Latest news with #RenZhengfei
South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong's research strength is vital to China's third wave of reform
As Shenzhen approaches 45 years as a special economic zone (SEZ), the importance of opening up in driving China's progress was stressed by none other than Huawei Technologies founder Ren Zhengfei. 'The more open the country becomes, the more it will drive our progress,' he told People's Daily in a recent interview, speaking also of the importance of basic research, education and talent development. Soon after, the government outlined reforms to accelerate the development of hi-tech emerging industries in Shenzhen, highlighting the pioneering and demonstrative role of the reforms to push innovation and opening-up. Shenzhen has long been the vanguard of China's reform and opening-up. The decision to create the Shenzhen SEZ in the first wave of reform was groundbreaking and marked China's entry into global markets. The second wave of opening up kicked off with Deng Xiaoping's 1992 'southern tour' . China seized the opportunities presented by the post-Cold War wave of globalisation, breaking free of sanctions and restrictions. In 2001, China's accession to the World Trade Organization furthered its integration into the global economy, solidifying its position as a key player and laying the foundation for its rise as a major power. Today, however, China needs to enter a new phase of opening up – a third wave – and Shenzhen's latest reform agenda is viewed as a key precursor to this shift. China is facing a more complex and uncertain global environment, characterised by escalating geopolitical tensions, economic decoupling and a fierce technological cold war with the United States. Unlike previously, this new phase will require a strategic recalibration – focusing on technological innovation and talent cultivation.
Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Why China is giving away its tech 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 program, which is also the basis of Google's Android operating system. Kubernetes, a program 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 fuelled 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. 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.
West Australian
3 days ago
- Business
- West Australian
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. 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.
Kuwait Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Kuwait Times
Taiwan adds China's Huawei and SMIC to export blacklist
BEIJING: People are seen at an electronics store in a mall in Beijing on June 16, 2016. – AFP TAIPEI: Taiwan has put Chinese tech giant Huawei and chip titan SMIC on an export blacklist, further squeezing Beijing's access to the technology needed to build the most advanced chips. Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp were among 601 entities added to Taiwan's 'strategic high-tech commodities entity list', the Ministry of Economic Affairs' International Trade Administration said Sunday. Taiwan is a global chip powerhouse, producing more than half of the world's semiconductors — including almost all high-end chips. Local companies wanting to ship high-tech products to Huawei, SMIC or any other entity on the list will have to obtain permission from Taiwan's government. 'Based on the prevention of arms proliferation and other national security considerations, a total of 601 entities involved in arms proliferation activities were added to the list... including Chinese companies such as Huawei and SMIC,' the administration said in a statement. Other entities added to the list are based in Russia, Pakistan, Iran and Myanmar, according to the statement. Taipei's move deals another blow to Chinese tech companies, which are already facing increasing export restrictions imposed by the United States. The United States has expanded efforts to curb exports of state-of-the-art chips to China, concerned they could be used to advance Beijing's military systems and other tech capabilities. Washington recently unveiled guidelines warning firms that using Chinese-made high-tech AI semiconductors, specifically Huawei's Ascend chips, would put them at risk of violating US export controls. Tougher controls have prevented US chip giant Nvidia, one of Huawei's rivals, from selling certain AI semiconductors — widely regarded as the most advanced in the world — to Chinese firms. As a result, it is now facing tougher competition from local players in the crucial market, including Huawei. Nvidia's chief executive Jensen Huang told reporters last month that Chinese companies 'are very, very talented and very determined, and the export control gave them the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development'. But Huawei's chips still 'lag behind the United States by one generation', state media quoted its founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei as saying in a rare interview last week. Beijing has accused the United States of 'bullying' and 'abusing export controls to suppress and contain' Chinese firms. — AFP
Asia Times
4 days ago
- Business
- Asia Times
Huawei chief hasn't a chip worry in the world
In a recent interview with China's state-run People's Daily, Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei provided an assessment of the Chinese semiconductor industry that many might find surprising. An English version of the interview was published by the Communist Party-run Global Times. 'There's actually no need to worry about the chip issue,' Huawei's chief said. 'By leveraging methods such as superposition and clustering, computational results can match the most advanced global standards. In terms of software, thousands upon thousands of open-source software will meet the needs of the entire society in the future.' This optimism comes from objective analysis supported by Huawei's own experience, with some self-deprecation: 'There are many companies in China making chips, and many are doing well; Huawei is just one of them. The US has exaggerated Huawei's achievements – the company isn't that powerful yet. We need to work hard to live up to their evaluation. 'Our single chips still lag behind the US by a generation. We use mathematics to compensate for physics, non-Moore's Law approaches to complement Moore's Law, and group computing to make up for single-chip limitations, which can also achieve practical results.' This squares with the conclusion of Dylan Patel and his colleague at SemiAnalysis, who found that Huawei's Ascend 910C AI processor is more impressive when used in the company's CloudMatrix 394 rack-scale AI data center solution, which is a complete system consisting of 384 Ascend 910C processors, servers, networking, storage, power management and cooling. In their estimation, the CloudMatrix 394 'competes directly' with Nvidia's top-end GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip. 'The engineering advantage,' they write, 'is at the system level not just at the chip level, with innovation at the accelerator, networking, optics, and software layers… Huawei is a generation behind in chips, but its scale-up solution is arguably a generation ahead of Nvidia and AMD's current products on the market.' With regard to the ongoing effort to develop the basic semiconductor devices needed to support the country's consumer electronics, automotive and other industries, Ren said, 'China has opportunities in low- and mid-range chips, with dozens or even hundreds of chip companies working hard. The opportunities are even greater for compound semiconductors.' One prominent example is China's rapid advance in silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors, which have become standard in electric vehicles (EVs). Approximately two-thirds of the world's electric vehicles (EVs) are manufactured in China, making this both an obvious opportunity and a strategic necessity. Compared with ordinary silicon, SiC-based power devices are more energy-efficient and reliable. They improve the performance of not only electric vehicles and battery chargers, but also industrial machinery, solar and wind power and data centers. In March, BYD announced a new high-speed EV charging system, which enables 400 kilometers of driving in five minutes – about twice the performance of Tesla's supercharger. According to DigiTimes, 'Silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductors played an instrumental role in this technological advancement, as key advantages of the wide bandgap material, including high voltage and temperature resistance and low energy loss, help enhance the efficiency and reliability of electric drive systems to support high-voltage charging.' Nomad Semi wrote that, 'This achievement was made possible by BYD Semiconductor's breakthrough in high-power 1,500V SiC chips. It marks the first large-scale application of 1500V SiC chips in the global automotive industry.' BYD is also starting to make its own SiC wafers, which should give it a complete internal SiC supply chain from substrates to chips and modules. Established in 2002, BYD Semiconductor also makes other types of discrete power semiconductors, power management ICs, microcontroller units (MCUs), sensors and optoelectronic devices used in new energy vehicles (NEVs, which include both battery-powered and hybrid vehicles). BYD appears to be well on its way to self-sufficiency in automotive semiconductors. Ren also emphasized the importance of theoretical scientific research. 'We must understand and support those doing theoretical work,' he said. 'We need to appreciate their vision; their great, quiet dedication… those engaged in theoretical research are the hope for our country's future.' Huawei is doing its part: 'We invest 180 billion yuan (US$25 billion) in research and development each year, with approximately 60 billion yuan allocated to basic theoretical research, which is not subject to performance evaluation. About 120 billion yuan is invested in product research and development, which is subject to evaluation. Without theoretical support, there can be no breakthroughs, and we will not be able to catch up with the US.' For example, more than 20 years of research into hybrid stochastic number systems has led to the development of a Hybrid Stochastic Computing SoC (System-on-Chip) for high-performance computing at the School of Electronic and Information Engineering of the Beijing University of Aeronautic and Astronautics (BUAA). Led by Professor Li Hongge, the research and development team combined binary (0 – 1) and stochastic (probability-based) values, in-memory computing, and heterogenous SoC design (multiple specialized processing units) using open-source RISC-V architecture, which is beyond the reach of US government sanctions. As reported by the Guangming Daily, the hybrid chip features higher fault tolerance, stronger resistance to interference, and much greater energy efficiency than conventional binary digital chips. As translated by TrendForce, 'Professor Li explains that stochastic computing expresses values through the probability of a CMOS logic signal remaining 'high' during a given time period. In other words, the frequency of high-level pulses represents the numerical probability.' BUAA is already applying the technology to touch recognition, instrument display panels, and flight control. Beyond that, the research team is working on more complex functions such as voice and image processing and AI model acceleration. The chips themselves are fabricated by the Chinese IC foundry SMIC. Similar R&D programs are underway in the US, Japan and Europe, but for the time being, China leads the world in the practical application of hybrid stochastic computing. The negative implications for the US policy of technology containment should be obvious. 'For the US semiconductor industry, China is gone,' electronics industry analyst Handel Jones told The New York Times. Jones is the founder and CEO of California consulting firm International Business Strategies, Inc. 'He projects that Chinese companies will have a majority share of chips in every major category in China by 2030.' Follow this writer on X: @ScottFo83517667
