http://english.tmtpost.com/post/4322384

Recent weeks have witnessed around-the-clock reports on the novel coronavirus pneumonia that emerged in Wuhan. People from all walks of life have been generously extending help to the city and its people, donating food and other basic necessities, not to mention medical supplies such as masks and protective suits. Most commonly, assistance comes in the form of monetary donations.

However, technology enterprises have the potential to offer far greater assistance to Wuhan in the overall battle against the new coronavirus by focusing on their respective areas of expertise.

5G Ready to Go

To combat the epidemic, it is not enough to just ensure there are sufficient medical supplies to treat patients and protect the wider population. In times of crisis such as this, the flow of information becomes of vital importance.

Thus, as construction rapidly commenced on Leishenshan Hospital and Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan, the country’s three major telecommunication operators (China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom) as well as communication equipment providers, such as Huawei and ZTE, embarked on analysing the communication resources of the region and formulated 5G expansion plans.

As of this moment, Leishenshan Hospital has already achieved gigabit network coverage, stable reception of 5G signals and a wireless network capable of supporting the concurrent communication needs of 25,000 people, accommodating the needs of remote command, remote consultation, remote surgery and data transmission. Meanwhile, Huoshenshan Hospital successfully completed the launch of its first 5G base station on January 25.

At present, most people still hold 4G communication devices, so 5G signals are being converted into WiFi signals via CPE (Customer Premise Equipment). Compared to the fiber router mode, CPE is less stable and suffers from network lag, however is more flexible in configuration and provides greater bandwidth capacity. For temporary hospitals such as Leishenshan and Huoshenshan, avoiding the requirement to lay cables can greatly improve construction efficiency.

Additionally, with 5G communication now guaranteed, all diagnostic and treatment data as well as patient medical records can now be transmitted, collected and archived digitally in the cloud, eliminating risk of viral and bacterial transmission caused by paper delivery. Digital management also facilitates remote access by researchers who are not on site, not only across China, but the entire world. Furthermore, for patients fitted with vital signs monitors, real-time body data can be fed back via 5G relieving the burden for medical staff of collecting records on site.

Robots on the Frontline

Besides ensuring cutting-edge communication systems for hospitals as they fight the epidemic, technology enterprises can also lessen the workload of medical staff. At this stage in development, medical robots have largely realized functions such as unmanned guidance, auto response to fever inquiry, patient guidance as well as preliminary diagnosis and treatment. In addition, distribution robots, walking predetermined routes, make deliveries of lab test reports and drugs.

Robots with refined operations, when modified and set, can even replace medical staff in the removal of protective suits of medical colleagues, thus reducing the risk of infection by direct contact. A robot model called Baxter, manufactured by Rethink Robotics, achieves this very function; not only that, it is also able to assist medical personnel to detect if a protective suit is damaged or if it is worn correctly, so as to better protect lives.

The disinfection robots launched by Shanghai TMiRob have been being used 24/7 in six hospitals located in the epidemic’s center Wuhan as well as in other hospitals on the frontline of the epidemic including Renji Hospital, Pulmonary Hospital, Zhongshan Hospital and Huashan Hospital in Shanghai, and Wenzhou’s №1 Hospital and №6 Hospital.

The robot integrates disinfection methods including ultra-dry atomized hydrogen peroxide, ultraviolet disinfection and plasma air filtration to achieve a 6-log reduction in microbes found on the surfaces of surrounding objects and in the air. In this way, not only do they lessen the burden on medical staff, they reduce patient exposure thus stemming the possibility of cross infection. More importantly, these robots are information collectors for the doctors.

Thermal Imaging Body Temperature Measuring

Technology enterprises can play a big role outside of the hospital wards too, one crucial example being the measuring of human body temperature. In densely populated areas, control of the epidemic is greatly facilitated if body temperatures can be accurately measured in the first instance and people with potential risks initially identified. Thermal imaging cameras are the best solution due to the fact they can measure body temperature without the need for close contact.

Zhejiang Dahua Technology, along with other companies, has successfully developed a thermal imaging temperature measurement system capable of long-distance and large-area detection. From 30℃ to 45℃, the margin of error can be as little as ± 0.3 ℃. Following the outbreak, the company first implemented the thermal imaging temperature measurement system in Shanghai Railway Station, then later at both Shanghai Hongqiao Airport and Shanghai Pudong International Airport.

Why Not Unmanned Delivery?

Those most affected by the epidemic are in fact ordinary people who are staying at home, particularly those more dependent on take-out food and courier supplies. Under the epidemic, many residential communities have begun to strictly control the entrance and exit of personnel; some are shutting their gates entirely. Objectively speaking, it creates an ideal distribution environment for unmanned delivery bots.

Some delivery bots have the ability to deliver goods in a semi-enclosed environment. Employing algorithms and equipped with cameras, they can (except in extreme conditions such as rain, snow or darkness) efficiently make deliveries to a building inside a community that is on relatively flat ground with few people moving about, without the need to set up base stations or QR codes for positioning. In the case of small-size goods or takeout, drones can also be used.

Outside of residential communities, the distribution environment may be more complex, yet there are already technology companies equipped with solutions.

Wuhan is not only the hot zone of the epidemic; it is, in fact, the first city to hand out commercial licenses for trial operations of self-driving cars. The risk of carrying goods is less than that of carrying people, even less on a closed expressway. It is feasible to have goods transported into Wuhan via expressway, then delivered by local freight drivers to the city’s distribution centers.

Regrettably, the companies who were granted the licenses in September of last year, including Baidu, Haylion Technologies and DeepBlue Technology, did not seize the opportunity to apply this new technology on the ground in the current situation. The only reported use of a delivery bot since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus was the one on January 24 for quarantined airline passengers on a flight from Singapore to Hangzhou, however it was conducted in a small, fixed and enclosed space.

Technical hardware and code might be stone-cold, yet the role they play and the assistance they provide are real and compassionate. The tremendous impacts of science and technology do carry weight in responses to critical public health events.

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This article was edited by Dido Pang. The original Chinese version was written by Tang Zhixiao.

Follow us on Twitter @tmtpostenglish, Medium @TMTPOST and Facebook @TMTPOST.

“Hold on to it. Great. Now move it a bit closer to your mouth. Almost there. Stop!” With the help of his doctor, and after four months of training, Mr. Zhang, a quadriplegic patient, finally found himself able to use his mind to operate the robotic arm to take a sip of cola by himself. In the process, Zhang has become the first elderly patient in China to succeed at carrying out complicated and effective motor control using an implantable Brain Computer Interface (BCI).

On January 16, Zhejiang University publicly announced the research results of its Brain Science and AI Program, in which volunteers implanted with electrodes used signals from the brain’s motor cortex to precisely control an external robotic arm and hand to achieve movements in three-dimensional space. The results provide positive evidence of the feasibility of elderly patients carrying out complicated and effective motor control using implantable BCI.

Mr. Zhang is 72 this year. Two years ago he was involved in a car accident that resulted in serious injury to the fourth cervical vertebra of his spinal cord, leading to total paralysis of all his limbs. In August 2019, Mr. Zhang was operated on by Dr. Zhang Jianmin, Chief Neurosurgeon of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University. The operation was the first successful craniotomy in China to implant a Utah electrode array in a patient’s motor cortex, which controls movements of the right upper extremity (the region from the shoulder to and including the hand). Having completed approximately four months of systematic training, Mr. Zhang is now not only able to shake hands; he can also drink beverages, eat Chinese deep-fried dough sticks and even play mahjong.

According to reports, the team used a progressive, step-by-step training method in which Mr. Zhang was first asked to track and control a mouse on a computer screen, then click on moving two-dimensional balls, then three-dimensional balls in virtual reality.

Next, Mr. Zhang was trained to control a robotic arm to carry out movements in nine directions that included upward, downward, leftward and rightward. Lastly, movements that simulate handshakes, drinking water and eating were also included. More than four months of training has achieved exciting results.

Though movements such as grasping, holding and moving objects may be a piece of cake for most people, they in fact involve a series of complicated processes including the sending and transmitting of signals, and decoding. For disabled people like Mr. Zhang who have suffered spinal nerve injuries and lost motor functions, such movements are practically mission impossible. Once the Utah electrode array has been implanted in Mr. Zhang’s brain, each needle on the electrode is able to detect the electric impulses produced by one or even several neurons. The other end of each electrode is connected to a computer which records neural signals produced by the brain in real time.

The next key step involves how to realize mind control. The team explained that hundreds of billions of neurons in the human brain communicate with each other by sending tiny electronic pulses that control every action of the human body. In order to achieve mind control, researchers need to collect and decode electroneurographic (ENG) signals within the electrode detection range in real time and match different signal signatures with the movements of the robotic arm.

Since BCI technology relies on both the ENG signatures of patients and algorithm design, there is currently no standardized method of analysis for the purposes of signal collection or decoding. In other words, no existing method can be directly applied. In the case of Mr. Zhang, Wang Yueming and his team introduced non-linear neural network algorithms and proposed a personalized solution specifically for the elderly patient.

The BCI used by Mr. Zhang functions as a channel for the direct transmission of orders, given by the brain, between the brain and external devices. For cases in which a patient’s spinal cord or motor neural pathway is damaged yet his/her brain cortex functions are still sound, BCI can be utilized with computers to interpret ENG signals as well as control external devices.

BCI research can be traced back to the U.S. in the 1970s. Dr. J. J. Vidal of UCLA first introduced the term in a dissertation intended to assess the viability of utilizing ENG signals. Since the start of the 21st century, BCI has become an increasingly cross-disciplinary field of research, involving neurology, physiology, psychology, engineering, computer science as well as rehabilitation science.

In fact, the California Institute of Technology many years ago already attempted to control the interface between brains and external robotic arms by implanting a chip. Innovations adopted by the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University are now testing the capability of robots to aid the electrode implantation procedure while limiting the margin of error to within 0.5 mm. It is also the world’s first successful surgical use of robots to aid electrode implantation.

Wang Yueming explained that in previous clinical applications a patient’s cortex would be covered with an electrode grid, or cortical EEG electrode. Such kind of semi-implanted operation involves craniotomy however without electrodes being actually inserted into the cortex. Thus, electric impulses produced by individual neurons could not be detected. This time, however, the micro electrode array is directly inserted into the brain’s motor cortex. As a result, it can detect electrical impulses produced by individual neurons, while the signals captured are not only more direct and more stable but able to capture more information from every cell.

Furthermore, at the age of 72, Mr. Zhang becomes the world’s oldest recorded patient to receive a successful BCI implant. Elderly patients are relatively weaker in physical strength, attention focus and control of emotions. Nevertheless, the positive outcome from the research means that BCI is, indeed, now also a feasible option for elderly patients.

Nevertheless, it will still take a considerable amount of time for BCI technology to be put into clinical application. At this stage, the team at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University will continue moving in this direction by carrying on their research and clinical trials.

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This article was edited by Dido Pang. The original Chinese version was written by Shi Wanjia.

Follow us on Twitter @tmtpostenglish, Medium @TMTPOST and Facebook @TMTPOST.

Tesla will be the name on every car enthusiast’s lips in 2020.

With the price of the domestically manufactured Tesla Model 3 dropping to below 300,000 RMB and official deliveries having commenced, how should domestic electric car manufacturers respond? Many have enquired of Li Bin, founder and CEO of NIO, that with Tesla now built at home in China and selling cheaper, will NIO be able to keep its head above water?

At last week’s China EV100 Forum, Li Bin gave his first response when he said, “We are surviving.”

Later in his speech, Li Bin mentioned that, even though Tesla has lowered its prices, NIO has no space for a price reduction. The domestic electric vehicle maker is operating at negative gross profit. NIO’s single recourse at this time is to deliver on its promise of high-quality products and service, and based on this, consumers will ultimately either reward or punish it.

Sales in 297 cities

NIO made 20,565 deliveries to buyers in 2019. Since deliveries began in June 2018, a total of 31,913 cars have been delivered.

However, for Li Bin, what really matters are two other figures. The first shows that NIO has already been sold in 297 cities in China, reaching as far as Heihe and Mohe in the north and Yili in the west.

In July 2019, China began its claw-back of electric car incentives, placing great pressure on electric car manufacturers. NIO only delivered 800 units in July — at the time, Li Bin stated that NIO was under severe pressure. However, from August, NIO then experienced increasing sales that have now lasted five months.

At this current point, all cars exhibited in NIO’s showrooms are already sold. Having made one’s order, a buyer needs to wait up to a month for delivery.

Brand breakthroughs

The second noteworthy figure shows that in November 2019, NIO’s ES6 made it into the list of top 10 bestselling luxury medium-sized SUV models priced above 300,000 RMB in China. ES6 achieved a delivery count of 2,537 units in December, and Li Bin predicts that ES6 should once again rank in the top 10 of bestselling luxury medium-sized SUV models for that month too.

Judging from the above figures, NIO has not simply made a breakthrough in sales. Its brand image has also transformed from that of just a startup to a competent player in the electric vehicle space, on par with the older, established brands like BMW.

Among medium-sized SUV models priced 300,000 to 400,000 RMB, the NIO ES6 is highly competitive. Judged comprehensively across acceleration and braking performance, the extent of smart technology integration, service, running costs and purchase tax, the car compares favorably against the similarly priced BMW X3, Audi Q5 and Benz GLC.

Li Bin pointed out that the performance of NIO ES6 shows that smart electric vehicles have provided a great opportunity for Chinese automobile companies to improve their brand image and compete globally.

Charging for all scenarios

Besides its incorporation of smart technologies, NIO vehicles boast another important feature — namely, that it has invested in a charging solution for all scenarios.

At present, NIO has charging stations, super charging stations, mobile-charging vehicles, third-party charging stations and power swap stations, on top of the cloud service which links all of these charging services. The NIO app allows users to charge their vehicles and make payments directly. This one-stop charging solution offers users a worry-free experience.

“The total investment to date in our charging solution is about 3 billion RMB,” Li Bin said.

In Li Bin’s opinion, such investment is worthwhile since it has brought a quality user experience, which lays the foundation for everything else. The biggest challenge for electric car manufacturers is to offer a convenient charging experience for drivers. It is the goal of NIO, for which the company will require further investment.

So far, NIO’s power swap stations are mainly located next to highways. Power swap stations next to highways between Beijing and Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai, and Shanghai and Shenzhen had all been deployed by the end of 2018. Basic network coverage has been achieved in other big cities, with NIO using its 123 power swap stations to cover all of the main charging scenarios of electric cars. Cumulatively, these power swap stations have completed a total of 250,000 charges, with the number of daily charges reaching nearly 2,000. These users are all private users.

Li Bin referred to a new term, “electric district homes”, that recently emerged for houses located in the vicinity of NIO charging stations. Their prices have not shot up as a result of the new label though.

Furthermore, it is noteworthy that NIO has applied for more than 1,200 patents in total for its battery pack, power swap station and cloud service. In its battery pack, NIO incorporates latest battery technologies in order to achieve one new iteration per year. In 2018, NIO released its battery pack with a capacity of 70 kWh, which then rose to 84 kWh in 2019 even though the size remained the same. In 2020, NIO will supply customers with battery packs at capacities of 100 kWh. Battery packs of the same size are interchangeable among all vehicles, while users can select battery leasing plans to implement car upgrades.

According to Li Bin, in 2020, NIO will introduce a very important service concept — battery as a service.

“This is a systematic innovation for the Chinese electric vehicle industry, a good undertaking. We are also very willing to share our technologies and experience. Hopefully our innovation will bring some insight from the user perspective for the next development of smart electric cars,” said Li Bin.

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This article was edited by Dido Pang. The original Chinese version was written by Zhang Min.

Follow us on Twitter @tmtpostenglish, Medium @TMTPOST and Facebook @TMTPOST.

AI, 5G and IoT were among the hottest topics discussed at the four-day event. The applications of these technologies have gone into cars, smartphones, shoes, even a plug, blurring the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds.

IoT, one of the top trends in tech, is rapidly changing how we go about our everyday lives, while businesses have also been making significant strides in their utilization of the technology.

Tuya Smart, an industry-leading AIoT (AI+IoT) platform, is committed to bringing its one-stop solution services and support model from traditional network modules to cloud services, to convert devices produced by traditional hardware manufacturers into smart devices, and accelerate time to market, particularly in the smart home segment.

Established in 2014, the company has grown from a staff of 12 employees to over 1,500, established offices in China, the U.S., Japan, Germany and India, served more than 180,000 customers in over 190 countries with the scope of products powered by Tuya exceeding 90,000 across over 500 categories.

Andrew Howard, Director of Sales at Tuya North America, during Talk to China’s IoT panel discussion, said that the company’s aim is to “help brands stay ahead of the curve both on the pricing and on the technology perspective.”

One interesting thing mentioned by Howard was that the company has set up a global strategy committee led by Jeff Immelt, the former chairman of US-based multinational conglomerate General Electric (GE) and now the chairman of Tuya North America.

The committee is tasked with researching, coordinating and staying ahead of the curve in technology in order to serve better those brands partnering with Tuya.

According to Howard, Tuya has also launched fun Tuya ‘Sandwich’ boards that will allow developers to build their own smart home product prototypes and even ecosystems. The boards arise from Tuya’s abundant experience in converting standard traditional devices into smart ones across a wide range of fields including Bluetooth, WiFi, ZigBee and more. It offers an enjoyable development experience in which the developer in effect builds a ‘sandwich’, layer by layer. Tuya can also help developers bring a product to market and mass-produce that product.

“So the next step in the IoT industry is about evolution, is to really give our brand partners more flexibility, to actually develop and deploy devices of their own making,” Howard added.

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This article was written by @Dido Pang.

Follow us on Twitter @tmtpostenglish, Medium @TMTPOST and Facebook @TMTPOST.

In 2019, as the full-length feature video streaming industry entered a cooling period, video hosting platforms iQIYI and Tencent both saw their numbers of paid members surpass 100 million, clear proof that consumers’ demand for full-length features has not diminished.

Last week, Tencent Video released its 2019 Annual Report, in which it analyses the real attitudes and needs of online video users through analysis of behavior data including customer profiles, consumption habits and viewing choices.

This year is the third consecutive year in which Tencent has published this annual report. The 2019 report covers TV dramas, variety shows, movies, documentaries and animations.

Output dwindles as drama and variety shows struggle to avoid “three-episode itch”

More quality, less quantity has become the new norm in TV drama.

In 2019, Tencent Video released a total of 149 domestic drama series online, 10 less than in 2018. Also in 2019, Tencent Video set a new record for the highest number of videos viewed in a single day on its TV drama series channel, peaking in excess of 1.5 billion, indicating both a reduction in market capacity as well as a better optimization of high-end productions.

Viewer demographics have also shifted. The report shows that the ratio of male to female viewers is also on the increase. Male viewers accounted for more than half of all viewers at 54.3%, up from 49.8% in 2018. It has led to an altering in the industry’s perception of gender ratios in viewers of drama.

Changes in audience compositions has also impacted changes in the themes and content of drama series. The report indicates that in the past year, the market has experienced an upsurge in the numbers of urban life-based TV dramas and an explosion in the numbers of romance-based drama series, with a diverse array of drama series including ‘The Untamed’, ‘Go Go Squid!’ and ‘The Story of Minglan’ gaining in popularity.

Furthermore, this year’s report for the first time includes data from abroad. With the rolling out of WeTV in markets including Thailand, Indonesia and India, drama series, for example ‘The Untamed’ and ‘Put Your Head on my Shoulder’, have set off viewing frenzies overseas. ‘My Girlfriend is an Alien’ (1st) and ‘The Untamed’ (2nd) topped the WeTV annual streaming charts with viewing numbers of 130 million and 106 million respectively.

The variety show market is also showing indications of reduced quantity, increased demand. The report shows that in 2019, Tencent Video introduced a total of 216 variety shows, 36 less than it did in 2018, with an average viewing time on the variety show channel of 35.19 minutes per person, a mere increase of 1.55 minutes compared to the previous year.

Young viewers are becoming fussier and fussier about the quality of the programs they watch. The report proposes the law of the “three-episode itch”, in which the third episode marks a watershed. If a program suffers from reduced quality or popularity, 30–50% of the viewers are likely to stop viewing after the third episode; only a quality program will maintain more than 85% of its viewer base.

Watching movies online

As video streaming platform libraries grow in size, the benefit of convenience that comes with online movie streaming becomes more and more evident as more and more viewers choose to watch movies online. In 2019, Tencent Video launched 1,252 movies.

On Tencent Video, the typical consumer profile is male, below 29 years of age, with an undergraduate degree and living in a third-tier city. If such a user were to watch one movie per day, it would take him 38 years to watch all the movies in Tencent’s library.

Viewers’ tolerance for sentimental plotlines in drama series that have been merely added to fill in time is 30 seconds at most. Tencent data of viewing behavior shows at the same moments such sentimental plotlines occur, fast-forwarding and discarding rates skyrocket. After 30 seconds of fast-forwarding, video discarding rates hit their peak.

In addition, video streaming websites are becoming important marketing arenas for cinema movie release and publicity. Data shows that the viewing numbers of trailers best reflects the impending performance of a movie in the first week of its release in cinemas. The more trailers viewed, the better the box-office performance in the first week.

As the derivatives of movies, extended content such as behind-the-scenes filming or movie reviews also attract a wide audience. Tencent’s report also shows that old movie commentaries and trailers of popular movies take up a big chunk of video streaming websites’ peak morning traffic.

New style documentaries and animation a win with young audiences

In the documentary category, it is noticeable that programming is increasingly catering to the younger generation, with more themes and content related to everyday life. From a study of the report, TMTPOST has found that university students comprise the majority of the documentary-viewing audience, with the post-90’s generation accounting for almost half of it, and those born after 2000 its fastest growing audience segment.

In comparison to documentaries that use strong techniques, whether distinctive themes or a sense of shock-and-awe, to win audience appeal, more domestically produced documentaries can now boast themes that are more down-to-earth and related to ordinary people’s everyday lives.

The report shows that culinary arts-based documentaries account for half of the documentaries streamed on Tencent. ‘Breakfast in China’, a series that introduces a breakfast from one Chinese region per only 5-minute episode, has gained high popularity. Only two seasons of 35 episodes each were produced. Footage in the popular series feature misty morning fog, noisy street markets, the hot vapor of boiling soups, not least all the expressions of satisfaction etched on the faces of people after consuming mouthfuls of delicious food.

The 2019 domestic animation market maintained its high speed of growth. Many productions appropriated and featured Chinese elements. Short animations telling Chinese stories and boutique productions targeting specific viewer segments have also been highlights in the domestic animation market. The report shows that ‘Soul Land’, one of the best animation productions of the year, has been streamed online more than 10 billion times. The rising popularity of domestically produced animations has also led to a maturing of the industries in its periphery, including the design and manufacture of character idols, voiceover acting and more, that feeds off the unique cultural phenomenon of animation fandom.

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This article was edited by Dido Pang. The original Chinese version was written by Li Chengcheng.

Follow us on Twitter @tmtpostenglish, Medium @TMTPOST and Facebook @TMTPOST.

We are soon raising the curtains on the annual Consumer Electronics Show, to be held January 7–9 in Las Vegas. This grand feast of technology gathers together the newest and freshest of technologies, while attracting tech experts and enthusiasts from all over the globe.

With the rise in China’s power of innovation, cutting-edge technology products from the country have become an indispensable part of the scenery at this renowned proving ground for innovators and boundaries-pushing technologies.

TMTPOST has been an official partner of CES for the past four years. In order to bring to light new innovations and provide a more efficient communication platform for those at the forefront of technological change, TMTPOST will host the Talk to China stage starting from CES 2020, which will be the first stage of Chinese media to participate in the history of the annual trade event.

The event will consist of three parts: 1. keynote and panel discussions joined by thought leaders and representatives of innovative Chinese companies, 2. high-energy, interactive demonstration roadshows, and 3. the release of 2020 Innovation Value Lists, which are based on TMTPOST’s research on products from more than 1,500 Chinese exhibitors at CES, considering comprehensive indicators that include consumer marketing power, the advanced technology embodied, market acuity, user popularity and media influence.

The stage will be located at Booth #43967, Level 2, Sands Expo.

Please click here for registration.

The first 100 participants to register will receive reserved seats and customized souvenirs from TMTPOST. The three-day event will also feature interactive and game sessions. See you at Las Vegas!

The international open-source community is undergoing a process of gradual differentiation.

The digital kingdom in which the open-source culture emerged maintained a state of homogeneity. This homogeneity was ideological. For example, there existed in the borderless digital world many countries, businesses and nameless individuals who made significant contributions. The homogeneity was administrative, too, as a homogeneous community of so-called computer geeks participated in its joint development and governance according to the extent of their contribution to the community.

It is common knowledge that the heavy tariffs slapped on Chinese goods by the Trump Administration are building fences between nations, with engineers and businesses from Russia, China and Iran also being banished from many of the world’s business, research and tech communities.

At the same time, in order to counteract changes that are turning more and more complex, some open-source communities have taken a different path, for instance, the recently widely circulated news that famous open-source platform GitHub was planning to set up a subsidiary in China.

This month, Erica Brescia, COO of GitHub, in an interview with the British Financial Times, stated that GitHub is adopting a staged plan. First, it will consider establishing a fully owned foreign subsidiary in China. Later, the company may explore the possibility of commencing a joint venture in China that will host GitHub content. Besides, Erica said signs that China’s government would be highly supportive of the company’s expansion plans in the country were “very encouraging”.

Many suspect GitHub’s move into the Chinese market is intended to circumvent the U.S. government’s ban. What goals might be achieved by GitHub’s decision to enter China, and what challenges will it be facing? Ultimately, we must return to the core question: what problems is the Chinese open-source community facing and how to resolve them?

Question №1: What is driving GitHub’s move to enter the Chinese market?

This question might also be rephrased to inquire as to whether these days it is China that needs GitHub or GitHub that needs China.

Only when this question is answered will we be able to get to the bottom of the impact of the US-China trade war on the international open-source community, namely, whether its impact is to be a short-lived one or a long-term one.

One thing is for sure. Chinese developers and the Chinese market are an indispensable force for both GitHub and its open-source community.

First of all, in terms of contributions, GitHub’s 2019 Octoverse report shows that GitHub currently has more than 40 million developer users globally, 80% among whom come from regions other than the U.S.

The speed of forking and cloning open-source projects by Chinese developers on GitHub increased by 48% from October 2018 to October 2019, making China the second most important market after the U.S. At the same time, more and more Chinese businesses are taking on important roles in international open-source projects. For example, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu all made it onto the list of GitHub’s top contributors.

Second, GitHub, as a commercial organization, needs revenue. In 2018, Microsoft acquired the company for the price of US$7.5 billion and has been trying to turn around its operations, which have been at a loss for some time.

One important source of income for GitHub is GitHub Enterprise, a fee-based service catering to businesses.

Recently, GitHub Enterprise adopted the Chinese IT standard known as GB18030, that defines the required language and character support necessary for software in China and is also a prerequisite for offering services in the country, a clear sign of its readiness to operate. How to avoid the policy risks posed by the U.S. government’s stance on trade with China is an issue of no less urgency for GitHub than it is for other businesses impacted by current U.S.-China tensions.

Even with the turbulent backdrop from the U.S.-China trade war, GitHub has still not applied restrictions on accounts from China. However, current restrictions placed on users from Iran and Crimea without any warning clearly aroused developers’ distrust of the U.S.-registered GitHub.

Question №2: What challenges will GitHub likely face in China?

Neither GitHub’s investor Microsoft, nor GitHub itself, is able to ignore the Chinese market. In an effort to encourage the relationship, Erica Brescia personally hosted GitHub’s first event in China in September, then in December, held meetings with developers in Shenzhen and Beijing.

However, will GitHub’s expansion attempt into China really be successful?

If the company were to place its server in a location nearer to Chinese developers, such as Hong Kong or Singapore, it would provide users much better server access and therefore user experience, however political risks would still not be completely avoided and the service may still be cut off at any time.

If, using its Japanese model as a reference, GitHub directly establishes a company under the Chinese legal and regulatory system on mainland China, it will have to answer the following three questions.

1. How to administer the computer code database that is in both the Chinese and U.S. jurisdictions

Will a portion of project codes be made inaccessible in particular regions? Will geolocation permissions be restricted by relevant U.S. or Chinese government policies if or as the trade war escalates?

Evidently, solutions will not be found overnight. Take Facebook as an example. Even though for years it prepared its plan to enter the Chinese market, even building up the PR image of a so-called “son-in-law of China” (given that CEO Zukerberg’s wife is Chinese and he learns Mandarin), it still had to overcome all of its obstacles one by one. What is clear now is that GitHub does not have a successful case from which to learn.

2. How to balance the local regulatory system and the legitimacy of open-source projects

As we know, open-source communities advocate the principle of freedom. GitHub’s vision in particular is that no matter the languages you speak, or the platforms you come from, you can always come home to GitHub.

GitHub’s operations in China will no doubt be undermined by regulations.

3. How to stand out amidst the rising popularity of local open-source software

Both GitHub and GitLab will inevitably face the problem of open-source software autonomy. Many Chinese commercial applications appropriate code directly from the open-source community thus any code contamination will directly affect those commercial applications using the code.

Furthermore, GitHub has a responsibility to give back to the community from which they make profit. For example, the open-source GPL, a widely used free license that guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share, and modify software, provides that any commercial application using open-source software interfaces is obligated to make its codes open-source too.

This means domestic businesses will face the conundrum of muddled intellectual rights ownership as soon as they make any independent innovation based on open-source projects.

In recent years, domestic open-source platforms have been gaining momentum with the support of the government. Platforms such as Alibaba Cloud Code, Tencent Cloud Developer Platform, Baidu Efficiency Cloud, Huawei’s open-source code hosting platform, as well as code clouds and code markets are gaining popularity. Thanks to the rapid evolution of China’s technological ecosystem, these domestic open-source platforms carry many heavyweight projects; they also offer a range of services that include incubation camps as well as software and hardware support, making them more attractive options for domestic consumers.

Once GitHub enters the Chinese market, it will face a big challenge in trying to ensure that its cohort of ideologues become community contributors.

Question №3: Where will the Chinese open-source community go from here?

The conflicts of interest between the spirit of open-source and geopolitical realities is a new problem faced by software developers around the globe, so much so that open-source community organizations and communities need to themselves search out answers amidst the confusion.

It is notable that GitHub, the largest open-source development hosting platform, has recognized the problem and is working on it. In the future, it plans to organize more meetups as well as cooperate with higher institutions to use GitHub in their courses.

However, all of these efforts will not change the fact that the IT industry is undergoing a gradual replacement of foreign hardware and software with domestic substitutes. Involved are not only open-source projects that are hosted on GitHub, but also platforms such as GitHub themselves.

The Open-Source Projects Risk Analysis and Countermeasure Recommendations published at the end of May by China RISC-V Consortium suggests that it is in China’s long-term interest to embrace a more open attitude and establish open-source hosting platforms that will attract open-source users everywhere in the world.

There is a joke in the industry that, if GitHub one day collapses, China’s AI development will regress five years since many of its AI computing frameworks have been developed based on international open-source codes. However, we have also witnessed that the open-source ecosystems of a number of leading players, such as Huawei, Baidu and Alibaba, also provide many popular projects in the field of AI.

Furthermore, in certain systems and databases that serve as the components of open-source’s fundamental infrastructure, comprehensive project planning has taken shape.

Besides developing domestic open-source platforms, influential leading technology firms that have made noticeable contributions in the global community should also participate more actively in the work of various foundational open-source systems (e.g. Linux, Eclipse, Mozilla) in order to have the voices of China’s businesses heard by international open-source organizations in order to avoid any unfair treatment.

Only if one day in the future most common new applications will be supported both by the Chinese market and Chinese developers will it then be possible for China to exert a greater influence on global open-source culture.

In general, although divisions within the international open-source community have emerged, a globalized and highly trustworthy open-source community which values fairness and efficiency will continue to act as an important force in the development of IT globally.

Open-source should take a global course. It should not be unilaterally restricted by any one country, while the entire worldwide open-source community should be working hard to avoid it. How to create an open-source community that is at once both independent and controllable is a big challenge that must be solved by the joint efforts of Chinese developers and businesses.

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This article was edited by the TMTPOST team.

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Three Questions Concerning GitHub’s Entry Into China was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The whirlwind days of T-EDGE 2019 are behind us, yet the stories and insights shared continue to resonate.

It is T-EDGE’s sixth year in Beijing. Previous years’ meetings here gathered top minds from over 30 countries and regions that have helped to shape global narratives on the mutual impacts of different technologues, the general human-tech coevolution, and the benefits for and concerns of increasingly tech-dominated societies.

China has had to weather some tough moments in 2019, with China-U.S. tensions impacting on almost every industry in the country. As new trade talks with the U.S. loom, the technology sector has been experiencing turbulence both in capital flows and global expansion.

Besides panel discussions specifically convened to address the impact of China-U.S. tensions, this year’s event also managed to slip outside of this suffocating frame in order to showcase some of the most exciting aspirations in the world of technology from a country on the other side of the world.

It welcomed a group of speakers from Israel, the country whose population of less than 9 million has been coined the ‘startup nation’, and dove deep into the present-day realities and future prospects for the country’s high-tech sector.

During a break between panel discussions, TMTPOST had a quick chat with Yosi Lahad, Chairman of the International Cooperation Committee at the Israeli Robotics Association (IRob) and CEO of Nextwave Robotics, a man with extensive experience in both technology and business.

TMTPOST: Some people say that under Israel’s model, though there are a large number of startups, few actually go on to scale up into that kind of mega-huge company. What is your opinion on this? Does it indicate a real limitation or is it, in fact, a kind of choice?

Yosi: It is not a choice. It is a reality. There are very few large Israeli companies, not to talk about conglomerates like Alibaba, but large companies. The reasons are several. First, we don’t have a large market. In China, the U.S., Europe, there are big markets. In Israel, the market is negligible. We are less than 9 million people. It’s an island with very few neighbors.

Second, it’s a cultural reason. We are impatient. We don’t have long-term strategies. People are trying to make their profits and exit pretty fast. It’s very difficult when a large company offers you a few tens or hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars after a few years of working, it’s very difficult to resist. Because for some people, after working several years, including myself, it’s very difficult when someone puts US$100 million on the table to resist.

Third, it probably also relates to our [Israeli] culture. We don’t obey very easily. Hierarchy and structure are not part of our behavior. This allows, on the one hand, the creation of a lot of startups. There are about 7,000 startups in Israel, every year more than 1,000 startups, which is more than any other country in the world. The advantage of being creative and disorganized, I would say chaotic, which is very good for creating new companies and new ventures, is counter-productive when you have to have long, sustainable, organized companies which focus on the market.

So our advantage is in innovation and creativity, but not in production, and definitely not in marketing itself. I would assume that this will not change in the future.

TMTPOST: From your point of view, what is the number one reason why startups fail?

Yosi: There is no one reason. Surveys all around the world say that the main reason relates to marketing in the wide sense. The main reason is the product/market fit — if the product, in terms of cost, design, etc., fits the market.

The second reason is also related to marketing. It is the channels, or the way in which to introduce a product to market — which channel you choose, which partner you use, which kinds of promotion you use. So statistically, those are the main reasons. And the second level of that is the product quality, compared to the price, which you can relate also to the product/market fit. So if the product is too expensive, it doesn’t fit the market.

That’s why such things are the main reasons for the failures of startups. I don’t think there is one [reason], but I can say quite definitely that it is related to the marketing aspects of the products. It is not to the specific functionality of the product but how it fits the market, how it is introduced to the market, how it is sold and supported in the market.

TMTPOST: A large amount of tech money from China has been moving to Israel, to invest in cutting-edge tech startups. But now, influenced by the U.S.-China tensions, some companies are starting to shy away from Chinese capital, especially those ones which have branches operating in Silicon Valley. Do you have any thoughts on this phenomenon?

Yosi: Unfortunately, we as a small country, are caught between this tension, the war or whatever is the right name for what is going on now between the U.S. and China, which is against globalization. But as it happens, we have to face the reality.

Yes, it is true that many U.S. investors, customers, which are quite influential in Israel, a lot of U.S. multinational, U.S. companies, they apply the pressure, some delicately and some less delicately, even bluntly. I went to New York last month and I was told by investors very clearly that if there is a major Chinese investor in a company, they will not invest in that company. So this creates a major dilemma because in some cases, the big market is in China, in some cases, it’s in the U.S. In some cases, it’s in both. So it kind of forces us to take a side, which we don’t want, because we appreciate very much the U.S. market and we appreciate very much the Chinese market. So probably what will happen — and we face it in some of my companies — is that we have to take a side, either this one, or that one, at least for the coming future, which is very unfortunate for everybody and definitely for Israel.

TMTPOST: We are now talking about artificial intelligence, IoT, 5G every day. Do you think it is a tech bubble or not?

Yosi: So every slogan has something real and something less real. 5G is becoming a reality. It’s very important because there are many computing items on each of us, in the environment, in the room. Look at each of us, we have a lot of computing items. So 5G is a necessity because the current network will not absorb anything. IoT, the Internet of Things, basically a lot of sensors, a lot of computing power and connectivity, is real. In some cases, it is used in small cities, things like that which do not need a lot [of computing power]. But in reality, there are a lot of computing devices, which are around us, in our home, in our car, in every place we are. So IoT is reality, it is not a slogan.

AI is essentially not a product, not a system. AI is a technology, a technology that goes into almost every industry — cars, manufacturing, education, health, transportation and so on, so forth. So, talking about AI, we should be more specific, on which industry. In some industries, it has really created a change. In marketing, in finance. It has its social aspects too. However, AI should be… is, actually, the ability to learn from a situation, to personalize the situation. Personalization doesn’t always mean a person. It can be a machine which is personalized, and [programmed] to act accordingly.

This is only the beginning. The future is very promising. As with every new technology, it will have ups and downs. In some cases, we will succeed. In some cases, we will fail.

The major challenge, I believe, is in the human-robot-computer interaction where you have to understand a human person — the motion, the behavior, the gestures, thinking and so on. This is very complex, because humans are complex and each of us is different. In different cultures, the reaction is different. So this is a challenging thing. I’m pretty sure it will come. Will it take a few years or 20 years? It’s hard to predict.

One example is… everybody was talking about autonomous cars five years ago, and everybody thought it will be 20 to 25 years until [the widespread use of] autonomous cars became a reality. It won’t happen then. It will probably take another 10 or 15 [on top of that].

It may become reality in some special lanes, or in some special areas, but not in the streets of Beijing or in New York or wherever. So this is not a bubble, but [something that] will just happen much further [down the track] than anticipated because of the complexity of humans, [of the relationship] between humans and machines, so we will concentrate on that.

I believe it will be on a small scale in the beginning, one by one, not [develop quickly] from one to many, [but] it will come. But still, it is very difficult to understand and predict the behavior of a person based on what we see, what we hear and what we predict.

TMTPOST: From your point of view, what are the most overhyped sectors in tech this year?

Yosi: It’s difficult to say. It’s IoT or AI. Probably both. AI is probably more overrated because it is used in everything [but] it does not fit everything. In some places, it fits. In some places, it’s not really AI because it’s not a learning process, not personalization and not prediction, so probably AI is a bit overhyped. And you will see a lot of companies coming down in the next three years because they use the slogan [but] don’t deliver enough.

TMTPOST: Can you name one of the most promising tech trends in 2019? Can you also perhaps predict one of these for 2020?

Yosi: I would say a lot of online or e-commerce retail, so we will see more and more, and Alibaba is a very good example of that, based on technology, based on the ability to understand and deliver in short time. So that’s definitely a growing sector. I believe that in health we are going to see more and more technology, because in most of the world, people are living longer. They need more support. There are not enough doctors, not enough nurses. So you need technology. So I would say that maybe not in 2020 but in the next few years, health, wearable health will become a very strong trend.

TMTPOST: Some products are of high innovation value, but when they go to market, they fail. How can we increase the mass-market acceptance of high-tech products?

Yosi: People don’t like change. People resist change. And they know that to change, they either need to have a major problem, with change as the only way to resolve it, or there is something new that gives them a lot of benefits. If you recall 10 years ago when the smartphone first came out — I think it was the iPhone — people didn’t buy a lot of them. It took two, three, four years before it became a situation in which almost everybody used it. So any change needs some [early] adapters in the beginning of any industry. Some of the products did not deliver on what they promised. Some were not good enough. Some were hard to accept because [the level of] interaction with the user was not good enough.

I believe in most cases that you mentioned, the second, third or fourth round will make it better. If you look at the car industry, 100 years ago, 120 years ago, in the U.S., you had [something like] 1,000 car producers. Everybody was doing it. Today we have maybe 20, which means most of them failed. That’s typical to every industry. [There are] a lot of [players] in in the beginning. Some of them are good enough. Some of them don’t have enough power or money or technology, industries are converging. So that’s what will happen here. A lot will fail, and some will emerge.

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This article was written by @Dido Pang.

Follow us on Twitter @tmtpostenglish, Medium @TMTPOST and Facebook @TMTPOST.

In this annual gathering of leaders and practitioners in technology and innovation, more than 100 speakers from around the world came together to crowdsource ideas and build consensus amid the changing global trends.

As organizer representative, Zhao Hejuan, the founder and CEO of TMTPOST Group, explained the T-EDGE concept: “T is an abbreviation of Technology; EDGE stands for the frontiers of Economy, Digitalization, Globalization and Efficiency. In this day and age, technology is an important driving force in our future economic development, world digitization, globalization and an overall more efficient society. T-EDGE highly resonates with that.”

“The world ahead is full of uncertainties and challenges, and we are glad to be friends of and partner with all of the challenge takers. T-EDGE is committed to being both a communication hub for leading global innovators as well as an important link connecting China and the rest of the world,” she said.

Day 1 of T-EDGE 2019 featured winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Dan Shechtman, technology prophet George Gilder, former Israeli Education Minister Shai Piron, edtech and AI expert Rose Luckin, chairman of the Israel-EU Chamber of Commerce Dan Catarivas and other international speakers. Voices representative of a new era of opening-up in China included founding partner of Qiming Venture Partners Kuang Ziping; chairman and CEO of tech firm Qihoo 360, Zhou Hongyi; founder and CEO of electric car manufacturer NIO, Li Bin; and Wang Kai, founder of children’s storytelling startup Kaishu Story.

On the morning of Day 2, December 7, the China-Japan International Cooperation Industry Forum, as a central part of the event, featured welcoming speeches from Yang Xiuling, deputy secretariat of Beijing Municipal Government, and Wang Youguo, head of Beijing’s Daxing District.

Wang pointed out that China and Japan are close neighbors with frequent exchanges in economy, trade, science and technology. This year’s gathering will discuss the trends in the industrial development of the two nations and the investment opportunities that new generations will create.

In the afternoon, renowned researcher in multi-agent systems and head of the Department of Computer Science at Oxford University Michael Wooldridge, director of Chinese tech titan Alibaba Group’s technology committee Wang Jian, Cheetah Mobile chairman and CEO Fu Sheng, and Yosi Lahad, chairman of the International Cooperation Committee at the Israeli Robotics Association (IRob), presented their visions on the industrial internet.

TMTPOST’s new chat show ‘Hé Wèi’ also debuted on Day 2. Fu Sheng, CEO of mobile internet company Cheetah Mobile, was the show’s first guest.

At the simultaneously running T-EDGE Innovation Contest, nearly 50 venture capital leaders from Silicon Valley, Israel and China were giving feedback and guidance to roadshows of entrepreneurs. The contest’s aim is to offer a platform for dialogue and from among the startups discover the next industry disrupter.

The final day of T-EDGE 2019 kicked off with the CHAINSIGHTS Fintech & Blockchain Summit. Jean Tirole, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics, Senior Partner Emeritus of McKinsey & Co. Peter B. Walker, chairman of Zhongchao Credit Card Industry Development Fan Guifu, and chief scientist of nChain Craig S. Wright all took part in discussion on the realities, prospects and challenges of fintech and blockchain.

The Digital Marketing and Innovation Forum was held concurrently on the last day of T-EDGE. Speakers such as president of Allbirds’ international division Erick Haskell and operating head of Taobao Live Zhao Yuanyuan reviewed the most important issues related to sustainable fashion and the digital transformation of consumption.

The three-day event was also a marvelous showcase for innovative products. T-EDGE 2019 hosted 50 companies with more than 1,000 cool gadgets and services on display. TMTPOST’s lifestyle platform Tikong Space, online expert service TExperts and blockchain information service ChainDD all showcased new products.

On the evening of December 8, the grand T-EDGE Awards ceremony was held, and following a month of open-to-the-public rating, the results were finally announced on the spot. The list of awardees included, among others, EDGE TOP50 Thought Leaders in Technology, EDGE TOP50 VC firms and EDGE TOP10 Writers.

It is now T-EDGE’s sixth year. Over the years, more than 600 speakers from over 30 countries and regions have shared their experiences, debated issues and envisioned futures. Over 200 startups have been linked to investment through the platform.

The event has become one of the most eye-catching in China in the field of technology, and a window through which to view the future evolution of global innovation.