China’s largest-ever data leak: Asian Tech Roundup

Plus: AI is coming for CEOs’ jobs

Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at China’s biggest-ever data leak, an AI CEO in Australia and Taiwan’s refusal to back down in the face of threats.

Security researchers have discovered a gigantic repository of information relating to Chinese citizens, which was temporarily exposed to the open internet without a password. The database includes collections relating to social media – including Chinese super apps AliPay and WeChat – financial data and Taiwan.

On the subject of Taiwan, the country has said it will not bow to Chinese accusations of state-sponsored hacking, and insists its larger neighbour has no legal jurisdiction over the island nation.

Back in China: The database held more than 40 billion records, but identifying the owner is impossible – especially it disappeared shortly after the researchers accessed it – but the scope and scale of the contents suggest it was being used for surveillance or profiling, possibly even by the Chinese government itself.

Because the owner is anonymous and notifying Chinese citizens en masse is notoriously difficult for anyone except the Chinese Communist Party, individuals are unlikely ever to know if their data was included.

Australia

• The CEO of Jim’s Group, Jim Penman, has created an AI version of himself that is available 24/7 to answer questions about franchising, business culture and related topics. Source

China

• Security researchers have found a 631GB trove of Chinese citizens’ personal data online, including WeChat, AliPay and financial data. Source
• Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed QiMeng, an AI-powered system that generates complete processor designs. Source
• Chinese AI companies including Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent have temporarily taken down some of their most popular chatbot features to prevent students from using them to cheat during exam season. Source
• Rednote, one of China’s most popular social media platforms, has released an open-source LLM, making it the latest Chinese tech company to make its model freely available. The approach contrasts with the approach of US-based competitors like OpenAI which remains proprietary. Source
• The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has ordered trials of robots to care for the elderly. China has a rapidly ageing population. Source 1, Source 2
• Alibaba founder Jack Ma has personally responded to an employee’s resignation letter, which raised concerns about company culture and practices. Source
• Hainan is trialling a programme offering certain businesses an exemption from China’s Great Firewall. The country’s southern-most province is trying to establish itself as a global free trade hub. Source

India

• Zoom has announced the launch of Zoom Contact Centre in India, an AI-first, omnichannel contact-centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) platform tailored to Indian users. Source
• In more Zoom-in-India news, Zoom Phone is also now available in four new telecom circles: Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Karnataka (Bengaluru), and Andhra Pradesh & Telangana (Hyderabad). Source
• India’s AI industry is likely to triple in value to $17 billion by 2027 as the country moves from testing to deployment at scale across multiple industries, according to a report from BCG, a consulting group. Source
• Shares of digital payments firm Paytm slumped approximately 10% after India's finance ministry said that reports about the introduction of fees on the popular unified payments interface (UPI) transactions were false. Source

Japan

• TSMC has opened a joint research lab with the University of Tokyo. The TSMC-UTokyo Lab will focus on advanced semiconductor research. Source

Other Asia

• North Korea: The country was disconnected from the global internet for approximately nine hours over last weekend. The cause is still being investigated but is believed to be due to internal issues rather than external cyberattack. Source
• Taiwan: Taiwan's defence ministry has said that China has no legal jurisdiction in Taiwan, and that cyber forces will not be intimidated by China's threats of a bounty for the arrest of 20 people Beijing claims are Taiwanese military hackers. Source
• Thailand: Thai B. Grimm Power Pcl and Singaporean digital infrastructure firm Digital Edge have jointly announced a $1 billion investment in a 100-megawatt data centre in Thailand, Southeast Asia's second-largest economy. It is expected to be operational by the end of 2026. Source
• Singapore: A warning by the Monetary Authority of Singapore to unlicensed crypto exchanges has caused several to consider relocating their activities outside the country. Source
• South Korea: Trade minister Yeo Han-koo has announced plans to speed tariff negotiations with the USA. The temporary suspension of Donald Trump’s tariffs will end on 8^th July. Source