India’s digital authoritarianism - Asian Tech Roundup
Plus: China’s online ID
Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at another site ban in India, China’s ‘convenient’ virtual ID and Japan’s power challenges in the face of datacentre construction.
The connectivity and access brought by web-enabled technology can be a wonderful thing, fostering friendships, creating convenience and advancing services in far-flung locations in a way that was never previously possible. But, as many of their early evangelists failed to predict or chose to overlook, these dual use technologies are also a boon to governments with authoritarian tendencies. Far from being sidelined as citizens have gain free access to the world's information, many in power have cleverly co-opted these same tools to keep tabs on their populations, suppress dissent and flood the zone with their own preferred mix of truths, half-truths and outright lies.
India, the world's largest democracy is also the world's largest user of internet shutdowns. and recent weeks have seen thousands of journalists' social media accounts blocked, news sites suspended and streaming sites geoblocked. The county is hardly alone in taking this path, of course, but this week we feature two more stories that demonstrate the trend: the banning of a satirical news site and the planned use of facial recognition and biometrics to authenticate benefits payments, with even babies being caught in the digital dragnet.
One of the world leaders in digital authoritarianism, China, is tightening the screws a little further, with plans for a virtual ID that will allow users to sign in across different social media apps and websites - with all their details stored centrally of course.
Australia
- YouTube, which was excluded from the country’s upcoming social ban for under-16s, should not be exempt, the eSafety regulator has said. Source
- Crypto ATMs are mostly used by scammers and their victims, Australia’s financial watchdog has found. Source
China
- China is to push a state-issued online ID for citizens that will allow them to conveniently sign in across different social media apps and websites, but which it is feared will also further erode online of freedoms. Source
- DeepSeek is aiding China's military and intelligence operations and is more reliant on US technology than its claims suggest, a senior US official told Reuters. Source
- Ride hailing app CaoCao raised $236 million when it floated on the Hong Kong stock exchange this week. Source
- China has vowed to take “forceful measures” after Taiwan imposed import restrictions on Taiwan's hundreds of Chinese companies, including Huawei and SMIC. Source
- Despite stories that Chinese chipmakers are catching up, the latest Huawei laptop, featuring a SMIC SoC, has tech that’s generations behind its US rivals, researchers have said. Source
- ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google’s Gemini, DeepSeek-R1 and Grok are all biased towards Chinese propaganda and disinformation owing to its presence in their training data. Source
India
- The US Embassy has warned visa applicants that omitting details about their social media could see them blocked from entering the country. Source
- Amazon India has launched an at home diagnostics service in partnership with Orange Health Labs. Customers in Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Mumbai and Hyderabad will be able to book diagnostic tests, have samples collected and have results delivered to an app within hours for standard tests. Source
- The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has fined Fino Payments Bank Rs 29.60 lakh for non-compliance with regulations on end-of-day balances on certain accounts on multiple occasions. Source
- The Indian government is to deploy facial recognition to authenticate parents and children receiving some benefits. Source
- Google has made its AI mode available to users in India emphasising that the Q&A-style search tool is still in the experimental stage. Source
- Drone manufacturer Raphe mPhibr, which specialises in military devices, has secured $100 million to fund expansion plans. Source
- Satirical news site The Savala Vada is no longer available on Instagram in India, the latest in a long line of government social media bans. Source
Japan
- Researchers at the Japanese National Research and Development Agency have deployed one of the largest superconducting quantum computers, quadrupling the density of the qubits by fitting 256 qubits into the casing used for a previous generation quantum computer. Source
- Sony faces a class action lawsuit from Dutch consumers who claim its console prices are inflated due to the virtual monopoly it enjoys. Source
- Japan faces a significant power shortage in coming decades as new data centres and chip manufacturing plants have created unanticipated demand. Source
Elsewhere in Asia
- Cambodia: The Cambodian government is turning a blind eye to cybercrime, allowing gangs to traffic people into forced labour in brutal scamming schemes, Amnesty claims. Source
- Singapore: The Singaporean High Court has permitted hacked cryptocurrency platform WazirX to present a new plan to repay creditors, having rejected a previous debt repayment plan. Source
- Indonesia: Indonesia is considering requiring ecommerce platforms to collect and pass on sellers' sales income as it seeks to control the black market. Source