Role in Africa’s Digital Revolution

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Africa is home to one of the fastest growing technology markets in the world. In fact, more African households own a mobile phone than have reliable electricity or clean water. The combination of a young population, quickly growing economies, and...

Is Huawei Doing Enough to Train Local Staff in Africa?

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
The Chinese telecom giant Huawei recently launched a massive publicity campaign to raise awareness in Africa about what it is doing to train local employees. The company has opened at least five training centers in different countries across the...

After Years of Big 3 Dominance, China Is About to Get a Fourth Telco

C. Custer
Tech in Asia
In an unexpected move, CBN is issued a telecom operator license, allowing it to compete with China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom.

The Long Arm of Chinese Law Reaches All the Way to Kenya

Eric Olander & Cobus van Staden
The Kenyan government’s consent to a Chinese request for the deportation of dozens of alleged cyber and telecom fraud has now bloomed into a full-scale diplomatic crisis. Among those forcibly sent to China included dozens of Taiwan nationals, many...

Caixin Media

04.12.16

Chinese Telecoms Gear Maker ZTE Fighting U.S. Export Ban

The second-largest maker of telecoms gear in China is scrambling to get off a U.S. export blacklist that threatens to dry up supplies of critical components.“The investigations are still in progress, and may result in criminal and civil liabilities...

China Aims to Build Its Own Secure Smartphones

EVA DOU and JURO OSAWA
Wall Street Journal
State-owned and private tech firms team up to cut cord to U.S. suppliers.

China’s Controversial Technology Partnership with South Africa

Eric Olander & Cobus van Staden
The Chinese and South Africa governments have signed a pact, or a “plan of action,” where Beijing will provide a broad array of technology training, skills transfer, and ICT (information and communications technology) development for South Africa’s...

Qualcomm to Pay $975 Million to Resolve China Antitrust Dispute

Noel Randewich and Matthew Miller
Reuters
Qualcomm said the agreement removes a major source of concern for its investor.

Caixin Media

02.09.15

In China, Quantum Communications Comes of Age

This may be a quantum leap year for an initiative that accelerates data transfers close to the speed of light with no hacking threats through so-called quantum communications technology.Within months, China plans to open the world's longest...

Qualcomm Nears $1 Bln Deal Resolving China Antitrust Dispute

Matthew Miller and Michael Martina
Reuters
The deal could end a 14-month government investigation into anti-competitive practices.

Sinica Podcast

11.25.14

Internet Wrangling in Wuzhen

Kaiser Kuo & Rogier Creemers from Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo hosts alone this week as we turn our attention to the World Internet Conference (English site) last week, when a last minute attempt by Chinese organizers to foist the so-called Wuzhen Declaration on participants provoked an international...

Caixin Media

05.13.13

Competitors Try Curbing China Mobile’s 4G Urge

The wireless Internet technology race is intensifying a longstanding rivalry between China’s largest mobile phone operator, China Mobile, and its smaller competitors China Telecom and China Unicom.Since 2011, China Mobile customers in fifteen cities...

Caixin Media

04.15.13

Tencent Lets WeChat’s Rapid Growth Do the Talking

Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s free messaging service, WeChat, has seen its popularity grow among both individual users and businesses, even amid a dispute with the Big Three telecom operators [China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom].Since launching...

Five Points on the Deeply Flawed U.S. Congress Huawei Report

Graham Webster
Transpacifica
Chinese telecomms firms painted as shady, but evidence to back up allegations is hidden in report's classified sections.

Sinica Podcast

08.31.12

The Huawei Enigma

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
Is there any other company that better captures the dual way China is perceived internationally than Huawei? As one of China’s few market-based telecommunications equipment providers, the company is in many ways a symbol of China’s high-tech, global...

Inside Huawei, Chinese Tech Giant Rattling Nerves in D.C.

Jay Greene and Roger Cheng
CNET
Huawei might make better, cheaper telecom gear than rivals. And it's come up with a new sleek handset to compete against the iPhone. But years of pressure from the federal government have largely kept Huawei on the fringes in the United States.

Huawei: The Company That Spooked the World

Unattributed
Economist
BANBURY, a little English town best known for a walk-on part in a nursery rhyme and as the eponymous origin of a fruitcake, is an unlikely fulcrum for the balance of power in the world of telecoms. But the “Cyber Security Evaluation Centre” set up...

The People’s Republic of Rumor

Richard Bernstein from New York Review of Books
A group of people the other day were at the large shopping mall at a place called Shuangjing, just inside Beijing’s Third Ring Road, looking at their cell phones and comparing notes. “Don’t go to Sina Weibo—it’s too famous,” one person advised,...

Caixin Media

06.27.12

Cash for China’s Homegrown Smartphone

Xiaomi Mobile Internet Co. has raised US$216 million, its CEO says, raising the total value of the upstart, homegrown Chinese smartphone maker to US$4 billion.If Lei Jun’s claim is accurate, his two-year-old company’s value is close to the market...

Books

04.01.10

China’s Telecommunications Revolution

Eric Harwit
China's telecommunications industry has seen revolutionary transformation and growth over the past three decades. Chinese Internet users number nearly 150 million, and the P.R.C. expects to quickly pass the U.S. in total numbers of connected citizens. The number of mobile and fixed-line telephone users soared from a mere 2 million in 1980 to a total of nearly 800 million in 2007. China has been the most successful developing nation in history for spreading telecommunications access at an unparalleled rapid pace.This book tells how China conducted its remarkable “telecommunications revolution.” It examines both corporate and government policy to get citizens connected to both voice and data networks, looks at the potential challenges to the one-party government when citizens get this access, and considers the new opportunities for networking now offered to the people of one of the world's fastest growing economies. The book is based on the author's fieldwork conducted in several Chinese cities, as well as extensive archival research. It focuses on key issues such as building and running the country's Internet, mobile phone company rivalry, foreign investment in the sector, and telecommunications in China’s vibrant city of Shanghai. It also considers the country’s internal “digital divide,” and questions how equitable the telecommunications revolution has been. Finally, it examines the ways the P.R.C.'s entry to the World Trade Organization will shape the future course of telecommunications growth.             —Oxford University Press