News on China's scientific and technological development.

Alibaba and Tencent, along with Huawei are the main providers of cloud computing services in China. Cloud computing is a core part of the technology ecosystem, and will continue to grow in relevance and importance in the foreseeable future. It is crucial that China maintains its own cloud ecosystem, rather than use US ecosystems such as AWS and Azure. However, I am not familiar with the actual services and capabilities provided by the Chinese companies, and not sure how much behind are they compared to the industry leaders. In general though, cloud adoption in China has been going on at a much slower pace than the US, although the pace has increased in recent years.

voyager1 said:

I hope they really do real R&D and not just buying companies to shut down the competition, this is what I am more concerned about.

When one company brings innovative products to the market, Alibaba comes swinging its pile of cash, buys the company and then make them align with the "Alibaba Strategy". This is blatanly anti-competitive and it is actively shutting down the competition.

Are all these Alibaba executives donating to their universities so they can do R&D?

I am worried that they are more busy shutting down the competition than they are about doing Real R&D

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Yeah that's pretty bad and something for the state to consider and properly investigate - separating truths from suspicions. They can and will implement changes to balance the strategy for the overall better if it is as you say.

BTW this happens in the west as well. It's universal and a hallmark of how corporations think and operate. They view the market as a binary - customers you converted into profits and missed out profits. It's up to the state to regulate these mechanisms and produce an ecosystem that balances all the overall public interests which are to have these great employers, innovators, tech, etc etc and to have a place for the small start up and the opportunity to flourish without visions and intentions becoming assessed by the lawyers and accountants at the conglomerate. All corporations honestly should be run by engineers with the assistance and advise of lawyers+accountants rather than the other way round. Thankfully China's government is sort of like that if you ignore the corrupt and the lazy and the cheaters.

Most conglomerates buy up for IP and to access the engineering talent to absorb and redevelop the product according to their strategic goals and strengths. It's not always a matter of buy up to shut down because they don't want to deal with competitors. They just want to expand into whatever niche that direct/indirect competitor is going after. If we're fair, this isn't necessarily going to slow down or corrupt overall tech development. The big picture aim is just to identify promising minds and attitudes followed by allowing those individuals to become most efficiently productive at what they're good at and what they'd like to do. Achieving this is the state's goal and their levers are how they manage the laws and infrastructure that facilitate/impede these things.

voyager1 said:

I hope they really do real R&D and not just buying companies to shut down the competition, this is what I am more concerned about.

When one company brings innovative products to the market, Alibaba comes swinging its pile of cash, buys the company and then make them align with the "Alibaba Strategy". This is blatanly anti-competitive and it is actively shutting down the competition.

Are all these Alibaba executives donating to their universities so they can do R&D?

I am worried that they are more busy shutting down the competition than they are about doing Real R&D

Click to expand...

Alibaba built their own database and cloud system from scratch. Not to forget they open source their own Risc cpu.

Alibaba also revolutionised cashless tech (after wechat - Tencent) and integrated this beyond the original scope of its business. That's actually a lot of heavy R&D from software to hardware not to mention the business side of getting this executed so successfully.

This in and of itself (a tiny part of Alibaba and its accomplishments) is a lot of heavy R&D but by that point they were sponging up a lot of talented folks and had huge budgets to pull this sort of move.

Voyager1, like myself, is just far more interested and impressed by hardware. Beyond being manufacturer and OEM partner/developer for global businesses, China's most impressive hardware, commercial only (not experimental, military, or purely academic e.g. hypersonic combined cycle test engines) tech giants are very limited unlike Japan, US, South Korea, and Germany. China's only got Huawei, CATL, Xiaomi (which used to be mostly just dependent of other suppliers and OEM developers who engineered their stuff), BBK, and handful of aviation shipbuilding and car manufacturers... aviation and shipbuilding are not exactly consumer products and all of them save for Huawei are pretty niche only. China's experimental/ academic and military hardware players are far more impressive. And of course China's energy sector, transport sector, space sector etc but not in this category e.g. Siemens, Honeywell, Mitsubishi etc. Much more potential for China but the problem is they're sort of prevented from achieving the same level of international consumer access. Only gradually changes as Chinese higher value (and quality) products become more normal but lawfare from the west can and does disrupt this.

ougoah said:

Alibaba also revolutionised cashless tech (after wechat - Tencent) and integrated this beyond the original scope of its business. That's actually a lot of heavy R&D from software to hardware not to mention the business side of getting this executed so successfully.

This in and of itself (a tiny part of Alibaba and its accomplishments) is a lot of heavy R&D but by that point they were sponging up a lot of talented folks and had huge budgets to pull this sort of move.

Voyager1, like myself, is just far more interested and impressed by hardware. Beyond being manufacturer and OEM partner/developer for global businesses, China's most impressive hardware, commercial only (not experimental, military, or purely academic e.g. hypersonic combined cycle test engines) tech giants are very limited unlike Japan, US, South Korea, and Germany. China's only got Huawei, CATL, Xiaomi (which used to be mostly just dependent of other suppliers and OEM developers who engineered their stuff), BBK, and handful of aviation shipbuilding and car manufacturers... aviation and shipbuilding are not exactly consumer products and all of them save for Huawei are pretty niche only. China's experimental/ academic and military hardware players are far more impressive. And of course China's energy sector, transport sector, space sector etc but not in this category e.g. Siemens, Honeywell, Mitsubishi etc. Much more potential for China but the problem is they're sort of prevented from achieving the same level of international consumer access. Only gradually changes as Chinese higher value (and quality) products become more normal but lawfare from the west can and does disrupt this.

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How about ZTE，BOE, TCL, Gree, Midae, BYD, Hisense, Lenovo...and CRRC？

foofy said:

How about ZTE，BOE, TCL, Gree, Midae, BYD, Hisense, Lenovo...and CRRC？

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CRRC is part of the transport sector. They're impressive and world leading now... even beyond Japan, Canada, Germany, and France for high speed rail technologies and manufacturing.

But you're right. Those are some impressive and respectable "branded" hardware players and some of them have decent reach and spread of expertise. Unfortunately Chinese ones just aren't allowed to get as much international exposure and market share. Their products are dollar for dollar, gram for gram much superior price:quality, price: performance, and sometimes leading tech that no one else has developed e.g. transparent TV for Xiaomi's case as one example. BYD blade batteries etc. I didn't list them all because I'm not familiar with all of them. Those electronics ones you listed are mostly just boring white goods developer and manufacturers. Some of them have reached impressive status like BYD with the tech they have developed or Lenovo but Gree and Midea make washing machines and ACs... it's just not like Honeywell with armies of engineers developing everything from thermostats to turbofan engines to exotic materials. There are ones that have already got there though like Huawei. It's why it has been assaulted by the ungodly forces of the dreaded "free world" lawyers.

I'm convinced those "free world" lawyers are literally the spawn of satan. If anyone has experience with these types, it's like they're no longer human. It's impossible to converse and debate them. They win by their own rules. Anyway, STEM is a paradise island in the sea of ignorance and depravity. The western world and the ability of its general population to think has long been corrupted by these lawyer types that come as politicians, corporate rulers, media elites etc. They call it liberal democracy but it's just the foundation work for the fourth reich. The cracks have already begun showing. It's always called a different thing and then they get their lawyer foot soldiers out to confuse, obfuscate, divide and conquer. Decent normal people have no fucking chance. They'll talk you to death like the US is trying to talk/slander China to death.

Harmony OS out in the wild:


Not sure at what stage they are at. It is either using partial android fork or it's own microkernal. Whichever the case, it doesn't matter. What matters is that if Huawei license this out to other vendors, this may be China's first major Operating System.

On the desktop side, OS like UOS/Deepin is gonna need someone like huawei or alibaba to really get it adpoted by the general masses.

ougoah said:

Alibaba also revolutionised cashless tech (after wechat - Tencent) and integrated this beyond the original scope of its business. That's actually a lot of heavy R&D from software to hardware not to mention the business side of getting this executed so successfully.

This in and of itself (a tiny part of Alibaba and its accomplishments) is a lot of heavy R&D but by that point they were sponging up a lot of talented folks and had huge budgets to pull this sort of move.

Voyager1, like myself, is just far more interested and impressed by hardware. Beyond being manufacturer and OEM partner/developer for global businesses, China's most impressive hardware, commercial only (not experimental, military, or purely academic e.g. hypersonic combined cycle test engines) tech giants are very limited unlike Japan, US, South Korea, and Germany. China's only got Huawei, CATL, Xiaomi (which used to be mostly just dependent of other suppliers and OEM developers who engineered their stuff), BBK, and handful of aviation shipbuilding and car manufacturers... aviation and shipbuilding are not exactly consumer products and all of them save for Huawei are pretty niche only. China's experimental/ academic and military hardware players are far more impressive. And of course China's energy sector, transport sector, space sector etc but not in this category e.g. Siemens, Honeywell, Mitsubishi etc. Much more potential for China but the problem is they're sort of prevented from achieving the same level of international consumer access. Only gradually changes as Chinese higher value (and quality) products become more normal but lawfare from the west can and does disrupt this.

Click to expand...

Friend, you have a nice way with words and conveying your thoughts which is something I am not good at. Sometimes, this makes some of my posts to seem a bit crazy or incomprehensible.

You explained why I regularly call these "tech" companies useless (relative term). Hardware is the base of everything. Software is important yes, but without hardware it is nothing but clouds on the sky.

Alibaba, Tencent etc can innovate all they want in software but when things become hard and TSMC is banned from supplying them, they cramble like 200 years old buildings...

For me, from the little of companies i know about, Huawei is the best mainstream hardware company in China right now. They are regularly on top of GLOBAL RANKINGS in R&D and they advance China's interests in the world stage.

Yes Alibaba is good, but have their clouds business gotten such traction as Huawei in the world?

What does it mean that whole world is choosing Huawei even when Threatened by the US? It means that Huawei can offer a product TRULY competitive and full of value.

To conclude, Hardware is above everything. All these software "tech" companies can play "innovation" all they want but when they get banned they become like chickens ready for slaughter.

daifo said:

Harmony OS out in the wild:

Not sure at what stage they are at. It is either using partial android fork or it's own microkernal. Whichever the case, it doesn't matter. What matters is that if Huawei license this out to other vendors, this may be China's first major Operating System.

On the desktop side, OS like UOS/Deepin is gonna need someone like huawei or alibaba to really get it adpoted by the general masses.

Click to expand...

Looks great but they're gonna need to polish up the UI before releasing it to the public. A lot of the flat design is a slightly changed or direct copy of iOS icons.

voyager1 said:

Friend, you have a nice way with words and conveying your thoughts which is something I am not good at. Sometimes, this makes some of my posts to seem a bit crazy or incomprehensible.

You explained why I regularly call these "tech" companies useless (relative term). Hardware is the base of everything. Software is important yes, but without hardware it is nothing but clouds on the sky.

Alibaba, Tencent etc can innovate all they want in software but when things become hard and TSMC is banned from supplying them, they cramble like 200 years old buildings...

For me, from the little of companies i know about, Huawei is the best mainstream hardware company in China right now. They are regularly on top of GLOBAL RANKINGS in R&D and they advance China's interests in the world stage.

Yes Alibaba is good, but have their clouds business gotten such traction as Huawei in the world?

What does it mean that whole world is choosing Huawei even when Threatened by the US? It means that Huawei can offer a product TRULY competitive and full of value.

To conclude, Hardware is above everything. All these software "tech" companies can play "innovation" all they want but when they get banned they become like chickens ready for slaughter.

Click to expand...

Alibaba and Tencent do not even need the fastest chips. They can get as many chips as they want from SMIC and others in China.