It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
A brand new Xiaomi SU7 broke down and could not be repaired after traveling only 39 kilometers, or about 24 miles, its owner has complained.
The first electric car from the Chinese phone maker Xiaomi has been a blockbuster hit since it launched on March 28th in China, reportedly selling out for the entire 2024 within 24 hours.
There have been numerous positive reviews following the first shipments of the car that started on April 9th but also reports of significant defects.
These include one new owner, who said that his car malfunctioned just after he picked it up from the Xiaomi delivery center in Fujian after more than a month-long wait.
The man said he was driving on a highway when warning messages started to appear telling him to pull over because the drive system was “faulty,” according to a report from Car News China.
In a video apparently filmed by the owner, the car can be seen parked on the roadside with its hazard lights blinking. Inside, the screen can be seen displaying warning messages.
The car had to be towed back to the delivery center, where the owner learned that it was beyond repair and had to be returned to the manufacturer for analysis.
The delivery center confirmed the incident and said they were unable to work out what the problem was. The owner was offered a refund – something he was not happy about.
According to media reports, the man requested a new car rather than agreeing to compensation, as he did not want to be put on a waitlist again.
However, because of the fact that all cars currently in production had sold out, Xiaomi said it was unable to give him one and is reportedly negotiating a refund.
Xiaomi SU7 starts at 215,900 yuan, or $29,900, and has become one of this year’s best-selling cars in that category in China. In comparison, the base model of the Tesla Model 3 costs 245,900 yuan, or $34,600.
Xiaomi’s car plant in Beijing has an annual production capacity of 150,000 vehicles, with plans to increase production to 300,000 vehicles later.
Xiaomi
Xiaomi Corporation, commonly known as Xiaomi and registered as Xiaomi Inc., is a Chinese designer and manufacturer of consumer electronics and related software, home appliances, automobiles and household hardware. It is the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, behind Samsung, mos...Wikipedia
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Blacklisted Chinese firms eye lawsuits after Xiaomi win against Trump ban
(Reuters) - Chinese companies targeted by a sweeping investment ban imposed by former President Donald Trump are considering suing the U.S. government after a federal judge on Friday suspended a similar blacklisting for Beijing-based smartphone maker Xiaomi.
Lawyers familiar with the matter said some of the banned Chinese companies are in talks with law firms including Steptoe & Johnson and Hogan Lovells, emboldened by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras' preliminary order halting Xiaomi's inclusion on a U.S. list of alleged Communist Chinese military companies that are subject to an investment ban.
The Trump administration's move to blacklist Xiaomi Corp, which knocked $10 billion off its market share and sent its shares down 9.5 percent in January, would have forced investors to completely divest their stakes in the company.
"Companies are reaching out to lawyers to challenge the listings and the grounds for the listings," said Wendy Wysong, managing partner of the Hong Kong office of Steptoe & Johnson, a worldwide law firm headquartered in Washington. Wysong and a person familiar with Hogan Lovells, another global law firm, declined to name the companies involved in discussions.
Contreras flagged the U.S. government's "deeply flawed" process for including the company in the investment ban, based on just two key criteria: its development of 5G technology and artificial intelligence, which the Defense Department alleges are "essential to modern military operations," and an award given to Xiaomi founder and Chief Executive Lei Jun from an organization said to help the Chinese government eliminate barriers between commercial and military sectors.
The judge noted that 5G and AI technologies were fast becoming standard in consumer electronics, and that over 500 entrepreneurs had received the same award as Lei since 2004, including the leaders of an infant formula company.
"The facts that led to Xiaomi's designation are almost laughable, and I think it absolutely is going to lead to additional companies seeking relief," said Washington lawyer Brian Egan, a former legal adviser in both the White House and State Department who also works at Steptoe.
GOVERNMENT UNDECIDED ON PATH FORWARD
In a joint filing on Tuesday, the government said it had not decided on the "appropriate path forward" in the Xiaomi case in light of the judge's decision.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice, which is defending the case, declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Department of Defense referred questions to the White House, which has not responded.
Xiaomi and 43 other companies were added https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2434513/dod-releases-list-of-additional-companies-in-accordance-with-section-1237-of-fy in the waning months of the Trump administration to the blacklist, which was mandated by a 1999 law requiring the Defense Department to publish a compilation of companies "owned or controlled" by the Chinese military.
Seeking to cement a tough line on China and box his Democratic successor, Joe Biden, into hardline policies, Trump signed an executive order that was later expanded to bar all U.S. investors from holding securities in the named companies beginning on Nov. 11, 2021.
Other companies listed include video surveillance giant Hikvision, China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) and China's top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.
SMIC, Hikvision and CNOOC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Luokung Technology Corp, a mapping technology company on the list, also sued the U.S. government earlier this month, and is expected to seek preliminary relief similar to that awarded to Xiaomi.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Alexandra Alper; Additional reporting by Mike Stone; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Thursday, March 28, 2024
China’s competitive car market at heart of global EV revolution
By AFP March 28, 2024 Xiaomi is the latest Chinese firm to enter a highly competitive EV market
- Copyright AFP STR
China is the biggest electric vehicle market in the world, a battle royale featuring both established carmakers as well as upstarts such as Xiaomi, which launched its first EV on Thursday.
EV makers from China have made inroads into markets from Europe to Southeast Asia and Tesla’s Elon Musk described them in January as “the most competitive car companies in the world”.
How big is the Chinese EV market?
China’s market for EVs dwarfs the rest of the world.
Of all new EVs sold globally in December last year, 69 percent were in China, according to the research firm Rystad Energy.
And of its forecast of 17.5 million EV sales this year, Rystad expects China to account for 11.5 million, or 65 percent.
The explosive rise of these EV firms has also fuelled China’s challenge to traditional auto powerhouses — it overtook Japan as the world’s biggest car exporter last year.
Which Chinese EV company is the biggest?
Founded as a battery company, BYD — known as “Biyadi” in Chinese or by the English slogan “Build Your Dreams” — has become China’s undisputed EV champion and Tesla’s biggest challenger.
It said last year it had become the first company to produce five million all-electric and hybrid vehicles, crowning itself the world’s top maker of “new energy” vehicles.
And, in the last quarter of 2023, it surpassed Tesla as the world’s leading EV seller.
BYD also enjoys cost advantages because of its strong capabilities across the EV supply chain, especially power storage.
Many foreign auto giants, including Tesla and BMW, rely on BYD for batteries. Who are the other players?
There are a staggering 129 EV brands in China, but just 20 have managed to achieve a domestic market share of one percent or more, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The data showed BYD at almost 33 percent, with Tesla in second place with more than eight percent.
In third place with 5.8 percent of the market is Wuling, which makes China’s best-selling EV to date — a tiny two-door car named Hongguang Mini.
The rest of the pack includes Volvo Cars-parent Geely and electric SUV maker Li Auto, as well as the relatively newer XPeng and NIO.
And the offerings for Chinese customers are just as varied — from buses and entry-level and mid-range city cars to luxury sedans and roadsters.
China’s tech giants also want a slice of the multi-billion-dollar EV pie.
Huawei, under heavy US sanctions over alleged links to Chinese security agencies, has in recent years developed EVs with production partners, with heavy use of its technology.
Search giant Baidu is also working on an EV project, with a focus on autonomous driving.
And Xiaomi, the world’s third-biggest smartphone maker, entered the fray on Thursday. Is this sustainable?
The glut of models from companies that have spent heavily for years has led to what has been widely described as an EV price war, with firms including BYD and Tesla offering significant discounts.
Analysts have said the process of consolidation in China’s EV market will continue as some companies go out of business, look to merge with others or seek buyers for their technology and assets.
Further, while heavy state support promoted the industry’s growth for years, purchase subsidies have been phased out.
However, industry experts point to China’s industrial and manufacturing prowess, as well as the country’s dominance of key EV supply chains including minerals as factors that will aid its auto sector. How have traditional auto powers reacted?
The stunning rise of China’s EV industry has sparked worries in Brussels and Washington, especially over the subsidies Chinese auto firms receive from the government.
European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen announced in September an investigation into Chinese subsidies for electric cars, vowing to defend European industry from unfair competition.
And while Chinese EV makers have not made inroads into the United States, President Joe Biden’s administration has taken aim at auto parts from China.
Beijing filed a complaint this week at the World Trade Organization, arguing that new US auto policies discriminated against Chinese companies, state media reported.
Aside from car makers, China’s CATL dominates the global EV battery markets and supplies heavyweights including Tesla, Volkswagen and Toyota.
Musk warned of the challenge posed by Chinese automakers.
“Frankly, I think if there are not trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world,” he said during a Tesla earnings call in January.
“They are extremely good.”
China’s Xiaomi to enter cut-throat EV market for the first time
March 28, 2024 A Xiaomi SU7 electric car is displayed at a Xiaomi store in Beijing on March 26, 2024. - Copyright TT News Agency/AFP/File Hanna Brunlof WINDELL
Chinese consumer tech giant Xiaomi will launch its first-ever EV at a press conference in Beijing Thursday, injecting itself into a fiercely competitive sector in the world’s largest car market.
China’s EV sector has grown rapidly in recent years — propelled by purchasing subsidies that were discontinued in late 2022 — and dozens of domestic automakers are engaged in a stiff price war to get ahead in a crowded market.
Xiaomi is known around the world for affordable smartphones and sleek home appliances, and CEO Lei Jun says he is now putting his “reputation on the line” with the SU7 EV, and challenging Chinese car giant BYD and Elon Musk’s Tesla.
Sleek, sporty, and available in blue bay, olive green or elegant grey, the SU7 even includes “sound simulation”, Lei says, “to recreate the thrill of driving a sports car”.
Lei has not divulged the price, but has promised it will be “the best-looking, best-driving and smartest car” costing under 500,000 yuan ($69,200).
Analysts have said they expect it to come in at half that price.
“If my guess is correct, the 200,000 to 250,000 yuan range, that actually is the most competitive segment in the China EV space at the moment,” Johnson Wan, an analyst at Jefferies Financial Group Inc, told Bloomberg.
China is now the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, but officials plan for domestic car sales to be made up mainly of electric and hybrid models by 2035.
The launch of the SU7 comes just days after BYD, the world’s top seller of EVs, posted record annual profits as it pushes a rapid expansion overseas into countries in Southeast Asia, as well as further afield in Latin America and Europe.
In a note attached to the earnings report, BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu acknowledged the year had not been all smooth sailing.
“At the beginning of the year, the recovery of automobile consumption was relatively lagging behind, affected by the switch in promotional policies and market price fluctuations,” he wrote.
XPeng — one of BYD’s top competitors in China — last week reported a net loss of 10.4 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) in 2023.
Hyundai to invest more than $50 bn in South Korea in major EV push
By AFP March 27, 2024 South Korea's Hyundai is one of the world's biggest automakers
- Copyright AFP/File
Yasuyoshi CHIBA
Hyundai on Wednesday revealed plans to invest more than $50 billion in South Korea by 2026, with a huge chunk dedicated to boosting the development and production of electric vehicles.
Along with its affiliate Kia, Hyundai is the world’s third-largest automaker by sales, but the South Korean giant lags in the EV sector behind Elon Musk’s Tesla and Chinese firm BYD.
Hyundai is keen to break into the global EV top three, saying last year that it was aiming to boost electric car production to more than 3.6 million units by 2030.
With the 68 trillion won ($50.5 billion) investment announced Wednesday, Hyundai Motor Group said it wants to “secure future growth engines in an uncertain business environment through constant change and innovation”.
“The automotive sector, including future mobility projects, accounts for… 63 percent of the Group’s total investment,” it added.
Under the plan, Hyundai will create 80,000 jobs in South Korea and build three new EV factories, with the aim of increasing annual EV production in the country to 1.51 million units by 2030.
The group’s EV strategy also includes investments in infrastructure, software, battery technology and autonomous driving.
A Greenpeace report in November said Hyundai’s growing sales of gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles had offset any climate gains from its transition to EVs.
It noted that Hyundai-Kia had posted SUV sales increases of more than 150 percent over the past decade.
SUVs emit approximately 12 percent more carbon dioxide than sedans, the environmental group said, urging Hyundai to reduce SUV sales.
When asked about the report, Hyundai said it was expanding its fleet of “fully electric SUV vehicles”, including Kia’s EV6 and EV9.
Thursday, November 04, 2021
POST-FORDISM
Smartphone giant Xiaomi to begin production in Pakistan next year It trails behind Samsung and Apple
Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi is collaborating with Air Link Communication for manufacturing mobile phones in Pakistan by January next year, SAPM on Production Abdul Razzak Dawood said Tuesday.
He said that the government’s policy had started yielding results and the domestic production of advanced mobile phones was a radical achievement. According to Dawood, initial estimates put annual production target between 2.5 and 3 million mobile phone units. “Industrial facilities are being set up in the Quaid-i-Azam Industrial Estate near Kot Lakhpat in Lahore and production is set to start in January next year, employing at least 3,000 people,” Dawood said. Xiaomi, he said, was one of the world’s largest mobile phone tech company.
Providing more details, he said that Select (Pvt) Ltd, a subsidiary of Air Link Communication, would jointly manufacture mobile phone sets in Pakistan.
Air Link Communication is one of the country’s largest retail and distribution company, assembling and selling mobile phones and accessories.
Recently, the company scooped Rs6.43 billion, after floating its IPO in the Pakistan Stock Exchange or PSX by selling 90 million shares to institutional and individual investors.
The government has already introduced a comprehensive policy regarding domestic production of mobile phones while the PTA issued a code of conduct regarding setting up manufacturing units for mobile phone devices.
Subsequently, at least 26 companies had so far been issued licenses for manufacturing mobile phones in the country.
Xiaomi is already marketing several brands in Pakistan, including Redmi, Poco and MI. It is also marketing other accessories as well as TV sets and smartwatches.
Market expert believe that most mobile phone manufacturing firms view Pakistan as a vast potential market, focusing on local production, assembly and distribution.
Xiaomi’s share of the global smartphone market grew by 83% year-on-year in the quarter ending June, as per Canalys, a research firm.
In a recent report, Xiaomi exported 52.8 million units during this period, making it one of the world’s top-selling brand behind Samsung and Apple.
Tuesday, May 03, 2022
Communist Xi explains capital’s benefits as Chinese executives speak up on economic crisis
Business leaders now openly say that Beijing’s zero-Covid policies are slowly destroying the economy. It is becoming difficult for many to justify Xi’s ‘common prosperity’ campaign.
Financial industry executives criticise Beijing’s Covid-19 and economic policies. Chinese social media users react to attacks in Karachi. India seizes the assets of Xiaomi India. Chinascope brings you stories from China – and the world – as they unfolded.
China over the week
President Xi Jinping has said that China should give a ‘full play’ to capital by focusing on its ‘positive role’. Xi was speaking at a meeting of the Politburo on Saturday.
Despite underscoring the importance of capital, Xi did try to warn people about letting private capital flow like ‘water’.
“Capital is like ‘water’. Laissez-faire will lead to disaster; timely and reasonable guidance can benefit one party. Correctly understand and grasp the characteristics and behavioural laws of capital, comprehensively improve the efficiency of capital governance, and educate and guide capital entities to practice the core socialist values,” said Xi during the Politburo meeting.
Xi’s remarks come when China’s economy is in the doldrums as the central government is trying to shore up factory production. But people haven’t forgotten Xi’s common prosperity programme, which was at the front and centre of ensuring equitable growth of the Chinese economy. Though common prosperity has slowly disappeared from press releases and Xi’s statements. Common prosperity wasn’t even mentioned in the Chinese version of the Xinhua story, but it was there in the English language version of Xi’s remarks.
It is becoming difficult to justify the direction of Xi’s ‘common prosperity’ campaign as business leaders have started speaking up about the health of the Chinese economy.
Weijian Shan, founder and chair of one of Asia’s biggest private equity investors, has criticised the Chinese government’s economic policies, resulting in a “deep economic crisis” on the scale of global financial crash.
Weijian isn’t the only business executive who has spoken up. Joerg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, has said that Beijing’s zero-Covid policies are slowly destroying the economy.
“The current lockdown is even more extreme than in early 2020, and the economy is crashing almost as hard. Freight traffic volumes in the Shanghai metropolitan area plunged by 81% year-on-year in the first three weeks of April,” said Wuttke in an interview.
It is still rather rare for business leaders like Weijian and Wuttke to speak in the fashion they have done.
----
The attack on Confucius Institute in Karachi has left the Chinese public looking for answers. Three staff members who died in the attack were Huang Guiping, who once served as deputy dean of the School of Foreign Languages at Sichuan Normal University; Ding Mufang, a teacher; and Chen Sai, a volunteer teacher. Another Chinese national, Wang Yuqing, sustained injuries but survived the attack.
The hashtag “Pakistan Confucius Institute shuttle bus hit by the terrorist attack on campus” was viewed 16.1 million times on Weibo. Pakistan’s president made a special visit to the Chinese embassy in Islamabad to share his condolences. A related hashtag was viewed 24 million times on Weibo.
Chinese state media published an article by Pakistani authors blaming British colonisation as the root cause of the Baloch secessionist movement.
The tensions between the US and China are often articulated in a statement by unnamed official sources, but a stark example was revealed this week.
A viral video showed a PLA fighter bomber pilot named Gao Zensong ready to “pull the trigger” to “expel” a foreign vessel in the South China Sea.
“I am the air force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. You have entered the control area of the Chinese air force. Please leave immediately. Otherwise, you will be responsible for the consequences,” Gao said in the video broadcast by state-run CCTV. The video was viewed 50 million times on Weibo.
On 27 April, the PLA spokesperson said the Chinese navy had expelled the guided-missile destroyer USS Sampson, which had sailed through the Taiwan Strait a day before. Chinese internet censors find it particularly difficult to digest criticism from celebrities and influential business leaders.
The social media presence of Wang Sicong, son of Chinese property magnate Wang Jianlin, was scrubbed from the Chinese internet. Wang, who had 40 million followers on Weibo, openly criticised the government’s Covid policies in Shanghai, including the use of China’s state-sanctioned medicine for treating the disease.
The Chinese foreign ministry has announced that it would be willing to allow some Indian students to return.
The US officials held “top-level talks” with their UK counterparts over reducing the chances of China launching a war against Taiwan, according to the Financial Times.
“One of the people said the Taiwan meeting spanned everything from how the UK could do more diplomatically with Taipei to discussions about boosting deterrence in Asia. It also included talks about what role the UK would play if the US ended up in a war with China over Taiwan,” Financial Times reported citing unnamed sources.
Despite a slight lull in India-China relations, things haven’t yet entirely resolved themselves.
India’s Enforcement Directorate on Saturday announced that they had seized Chinese telecom giant Xiaomi’s assets worth Rs 5,551 crore under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
The directorate said that Xiaomi was making remittances to three foreign entities, one of which was a Xiaomi entity. The directorate has alleged that Xiaomi hasn’t availed any services from the entities to which the royalty payment was remitted. Xiaomi India has been under the ED’s investigation since February.
“We have studied the order from government authorities carefully. We believe our royalty payments and statements to the bank are all legit and truthful,” Xiaomi India said.
Experts this week
“Western countries such as the US and Europe have a set of rhetoric for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Wherever the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor passes through, and wherever there is a BRI project, they will hype China for plundering local energy and resources and portray the Chinese people as looters and loan sharks, and the locals as looted victims of so-called “debt traps”. Including the Indian media which also spreads the same propaganda. At present, the publicity statements of the Baluchistan Liberation Army are the same as that of the United States, the West, and India. It is possible that BLA is to please these countries to gain more support,” wrote Liu Zongyi, senior fellow and secretary-general of the South Asia and China Center, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.
Podworld
India’s neutral position on the war in Ukraine has become a matter of discussion worldwide. India’s position has had an impact on its relations with China.
Sinica Podcast’s Kaiser Kuo spoke to Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Research Programme and a China studies fellow at the Takshashila Institution, about how the war in Ukraine is shaping India-China relations.
The author is a columnist and a freelance journalist, currently pursuing an MSc in international politics with focus on China from School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He was previously a China media journalist at the BBC World Service. He tweets @aadilbrar. Views are personal.
This is a weekly round-up that Aadil Brar writes about what’s buzzing in China. This will soon be available as a subscribers’-only product.
Beijing, Aug 19 (EFE).- Robots that care for the elderly, conduct PCR tests, and deliver packages are some of the highlights of the 2022 World Robot Conference underway in Beijing.
The event, organized between Aug.18 to 21, brings together more than 130 companies that showcase the latest advances in robotics in China, where the sector had a turnover of 83 billion yuan ($12.23 billion) in 2021.
The participants display how robots can contribute to different sectors, including the restaurant industry, medicine, elderly care, agriculture, and manufacturing.
One of the main event attractions is the robots that carry out PCR tests.
After a series of coronavirus outbreaks in the country in spring, the inhabitants of large cities undergo several weekly PCR tests to gain entry into public places, including stores, parks, and even the conference.
The authorities of the Chinese megalopolises have fixed a target of setting up testing booths so every resident can find one within a 15-minute walk.
It has led to thousands of such booths on the country’s streets.
The robotic cabin developed by a laboratory affiliated with Tsinghua University promises to test a sample in 35 seconds with a 99.9 percent effectiveness.
With the push of a button, a mechanical arm comes out of the cabin and places a stick of cotton in the mouth of the person being tested.
Owing to their ability to work for many hours at a time, these robots could help ease the long queues outside testing booths in high populated areas.
Healthcare robotics occupies a prominent place in the event with robots that perform dental procedures, high-precision surgeries, and vaccinations.
Companies are also displaying their creations in the elderly care sector, which is expected to grow considerably in the future as the Chinese population ages.
The robot developed by Robint is equipped with a camera and is capable of moving around an elderly person’s house, keeping track of the medicines they have taken, and alerting if any have been skipped.
It also has a thermometer and a blood pressure monitor with data synchronized to monitor the patient’s health.
“In China, there are more than 260 million elderly people,” a company representative told EFE.
“If only a small percentage of them buy these products, we would already be talking about a huge market.”
By 2035, people over 60 are expected to constitute more than 30 percent of the Chinese population compared to the current 18 percent.
Two Chinese digital giants, the JD e-commerce platform and the Meituan food delivery firm, were also present at the event.
For years, these companies have been at the forefront of developing logistics robots to save millions of dollars in wages for their delivery personnel.
What will humanoid robots be used for in the future?
While waiting for other players to enter the fray, the humanoid robot war is already raging between the United States' Tesla and China's Xiaomi. From assembly line work to personal services, these robots could have very practical uses once they're made operational.
While waiting for other players to enter the fray, the humanoid robot war is already raging between the United States' Tesla and China's Xiaomi. From assembly line work to personal services, these robots could have very practical uses once they're made operational.
Whether the Tesla Optimus or the Xiaomi CyberOne, these robots are the size (between 1m70 and 1m80 or 5 ft 6 inches to 5 ft 9 inches) and the weight (about 50 kilos or 110 pounds) of an average human, and can walk and move like a person. The more elaborate of the two, Xiaomi's CyberOne, is also capable of perceiving space in 3D as well as recognizing individuals as well as their gestures, their expressions and their emotions. Artificial intelligence gives it the capability of interacting with humans, such as comforting someone who is unhappy. Meanwhile, Tesla's Elon Musk has long spoken of his dream of grafting an artificial intelligence that surpasses human intelligence onto his robots. A first prototype of the Optimus robot is set to be revealed before the end of the year.
The potential of such robots seems nearly limitless. However, it's within an industry setting that these robots will first need to demonstrate their worth. As Elon Musk himself announced, this type of robot would be perfect for alleviating humans of "repetitive, boring and dangerous tasks." In the factory, they could work on a production line, carry heavy loads or screw in bolts. In everyday life, they could do errands like mowing the lawn or walking the dog.
Once their operations have become more elaborate and "intelligent," these humanoid robots could very well be used to assist elderly or dependent people. But to start with there's more chance of seeing them on a production line than in a nursing home or in a regular home setting.
Friday, July 08, 2022
China says closely following India's raid of Vivo, warns of chilling impact on business confidence
Manish Singh Thu, July 7, 2022
China's embassy in India has criticized Indian authorities in a statement for "frequent investigations" into local units of Chinese firms and warned that such moves "impede the improvement of [the] business environment" in India and "chills the confidence and willingness" of other foreign nation's businesses to invest and operate in the South Asian market following raids into Vivo offices earlier this week.
Wang Xiaojian, spokesperson of Chinese Embassy in India Counsellor said China was following the issue closely.
The Enforcement Directorate said Thursday afternoon that a firm associated with Vivo used forged documentation at the time of incorporation in India. The agency seized 119 bank accounts with $58.7 million linked with Vivo India, it added (PDF).
The incident follows a similar investigation into Xiaomi, another Chinese firm. The ED seized $725 million from Xiaomi India, accusing the company of violating the country’s foreign exchange laws. Executives of Xiaomi, which has refuted the charges and has legally challenged the ruling, faced threats of "physical violence" during their investigation, Reuters reported earlier.
Chinese smartphone makers command the Indian market, according to research firm Counterpoint. Xiaomi held the tentpole position in the India in the quarter that ended in March, whereas Vivo was the fourth-largest smartphone vendor by the volume of handsets shipped, Counterpoint said.
India Cellular and Electronics Association, a lobby group that represents several tech giants including Apple and Amazon, in May urged New Delhi to intervene and alleged ED of lacking understanding of just how royalty payments worked in the tech industry. (The Indian Enforcement Directorate said earlier that Xiaomi had remitted $725 million to three foreign-based entities “in the guise of royalty” payments.)
Tension between the two nuclear-armed neighboring nations escalated in 2020 after a skirmish at the border. India has since introduced several restrictions on Chinese firms (without ever naming China in its orders.)
The investment rule has significantly curtailed Chinese investors' ability to back Indian businesses and startups. Prior to the amendment, Tencent and Alibaba were among the most prolific backers of Indian startups.
Xiaojian said Wednesday evening that the world's largest population always asks Chinese firms to follow laws and regulations overseas and "wishes" that the Indian side provides a "fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment" to Chinese firms.
"The essence of China-India economic and trade cooperation is for mutual benefit and win-win results. The bilateral trade volume between China and India strikes a historical record of over 100 billion USD in 2021, which reflects the huge potential and broad prospect of economic and trade cooperation between our two countries. China wishes the Indian side to investigate and enforce the law in compliance with laws and regulations, and effectively provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese enterprises to invest and operate in India," he added.
The story was updated with ED's comment.
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
Young consumers in Southeast Asia prefer budget phones over Apple's iPhones and Samsung's high-end handsets: survey
South China Morning Post Mon, August 21, 2023
An overwhelming majority of young consumers in Southeast Asia are more attracted to mid-range or budget phones than higher-end models from established brands like Samsung Electronics and Apple, according to a new survey.
The survey, conducted by British market research firm YouGov and sponsored by Xiaomi-backed smartphone brand Poco, covered 2,500 Gen Z and millennial consumers - defined as those aged between 18 and 40 - in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
More than three-quarters of respondents agreed that they prefer "mid-range" phones, including 37 per cent who "strongly" agreed with that preference.
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Almost eight out of every 10 respondents said they are more confident in mid-range mobile phones than five years ago, because those devices are affordable and budget friendly, strike a good balance between price and performance, and fulfil user needs without excessive features. People with their smartphones in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images
Poco, which was spun off from Beijing-based Xiaomi in 2020, is trying to win young smartphone users in Southeast Asia with its pitch for good price-to-value handsets, such as its newly released Poco M3 Pro 5G, which sells in Indonesia at a starting price of 2,399,000 rupiah (US$156.5).
The device comes with 5G connectivity and a dual-SIM slot. It is marketed for its adaptable screen refresh rate, which adjusts depending on the content shown, helping users conserve battery.
"When it comes to the rise of gaming in Southeast Asia, or even around the world, we want to put more focus on the roots, the basics, and perfecting the mid-range market, where we can find the perfect balance between price value and product," said Angus Ng, product marketing head at Poco Global.
The YouGov survey found that young consumers in Southeast Asia mainly use their handsets for entertainment, with 80 per cent of respondents saying they bought their phones to watch videos and 60 per cent saying they play mobile games on their devices.
More than half of the respondents shop online at least several times a week.
In general, Gen Z spend more time on their mobile phones than their older millennial counterparts, according to the survey. For instance, Gen Z respondents on average spend 10 hours a week on social media, compared with 7.7 hours for millennials.
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of mobile phones for entertainment, which has raised consumers' expectations on the technical performance of their devices, according to Jenny Armshaw-Heak, director at YouGov.
"We're seeing a focus on utility and storage capacity, performance, speed and features, which will enhance [the user] experience across the board, and particularly in relation to gaming, which we all know [users] love and enjoy on an almost daily basis," she said. People use smartphones to take pictures and video at a park in Manila, Philippines.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The Southeast Asian smartphone market is currently led by Samsung, which had a 27 per cent share in the first quarter of 2023, followed by Chinese brands Oppo, Xiaomi, Vivo and Realme, according to statistics from research firm Canalys.
While smartphone shipments to the region fell 21 per cent from a year ago during that quarter, analysts expect the numbers to rise 7 per cent next year, driven by a rebound in demand. "2024 is expected to spin a different story," said Sheng Win Chow, analyst at Canalys. "Looking ahead, Southeast Asia continues to be a promising market for smartphone manufacturers, thanks to its expanding middle class and young population, which are key customer segments for smartphone vendors."
However, budget brands also face growing competition from vendors of premium handsets.
"The rise in digital payments and financing options in the region makes high-end devices more affordable for the masses," said Chow.
Shipments of Apple's iPhones rose 18 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter, while Samsung, Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi all saw their shipments drop, according to a separate report by research firm Counterpoint.
Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Robots are coming for the lawyers — which may be great for anyone in need of cheap legal assistance
by Elizabeth C. Tippett and Charlotte Alexander, The Conversation
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Imagine what a lawyer does on a given day: researching cases, drafting briefs, advising clients. While technology has been nibbling around the edges of the legal profession for some time, it's hard to imagine those complex tasks being done by a robot.
And it is those complicated, personalized tasks that have led technologists to include lawyers in a broader category of jobs that are considered pretty safe from a future of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence.
But, as we discovered in a recent research collaboration to analyze legal briefs using a branch of artificial intelligence known as machine learning, lawyers' jobs are a lot less safe than we thought. It turns out that you don't need to completely automate a job to fundamentally change it. All you need to do is automate part of it.
While this may be bad news for tomorrow's lawyers, it could be great for their future clients—particularly those who have trouble affording legal assistance.
Technology can be unpredictable
Our research project—in which we collaborated with computer scientists and linguists at MITRE, a federally funded nonprofit devoted to research and development—was not meant to be about automation. As lawprofessors, we were trying to identify the text features of successful versus unsuccessful legal briefs.
We gathered a small cache of legal briefs and judges' opinions and processed the text for analysis.
One of the first things we learned is that it can be hard to predict which tasks are easily automated. For example, citations in a brief—such as "Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 (1954)"—are very easy for a human to pick out and separate from the rest of the text. Not so for machine learning software, which got tripped up in the blizzard of punctuation inside and outside the citation
It was like those "Captcha" boxes you are asked to complete on websites to prove you're not a robot—a human can easily spot a telephone pole, but a robot will get confused by all the background noise in the image.
A tech shortcut
Once we figured out how to identify the citations, we inadvertently stumbled on a methodology to automate one of the most challenging and time-consuming aspects of legal practice: legal research.
The scientists at MITRE used a methodology called "graph analysis" to create visual networks of legal citations. The graph analysis enabled us to predict whether a brief would "win" based on how well other briefs performed when they included a particular citation.
Later, however, we realized the process could be reversed. If you were a lawyer responding to the other side's brief, normally you would have to search laboriously for the right cases to cite using an expensive database. But our research suggested that we could build a database with software that would just tell lawyers the best cases to cite. All you would need to is feed the other side's brief into the machine.
Now we didn't actually construct our research-shortcut machine. We would need a mountain of lawyers' briefs and judicial opinions to make something useful. And researchers like us do not have free access to data of that sort—even the government-run database known as PACER charges by the page.
But it does show how technology can turn any task that is extremely time-consuming for humans into one where the heavy lifting can be done at the click of a button.
Legal scholar Miriam Cherry discusses workplace automation with Elizabeth Tippett.
A history of partial automation
Automating the hard parts of a job can make a big difference both for those performing the job and the consumers on the other side of the transaction.
Take for example, a hydraulic crane or a power forklift. While today people think of operating a crane as manual work, these powered machines were considered labor-saving devices when they were first introduced because they supplanted the human power involved in moving heavy objects around.
Forklifts and cranes, of course, didn't replace people. But like automating the grind of legal research, power machines multiplied the amount of work one person could accomplish within a unit of time.
Partial automation of sewing machines in the early 20th century offers another example. By the 1910s, women working in textile mills were no longer responsible for sewing on a single machine—as you might today on a home sewing machine—but wrangling an industrial-grade machine with 12 needles sewing 4,000 stitches per minute. These machines could automatically perform all the fussy work of hemming, sewing seams and even stitching the "embroidery trimming of white underwear." Like an airline pilot flying on autopilot, they weren't sewing so much as monitoring the machine for problems.
Was the transition bad for workers? Maybe somewhat, but it was a boon for consumers. In 1912, women perusing the Sears mail order catalog had a choice between "drawers" with premium hand-embroidered trimming, and a much cheaper machine-embroidered option.
Likewise, automation could help reduce the cost of legal services, making it more accessible for the many individuals who can't afford a lawyer.
DIY lawyering
Indeed, in other sectors of the economy, technological developments in recent decades have enabled companies to shift work from paid workers to customers.
Touchscreen technology, for example, enabled airlines to install check-in kiosks. Similar kiosks are almost everywhere—in parking lots, gas stations, grocery stores and even fast-food restaurants.
At one level these kiosks are displacing paid labor by employees with unpaid labor by consumers. But that argument assumes that everyone could access the product or service back when it was performed by an employee.
In the context of legal services, the many consumers who can't afford a lawyer are already forgoing their day in court altogether or handling legal claims on their own—often with bad results. If partial automation means an overwhelmed legal aid lawyer now has time to take more clients' cases or clients can now afford to hire a lawyer, everyone will be better off.
In addition, tech-enabled legal services can help consumers do a better job of representing themselves. For example, the federal district court in Missouri now offers a platform to help individuals filing for bankruptcy prepare their forms—either on their own or with a free 30-minute meeting with a lawyer. Because the platform provides a head start, both the lawyer and consumer can make better use of the 30-minute time slot.
More help for consumers may be on the way—there is a bumper crop of tech startups jostling to automate various types of legal work. So while our research-shortcut machine hasn't been built, powerful tools like it may not be far off.
And the lawyers themselves? Like factory and textile workers armed with new power tools, they may be expected to do more work in the time they have. But it should be less of a grind. It might even free them up to meet with clients.
The big picture: Robotics and automation are more affordable now than they once were, and with more people questioning whether or not they want to be involved in the food services industry due to unstable schedules and relatively low wages, there might be no better time than the present for restaurant operators to further test the waters.
For better or for worse, the pandemic has impacted nearly every facet of modern life. Nowhere is that more evident than in the food services industry.
In just over a year and a half, virtually everything has changed as it relates to food. Online grocery shopping has finally started to gain traction. Many fast food joints closed their lobbies, turning instead to takeout or delivery to keep the lights on. Others that weren’t able or willing to adapt often went out of business.
All of the turmoil has wreaked havoc on the job market, and as The Wall Street Journal reports, it’s forcing yet another rethink by restaurants and executives.
White Castle last year started testing a robotic fry cooker at select locations. “Flippy,” from Miso Robotics, operates 23 hours a day at the Merrillville, Indiana, White Castle – it gets one hour of downtime a day for cleaning. The company is so happy with the bot’s performance that it is planning to bring it to 10 additional restaurants across the country.
According to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, there were more than 1.4 million job openings in the accommodation and food services sector as of May 2021. That’s more than double the number from a year earlier.
Indeed, with so many unfulfilled jobs and the pandemic still looming, even more restaurants and fast food establishments are willing to experiment with replacing human labor with robots. And the cost isn’t nearly as much of a factor as it once was.
“The 17-year-old fry cook isn’t expensive labor, but the 17-year-old becomes expensive labor if he or she doesn’t show up for work,” said, Ruth Cowan, an expert in kitchen automation.
Bird Protection System In Operation At Wind Farm In Tasmania
I expect that when the large oil companies transition into energy companies and buy up all the renewable generation — thus continuing their oligarchy — the FUD will cease around wind turbines. Very few people cared that birds died from the pollution caused by coal-fired power stations, but one sparrow gets hit by a turbine and the deal’s off.
A wind farm in Tasmania has pioneered a novel solution. Probably would have been simpler and less expensive to build the wind farm somewhere else. However, what they have come up with could be a world first, and might be useful in many countries around the globe. The Cattlehill Windfarm in Tasmania’s central highlands is trialling a way to mitigate the impacts on the endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle. Using tower-mounted optical units, eagles are detected, their flight path analyzed, and turbines in their way are shut down. There has only been one fatality so far, and that was likely due to human error.
One common argument against the use of wind turbines is the belief that they cause a lot of bird deaths. (Trump said so!) There is not a lot of empirical data on this issue. What there is suggests that far more bird deaths are caused by the pollution from coal and gas fired power generation and cats. “Wind farms killed approximately seven thousand birds in the United States in 2006 but nuclear plants killed about 327,000 and fossil-fuelled power plants 14.5 million,” according to a 2019 study. A Canadian study found that the vast majority of bird deaths were from feral cats, followed by domestic cats. In all, 60% of all bird deaths are caused by cats. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in the UK has put in a wind turbine at its headquarters to make the point that more birds will die from climate change than from this form of renewable energy generation.
Back in Tasmania, the Identiflight system is being fine-tuned. As a side effect, it is collecting massive amounts of data about the flights of eagles, with over 3 million images taken and over 130,000 flight paths tracked. And the economics — each shutdown lasts about 2 minutes, leading to a total of about 14 hours curtailment over 48 turbines on a daily basis. The eagles don’t fly at night and that is when the wind is blowing the most.
This good corporate behavior is generating a better social license for the wind power industry, an example that could be followed in other parts of Australia and around the world.
When robots make mistakes—and they do from time to time—reestablishing trust with human co-workers depends on how the machines own up to the errors and how human-like they appear, according to University of Michigan research.
In a study that examined multiple trust repair strategies—apologies, denials, explanations or promises—the researchers found that certain approaches directed at human co-workers are better than others and often are impacted by how the robots look.
"Robots are definitely a technology but their interactions with humans are social and we must account for these social interactions if we hope to have humans comfortably trust and rely on their robot co-workers," said Lionel Robert, associate professor at the U-M School of Information.
"Robots will make mistakes when working with humans, decreasing humans' trust in them. Therefore, we must develop ways to repair trust between humans and robots. Specific trust repair strategies are more effective than others and their effectiveness can depend on how human the robot appears."
For their study published in the Proceedings of 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, Robert and doctoral student Connor Esterwood examined how the repair strategies—including a new strategy of explanations—impact the elements that drive trust: ability (competency), integrity (honesty) and benevolence (concern for the trustor).
The researchers recruited 164 participants to work with a robot in a virtual environment, loading boxes onto a conveyor belt. The human was the quality assurance person, working alongside a robot tasked with reading serial numbers and loading 10 specific boxes. One robot was anthropomorphic or more humanlike, the other more mechanical in appearance.
The robots were programed to intentionally pick up a few wrong boxes and to make one of the following trust repair statements: "I'm sorry I got the wrong box" (apology), "I picked the correct box so something else must have gone wrong" (denial), "I see that was the wrong serial number" (explanation), or "I'll do better next time and get the right box" (promise).
Previous studies have examined apologies, denials and promises as factors in trust or trustworthiness but this is the first to look at explanations as a repair strategy, and it had the highest impact on integrity, regardless of the robot's appearance.
When the robot was more humanlike, trust was even easier to restore for integrity when explanations were given and for benevolence when apologies, denials and explanations were offered.
As in the previous research, apologies from robots produced higher integrity and benevolence than denials. Promises outpaced apologies and denials when it came to measures of benevolence and integrity.
Esterwood said this study is ongoing with more research ahead involving other combinations of trust repairs in different contexts, with other violations.
"In doing this we can further extend this research and examine more realistic scenarios like one might see in everyday life," Esterwood said. "For example, does a barista robot's explanation of what went wrong and a promise to do better in the future repair trust more or less than a construction robot?
More information:Esterwood, C. et al, Do You Still Trust Me? Human-Robot Trust Repair Strategies,Proceedings of 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication(2021).DOI: 10.7302/1675
NASA is training human-like robots to explore caves on Mars
When searching for signs of life on other planets, scientists say caves are a crucial place to look. But how can a team on Earth effectively explore intricate, dark, unfamiliar landscapes on another world?
NASA and Boston Dynamics have found an answer: Fully autonomous robots.
Caves are one of the most likely places to find signs of both current and past life on other planets because they are capable of protecting life from cosmic rays and extreme temperature fluctuations around our solar system. A NASA project called BRAILLE is now working on exploring Mars-like caves that already exist on Earth in order to hone key technologies for future missions.
According to researchers, the project has enabled the first-ever fully autonomous robotic exploration of these types of caves, which are several hundred meters long and limit communication with the surface. As the robots explore, with no prior information about the environment, a team of researchers outside the cave simultaneously performs actions that scientists on Earth would be executing during a real Martian mission.
The Boston Dynamics SPOT robot explores a Mars-like cave. NASA/JPL
The research, which project lead Ali Agha said could "fundamentally change how we think about future missions," is now in year three of four in its quest to journey to the moon, the red planet and beyond.
But researchers are interested in exploring caves for another reason beyond finding signs of life: caves provide obvious natural shelters for future astronauts exploring Mars or the moon.
"Future potential human exploration missions can benefit from robots in many different ways," Agha told CBS News. "Particularly, robots can be sent in precursor missions to provide more information about the destination before humans land on those destinations. In addition, robots can accompany astronauts during the missions to help with scouting certain terrains or with logistics and many tasks that can make astronauts' missions safer and more efficient."
So, how is designing a Mars robot different from designing an Earth robot? They are similar in a lot of ways, Agha said, especially when it comes to the AI robot brain, called NeBula, and its ability to process information and make decisions when they don't have contact with scientists on Earth.
But when it comes to the robot body, that's where things get more complicated. Scientists need to consider temperature management, shielding the robots from radiation, as well as the severe power and energy constraints that come with trekking to a far-away world — all aspects not previously considered on Earth.
Boston Dynamics' Spot robot has proven an extremely viable body for NeBula.
"SPOT is one of the most capable robots that we have and it is amazing to see how it successfully reacts to high-level decisions and commands coming from the robot brain and how it can maintain stability over rough and extreme terrains," Agha said. "In addition to our capable traditional wheeled rovers, the ability to "walk" is a huge asset when dealing with uneven terrains with no roads and no flat surfaces." There are three main factors for the robot's success:
It needs to be able to carry enough payload for its eyes, ears and brain to be able to traverse the challenging Martian or lunar terrain.
It needs to carry a meaningful amount of science instruments.
It must prove it can maintain a "reasonable" level of stability, speed and endurance on another world.
"We have these multiple mobile robots that can carry different instruments, as opposed to one big robot that's going to have trouble traversing its terrain," said deputy project lead Benjamin Morrell, referring to past Martian rovers.
Ali Agha, Project Lead, JPL NeBula Autonomy and AI, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, with the Boston Dynamics robot. NASA/JPL
"Boston Dynamics Spot robot is one of the few robots that satisfy these constraints simultaneously," Agha said. "So integrating our robot brain, NeBula, on Spot has been pushing the boundaries of what was possible in exploring unknown Mars-like environments."
The robots typically cannot communicate from inside the cave, so scientists eagerly await their return to the surface for data, which could include a 3D map of the cave's interior, information on science targets or general findings about the environment.
Some of the robots are also equipped with arms to bring back small samples from the cave walls for analysis. Researchers hope that these robots will be able to autonomously carry out parts of future missions in space, after humans have built up a certain level of trust with them.
"The next-generation robot bodies and mechanical locomotion capabilities would enable new types of missions over terrains that were otherwise inaccessible by traditional rovers," Agha said. "Also, due to the increased speed and traversal capabilities, future missions can target destinations that are traditionally considered to be too far from landable regions on Mars."
Chinese tech giant Xiaomi has unveiled a quadrupedal robot named CyberDog: an experimental, open-source machine that the firm says “holds unforetold possibilities.”
It’s not clear what purpose Xiaomi envisions for CyberDog. In a press release, the company stressed the open-source nature of the machine’s design and that it would release only 1,000 units initially for “Xiaomi Fans, engineers, and robotic enthusiasts.” The company says it hopes these first users will “propel the development and potential of quadruped robots” and is pricing the robot to sell. The first 1,000 units will cost just 9,999 Yuan, or roughly $1,540 (though it’s not clear if this price will be the same for any future releases).
The same press release highlights CyberDog’s “pet-like nature,” including its ability to respond to voice commands and follow its owner like a real dog. Looking at pictures of CyberDog, though, it’s clear Xiaomi isn’t pitching the machine as a rival to Aibo, Sony’s own robot canine. While Aibo is small and cute, CyberDog is sleek and futuristic — even a little menacing. Renders of the machine make it look like the protagonist in a sci-fi TV show, pacing up stairs and appearing silhouetted in doorways. Inevitable comparisons to Black Mirror’s “Metalhead” episode will be made, as they always are.
Xiaomi says CyberDog is nimble enough to perform backflips, can trot along at speeds of 3.2m/s (compared to Spot’s 3.9m/s), and weights 3kg (compared to Spot’s 5.2kg). CyberDog is powered by Nvidia’s Jetson Xavier AI platform and is equipped with an array of cameras and sensors. These include touch sensors, a GPS module, an ultra-wide-angle fisheye lens, and Intel’s RealSense D450 camera for depth-sensing. These components enable the robot to navigate semi-autonomously.
“CyberDog can analyze its surroundings in real-time, create navigational maps, plot its destination, and avoid obstacles. Coupled with human posture and face recognition tracking, CyberDog is capable of following its owner and darting around obstructions,” says Xiaomi. The machine can also respond to voice commands, including recognizing wake words and instructions, or it can be controlled using a connected smartphone app.
CyberDog also has three USB-C ports and one HDMI port, which Xiaomi says can be used to customize its hardware. The company suggests lidar sensors, panoramic cameras, and search lights could all be added to the robot.
Xiaomi’s CyberDog has a very similar design to Boston Dynamic’s Spot robot.
Image: Xiaomi
The release of CyberDog by Xiaomi is very interesting, though not necessarily as a product in its own right. Instead, it says a lot about the current robotics landscape and the accessibility of this tech.
Boston Dynamics popularized the quadrupedal format for robots, and companies around the world are now exploring exactly how and where such machines can be deployed effectively. The price of this hardware has been falling though, allowing for new use-cases to be explored. Earlier this year, Chinese robotics firm Unitree released a quadrupedal bot that cost just $2,700, and Xiaomi’s own CyberDog undercuts that again. Obviously, the capability of these machines will not be identical, but broader access to the technology will show whether it’s worth these firms pursuing at all.
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