THE ECONOMIST: Why China is giving away its technology for free
Underpinning the digital economy is a deep foundation of open-source software, freely available for anyone to use. The majority of the world's websites are run using Apache and Nginx, two open-source programs.
Most computer servers are powered by Linux, another such programme, which is also the basis of Google's Android operating system. Kubernetes, a programme widely used to manage cloud-computing workloads, is likewise open-source. The software is maintained and improved upon by a global community of developers.
China, which had long stood at the periphery of that community, has in recent years become an integral part of it. After America and India, it is home to the largest group of developers on GitHub, the world's biggest repository of open-source software.
Chinese tech giants, including Alibaba, Baidu and Huawei, have become prolific open-source funders and contributors.
China has been particularly active in the development of open-source artificial-intelligence (AI) models, including those from DeepSeek, an AI startup that shook the world in January by releasing for free the cutting-edge models it had developed on a shoestring. According to Artificial Analysis, a website, 12 of the 15 leading open-source AI models are Chinese.
This newfound interest in open-source has been fueled by America's efforts to hobble its rival. Curbing China's access to code that is readily available online is tricky.
This month Ren Zhengfei, Huawei's founder, told People's Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, that American tech restrictions were nothing to fear since 'there will be thousands of open-source software (programs) to meet the needs of the entire society'.
Yet the rise in China of open technology, which relies on transparency and decentralisation, is awkward for an authoritarian state.
If the party's patience with open-source fades, and it decides to exert control, that could hinder both the course of innovation at home and developers' ability to export their technology abroad.
China's open-source movement first gained traction in the mid-2010s. Richard Lin, co-founder of Kaiyuanshe, a local open-source advocacy group, recalls that most of the early adopters were developers who simply wanted free software.
That changed when they realised that contributing to open-source projects could improve their job prospects.
Big firms soon followed, with companies like Huawei backing open-source work to attract talent and cut costs by sharing technology.
Momentum gathered in 2019 when Huawei was, in effect, barred by America from using Android. That gave new urgency to efforts to cut reliance on Western technology. Open-source offered a faster way for Chinese tech firms to take existing code and build their own programs with help from the country's vast community of developers.
In 2020, Huawei launched OpenHarmony, a family of open-source operating systems for smartphones and other devices. It also joined others, including Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, to establish the OpenAtom Foundation, a body dedicated to open-source development.
China quickly became not just a big contributor to open-source programs, but also an early adopter of software. JD.com, an e-commerce firm, was among the first to deploy Kubernetes.
AI has lately given China's open-source movement a further boost. Chinese companies and the government see open models as the quickest way to narrow the gap with America. DeepSeek's models have generated the most interest, but Qwen, developed by Alibaba, is also highly rated, and Baidu has said it will soon open up the model behind its Ernie chatbot.
China's enthusiasm for open technology is also extending to hardware. Unitree, a robotics startup from Hangzhou, has made its training data, algorithms and hardware designs available for free, which may help it to shape global standards. Semiconductors offer another illustration.
China depends on designs from Western chip firms. As part of its push for self-sufficiency, the government is urging firms to adopt RISC-V, an open chip architecture developed at the University of California, Berkeley.
Many Chinese firms also hope that more transparent technology will help them win acceptance for their products abroad. That has yet to prove true. Huawei's operating system has found few users elsewhere.
Although some Western companies have been experimenting with DeepSeek's models, an executive at a global enterprise-software firm says that many clients outside China will not touch the country's AI tools. Some fear disruption from future American restrictions. Others worry about backdoors hidden in the code that might allow them to be spied on.
China's open-source ambitions could be derailed in other ways, too. Qi Ning, a Chinese software engineer, points out that at international open-source conferences, attendees increasingly avoid naming Chinese collaborators, as they worry about reputational risk or political blowback.
America's government may also make life difficult for Chinese open-source developers. Fearing nefarious meddling in the world's code, it could seek to cut China off from GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft.
Mr Qi says many Chinese developers fear 'access issues in the future'.
China's government has promoted Gitee, a domestic alternative. But few local programmers use it. Last year some American lawmakers argued for restricting China's access to RISC-V — though Andrea Gallo, head of the Swiss body that oversees the technology, contends that this is not feasible as it is a public standard, much like USB.
Yet it is China's own government that poses the biggest threat to the country's open-source experiment, despite supporting it in principle. In 2021 the government restricted access to GitHub, concerned that the platform could be used to host politically sensitive content.
Developers quickly turned to virtual private networks (which mask a user's location) to regain access, but the episode rattled many. In 2022 the government announced that all projects on Gitee would be subject to official review and that developers would need to certify compliance with Chinese law.
A similar pattern is playing out in AI. Chinese law prohibits models from generating content that 'damages the unity of the country and social harmony'. In 2023 Hugging Face, a Franco-American platform for sharing open-source AI models, became inaccessible from within China.
China's open-source movement is organic, driven by developers and tech firms. The government has so far encouraged it because it serves its objectives of accelerating domestic innovation and reducing reliance on Western technology. If China's leaders constrain the culture of freedom and experimentation on which open technology relies, however, they will limit its potential.
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Sydney Morning Herald
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The Age
4 hours ago
- The Age
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The Age
6 hours ago
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Forrest's Fortescue is investing heavily in a push to diversify into green hydrogen as a substitute for coal in the steel-making process, and has plans to build a commercial-scale green iron plant in the Pilbara. 'Australian industry is starting to do the work here,' says Shaw. The opportunity for Australia to shift to a green iron producer and away from an iron ore miner and shipper is 'real', he adds, but will face technical and economic challenges. 'Innovation, commitment and supportive policy settings will likely be needed in combination to realise such an enormous transition,' he says. 'They are going to shut down the old-fashioned, two-century-old technology of burning sticks and logs, putting in coal, putting in iron ore, burning it all and sending up masses of pollution into the atmosphere and producing steel.' Fortescue's Andrew Forrest While the industry is responding to growing efforts to decarbonise the steel sector, which accounts for at least 8 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, Forrest's suggestion that the Pilbara is at risk of becoming a wasteland is one that Rio Tinto's head of iron ore, Simon Trott, rejects. 'We're going to be in the Pilbara for decades,' he says. 'It has got a strong future if we do the work.' Asked to explain the progressive decline in ore quality coming out of the region, Trott says: 'You tend to start with the best bits first. That's what happened when the Pilbara got developed through the '60s, and since then, as a whole, the Pilbara has gradually declined.' Rio Tinto says its new mines, such as Western Range, will shore up growth. The Anglo-Australian mining giant also believes it has an ace up its sleeve at its Rhodes Ridge development, which is expected to be ready by the end of this decade and contains more than 6 billion tonnes of higher grade ore. 'The good news for us is that it's in front of us rather than behind us,' says Trott. Loading Rod Sims, the long-serving former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, paints a more optimistic picture of the Pilbara's future. Where the industry sees a threat, he sees lucrative potential to create a green iron manufacturing hub for which, he says, Australia is 'superbly well positioned'. Now chair of the Superpower Institute, a think tank he co-founded with energy expert and economist Ross Garnaut, Sims says Australia's abundant iron ore, when coupled with world-class wind and solar resources, could power a green steel export industry potentially worth $386 billion a year by 2060. 'Green iron is the next great chapter in Australia's export story,' he says. 'As the world decarbonises, our fossil fuel exports will inevitably decline – but by using our unparalleled renewable energy resources to make green iron, we can replace those exports with high value, zero carbon products that the world will need.' One way to fulfil that vision is to use green hydrogen to replace coal in the steelmaking process, creating an emission-free product, a technology Forrest is placing big bets on. The hydrogen is sourced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis powered by fields of solar panels or wind turbines. However, the technology remains far more expensive than basic furnaces, and is not widely used yet. Loading With big challenges ahead, how Australia's mining giants position themselves for the next decade will be critical. BHP and Rio Tinto are searching for new leadership talent to steer them through. Both companies are heading into capital-intensive, construction-heavy periods with a focus on projects aimed at boosting their supplies of commodities that stand to benefit from growing global efforts to tackle global warming, such as electric battery raw material lithium, and copper, a key ingredient in electric wiring. BHP is focusing on several new and expanded copper mines, while Rio Tinto is concentrating on copper and lithium. 'Both businesses will need to pivot to a more technical, execution-driven capability within senior leadership ranks,' says Shaw. 'It will come down to the right balance of senior leaders being able to surround themselves with the technical skills and talent they need and can trust, versus potential new leadership with stronger technical experience.' Rio Tinto chair Dominic Barton surprised investors with his disclosure three weeks ago that chief executive Jakob Stausholm will leave later this year. The miner didn't name a successor, prompting speculation the transition was hasty and a result of friction between Stausholm and Barton. Stausholm has rejected talk of a rift. There is 'no disalignment', he told reporters at Western Range last week. 'We have completely agreed between ourselves that it is the right time to look for succession, and I will be stepping down. I am very happy and proud about my what will be five years as CEO of this company,' he said. Any incoming boss at Rio Tinto will need to 'double down to deliver greater operational performance', Barton said, intimating the company is focusing on candidates for the top job with deep mining experience. Change at the top of resource giant BHP has been smoother. Former National Australia Bank chief executive Ross McEwan seamlessly took over as company chair from eight-year veteran Ken MacKenzie in March, although there are now suggestions the Big Australian is looking to replace CEO Mike Henry but no official acknowledgement. For Shanghai-based Baowu, Rio Tinto's partner in Western Range, there is no equivocation on the Pilbara's future. The world's largest steel producer, wholly owned by the Chinese government, is firmly rooted in the region's red earth, owning 46 per cent of the joint venture since 2002. Its chairman, Hu Wangming, describes it almost poetically as a place 'where partnership and friendship flourish, like the ore veins of the Western Range: strong, deep and everlasting'.
