News on the Internet & Tech Industry in China

The heart of the matter
SMIC’s delisting in New York is yet another milestone in the Sino-US tech war
May 31, 2019 (WiC 454)

The Chinese name of SMIC is Zhongxin Guoji. The first two Chinese characters are a pun on ‘China’s heart’ while the latter two mean ‘international”. The name sums up the patriotic mission that the state-backed foundry has struggled with ...

Killer app?
Why WeChat’s latest rival is Bytedance’s Flipchat
May 31, 2019 (WiC 454)

Meitu, known for its beauty-centric camera apps, has shut down its smartphone business. Handset makers Smartisan and Meizu have needed cash injections from local governments to stay afloat. But the setbacks for China’s more marginal handset ...

Out of their league
A bad quarter for Baidu, which drops it further behind its BAT rivals
May 24, 2019 (WiC 453)

In the Oxford English Dictionary, a word is regarded as ‘obsolete’ or ‘archaic’ if no evidence of its written usage can be found after 1930. The term ‘BAT’ hardly fits that bracket, but it is showing signs of becoming outdated. Short ...

No more kills, but win a cake
Chinese censors extend their reach to Tencent’s video games
May 17, 2019 (WiC 452)

PUBG – or PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – was one of China’s most popular online video games. In the 15 months since it was released by Tencent it accrued 400 million players worldwide – 150 million more than Fortnite, ...

The decoupling continues
Oracle shuts R&D unit in China, shedding 900 staff as the tech war escalates
May 17, 2019 (WiC 452)

What do you get if you tip some dried fish into a pot of gently boiling frogs? In China, the answer is an unappetising dish of late 30-something ex-Oracle employees – according to the firm’s former Chinese engineers. “We were like warm ...

The silver screen
How a dance app is targeting China’s ‘damas’
May 10, 2019 (WiC 451)

Salsa, Hip hop and Revolutionary: these are just three of the genres available on Tangdou – a mobile app for middle-aged Chinese women who like to dance. The app – launched in 2015 – offers instructional videos to break down the trickier ...

Chips are down
Qualcomm shutters JV in Guizhou
May 3, 2019 (WiC 450)

In mid-April, Apple and Qualcomm called a halt on their lengthy wrangle over patent royalties. The knock-on effects have been felt in China, where the government has been trying to loosen the US semiconductor giant’s grip on mobile chip ...

Taiwan’s Trump?
Foxconn boss Terry Gou is running for president in Taiwan
Apr 26, 2019 (WiC 449)

The Financial Times described him last week as “Taiwan’s disrupter-in-chief”, while the Wall Street Journal went with “a brash billionaire” that’s in the same mould as Donald Trump. The man in question is Terry Gou, the tycoon from ...

Coded warning
Tech tycoons under fire for trumpeting a ‘996’ work culture for their staff
Apr 26, 2019 (WiC 449)

After a lengthy wait Japan has introduced new laws to tackle one of the most notorious aspects of the country’s work culture: punitively long hours. Starting from April 1 overtime permitted has been capped at 45 hours a month and 360 hours a ...

Rise of the machines
How automation and artificial intelligence are reinventing the workplace
Apr 18, 2019 (WiC 449)

WiC’s first references to China’s robot revolution featured people like Wu Yulu, a farmer-turned-inventor who merited mention in our fourth issue for his brood of machines. “Each one is like my child so they all have my surname,” he ...

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