Day: July 12, 2020

(China Daily)09:24, July 01, 2020

The Indian governments decision on Monday to block a number of Chinese mobile apps might incur short-term revenue losses and propel Chinese tech firms to recalibrate their overseas expansion strategy in the long term, industry experts said.

The ban cites sovereignty and integrity concerns, and Chinese companies subject to the policy include short video app TikTok operated by ByteDance, the WeChat messenger from Tencent, Alibabas UC News and Xiaomis Mi Video Call.

It is expected to pose a big stumbling block for Chinese internet powerhouses, which bank on sheer user numbers and online traffic to gain a market position overseas, said Raymond Wang, a global partner at consultancy Roland Berger.

India, the market with the second-largest population worldwide, is definitely lucrative for sectors that compete for market scale and share, Wang said. That advantage could be wiped out in the foreseeable period of time.

Chinese tech products and services have a solid fan base. For instance, India claimed roughly 30 percent of TikToks 611 million downloads, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower in April. Counterpoint, another technology research house, said Chinese smartphone makers, represented by Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, currently claim more than half of Indias smartphone market.

Ant Financial, Alibabas financial arm, has even brought its technological prowess and business model to India, helping to incubate the indigenous digital wallet Paytm, which draws experience from Alipay, its Chinese equivalent.

China is deeply concerned about Indias statement banning Chinese apps and is checking the facts, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Tuesday.

China and India have both benefited from their pragmatic cooperation, Zhao said, adding that undermining such cooperation goes against Indias own interests.

The Chinese government has always asked Chinese companies to conduct international cooperation on the basis of obeying international rules and local laws, Zhao said. The Indian government has an obligation to follow market rules and protect the lawful interests of international investors, including Chinese ones, he said.

ByteDance didnt reply to calls from China Daily on Tuesday. But a CNN report cited a company statement as saying that the ByteDance team of around 2,000 employees in India is committed to working with the government to demonstrate our dedication to user security and our commitment to the country overall.

Tencent, whose QQ messaging app services were also on the list, declined to comment. Other Chinese tech firms subject to the new policy were unavailable for comment.

Wang said Chinese tech companies initial success in India is largely due to the similarity of the Indian and Chinese markets, as both nations are developing markets with a huge population and both have customers pursuing cost-effective goods, and their geographical proximity.

Chen Guoli, an associate professor of strategy at global business graduate school INSEAD, attributed Chinese firms success in India to value for money offerings, product development pinpointing a precise target group and innovative apps such as TikTok.

It seems unclear how this ban will be implemented, whether it means banning new downloads or influencing existing users of these apps, Chen said. Besides, its still unclear to what extent the government is determined to implement it.

While a short-term blow is inevitable, the impact is unlikely to be sustained as technology companies tend to have lower costs when doing business overseas, meaning they have the ability to diversify their footprint should a crisis occur, said Wu Xiaole, a professor at Fudan Universitys School of Management in Shanghai.

The other reason is due to the dominant position Chinese tech apps hold in the local market, which is set to help them weather the storm given the core technologies that make their products a must-have for local users.

Nevertheless, the ban is still a signal that overseas investors, especially Chinese companies, have received, and it is certain to increase the firms operating costs, said Chen from INSEAD.

These Chinese firms need to think how to enter, who to partner with, and how to localize, he said.

(Xinhua)14:49, July 01, 2020

XIAN, July 1 (Xinhua) — The newly-launched last satellite of Chinas BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) successfully entered the long-term operation mode on July 1, announced the Xian Satellite Control Center.

It marked that all 30 satellites of the BDS-3 system have been operating in the long-term mode, a major step forward for BDS to provide full services to the world, said the center.

The last satellite of the BDS was launched on June 23. After flying for nearly eight days, it successfully entered the final orbit, which is 36,000 km above Earth, on June 30.

The center is now conducting the final tests before the satellite could be connected with the BDS-3 system and provide services.

The BDS-3 system started to offer basic navigation services to countries and regions along the Belt and Road as well as the world in December 2018.

By ZhongSheng (Peoples Daily)09:48, August 08, 2019

“The Americans have always been internationalists, but their internationalism has always been a by-product of their nationalism.” The remarks made by Robert Kagan, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, are more than appropriate to describe the reckless practices of some Americans.

By unilaterally provoking and constantly upgrading trade frictions with global countries, frequently withdrawing from international agreements and organizations, and continuing practicing protectionism and unilateralism, some US officials are maxing out their credibility in the international society and undermining the rule-based international order. What they did has placed huge negative impacts on global economic cooperation.

On August 1, the US announced that it would slap 10 percent tariffs on another $300 billion of Chinese goods starting September 1, as if they had totally forgot their “constructive” description of the just-concluded 12th round of high-level economic and trade consultations between the US and China.

The announcement astonished the international society and caused serious harm to the global market. Some American officials even claimed that they didn’t care at all about the negative impacts on the stock market. It’s beyond imagination that how an influential major country can be so irresponsible.

The American society is making increasingly louder voices to oppose additional tariffs. Some said the added 10 percent tariff will strike the American consumers and families’ budget and American families should not be pawns in the trade war.

Others said that the new round of tariff increase is actually taking American families as hostages in trade negotiations. The new tariffs would raise costs on everything from computers to backpacks to clothes as kids go back to school.

Faced with the opposing voices from US congressmen, the public and industrial associations, Washington still argues that the impact on American consumers is very small and the US has produced models to prove it.

However, the problem is that the so-called proof is not comparable at all to how American people and consumers are actually feeling.

The responsibility of big countries is to provide the world with stability and certainty while creating conditions and opportunities for the common development of all countries. But some people in the United States do just the opposite.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently lowered its global economic growth forecast for the third time this year. In the World Economic Outlook released this July, the organization slashed expectations for growth in the global volume of trade to 2.5 percent, lower than its estimate in April.

The trade tensions caused by the US and the uncertainties in the country’s long-term policies have become a primary factor affecting market confidence and weakening the vitality of the global economy.

The IMF once predicted that global GDP growth would be cut by 0.5 percent by 2020 if all the threatened tariffs were implemented.

Today some in America are obsessed with American privilege to the point of destroying international rules and the international order. An observer commented that the US claimed to be at the steering wheel of the world economy, yet it could neither guide the economic development nor assume its responsibility.

On the contrary, the US was just being extremely irresponsible by withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and the United Nations Human Rights Council.

No one can stand without credibility; no country can fit in without reputation. The irresponsible practice of some Americans is something that stems from their disdain for justice and disregard for faith, and these Americans need to wake up.

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)

(Xinhua)10:24, August 08, 2019

BEIJING, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) — Chinas lunar rover Yutu-2 has driven 271 meters on the far side of the moon to conduct scientific exploration on the virgin territory.

Both the lander and the rover of the Change-4 probe switched to its dormant mode for the lunar night on Wednesday (Beijing time), according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.

Chinas Change-4 probe, launched on Dec. 8, 2018, made the first-ever soft landing on the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon on Jan. 3.

A lunar day equals 14 days on Earth, a lunar night the same length. The Change-4 probe switches to dormant mode during the lunar night due to lack of solar power.

During the eighth lunar day of the probe on the moon, the scientific instruments on the lander and rover worked well, and a new batch of scientific detection data were sent to the core research team for analysis.

As a result of the tidal locking effect, the moons revolution cycle is the same as its rotation cycle, and the same side always faces Earth.

The far side of the moon has unique features, and scientists expect Change-4 could bring breakthrough findings.

The scientific tasks of the Change-4 mission include low-frequency radio astronomical observation, surveying the terrain and landforms, detecting the mineral composition and shallow lunar surface structure and measuring neutron radiation and neutral atoms.

The Change-4 mission embodies Chinas hope to combine wisdom in space exploration with four payloads developed by the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.

(Xinhua)15:46, August 08, 2019

BEIJING, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) — Chinas super-thin rubidium atomic clock, which is just 17 millimeters thick, has been put into mass production, said its manufacturer Thursday.

The clock, developed in 2018 by a research institute under the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation Limited, is the key to the positioning and timing accuracy of BeiDou navigation satellites.

Compared with the previous generation, the new clock is smaller in size but performs better. It adopts a plug-in design, making it easy to insert and remove on circuit board. With stronger resistance to high temperatures, it can work at 70 degrees Celsius.

The clock can be used in fields such as aviation, aerospace and telecommunications. According to its developers, the ultra-accurate clock will have a broader market prospect in the future.

A large number of self-developed rubidium and hydrogen atomic clocks have been carried by satellites that provide accurate positioning for Chinas BeiDou Navigation Satellite System.

The atomic clocks are the workhorses that send synchronized signals so sat-nav receivers can triangulate their position on Earth.