Interconnected

Covid Zero and Its Ironies

It is hard to talk about China’s Covid Zero Policy in a multidimensional way. The policy is often cast in binary terms – either the reason why millions of lives are saved or the reason why millions of lives and billions of economic output

Topics: Developer• Open Source•

Are the Next 50 Million Developers Already Here?

Every year GitHub publishes a “State of the Octoverse” report to share insights on the state of open source software and developer ecosystem at large. Every year for the last two years, I’ve written a post to share my own personal thoughts, takeaways,

Topics: Twitter• Elon Musk• Open Source•

Elon's Twitter and Open Source Algorithm

By now, the entire world knows that Elon Musk owns Twitter. The ongoing frenzy surrounding this deal has reached peak “silly season” – a term political campaign operatives use to describe ridiculous and frivolous media stories near the end of a campaign season. (Coincidentally, we

Topics: South Korea• Data Center• Data Regulation•

Kakao, Data Center Fire, the Data Residency Dilemma

I used to work at an open source distributed database startup called PingCAP. As the exec driving the company’s global market expansion effort, I talked to a lot of cloud architects and distributed systems engineers (as potential customers) about how a distributed database

Topics: EVs• CALB• Tesla•

CALB vs CATL: Can Two Battery Pigs Both Fly?

In the Chinese startup ecosystem, no advice is more viral than this line: “if you stand where the wind blows, even a pig can fly.” It was coined by Lei Jun, the founder and CEO of Xiaomi, chairman of Kingsoft, and a prolific angel

Topics: Hong Kong• IPO•

Is Hong Kong’s IPO Window Opening Up?

The IPO market has been frozen not just on Wall Street, but around the world, especially for new, emerging companies. So much so that the only IPO that has been grabbing attention is Volkswagen’s spin-out IPO of Porsche – a 70-plus-year-old brand – on the

Topics: Alibaba• Jack Ma•

Alibaba: Is It a “Mature” Company?

I still vividly remember the last time I visited Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou. It was the summer of 2016. I was in town for the G20 Summit and happened to have another unrelated meeting with one of Alibaba’s original co-founders, who functioned

Topics: Tencent• VC• Prosus•

Prosus: Softbank Without the Drama

“What is the single best technology investment of all time?” An often-heard answer to this question is Softbank’s early investment in Alibaba. Indeed, Masa Son’s storied $20 million bet on Jack Ma (with his strong, shiny eyes) in 2000 has yielded Softbank

Topics: Industrial Planning• Semiconductor• China•

US vs China: How Can America Win?

The technology competition between the US and China is often framed as a race where China is trying to catch up, while the US is trying to maintain its lead by using tools, like export control, to keep China behind. For the first time

Topics: Cloud Industry•

How to Invest in China's Cloud

A couple of weeks ago, we published a detailed breakdown of China’s cloud industry’s current state of development, which resonated with many industry analysts and technologists. We combed through the official whitepaper published by the government-affiliated think tank, China Academy of Information

Topics: Cloud Industry•

How is China’s Cloud Industry Doing?

The Chinese economy may well be heading into a recession. But one sector that has continued to grow, seemingly unabated, is its cloud computing industry. According to Canalys, China’s total cloud spending in 2021 increased by 45%, bringing high expectations for more in

Topics: AI• Regulation• China•

So Which Algorithms Do the Chinese Regulators Have?

Back in January, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), in coordination with several other regulatory bodies, enshrined a new policy to regulate how algorithms are used in Chinese Internet companies. Seven months later, the CAC made its first public announcement of which companies have

Topics: Masa Son• Softbank• Alibaba•

Understanding Masa Son’s Rationality

During Christmas last year, I read one of the few biographies available on Masayoshi Son, titled “Aiming High”. Written by Atsuo Inoue, the version I read was an English translation of the Japanese original. Perhaps due to the “lost in translation” problem, it was

Topics: XPeng• Tesla• Alibaba•

Why China’s Road to Self-Driving Goes Through Inner Mongolia

AliCloud and XPeng announced a partnership to build a dedicated cloud computing center to train XPeng electric vehicles’ self-driving capabilities last week. The news of this alliance was not terribly surprising. After all, Alibaba was an early investor in XPeng, still one of its

Topics: Intel• Semiconductor• South Korea•

Not Intel, but South Korea, is where CHIPS Money Should Go

The comically embarrassing timing between the final passage of the CHIPS and Science Act and Intel’s disastrous quarterly earnings, both occurring on the same day last week, elucidated one hard truth: Congress may be barking up the wrong tree. Many have assumed that

Topics: Didi• Antitrust• Data Regulation•

Didi's $1.2 Billion Penalty and the Global 5% Upper Bound

Last week, the embattled Didi stock had arguably its best week ever since its IPO last July, notching a 20% weekly gain. Why? Because it was fined $1.2 billion by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) for its egregiously poor data privacy and

Topics: Cloud Industry• Google Cloud Platform• Data Regulation•

Where Data Centers and Abortion Rights Intersect

On the surface, cloud data center locations and women’s right to abortion in America are two topics that could not be further apart. Yet, they have become intimately intertwined when Proov, a healthcare tech company focused on fertility, decided to move its entire

Topics: Geopolitics•

What is Exceptional about "American Exceptionalism"

Every year leading up to July 4th, the American Independence Day, I get pensive and meditative. As a naturalized American citizen, who has sworn the oath to protect the US constitution three times so far -- once during my naturalization ceremony, once to work

Topics: ByteDance• Oracle• Data Regulation•

Solutions to TikTok's American Credibility Problem

Last week, I wrote a detailed post breaking down TikTok’s immense credibility challenges in America, as revealed by Buzzfeed’s reporting based on more than 80 leaked internal meeting recordings. In today’s post, I propose some viable solutions – some technical, some organizational

Topics: ByteDance• Oracle• Data Regulation•

TikTok's American Credibility Problem

What happens when audio recordings of 80 internal meetings of a company are leaked to the media? A serious credibility problem. That’s what happened to TikTok last week when the audio of, indeed, more than 80 internal meetings were leaked to Buzzfeed, which

Topics: China• Alibaba• Jack Ma•

Ant IPO and China's "Startup Debt" Problem

Last week, Chinese tech stocks went through a mini rollercoaster. The Wall Street Journal first reported that regulators were close to completing their cybersecurity investigations of Didi, Full Trust Alliance, and Kanzhun, sending stock prices up. Then Bloomberg reported that the China Securities Regulatory

Topics: Apple• Tesla• China•

American Tech Leaves China, But What Will Stay?

A series of recent headlines has confirmed a looming trend – American tech businesses are giving up China for good. LinkedIn, Yahoo, Airbnb, and most recently, Amazon’s Kindle, have all officially announced their departure. To me, this trend feels irreversible and not a temporary

Topics: Southeast Asia• Cloud Industry• Geopolitics•

US and Southeast Asia: A Dysfunctional Romance

Last week, Southeast Asia scored a long overdue diplomatic victory. The US-ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Nations) Summit was finally held in Washington, DC and hosted by the White House – the first time in ASEAN’s 55-year history. Symbolic victory aside, what the Southeast

Topics: Morris Chang• TSMC• Semiconductor•

When Morris Chang Speaks, America Should Listen

Last month, Morris Chang, the founder and two-time CEO of TSMC (now retired and in his 90s), gave a rare interview, hosted by the Brookings Institution and CSIS, two of the most prestigious DC think tanks. During this interview, in no uncertain terms, Morris

Topics: ByteDance• Facebook•

How Does TikTok Do Global Expansion

Like it or not, TikTok is now a global phenomenon, not just in terms of cultural relevance, but also as a real business success. (As we all have seen with Twitter, you can be very culturally relevant and still struggle as a business.) Based