While China is poised to become an innovation challenger, will it out-innovate its global competitors? The answer is a qualified yes. On its current path, China could develop transformative innovations on a global scale; it is already getting good at developing short-term, consumer-focused innovations. More
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“Omigod!”…and other Exclamations Upon Reading WSJ’s Piece on Facial Recognition in China
Do you want your photo flashed on a sign at an intersection? If not, don't jaywalk in China. Leave aside what happens if you're a dissident traveling in a new region. Here's a headline the WSJ used for this must-read article: "The All-Seeing Surveillance State Feared in the West is a Reality in China." More
China’s Challenges in Healthcare Innovation
China produces relatively few breakthrough innovations in science, medicine, and healthcare technology. But China’s leaders understand that healthcare innovation is crucial for their nation’s continued rise, and massive new investments and policy reforms could soon transform healthcare R&D. In some fields such as precision medicine, it even may become a global leader. More
Why Tuberculosis Persists
Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the great scourges. Amazingly, one of every three people in the world is infected. Why it persists: political leaders do not understand its sociology; scientists lack effective paradigms to attack it; and the rich and famous no longer die from it. We need fewer excuses and more action. More
China’s Empty Incubators are a Sign of Development Run Amok
For years, the Chinese state has managed to strong arm the country’s economy through global crises by making huge investments into sectors like real estate and infrastructure. That top-down capital strategy is hitting a wall when it comes to China’s new dream: growing start-ups. Across the country, brand new innovation centers sit empty as education levels fail to meet China's demand for entrepreneurs. More
Shanghai Street View: Wealth Explosion
In the last two months alone, at least three wealth management shops have opened up in my neighborhood, often in spaces that were vacant for years or inhabited by struggling businesses. And my neighborhood in Hongkou District is quite ordinary, which means Shanghai’s trendier areas have undoubtedly been hit by the same scourge of wealth management shops. More broadly, this sudden explosion looks a lot like the kind of boom-bust pattern you often see in China, be it in our stock markets or the latest business trends. On the retail scene, I’ve written about similar booms in convenience stores and coffee shops, which both occurred quite rapidly and created huge supply gluts. More
Why Asia Matters for LinkedIn
As LinkedIn works to connect all the world’s professionals, CEO Jeff Weiner is increasingly setting his sights on a bigger vision—to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Since Asia accounts for a large portion of that workforce and a rising share of global economic activity, its importance for the professional network is bound to grow. At Techonomy 2014, Weiner envisioned LinkedIn as a platform that connects all the world’s workers, companies, and educational institutions. This is not an impossible dream. LinkedIn already has more than 364 million registered members globally. More
Chinese Net Giants Head Towards U.S.
Just a day after I wrote that online gaming giant Tencent may be planning a major new drive into the U.S., we’re hearing that its top rival NetEase is also moving into the neighborhood with plans for a new California R&D center. NetEase’s move comes after search leader Baidu and Tencent both set up U.S. offices last year, though only Baidu actually announced a major new product development center. All of these moves represent the Chinese companies’ efforts to tap into the Silicon Valley ethos, which has far more of the skills they will need in their quest to enter global markets outside of China. More
Tencent’s WeChat Trounces Alibaba at Chinese New Year
I remember a time not long ago when we China tech reporters used to write annual stories about the number of people who sent billions of simple Lunar New Year text greetings over their mobile phones. Those days now seem like a distant memory, and new data from Tencent’s WeChat and Alibaba’s Alipay are showing just how small those earlier figures were, even though they seemed impressive at the time. But the real story in this new tide of “red envelope grabbing wars” is the huge victory for Tencent over Alibaba. More
Tesla Looks for New China Formula
After roaring into China last year on a wave of hugely positive publicity, electric car superstar Tesla has rapidly lost momentum and now appears on the cusp of a major overhaul in a bid to jump-start its prospects. This kind of development isn’t hard to understand, as Tesla’s charismatic CEO Elon Musk set the bar incredibly high when he sold his company’s first electric vehicle (EV) in China last April. More
Global Tech Security & Privacy
Rhetoric Eases, but Troubles Remain in Alibaba Piracy Spat
After reaching a fever pitch last week, rhetoric in the high-profile spat over piracy between e-commerce giant Alibaba and one of China’s main business regulators appears to be softening as the two sides move towards a compromise. The latest headlines say Alibaba and the State Administration For Industry And Commerce (SAIC) have joined hands to fight piracy, marking a sharp toning down of the angry rhetoric that was flying for much of last week. More
Apple’s New Security Concessions to Beijing
Apple is deepening its uneasy embrace of Beijing security officials, with word that it has agreed to allow security audits for products that it sells in China. This latest development comes less than a year after Apple took the unusual step of moving some of the user information it collects to China-based servers, which was also aimed at placating security-conscious regulators in Beijing. More
Davos 2015: Harvard’s Joseph Nye on China Relations
Professor Joseph Nye shares his thoughts on China with Hub Culture at the World Economic Forum Davos 2015. Externally, Chinese relations with its neighbors have improved, says Nye. Internally, the atmosphere is still tense, with citizens being mindful of what they say. More
China Reaches out to Facebook in Growing Courtship
I have to commend Mark Zuckerberg for his tenacity, after the Facebook founder once again made headlines for receiving a visit from a top Chinese Internet official visiting the U.S. There are several interesting things about this latest development involving Zuckerberg’s endless quest to bring Facebook to China, beginning with the source of this latest news. More
Facebook’s Zuckerberg Seeks China Entree at Tsinghua
I previously wrote that Apple’s plain-spoken CEO Tim Cook should consider buying a second home in China due to his frequent visits to the country, and the same could be said for Facebook’s more brash founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. While Cook’s frequent visits are quite official and include many stops at government and company offices, Zuckerberg has been far more low-key in his equally regular visits due to Facebook’s lack of official presence in the country where its website is formally blocked. More
Xiaomi Hit by Apple’s Ive, Lifted by Qihoo’s Zhou
Publicity savvy smartphone maker Xiaomi was making awkward noises in the blogosphere this past week, as it found itself stinging from critical remarks made by a top executive at Apple, the company’s role model. At the same time, the company got an unexpected show of support from another source, as controversial Qihoo 360 CEO Zhou Hongyi defended the smartphone maker over a different brouhaha involving involving an embarrassing data security investigation in Taiwan. More
New Microsoft Chief Sets Sail for China
It’s become a sort of rite of passage for CEOs of major tech firms to visit China after moving into their job, which looks set to happen again with a September trip to Beijing set for Microsoft’s new top executive Satya Nadella. Tim Cook traveled to China just 6 months after taking the reins from Steve Jobs as Apple’s CEO in 2011, and has visited the country several times since then. Even Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo visited Shanghai earlier this year, just months after the social networking giant’s New York IPO, despite saying earlier that China wasn’t a market where his company could do business. More
It’s Getting Complicated for Growing Chinese Smartphone Makers
Smartphone makers Xiaomi and Huawei are learning tough new lessons this week, reflecting intense competition in the overheated market where a feisty field of Chinese players are vying for a place alongside global leaders Apple and Samsung. News in the smartphone space has been coming nonstop over the past year, as a crop of larger players including Xiaomi, Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo compete with smaller but equally aggressive names like Coolpad and Oppo in their home market. More
Tencent Beats Alibaba to Banking License
Earlier reports of e-commerce leader Alibaba’s strong political ties appear to be overstated, following word that archrival Tencent has become the first of China’s major Internet firms to win a highly sought banking license. Both companies had been aggressively expanding into financial services over the past year, though each was reliant on partnerships with other companies that already had licenses to offer services in the highly regulated sector dominated by big state-run companies. But now Tencent will be able to offer many of those services on its own, following this ground-breaking award of a license from the nation’s banking regulator. More
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