60 Seconds over Sinoland- China tech giants promote AI in their rise to global dominance

Pictured above: Huawei promoting its new P20 mobile phone that will incorporate artificial intelligence (AI). The huge flags of China are to celebrate National Day Week. Photo taken on my, er…hum… Huawei Nova 2, bought six months ago and already a relic of the past. All photos taken on 2018.9.28, at the Shenzhen Airport, on my way to a week of discovery in Hunan Province.

“60 Seconds over Sinoland” are direct reports, live from the streets of China. They put into perspective, with the West, China’s social, cultural and political context. China truly is the “Greatest Show on Earth” and when you understand its past, present and future, the headlines you read finally start to make sense. For 5,000 years, Asia’s enigmatic colossus has been and continues to drive world affairs, much more than Euranglolanders want to admit.

Time to get smart.

Downloadable SoundCloud podcast (also at the bottom of this page), YouTube video, as well as being syndicated on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, RUvid and Ivoox (links below).

Huawei’s huge display at Shenzhen Airport, seen across a lower level mezzanine. Below is a conical laser focused on the huge fiber optic sculpture, which is very Alice in Wonderland, indeed. Oppo and Xiaomi also had big displays side-by-side, next to Huawei. Except for Alibaba and Baidu, the other big China tech firms had ads all over the place.

Huawei promoting AI on huge electronic billboards. The future is now in China.

Tencent, one of the big three China tech giants (along with Baidu and Alibaba), promoting cloud AI and retail sales. They are competitors, but they work together for added synergies (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/05/08/declaring-war-on-the-united-states-hitting-trump-ma-yuns-biggest-revenge-yet-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180508/).

ZTE does not have AI in this huge ad, but notice they are still using Qualcomm chips. What happened? The US supposedly stopped exports to ZTE (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/04/25/baba-beijing-is-going-to-shove-zte-way-up-uncle-sams-backside-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180425/).

Evidently, Qualcomm didn’t get the message either!

Vivo makes great phones. Notice the “AI” on the left. Vivo is also an official sponsor of the 2018 Football World Cup in Russia and they are still using it in their ads, above the “NEX” (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/06/22/100000-chinese-going-to-the-world-cup-in-russia-with-no-team-to-cheer-for-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180622/).

China held an international “Internet of Things” (IOT) expo in Wuxi, in September (http://en.wiotexpo.cn/). Shanghai had another one in May (https://10times.com/iot-china). All the big and little shots from around the world came to participate in both. IOT cannot work without AI and China is at the forefront of both.

When checking in to fly to Changsha, Hunan, passengers were asked to sign a pledge that they were not carrying explosive, toxic, corrosive and radioactive goods, NOR a Samsung Galaxy 7, due to its propensity to have exploding batteries. Ouch! No tech company in the world wants to see this happen to them.

For more information about China’s incredible drive to integrate AI into its economy, society and daily life, go to the section entitled “Artificial Intelligence” in the China Tech database below, where there are a number of interesting articles,

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Or better yet, buy one of Jeff’s books offered below.

ABOUT JEFF BROWN

JEFF J. BROWN, Senior Editor & China Correspondent, Dispatch from Beijing

Jeff J. Brown is a geopolitical analyst, journalist, lecturer and the author of The China Trilogy. It consists of 44 Days Backpacking in China - The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (2013); Punto Press released China Rising - Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and for Badak Merah, Jeff authored China Is Communist, Dammit! – Dawn of the Red Dynasty (2017).

More details about Jeff Brown's background.

As well, he published a textbook, Doctor WriteRead’s Treasure Trove to Great English (2015). He is also currently penning an historical fiction, Red Letters – The Diaries of Xi Jinping, to be published in late 2018. Jeff is a Senior Editor & China Correspondent for The Greanville Post, where he keeps a column, Dispatch from Beijing. He also writes a column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing Express. Jeff interviews and podcasts on his own program, China Rising Radio Sinoland, which is also available on SoundCloud, YouTube, Stitcher Radio and iTunes.
In China, he has been a speaker at TEDx, the Bookworm and Capital M Literary Festivals, the Hutong, as well as being featured in an 18-part series of interviews on Radio Beijing AM774, with former BBC journalist, Bruce Connolly. He has guest lectured at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences and various international schools and universities. Jeff grew up in the heartland of the United States, Oklahoma, much of it on a family farm, and graduated from Oklahoma State University. He went to Brazil while in graduate school at Purdue University, to seek his fortune, which whetted his appetite for traveling the globe. This helped inspire him to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia in 1980 and he lived and worked in Africa, the Middle East, China and Europe for the next 21 years. All the while, he mastered Portuguese, Arabic, French and Mandarin, while traveling to over 85 countries. He then returned to America for nine years, whereupon he moved back to China in 2010. He lives in China with his wife. Jeff is a dual national French-American, being a member of the Communist Party of France (PCF) and the International Workers of the World (IWW).

Jeff can be reached at China Rising, jeff@brownlanglois.com, Facebook, Twitter and Wechat/Whatsapp: +86-13823544196.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.