China

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3332365/bytedance-unveils-chinas-most-affordable-ai-coding-agent-just-us130-month Key points Pricing: First-month promotional price of 9.9 yuan (~US$1.30) for the new coding agent. Standard monthly price after promotion: 40 yuan thereafter. -Performance claim: The model achieved a “state-of-the-art record on the SWE-Bench Verified test,” putting it on par with major systems like Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet. -Strategic implication: The pricing aggressiveness underscores how competitive China’s AI developer-tools market is becoming. -Related shift: This comes amid growing AI push by ByteDance, including their chatbot Doubao usage doubling in six months, per Volcano Engine president Tan Dai. ...

https://archive.ph/PZJYo Key points The article begins by quoting Jensen Huang (CEO of Nvidia) that “China is going to win the AI race,” later softened to “nanoseconds behind.” Evidence of U.S.-based companies using Chinese models: On the All-In podcast, VC Chamath Palihapitiya said one of his portfolio companies “offloaded major workloads to Kimi K2” from Beijing’s Moonshot AI because it was “frankly just a ton cheaper than OpenAI and Anthropic.” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said their service agent relies heavily on Alibaba Group’s “Qwen” model family—“very good. It’s also fast and cheap.” ...

Big news as China is looking to take back Taiwan. I’m sure they would make a move after the election if Trump wins. China also officially adopted tougher language against Taiwan as it released the budget figures, dropping the mention of “peaceful reunification” in a government report delivered by Premier Li Qiang at the opening of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s rubber-stamp parliament, on Tuesday. They’re putting their money where their mouth is militarily. ...

China is moving behind the scenes. I wonder what Jared traded for $2 Billion to the Saudis. According to the Financial Times report, the decision to adopt an economic strategy independent of the United States is due to declining relations between Riyadh and Washington during the Biden administration. Last week, the Biden administration ruled out new crude purchases in an effort to refill a stockpile that was drained last year, and this was also reported to be an effort by the White House to curb inflation. ...

I came across a Bloomberg article that I found absolutely tantalizing. Apple Inc. is forcing Chinese companies that make their Ipods and other products, to pay workers overtime that they deserve.  It seems that some Chinese companies routinely agree to pay their workers overtime when they negotiate with Western partners but then "forget" about it. Apple Inc., which relies on Chinese manufacturers for its iPhones and iPod music players, found 45 of the 83 factories it audited last year didn’t pay proper overtime and 23 provided less than minimum wage, according to its 2009 progress report on supplier responsibility. The Cupertino, California-based company required them to adjust practices to ensure correct payments, it said in the report. [via Bloomberg] ...