Nov 26 2023
This Chinese map app wants to be a super app for everything outdoors

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

Thanksgiving is almost here. This year, when you get together with your family, may I suggest a fun little game that reinvents hide-and-seek for the digital age?

When I was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, I went to a park with dozens of strangers to play the “cat-and-mouse game,” which combines old-fashioned hide-and-seek with modern technology. Instead of trying to guess where everyone was, we shared live locations with the group and monitored each other’s paths as the “cats” and “mice” tried to capture or avoid each other. A grassroots invention of the Chinese internet, the game became viral sometime earlier this year and now draws thousands of people every week. 

In a story yesterday, I wrote about how the game works and how it uses Amap, the Chinese map app owned by Alibaba. If you want to know more (and figure out if I won!), read my story here. 

Despite not being a sporty person, I did really enjoy the two cat-and-mouse games I participated in. The way they blend together digital experiences and real-life interactions felt natural and refreshing. 

They also changed how I view map apps. Even though I’ve had Google Maps and Apple Maps on my phone forever, I never thought of them as anything more than trip-planning tools; I certainly never thought of them as gaming apps or ways to bring people together IRL.

I’m not alone. Before one of the games started, the organizer was explaining the rules and the technical set-up, which requires people to join a group on Amap to share locations.

“There are groups in Amap now?” one participant asked.

“Every app has a group function nowadays,” another answered.

It was only a quip, but it also perfectly captured a weird characteristic, or maybe problem, of the Chinese app ecosystem: every app is trying to be something it isn’t.

Amap, for example, is one of the most widely used map and navigation apps in China today. But when I open it on my phone, I can see over 30 functions that you wouldn’t find on Western-equivalent apps.

Some of them still feel integral to the map experience, like recording when you last filled your car with gas, calling for roadside assistance, or comparing the prices of ride-hailing services. Others are pretty far removed: the app lets me check the purchase price of cars and contact a dealership, set up exercise goals and record my progress, and even—to my surprise—check out real estate listings. Just last week, Amap quietly added a new feature to its portfolio: you can hire a courier to do chores, like delivering a gift to the other side of the city.

Even though Amap had nothing to do with developing the cat-and-mouse game, it has tried to develop games in the past. (They didn’t catch on.) And now the company is riding the wave of cat-and-mouse popularity by adding new features to make the map more convenient for organizing a game; it also allows users to browse through the games being organized around the country every week. 

To me, this all feeds into Amap’s goal of becoming an aggregator of local information and services. And it certainly seems that Amap wants to be your app of choice whenever you need any service outside your home. In fact, back in 2019, the company declared it was changing from a navigation app to a “national platform for going out.” (Amap declined to make anyone available for an interview for my story.) 

What’s happening with Amap is a good example of how Chinese apps have always been obsessed with becoming super-apps. Wallet apps want to become social networks; social networks want to be personal loan providers; and food delivery apps are showing you TikTok videos and livestreams. Map apps are primed for such ambitions: almost every phone has a map app installed, and the scale of traffic any such app gets every day is invaluable to pushing users toward more and more services offered by the developer, in this case Alibaba.

Maybe it’s the quest for infinite scaling up that is original sin of Silicon Valley, or maybe it’s because there are successful examples in Asia, particularly WeChat and Alipay, for everyone to look to. The app ecosystem in China is often guided by this monopolistic notion that every app, no matter how niche it is, can and should become a platform for other barely related services. The result is that every app becomes a dense pile of trivial functions, most of which end up as nothing but a waste of storage space. Sometimes they even distract or obstruct users from doing what they originally intended to do with the app.

The dream of the super-app isn’t unique to China; Elon Musk is still supposedly working on transforming X into the all-in-one app for the West. But Chinese tech companies are already much further ahead. Unfortunately, their success has also revealed the risks that come with the super app—like the tight control they can have on freedom of speech, which I wrote about last year.

All this said, viral trends come and go. Even though I’ve enjoyed the games I played, I’m sure the popularity of cat-and-mouse will wind down after a while. I mean, how many people are still playing Pokémon Go? But the trend does serve as a good example of how a map app can actually be useful for something completely different from its initial purpose. 

Is that enough for Amap to really become the next super-app? I don’t think so. I’ll still prefer to get my apartment listings and step counts somewhere else—sorry.

What do you think of the Chinese tech companies’ perpetual pursuit of building super-apps? Let me know your thoughts at zeyi@technologyreview.com.

Catch up with China

1. China says it will step up its efforts to stop fentanyl chemicals from flowing to overseas labs. (Washington Post $)

2. Following the Biden-Xi meeting last week, Chinese state media has started taking a much friendlier tone toward the US, which has rarely happened in the last few years. (Associated Press)

3. Applied Materials, the largest US semiconductor equipment maker, is being investigated by the US Department of Justice for potentially selling products to Chinese chipmaker TSMC without export licenses. (Reuters $)

4. China has been “the world’s factory” for decades, but new e-commerce platforms like Shein and Temu are trying to change how the world shops. (Rest of World)

5. Xiaomi, one of the top Chinese smartphone brands, finally showed what its first electric-vehicle model looks like. (Mashable)

6. Tencent says it’s not affected by the US chips restrictions because it has stockpiled Nvidia chips “for at least a couple more generations.” (Reuters $)

Lost in translation

For Chinese EV owners, the early bird doesn’t always catch the worm. On November 8, over 300 owners of the XPeng P7, a Chinese EV model released in 2020, wrote a joint complaint letter to the company. Even though they paid extra to get the highest software upgrade when they purchased their cars, they were told to pay even more when the company released its latest software update this year. 

According to the Chinese publication Powerhouse, the development cycle of a new EV model is only three years, while a gas car model takes five years. This accelerated pace, which more closely mirrors that of the tech gadget industry, means first-generation EVs can quickly become outdated. The constant upgrades in chip technology, battery capabilities, and self-driving features mean it’s harder to make sure upgrades are compatible with existing models across generations. Chinese brands like XPeng, LiAuto, Jike, and Aito have all faced controversies over issues like the discontinuation of features within two years of launch and the introduction of second-generation features that lack support for first-generation models.

One more thing

Not everyone can be elected to the National People’s Congress, but a political education center in Hangzhou built a “People’s Congress Metaverse” for the public to experience in virtual reality what it’s like to join a meeting. Amazing things are happening in the metaverse! Take notes, Zuckerberg.

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Nov 12 2023
Why Hong Kong is still bullish on crypto

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

We were far from the courtroom where Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on seven criminal charges, but everyone still wanted to talk about him. That said, I have a feeling the conversations I heard last week were pretty different from the ones in the US.

The day after his conviction, I was at Hong Kong FinTech Week 2023, a new annual conference hosted by the local government. Unlike people in the US, where the SBF trial is just one more episode in the prolonged crypto winter, those in Hong Kong were feeling much more optimistic about all things Web3. 

The city’s top official, Chief Executive John Lee, was there to discuss how the city could reinvent itself as a technology hub and capitalize on the big bets it has made over the past year on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Yat Siu, founder of Animoca Brands, a homegrown Web3 startup that was clearly the star of the two-day event, told the audience on Friday, “This is the closing of a dark chapter of the industry … now we can start moving forward.”

I attended panel after panel where people discussed the future of tokenized assets, central-bank digital currencies, and even NFTs—beaming with hopes that’d be hard to find in the US. It felt as if I’d jumped into a time machine; the executives of international crypto heavyweights like Crypto.com and Bored Ape Yacht Club attended the conference in person, while the CEO of Coinbase videoed in for a fireside chat. (I have to say I’m glad I didn’t go to the BAYC party, a side event happening at the same time, which apparently left many attendees with “severe eye burn.” Ouch.)

For these execs, Hong Kong is a rare place where the government is welcoming them. Following major crypto failures last year like the collapse of FTX and Terra, and reports about the worthlessness of NFTs, many governments and observers have grown wary of the industry. But for Hong Kong, this new digital frontier seems like an opportunity to rewire its economy. 

The city used to punch above its weight in finance and trade, but its importance in these sectors has been falling. And as tech industries have powered exponential growth in places like Shenzhen (which is right across the border in mainland China), Hong Kong has missed out on much of that boom. Crypto, though, could offer a relatively easy pivot.

During the FinTech Week last year, the local government released its own NFTs and a tokenized bond. Since then, leaders of global Web3 projects have visited Hong Kong and explored investing there, says Gary Liu, founder of two Hong Kong–based Web3 startups, Terminal3 and Artifacts Lab. “While everyone else is in a bear market, Hong Kong is rising up,” he says.

What arguably matters most to these international crypto players is that Hong Kong has been busy creating a framework allowing them to legally provide services there. In May, Hong Kong introduced a licensing regime for retail crypto exchanges, and two companies have already been approved to operate. At the conference last week, speakers kept bringing up the prospect that Hong Kong would soon issue more legislation on stablecoins—which will be an important bridge between fiat money and cryptocurrencies, and provide a foundation for many Web3 services.

Compared with other governments, Hong Kong has been moving faster in crypto legislation while being consistently more friendly. It is not the first government to try crafting crypto regulation; Europe started exploring its Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation in 2020, and Singapore and Japan also started years ago. But Hong Kong has made significant progress in catching up in just the last year, says Linda Jeng, the head of global Web3 strategy at the DC-based industry group Crypto Council for Innovation. 

“I anticipate Hong Kong to probably be finished with putting in place all the legal regulatory framework way ahead of Europe,” she told me at the conference. “It can literally leapfrog Europe.” That could entice more Web3 companies and investors to set up shop in the city. 

But as with anything in this space, moving this fast is a high-risk bet. Crypto may turn out to be less transformative than initially promised, and there’s also the chance of inadvertently enabling more scams and traps. Just in September, the local crypto scene was shaken by the collapse of JPEX, a crypto exchange that defrauded investors of $192 million worth of assets in Hong Kong. 

But so far, the city’s government seems undeterred. In a keynote speech, Christopher Hui, Hong Kong’s secretary for financial services and the treasury, said: “We have been asked many times whether JPEX will affect our determination to grow Web3, the answer is a clear no.” 

Beijing’s attitude toward crypto will be another big risk factor. While the central government has famously banned cryptocurrencies, it seems to have given Hong Kong implicit consent for its tech experiments. It may hope to use the city as a sandbox to determine what China itself should do with Web3. Yet there’s no guarantee Beijing won’t change its mind and stop Hong Kong’s exploration. To me, that, not SBF, was the elephant in the room last week.

Do you think Hong Kong made the right decision to welcome crypto and Web3? Let me know your thoughts at zeyi@technologyreview.com.

Catch up with China

1. While we are talking about Hong Kong: 

  • Tens of thousands of residents emigrated after the crackdown on pro-democracy activism, but the local government is inviting people from mainland China to move there and fill the gap in the workforce. (Associated Press)
  • A student from Hong Kong, who returned from Japan to renew her ID document, was arrested and sentenced to two months in jail for posting “seditious” content online while abroad. (Hong Kong Free Press)

2. Chinese social media platforms now require all users with over 500,000 followers to display their real names online. (South China Morning Post $)

3. Government officials from China, the US, and Europe agreed to work together on AI governance at the UK’s AI Safety Summit last week. (Reuters $)

4. For the first time in more than 40 years, the US is using its own money to send weapons to Taiwan. (BBC)

5. China’s richest billionaire built his business empire by bottling pristine water. Its environmental footprint is worrisome. (Bloomberg $)

Lost in translation

In June, a group of Chinese women started running a social experiment. They used AI tools to generate photos of four female characters: a sexy rich woman, a sassy sister, a girl next door, and an underage girl named Xiao Yu. They created profiles for these four characters on Chinese dating apps to see whether and how they would be harrassed. To their surprise, Xiao Yu, who clearly presented herself as a 16-year-old girl, received the most harassment. When they lowered Xiao Yu’s fictional age to 14, the harassment only intensified, accounting for half of all messages. Men asked her for suggestive pictures, sent unsolicited nudes, and even offered to be her “guardian” against abuse before asking whether she’d be interested in some role-playing. 

The experiment shines light on the extent of online child abuse in the country, according to the Chinese publication White Night Studio. The problem is particularly acute for children who stay in their rural hometowns while their parents leave to work in the cities. One sex-ed advocate who conducted a field study in rural southwest China this year found that nearly 80% of children there have been exposed to online abuse. 

One more thing

An upcoming video game called “The Exit 8” puts the player in one of the worst situations I can imagine: trapped in a Japanese metro station, trying to find an exit from a series of infinite turns and diverging paths. The game’s intended play time is 15 to 30 minutes, the developer says. That seems wildly optimistic given real-life Tokyo mega subway stations.

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Oct 19 2023
China has a new plan for judging the safety of generative AI—and it’s packed with details

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

Ever since the Chinese government passed a law on generative AI back in July, I’ve been wondering how exactly China’s censorship machine would adapt for the AI era. The content produced by generative AI models is more unpredictable than traditional social media. And the law left a lot unclear; for instance, it required companies “that are capable of social mobilization” to submit “security assessments” to government regulators, though it wasn’t clear how the assessment would work. 

Last week we got some clarity about what all this may look like in practice. 

On October 11, a Chinese government organization called the National Information Security Standardization Technical Committee released a draft document that proposed detailed rules for how to determine whether a generative AI model is problematic. Often abbreviated as TC260, the committee consults corporate representatives, academics, and regulators to set up tech industry rules on issues ranging from cybersecurity to privacy to IT infrastructure.

Unlike many manifestos you may have seen about how to regulate AI, this standards document is very detailed: it sets clear criteria for when a data source should be banned from training generative AI, and it gives metrics on the exact number of keywords and sample questions that should be prepared to test out a model.

Matt Sheehan, a global technology fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who flagged the document for me, said that when he first read it, he “felt like it was the most grounded and specific document related to the generative AI regulation.” He added, “This essentially gives companies a rubric or a playbook for how to comply with the generative AI regulations that have a lot of vague requirements.” 

It also clarifies what companies should consider a “safety risk” in AI models—since Beijing is trying to get rid of both universal concerns, like algorithmic biases, and content that’s only sensitive in the Chinese context. “It’s an adaptation to the already very sophisticated censorship infrastructure,” he says.

So what do these specific rules look like?

On training: All AI foundation models are currently trained on many corpora (text and image databases), some of which have biases and unmoderated content. The TC260 standards demand that companies not only diversify the corpora (mixing languages and formats) but also assess the quality of all their training materials.

How? Companies should randomly sample 4,000 “pieces of data” from one source. If over 5% of the data is considered “illegal and negative information,” this corpus should be blacklisted for future training.

The percentage may seem low at first, but we don’t know how it compares with real-world data. “For me, that’s pretty interesting. Is 96% of Wikipedia okay?” Sheehan wonders. But the test would likely be easy to pass if the training data set were something like China’s state-owned newspaper archives, which have already been heavily censored, he points out—so companies may rely on them to train their models.

On the scale of moderation: AI companies should hire “moderators who promptly improve the quality of the generated content based on national policies and third-party complaints.” The document adds that “the size of the moderator team should match the size of the service.” 

Given that content moderators have already become the largest part of the workforce in companies like ByteDance, it seems likely the human-driven moderation and censorship machine will only grow larger in the AI era.

On prohibited content: First, companies need to select hundreds of keywords for flagging unsafe or banned content. The standards define eight categories of political content that violates “the core socialist values,” each of which needs to be filled with 200 keywords chosen by the companies; then there are nine categories of “discriminative” content, like discrimination based on religious beliefs, nationality, gender, and age. Each of these needs 100 keywords.

Then companies need to come up with more than 2,000 prompts (with at least 20 for each category above) that can elicit test responses from the models. Finally, the models need to run tests to guarantee that fewer than 10% of the generated responses break the rules.

On more sophisticated and subtle censorship: While a lot in the proposed standards is about determining how to carry out censorship, the draft interestingly asks that AI models not make their moderation or censorship too obvious. 

For example, some current Chinese AI models may refuse to answer any prompt with the text “Xi Jinping” in it. This proposal asks companies to find prompts related to topics like the Chinese political system or revolutionary heroes that are okay to answer, and AI models can only refuse to answer fewer than 5% of them. “It’s saying both ‘Your model can’t say bad things’ [and] ‘We also can’t make it super obvious to the public that we are censoring everything,’” Sheehan explains.

It’s all fascinating, right? 

But it’s important to clarify what this document is and isn’t. Even though TC260 receives supervision from Chinese government agencies, these standards are not laws. There are no penalties if companies don’t comply with them. 

But proposals like this often feed into future laws or work alongside them. And this proposal helps spell out the fine print that’s omitted in China’s AI regulations. “I think companies are going to follow this, and regulators are going to treat these as binding,” Sheehan says.

It’s also important to think about who is shaping the TC260 standards. Unlike most laws in China, these rules explicitly receive input from experts hired by tech companies and will disclose the contribution after the standards are finalized. These people know the subject matter best, but they also have a financial interest. Companies like Huawei, Alibaba, and Tencent have been heavily influential in the past TC260 standards.

This means that this document can also be seen as a reflection of how Chinese tech companies want their products to be regulated. Frankly, it’s not wise to hope that regulations never come, and these companies have an incentive to influence how the rules are made.

As other countries work to regulate AI, I believe, the Chinese AI safety standards will have an immense impact on the global AI industry. At best, they propose technical details for general content moderation; at worst, they signal the beginning of new censorship regimes. 

This newsletter can only say so much, but there are many more rules in the document that deserve further studying. They could still change—TC260 is seeking feedback on the standards until October 25—but when a final version is out, I’d love to know what people think of it, including AI safety experts in the West. 

Do you think these detailed requirements are reasonable? Let me know your thoughts by writing to zeyi@technologyreview.com.

Catch up with China

1. The European Union reprimanded TikTok—as well as Meta and X—for not doing enough to fight misinformation on the conflict between Israel and Hamas. (Reuters $)

2. The Epoch Times, a newspaper founded two decades ago by the Falun Gong group as an anti–Chinese Communist Party propaganda channel, now claims to be the fourth-biggest newspaper in the US by subscriber count, a success it achieved by embracing right-wing politics and conspiracy theories. (NBC News)

3. Midjourney, the popular image-making AI software, isn’t creative or knowledgeable when it responds to the prompt “a plate of Chinese food.” Other prompts reveal even more cultural stereotypes embedded in AI. (Rest of World)

4. China plans to increase the country’s computing power by 50% between now and 2025. How? By building more data centers, using them more efficiently, and improving on data storage technologies. (CNBC)

5. India’s financial crimes agency arrested a Chinese employee of smartphone maker Vivo after the company—the second-largest smartphone brand in India—was accused of transferring funds illegally to a news website that has been linked to Chinese propaganda efforts. (BBC)

6. Leaked internal Huawei communications show how the company tried to cultivate relationships with high-ranking Greek officials and push the limits of the country’s anticorruption laws. (New York Times $)

7. US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and five other senators visited Beijing and met with Chinese president Xi Jinping last week. The war between Israel and Hamas was the focus of their conversation. (Associated Press)

8. Cheng Lei, an Australian citizen who worked in China as a business reporter, was finally released from Chinese detention after three years. (BBC)

Lost in translation

As Chinese TVs and projectors get smarter, the user experience has also become more frustrating amid an the inundation of advertisements. According to the Chinese tech publication Leikeji, many smart TVs force users to watch an ad, sometimes 40 seconds long, whenever they turn on the TV. Even though there are regulations in place that require TV makers to offer a “skip” button, these options are often hidden in the deepest corners of system settings. Users also complained about TV providers that require multiple payments for different levels of content access, making it too complicated to watch their favorite shows.

Earlier this year, the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television began to address these concerns. A new government initiative aims to ensure that 80% of cable TV users and 85% of streaming users can immediately access live TV channels after turning on their TVs. Some TV makers, like Xiaomi, are also belatedly offering the option to permanently disable opening ads.

One more thing

What do you look for the most when you’re dating? If you answer, “They have to work for the government,” you should come to Zhejiang, China. The internal communications app for Zhejiang government workers has a feature where people can swipe left and right on the dating profiles of other single government employees. Apparently, the Chinese government is endorsing office romances.

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Oct 13 2023
These Chinese companies prove green tech can be profitable

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

Living through the epic rainfall that flooded New York City a few weeks ago was nothing if not a reminder of just how urgently we need to tackle the climate crisis.

Fortunately, that was the focus of our ClimateTech summit last week, where my colleagues invited scholars, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and investors to the MIT campus to discuss the technologies that will be vital in combating climate change.

At the event, we also released a brand-new list that we have worked on for months: 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. These are the companies from all around the world that we think could have a significant impact on the future of our climate, either by enabling new energy sources like solar and nuclear, making electricity-powered products more versatile and efficient, or revamping the most ordinary goods in our lives, like food and cement. 

Among them are two Chinese companies you should know about. One is BYD, the world’s top electric-vehicle maker, which has just produced its 500 millionth EV! The other is GEM, which stands for Green Eco-Manufacture; it makes the supply chain for batteries more environmentally friendly by recycling the minerals in them.

For the list, I dug into these two companies—their histories, key products, and technological advantages, as well as the potential challenges they face. I’ll give you two quick previews in this newsletter, but I highly encourage you to go read more about them and the other 13 companies with the potential to change how we live.

🚗 BYD

What it does: BYD’s signature battery product—the Blade Battery—is cheaper, safer, and more durable than its peers. It’s so good that it powers both the carmaker’s own electric vehicles and Tesla’s. The company also stands apart because it handles or makes almost everything in the EV supply chain, from raw minerals to car chips. Its technological and manufacturing advantages make it one of the most competitive providers of EVs that are both reliable and, crucially, affordable. 

Why it’s important: The world needs a lot of different kinds of electrified transportation to replace the demand for fossil fuels, and BYD is making cars, buses, and even trains. The variety and affordability of its products makes transitioning to clean energy more feasible in many regions of the world.

♻ GEM

What it does: Every day, tons of electronics and batteries are thrown away in China. GEM collects them and remakes them into new products or extracts the critical minerals from them to use again. A big part of its business in recent years has been recycling thousands of tons of EV batteries, which are either reused in less demanding scenarios like energy storage or crushed and turned into mineral powders that can be made into new batteries.

Why it’s important: EVs might be great for the climate, but their manufacturing process isn’t always. Particularly, the mining process for battery materials is often dangerous to both the environment and the workforce. As a result, efficient recycling of batteries will be vital to making the EV industry more climate friendly. 

As my colleague James Temple, our senior editor for energy, wrote in the introductory essay, our list offers a rare optimistic outlook on the future. It’s easy to feel that humanity is doomed when people talk about climate change, because it feels as if politics and inertia are getting in the way of problem solving. But it’s still important to talk about what the solutions could look like.

BYD and GEM in particular offer a peek at a future in which climate solutions are also profitable. BYD made $2.4 billion in profits last year, while GEM—which admittedly operates on a different scale—made $167 million in 2022, a jump of more than 60% from the year before.

This may provide inspiration for players outside China. If the Chinese EV market has proved that ordinary consumers can be genuinely interested in choosing electric cars over gas-powered ones, entrepreneurs and governments around the world know that they, too, can grow their own “BYD” or “GEM.” And that could draw more talent and investment into climate technologies.

Obviously, corporate solutions are only one part of the global climate change response, and on the list we made sure to spotlight the challenges each company faces. But I do feel that this list, which will be updated every year, provides a boost of confidence for people who want to see the world rise to the climate challenge. If that’s also what you need to keep moving forward on this Tuesday afternoon, come learn more about the other companies here.

Maybe this is too early, but do you want to nominate a company that you believe should be on this list next year? I’m all ears at zeyi@technologyreview.com.

Catch up with China

1. The Wagner Group bought two high-resolution observation satellites from a Chinese firm in 2022, allowing the Russian mercenaries to access surveillance images for its campaigns in Ukraine and Africa. (AFP)

2. In meetings with the Biden administration, American chip companies have pushed back on further chip restrictions, warning that they could derail plans to build new semiconductor factories in the US. (New York Times $)

3. Chinese chip manufacturer SMIC made $1.5 billion in revenue from American semiconductor-design companies in 2022—a fifth of its overall sales—despite being blacklisted by the US government. (Wall Street Journal $)

  • The US Commerce Department added 42 more Chinese companies to its export blacklist on Friday, saying they aided Russia in the war in Ukraine. (South China Morning Post $)

4. For Chinese EV startup Nio, selling one car means losing $35,000. But government backing allows companies like Nio to withstand such losses and keep growing. (New York Times $)

5. Chinese ultra-fast-fashion company Shein appointed a former SoftBank Group executive as its vice chairman. He’s tasked with diversifying the company’s supply chain beyond China. (Wall Street Journal $)

6. A Hong Kong man was sentenced to four months in prison for importing “seditious” children’s books that portrayed the city’s democracy supporters as sheep defending their village from wolves. (The Straits Times)

Lost in translation

Since China softened its zero-covid policies almost a year ago, many Chinese companies that offer PCR test products have been forced to evolve. One company, however, has made the indecipherable decision to enter the market for precooked meals. 

According to the Chinese publication Lanjing Caijing, Shenzhen Nuclear Gene Technology, a company with more than 30 testing labs across China, was at the center of a controversy last year after it was repeatedly fined by local governments for fabricating test results and not adhering to technical standards. Then in May, the company incorporated a subsidiary called Wuhan Nuclear Agriculture Technology, which now works on producing frozen meals based on rice. 

The only connection between PCR tests and precooked meals is that both have been extremely trendy businesses. In recent years, the popularity of precooked food—often complicated, time-consuming dishes like grilled whole fish—has risen significantly in China among young people who don’t like to cook. The domestic market is around $58 billion now, and it’s predicted to grow to $148 billion by 2026. But people are also questioning whether it’s acceptable for restaurants to take a shortcut by turning to precooked food packages instead of developing their own recipes.

One more thing

A new study by Chinese researchers analyzed the relationship between a stock fund’s performance and the fund manager’s “facial attractiveness.” And yes, the paper actually includes a few examples of real manager faces that were given low scores by a deep-learning model for “facial beauty prediction.” Yikes. Oh, and their conclusion? “Funds with facial[ly] unattractive managers outperform funds with attractive managers by over 2% per annum.”

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