We start with the US ban of Tiktok and end with various EU actions against China. China has passed a Tariff Law against violating trade agreements. We pick out some striking facts from the Beijing motor show and continue with the first quarter figures for online trade, smartphones and PCs. We also have a large chip news section.
President Biden has signed the monster law that, in addition to military aid to Ukraine and Israel, also includes: Tiktok in the US on software sites unless it sells itself. Tiktok plans to appeal to the courts for the unconstitutional restriction of free speech. China speaks of ‘a robbery’ that completely undermines the already damaged US credibility. It is remarkable that presidential candidate Trump holds Biden responsible for the ban, while he himself did the same 4 years ago. Meanwhile, he spoke to Republican billionaire sponsor Jeff Yass who owns a sizable stake in the company and changed his mind. Tiktok is not considering a sale, which is not legally possible without the consent of the Chinese government. .The matter will also be closely monitored by Shein and Temu which are also successful Chinese companies in the US Yahoo, S.C.M.P For a humorous approach, check out YouTube
*The European Commission applies Tiktok or the company for the launch of TikTok Lite assessed the addictive effect and risks of the program for mental health, especially for children. TikTok Lite awards points and rewards for presence and comments on Tiktok. The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) asks major platforms to do this. Tiktok has replied that the reward system of TikTok Lite is not available to minors and has a daily limit on the number of videos that can be viewed for a reward. TikTok Lite has already been launched in France and Spain. Yahoo
Legislature adopts tariff law
After three rounds, the Chinese legislature passed the Tariff Law, which will take effect on December 1. The law contains a series of legal provisions regarding tariffs on Chinese imports and exports ranging from tax breaks to China’s right to retaliate against countries that violate trade agreements. If others impose tariffs on China, China can do the same. Experts compare the law to an atomic bomb that it is hoped will never have to be deployed. Yahoo
At the Beijing Auto Show
*The Beijing Motor Show has 1,500 exhibitors and runs from April 25 to May 5. 278 NEVs are on display, of which 117 are new models. 30 of them are from foreign companies such as the VW Group brands Audi, Porsche and Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes Benz, Hyundai and its subsidiary Kia, Ford and Japan’s top three automakers, Toyota, Nissan and Honda. Tesla which fell to third place in China is missing. Asia Times
*EV manufacturer Xpeng experiences no hindrance in its partnership with Nvidia but is also open to local chips, even if they are less advanced, said vice chairman Brian Gu Hongdi. Owned it in June last year Nvidia 52% of the global self-driving market. Nio‘s flagship ET5 and ES7 sedans, Li Auto’s L9 model and Xpeng‘s G9 are all equipped with Nvidia’s Orin chips. This year, the focus is on investing 3.5 billion yuan in the development of generative AI technologies. Xpeng has 2,000 engineers working on autonomous driving technologies and 3,000 people working on generative AI. S.C.M.P
*BMW yesterday announced an additional investment of 20 billion yuan (approximately $2.81 billion) in its Shenyang manufacturing facility.
*Renault unveiled at the motor show with Li Auto and Xiaomi to discuss electric and smart cars, opening the door for further technological cooperation. Renault already has Geely and Dongfeng as partners. CEO de Mezo admits that he wants to learn from Chinese car manufacturers who are far ahead in the development of EVs and their software. Reuters
*Toyota forms with Tencent a strategic alliance for collaboration in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and big data for Toyota EVs were announced at the Beijing Motor Show. Tencent had previously met Audi-VW and Mercedes-Benz a partnership.
*Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) unveiled the new Shenxing Plus car battery at the show, which lasts 1000 km and can travel 600 km after 10 minutes of charging ChinaDaily
K1: Online trading, smartphones, PCs
*During the first quarter, online retail sales increased by 12.4% to 3,300 billion yuan. Online travel almost doubled while online food grew by more than a quarter compared to Q1 2023. Pre-ordered airline tickets reached pre-Covid levels. Sales of smart wearable gadgets were another star with a 30.9% increase while online sales of agricultural products rose 28.2%. Cross-border e-commerce increased 9.6% to 577.6 billion yuan in the first quarter S.C.M.P
*During Q1, China shipped 69 million smartphones or 6.5% more, said IDC. Honor is number one, Vivo on two. Apple which was first in Q4 2023, falls to third place. Huawei grew strongly and comes in fourth place. However, it leads in the foldable phone market with a 44% market share. Some even expect that Huawei returns to number one this year with its Pura 70 and Mate 70 series. Technode
*According to Counterpoint Research China shipped 57 million PCs or 3% more in Q1 after 8 quarters of decline. Was topper Lenovo with 13.7 million units and 24% market share. The 4 other leading brands were H.P (21%), Dell (16%), Apple (14%) and Acer (11%). Counterpoint predicts that AI PCs will enter the market by 2024, with 45% of new laptop shipments expected to include AI features. .Counterpoint Research..
Chips, chips, chips
*Chinese researchers have developed two extremely energy-saving chips, one for speech recognition and the other for recognizing epileptic seizures. The team led by Professor Zhou Jun of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu has been working on optimizing the algorithms and the architecture of the chips. The first chip achieves a detection energy consumption of less than two microjoules per instance with an accuracy of more than 95% in quiet scenarios and 90% in noisy environments Elektronikpraxis.de
*The Shanghai based company Hesai which manufactures lidars (a type of radar for cars) is seriously planning to set up factories in Europe. Hesai counts Li Auto and Geely among his customers. Its new ATX technology can identify conditions such as rain, fog and exhaust fumes in real-time at the pixel level and filter out more than 99 percent of ambient noise. The cost of lidars has fallen sharply and last year 10% of EVs in China were equipped with lidars. This year 16% would be achieved. Hesai made a loss of 476 million yuan last year S.C.M.P*
*The US Department of Commerce is investigating the risks of US collaboration on RISC_V chip technology. As an open-source technology, RISC-V is widely used in designing the Internet of Things, and the Chinese contribution is large. Observers suspect that it will be difficult for the US to contain China in the field of RISC-V technology. If that does happen, US companies could suffer huge losses and disrupt the global supply chain. RISC-V International moved its headquarters from the US to Switzerland in March 2020, partly to hedge against the influence of geopolitics on the chip industry. The move significantly limits the U.S. government’s regulatory options. GT..
*According to Reuters After February 28, various Chinese educational institutions were still able to purchase servers whose GPUs were limited. The NVIDIA chips would be in the servers of Super Micro Computer, Dell Technologiesand Taiwan’s Gigabyte Technology. According to NVIDIA This concerns orders and inventory from before the entanglement. Technode
EU actions against China
* On Tuesday, EU officials entered the premises of the Dutch and Polish subsidiaries of a Chinese company involved in the production of surveillance equipment. It’s about Nutech that manufactures airport scanning equipment and other surveillance machines. Computers and telephones were searched. The Commission considers this a first step in an investigation into alleged distortive foreign subsidies. The China Chamber of Commerce to the EU sexpressed “grave concern” about the “unjustifiable dawn raids” S.C.M.P
*The European Union has launched an investigation into Chinese government procurement of medical devices, the EU’s official gazette said on Wednesday. It is the first study under the EU’s international procurement instrument, which aims to promote reciprocity in access to international public procurement markets. If the investigation shows unfair behavior, the EU could restrict Chinese companies’ access to the government procurement market in the 27-nation bloc. EU Commission
*The European Commission has Shein formally designated as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the Digital Services Act (DSA), meaning the Chinese fashion giant must comply with a number of new regulations within four months. These concern monitoring of illegal counterfeit products, transparency about the use of customer online data and compliance with all DSA obligations, including the annual publication of transparency reports. Shein said in a statement to the news platform Politico know to be ‘ready’ for the new rules. fashionunited.be
*It European parliament on Tuesday supported a ban on products made with forced labor, with China’s Xinjiang region in mind. The new regulation will allow the EU to ban the sale, import and export of goods made with forced labor once it is finally approved by the European Council which consists of the 27 countries. S.C.M.P
