In recent months, followers of influential liberal bloggers have been interviewed by police as China widens its net of online surveillance Late last year, Duan*, a university student in China, used a virtual private network to jump over China’s great firewall of internet censorship and download social media platform Discord. Overnight he entered a community in which thousands of members with diverse views debated political ideas and staged mock elections. People could join the chat to discuss ideas such as democracy, anarchism and communism. “After all, it’s hard for us to do politics in reality, so we have to do it in a group chat,” Yang Minghao, a popular vlogger, said in a video on YouTube. Continue reading...

Streamers were given list of topics to avoid also including news and politics, Covid-19 and China’s game industry Hit new Chinese game Black Myth: Wukong has sparked controversy after gaming influencers who were given early access were told not to mention news and politics, Covid-19, or “feminist propaganda” while publicly discussing the game. The game, which was released last week, is China’s first “triple A” rated game, an industry term meaning a high budget blockbuster game, and is based on the famous 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West. Do NOT insult other influencers or players. Do NOT use any offensive language/humor. Do NOT include politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishization, and other content that instigates negative discourse. Do NOT use trigger words such as ‘quarantine’ or ‘isolation’ or ‘Covid-19’. Do NOT discuss content related to China’s game industry policies, opinions, news, etc. Continue reading...

The 9% tariff is much less than the up to 36.3% others face after investigation into Beijing’s ‘unfair’ subsidies of EVs * Business live – latest updates Tesla will face a 9% levy on its Chinese-made cars exported to the EU, the European Commission has said, as it issued an update on its sweeping investigation into Beijing’s “unfair” subsidies of electric vehicles. The tariff on Tesla – far lower than the 21.3% average on companies that cooperated with the EU investigation and 36.3% on those that did not – came after the California-headquartered firm requested individual treatment as part of the wider Brussels inquiry. Continue reading...

Tech giant’s revenue rises 4.9% to $85.78bn despite phone sales falling 0.9% and trend of decline in key China market Apple reported better-than-expected earnings in the third quarter of 2024, with buzz about its new AI features offsetting a continuing decline in its key China market. Earnings exceeded analyst predictions despite a year-over-year decline in iPhone sales, with revenue rising 4.9% to $85.78bn in the three months ending 29 June, beating the average analyst estimate of $84.53bn. The company maintained its cash dividend at 25 cents for each share. Continue reading...

Officials insist China-based owner ByteDance must separate from its short video app in the US because it is a threat to national security and citizens’ data The US justice department has asked an appeals court to reject legal challenges to a law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok’s US assets by 19 January or face a ban. TikTok, parent company ByteDance and a group of TikTok creators have filed suits seeking to block the law, which could ban the app used by 170 million Americans. Continue reading...

The country has long been the world’s biggest market – but the government’s interest is more geopolitical than environmental When Kenzi, an advertising worker in Shanghai, bought an electric vehicle in November she wasn’t even thinking about the environmental benefits. She had read Elon Musk’s biography and thought the Tesla 3 looked good. She also knew that if she bought an EV she could bypass the long wait and cost of getting licence plates, which are rationed by the government. “It’s not easy to get a licence plate in Shanghai, but you get a licence for free when you buy an EV,” she said. Continue reading...

US firm’s move, amid Beijing-Washington tensions, sparks rush to lure users to homegrown models At the World AI Conference in Shanghai last week, one of China’s leading artificial intelligence companies, SenseTime, unveiled its latest model, SenseNova 5.5. The model showed off its ability to identify and describe a stuffed toy puppy (wearing a SenseTime cap), offered feedback on a drawing of a rabbit, and instantly read and summarised a page of text. According to SenseTime, SenseNova 5.5 is comparable with GPT-4o, the flagship artificial intelligence model of the Microsoft-backed US company OpenAI. Continue reading...

Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, has said Chinese state-affiliated actors have been involved in two cyber-attacks on the UK, including the hacking of the Electoral Commission, and attacks aimed at parliamentarians. Dowden said the Foreign Office would summon China’s ambassador to account for its actions * Chinese hackers targeted UK’s Electoral Commission and politicians, say security services * UK politics: latest updates Continue reading...