Weblog with daily updates of the news on a frugal, fair and beautiful China, from the perspective of internet entrepreneur, new media advisor and president of the China Speakers Bureau Fons Tuinstra
China’s President Xi Jinping met last week with the country’s major tech leaders, for the first time he did so since 2018. Business analyst Shaun Rein, author of The Split: Finding the Opportunities in China’s Economy in the New World Order, discusses the importance of this policy change after the country’s tech industry suffered from a major crackdown in the past years, he tells at the Thinkers Forum. China’s industrial leaders heard it is ok to make money again after a long time, he added
According to Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein in The Global View, capital is moving back to China, and the country will be back in business in six to 12 months. In the short run investors in the stock markets have to be careful, as China’s stock markets behave more like volatile retail markets where institutional investors have little influence. He adds that the tech markets will especially be booming again now Xi Jinping showed his full support for the sector.
China expert Kaiser Kuo kicks off a wide-ranging debate on Huawei and describes how it developed from a rather obscure brand with no government support into the national champion it is today, at the Asia Society. Now it appeals to nationalistic feelings among consumers in China, but that trajectory was not so obvious at its humble start, he says.
Later, the debate focuses on whether Huawei can have its own “DeepSeek moment” in the semiconductor industry.
China’s consumers turn to local brands because they tend to be cheaper than international brands, and because of patriotism because of the US-China trade war, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein to CNBC. Anti-US sentiment was already virulent under Biden because of anti-Chinese measures. Under Trump that has not yet improved, adds Shaun Rein, but the Chinese hope Trump is more transactional than Biden was.
Business analyst Shaun Rein looks at the nervewracking few weeks for the global IT industry, starting with the DeekSeek moment of fame, proving that China was way ahead of the US competition in AI. Also, TikTok, Trump’s curtailing of Nvidia, RedNote’s success, censorship in the US, and Silicon Valley get his verdict on East-West Investment opportunities.
China expert Kaiser Kuo attended this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos and wrote up the three trends shaping China’s development for the Weforum. Including how China is managing multiple transitions, its role in the global industry, and the country’s latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.
Kaiser Kuo:
The electric vehicle sector emerged as a prime example of China’s evolving role in global industry. Pan Jian, co-chairman of Chinese EV battery giant CATL, emphasized the need for global collaboration: “It’s not going to be a one-country effort in terms of EVs. It’s going to be a global effort.” He highlighted China’s success in fostering a robust EV ecosystem through what he called a “perfect marriage between the public and private sectors,” while noting that software integration has been crucial to China’s EV success: “In China, we no longer call them EVs; we call them EIVs — where the ‘I’ stands for ‘intelligent.’ The ‘I’ is what truly makes the difference. Without the intelligence aspect, EV penetration in China would never have exceeded 30%.”
Rupert Hoogewerf, founder and compiler of the Hurun China Rich List, looks back at the 25-anniversary of his Hurun Rich List and explains how his company survived all the twists and turns in China’s recent history.
What’s the relationship between TikTok and the Chinese Communist Party?
TikTok is a private company, and it’s now registered offshore from China — but, of course, historically most of its operation has been in China. As of five or six years ago, maybe even a bit longer, the Chinese government has required large, private companies to have branches of the Chinese Communist Party within the company structure.
For the Chinese equivalent of TikTok, Douyin, there’s a party committee in the company. And the parent company, ByteDance, which is located in China, also has a Chinese Communist Party branch. Most of the people in the party committee would not be full-time government officials — they’re just workers or executives who had already belonged to the party. That’s actually a common thing to happen. You will soon be recruited into the party at a university or in the workplace, and a lot of people do it just to advance their careers.
There are certain requirements for joining the party, and the No. 1 requirement is that you have to obey the party no matter what. I think that’s where a lot of U.S. lawmakers and people in the government really have an issue.
More recently, within the past four years, the party has demanded top tech companies to give part of their shares to entities of the Chinese government. So China has sovereign wealth funds. Through that mechanism, the government becomes a minority shareholder of these tech companies, so then it can send members to the management boards of these tech companies, and these board members are full-time Chinese government officials.
How has this relationship between ByteDance and the party played into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s larger goals?
Xi Jinping recognizes the power of social media and the internet in general — not really as something to control people’s minds with, but certainly something to use to sway people’s opinions. He has ordered internet companies in China to work for the party on behalf of the party. It’s very well known that the Chinese counterpart of TikTok is ordered by the Chinese government to convey propaganda to users within China all the time, even if TikTok claims that it doesn’t do that for audiences outside of China.
Xi has also said that he wants users around the world, not just in China, to use Chinese technology. And of course, TikTok has been the most successful case of this, certainly on the software side: it’s used by over a billion users worldwide.
Is there reason for the U.S. to be legitimately concerned about how TikTok might make users’ personal data available to the Chinese government?
I don’t buy the argument that we should be alarmed how the Chinese government can get all this data on users from TikTok — because all the other internet platforms active in the U.S. already sell user data to data brokers, and China can obtain it that way. To be clear, I’m sure TikTok is feeding some data to the Chinese government; I’m just saying that it’s probably not that much worse than what they could do already using all the other sources of data.
The other worry is that TikTok is so powerful, and that it’s used by so many people that the people behind the app can bias the politics within the United States. I think that TikTok does have the potential to do that. But then, compare that with other people who are influencing opinion on social media. You have to ask yourself, “Who has done more damage to the quality of American democracy: Elon Musk or TikTok?”
Is the ban a wise move? How could it affect relations between the two countries?
It’s really difficult to assess because former government officials, sometimes at 21st Century China Center events, will say, “If only you knew what we knew, you would definitely support the ban.” But we don’t know what they know.
One consideration is that the Chinese government has banned pretty much all of our social media and search platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Google.
From a pure competitive technology perspective: I don’t think the ban is optimal, but at least it’s fair game. But of course, TikTok has great currency in the United States: people make a living off of TikTok, so a ban is going to affect them, and as a result, for domestic political reasons it may not be the smartest thing to do.
The international march forward of China’s EV producers profoundly influences the supply chains. China veteran Kaiser Kuo looks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, especially at CATL, the market leader for batteries in China, and a magnet for geopolitical tensions, he writes at the WEForum.
Kaiser Kuo:
China’s rise as a superpower in the electric vehicle (EV) industry has reshaped global supply chains, and at the centre of this transformation is Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL). As the world’s largest EV battery maker, CATL has become a critical player in the clean energy transition – and a lightning rod for geopolitical tensions. Co-chairman and co-founder Pan Jian of CATL, speaking recently at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, underscored the global nature of the EV revolution: “It’s not going to be a one-country effort in terms of EVs. It’s going to be a global effort.”…
The road ahead for CATL is strewn with obstacles. The Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese EVs and proposed bans on Chinese software – the very thing Pan credits for China’s edge in EVs – in US-sold vehicles are likely to complicate CATL’s operations. Furthermore, the Pentagon’s designation could deter US automakers from deepening partnerships with CATL, despite the company’s importance to their supply chains.
Yet CATL’s leadership remains confident. Pan’s optimism reflects a broader belief in the inevitability of EVs and the necessity of global collaboration. “It’s a massive cultural shift,” he said, referring to the transformation of the auto industry, “but it’s going to happen.”
As the EV revolution accelerates, CATL’s ability to navigate these geopolitical and market complexities will shape not only its future, but also the contours of the global energy transition. Its story is emblematic of a world grappling with the contradictions of competition, cooperation and the urgent need for sustainability.
Business analyst Shaun Rein, author of The Split: Finding the Opportunities in China’s Economy in the New World Order, dives into the future of EU-China relations, as Trump is getting settle for his second term as US president. He discusses the currently hostile relationship between some of the EU leaders and how the European continent can move ahead with a better relationship with China, more independent from the United States, he tells Volker Friedrich.
While in the past youth looked for jobs in the private sector or at foreign companies, they now look for government jobs as they offer more security, says Arthur Kroeber, leading economist and author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know®. Most graduates feel the sluggish Chinese economy will continue for some time, he says on CNBC.
‘Trump will use a shock and awe strategy to control China, similar to his tactics with Denmark, Greenland, Canada, Panama, and Mexico,’ says Shaun Rein, Founder and Managing Director, China Market Research Group (CMR) in an interview at WION. Tariffs, TikTok, and many other issues are hanging over the negotiations. But in the end, both countries are better off working together, says Shaun Rein.
A prime example is the Chinese-developed DeepSeek AI chatbot, whose developer claims to have spent only a fraction of the development costs compared to companies like OpenAI. In some tests, it closely matched OpenAI’s ChatGPT model and outperformed Meta’s Llama AI model.
“You could have said that thanks to the sanction of the chips, lots of Chinese AI startups focused on developing AI applications in a more efficient way, using much fewer GPU chips than the U.S. counterparts,” said Winston Ma, author of “The Digital War.”
One area where Chinese tech companies have focused their efforts is humanoid robotics.
“[If you went to] the recent CES Las Vegas Exhibition, you will find Chinese manufacturers dominate the exhibition of smart robotics. It’s interesting that ‘Made in China’ was started when China was at the low end of the global supply chain. But after two, three decades, the Chinese manufacturing ecosystem, especially relating to electronics, has become the strongest in the world,” said Ma.
Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report Chairman and Chief Researcher, presented on Wednesday in Beijing “the Hurun Future Unicorns – Global Gazelles Index 2024, a list of the world’s start-ups founded in the 2000s but not yet listed on a public exchange and most likely to ”go unicorn”,(meaning hitting a valuation of US$1bln) within three years,” writes the ECNS.
ECNS:
Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report Chairman and Chief Researcher, noted that Hurun Gazelles represent the most exciting startups in the world that are most likely to “go unicorn” within three years. Their animal counterpart is famous for agility and incredible bursts of speed, reaching speeds of close to 100 km/h. In much the same way, Hurun Gazelles have to run fast, or – like their animal counterparts – they may get eaten and never make it to a Hurun Unicorn.
“The idea behind the Hurun Gazelles is to help them find more investors, strategic partners and service providers as well as encourage the founders to think bigger, grow faster and go further,” noted Hoogewerf, adding that over a quarter of Hurun Gazelles are already leveraging AI to transform sectors, with fintech, blockchain, and SaaS seeing the most disruption.
Specifically, BioTech and HealthTech represent the hottest pipeline for the next generation of unicorns, the Hurun Gazelles. Innovations in medical devices, BioTech, and digital health are transforming disease treatment, diagnostics, and patient care, with China and the U.S. leading this healthcare revolution, Hoogewerf explained.
According to the List, China has more Hurun Gazelles than the rest of the world combined except for the U.S. In the past five years, China has seen the number of Hurun Gazelles more than tripling from 70 to 258. BioTech and semiconductors stand out as the industries with the most number of future Chinese unicorns. By city, the “Big Two” are Shanghai and Beijing, followed by Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Suzhou.
China’s lunar new year is usually the time of the year consumers spend their money, but 
