China’s AI push advances on all fronts - Asian Tech Roundup

Plus: Trouble at the top at TSMC

Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at AI news coming out of China suggesting progress in models, hardware and self-sufficiency, fallout from the cyberattack on Japanese brewer Asahi and trouble at the top at Taiwan’s TSMC.

The release of DeepSeek’s “open” R1 LLM back in January sent a shockwave through the markets. Could it be that all this money shovelled manically into the US-dominated AI firebox was being burned for nothing? Was the runaway train about to go off the rails? Subsequent weeks bought questions concerning the provenance of DeepSeek’s model, whether it had really been trained on homegrown hardware and the usual security issues with Chinese tech; the jitters subsided and markets resumed their upwards trend.

In this febrile atmosphere, all AI announcements should be taken with a pinch of salt. But with that important caveat, this week brings a number of stories that demonstrate China’s determination to dominate the AI space on its own terms, no matter what sanctions and hurdles may be placed in its way.

First is the news that China has overtaken the US in the global market for “open” AI models, with Chinese LLMs accounting for 17% of downloads, surpassing the 15.8% share from the likes of Meta, Google and OpenAI. This shift is significant because open models foster rapid global adoption and companies like DeepSeek and Alibaba Cloud are releasing models more frequently and with more variations than American rivals. Beijing has encouraged Chinese companies to adopt an open-source approach to AI, which contrasts with the closed, proprietary models favoured by most major US tech companies.

Next we have advances in AI hardware. China's top memory chipmaker CXMT has emerged as a rival to Korean giants Samsung and SK Hynix and the US’s Micron in the advanced DDR5 market which serves high-end AI computing servers and stacks. Meanwhile, AI chip start-up Zhonghao Xinying, whose founder once worked for Google, has emerged as a home-grown alternative to Nvidia, claiming its new TPU delivers up to 1.5 times the compute performance of Nvidia's A100 tensor core GPU while cutting energy consumption by 30%. At the same time, the Chinese government is reportedly banning ByteDance from using Nvidia GPUs in its datacentre. This news comes as Meta is eschewing Nvidia in favour of Google’s AI chips, a worrying trend for AI’s star performer.

China's push for AI self-sufficiency and ultimate dominance is heavily supported by government with massive investment in R&D and supply chains. And with Chinese companies also forming numerous strategic partnerships and making acquisitions to strengthen their position in the AI market, advances are happening on multiple fronts.

China

• A study by MIT and Hugging Face found that the total share of downloads of new Chinese-made “open” AI models rose to 17% in the past year, overtaking those from the US. Source
• Alibaba’s Qwen App, marketed as a “smart personal assistant that not only chats but gets things done”, was downloaded 10 million times a week after its public beta launch, one of the fastest adoption rates seen in the consumer AI sector. Source
• Four years after it was banned, bitcoin mining is regaining popularity in China despite the prohibition still being in place, thanks to the availability of cheap power in certain provinces. Source
• The DeepSeek-R1 LLM produces more insecure code when trigger words such as Tibet and Uygher are present in prompts, researchers have found. Source
• China’s top memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is positioning its advanced memory DRAM chips as competitors to those produced by Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix. Source
• Start-up Zhonghao Xinying has claims to have produced a tensor processing unit (TPU) with up to 1.5 times the compute performance of Nvidia’s A100 tensor core GPU while using 30% less power. Source
• Meanwhile Chinese regulators have banned ByteDance from deploying Nvidia chips in its new datacentres, according to sources within the TikTok owner. Source
• Reports suggest that Chinese manufacturers are experimenting with smartphone prototypes equipped with 10,000 mAh batteries - far exceeding the current standard of 4,500 - 5,500 mAh. Source
• Premier Li Qiang has called for an alliance with other developing nations for rare earths production. Source
• Baidu is cutting jobs in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, as well as restructuring AI teams after posting a loss in its most recent financial report. Source

India

• India could be about to fine Apple $38 billion under antitrust regulations that allow the country to charge a maximum fine of 10% of global revenue. Apple has been accused of abusive conduct in the Indian app market. Source
• An investigation by SourceMaterial and The Guardian has shown that datacentres are a significant factor in Mumbai’s refusal to close its coal-fired power plants. Source
• The DPDP framework protects personal data from private companies, but not from the government, Medianama reports. Source
• Food delivery ecommerce leader Swiggy has denied reports that it has been overtaken in the market by rival Zepto. Source

Japan

• Asahi, the Japanese beer brand that owns others including Peroni and Fuller’s Brewery, has revealed that a cyberattack has exposed more than 1.5 million customers’ personal information. Source
• Rapidus, a government-backed foundry venture, is building a new 2nm chip plant is in Hokkaido. IIM-1 is an attempt to bring Japan back into the global chip competition. Source
• The government also plans to invest ¥1 trillion (£4.8 billion) in Rapidus. The company has said it will need at least ¥5 trillion (£24.3 billion) to prepare for mass chip production. Source
• Railway JR Central is to trial AI language services at JR Shinagawa Station in Tokyo for foreign tourists travelling on its bullet trains. Visitors will be able to use a chatbot to navigate services and information. Source
• Renesas Electronics claims its latest 6^th-gen Registered Clock Driver (RCD) for DDR5 RDIMMs brings a significant increase in throughput. Source

South Korea

• Samsung’s chair Lee Jae-yong invited Mukesh Ambani, chair of India’s Reliance Industries and Asia’s richest man, to Korea to discuss possible joint ventures. Source
• SK Hynix says its soon-to-be-unveiled next gen GDDR7 represents a substantial leap forward compared to existing GDDR7 solutions operating around 28 Gb/s, claiming a theoretical figure of 192 GB/s. The chipmaker is also introducing LPDDR6 memory modules, for which it again claims a substantial performance increase. Source

Taiwan

• TSMC is suing former vice-president Lo Wei-Jen after he retired from the company and subsequently joined Intel. The case is based on the likelihood of Lo leaking TSMC secrets to the company’s rival. Source
• TSMC is increasing the number of 2nm fabs it plans to build in Taiwan from seven to ten as demand ramps up. Source
• Foxconn and OpenAI have agreed a deal to design and manufacture key equipment for AI datacentres in the US. Source

Elsewhere in Asia

• Singapore: Singapore has ordered Apple to block or filter iMessages that impersonate government agencies. Source
• North Korea: Fake job assessments have been observed that ask the applicant to run Terminal commands leading to the deployment of FlexibleFerret credential stealing malware DPRK-aligned operators. Source
• Australia: The Australian government is continuing with its plans to ban under-16s from social media on 10^th December despite a court challenge by digital rights group Digital Freedom Project. Source
• Malaysia: Malaysia plans to join Australia with a ban on under-16s having social media accounts as part of an effort to reduce cyberbullying, scams and sexual exploitation. Source