Asian Tech Roundup: Chinese AI’s great leap forward

Plus: India’s intrusive tax inspection plans

Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at the spring in China’s step provided by DeepSeek, plus India’s plans to allow tax inspectors into emails and social media.

Since the announcement of DeepSeek in January, Chinese AI announcements have been coming thick and fast – there are three in this week’s roundup alone. DeepSeek showed that a homegrown match for US tech was possible at a much lower price (by whatever means that was achieved) and in the face of harsh trade sanctions. Now AI is rapidly finding its way into other areas where China has an advantage or is running a close second to global rivals, including EVs, smartphones, toys, chatbots, manufacturing production lines, household appliances, healthcare and defence. In its annual “Two Sessions” policy event, the government emphasised an increasing role for AI. “China is sending a signal to the outside world that it’s quite independent from the US now,” Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing, told CNN.

Meanwhile, the Indian authorities reportedly want to give access to all emails, messaging and bank accounts to tax inspectors, in a move that opposition politicians fear could be weaponised against them and their supporters,

Australia

• The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is suing fixed-income broker FIIG, after 385 GB of confidential data from 18,000 clients was leaked. Source
• Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar will succeed Tesla chairwoman Robyn Denholm as chair of the Tech Council, the Australian tech industry lobby group. Farquhar has called on the Australian government to accelerate the economy’s transition away from its dependence on natural resources. Source

China

• A whistleblower has said that Facebook built a censorship mechanism in 2014 in a failed attempt to enter the Chinese market. Source
• Since Elon Musk became a de facto member of the US government, wealthy Chinese investors have been quietly putting money into his tech companies via special purpose financial vehicles that secure their anonymity. Source
• A Chinese startup called Monica.im unveiled a service called Manus that it describes as a “general agent” for research. Source
• Chinese AI startup Zhipu AI has raised over a billion yuan ($137 million) in fresh funding. The company has raised the equivalent of $1.16 billion to date, despite being on a US “restricted entity” list. Source
• Alibaba has released an upgraded version of its Quark application, integrating its Qwen-based reasoning model into the AI Assistant. Source

India

• The Indian government wants tax inspectors to be able to access all digital data, wherever it is held. Opposition parties have called the plan warrantless surveillance. Source
• India’s telecom regulator will recommend that satellite broadband spectrum be allocated for five years only, in defiance of Elon Musk’s Starlink, which was lobbying for a 20-year deal. Source
• Indian authorities arrested, at the request of the US, a cryptocurrency exchange administrator accused of money laundering and violating sanctions. Source
• Xiaomi India has partnered with Indus Appstore, an Indian Android app marketplace, to integrate Indus into all new Xiaomi phones. Indus Appstore will replace the GetApps Appstore which currently ships on Xiaomi devices. Source
• India’s Central Consumer Protection Authority is investigating whether Uber charges iPhone users more than others for rides. Source
• Apple has successfully blocked opponents from accessing commercially sensitive information in an ongoing antitrust case against it after a ruling by the Competition Commission of India. Source

Japan

• Nissan has laid off its CEO and CTO as it seeks to revive its collapsed merger talks with Honda. Source
• Trump’s tariffs have seen shares in Nintendo drop 10% in the past week with Sony falling 6%. Source

North Korea

• Multiple Android apps, some that were available on Google Play, have been discovered to contain North Korean spyware. Source
• Hackers in the Lazarus Group, often linked to North Korea’s ruling regime, have started to cash out their $1.5 billion crypto heist. They have so far converted at least $300 million (£232 million). Source

Singapore

• Prosecutors told a Singapore court that a case in which Singapore-based firms have been accused of fraudulently supplying US servers to Malaysia involves transactions worth $390 million. Source
• Salesforce says it will invest $1 billion in Singapore over five years to promote use of its Agentforce AI development platform. Source

Taiwan

• Uber has abandoned its attempt to buy Delivery Hero’s Foodpanda in Taiwan following an intervention by the competition regulator. Source
• TSMC, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom and Qualcomm have reportedly discussed taking over parts of Intel’s operations. Source

Other Asia

• Bangladesh: Facing competition from Vietnam and Cambodia, clothing factories in Bangladesh are using surveillance and automation tools to increase productivity. Source