Howdy, everybody! That is Cheng Ting-Fang, your #techAsia host for this week, sending greetings from Taipei as we kick off the primary working week of the lunar 12 months of the Snake.
In the event you reside in a Mandarin-speaking place like Taiwan or China, the spring pageant, which celebrates the lunar new yr, is a very powerful vacation of the yr. Throughout this time, households historically collect for lavish feasts. After I was a baby, our celebration would begin within the late afternoon on New 12 months’s Eve at my grandparents’ dwelling within the countryside. We loved sizzling pots, marinated beef, slices of abalone, freshly steamed shrimp and fish, mullet roe and dumplings, all with limitless servings of fried turnip pancakes and candy glutinous rice truffles.
Through the years, many households have progressively stopped cooking at dwelling for the spring pageant as a result of getting ready so many dishes may be overwhelming. Final yr, we tried one thing new and took a visit abroad. Nonetheless, with US President Donald Trump having simply taken workplace and the chance that I must work over the vacation, we determined to remain in Taipei this yr and dine out. As a result of we left the choice till simply two weeks earlier than New 12 months’s Eve, I ended up calling round 30 eating places — together with Indian, Japanese, Thai and Italian spots (Chinese language and Taiwanese eating places have been positively full) — till I might discover a desk. Ultimately, we settled for a resort buffet, the place we had steak and lobster, together with fries and macaroons served with English breakfast tea and occasional for our New 12 months’s Eve dinner. My cousins later advised me that that they had made their reservation at a standard Taiwanese restaurant in one other metropolis as early as October to ensure a desk.
However Trump was not the one newsmaker in the course of the vacation season. DeepSeek was additionally a high matter of dialog. Even my dad and mother, who don’t work within the tech trade, have been asking what DeepSeek is all about and what it means for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Firm and Nvidia.
In the beginning of the 12 months of the Snake, I visited a famend temple in my hometown of Tainan in southern Taiwan. Relationship again greater than 460 years, this historic website is known for internet hosting Taiwanese President William Lai when he was on the marketing campaign path and on many different events. The temple was packed, however I used to be ready to participate in a particular ritual the place guests crossed a “fortune and luck” bridge, and I additionally acquired a sprinkling of “fortunate water”.
One other spotlight of the vacation was a Lunar New 12 months’s Day interview with Christophe Fouquet, CEO of ASML, the highest European chip tools maker. He provided insights into AI and Japan’s efforts to rebuild its semiconductor trade. What a memorable — and busy — begin to the yr!
Labs as a lifeline
China has many artistic methods to get round US commerce restrictions. One less-reported methodology is thru “pilot manufacturing traces” at state-backed laboratories throughout the nation, Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li of Nikkei Asia write.
These labs and universities, which frequently have higher entry to international tools than US-blacklisted chipmakers, are enjoying a key function in advancing the nation’s expertise. They’re quickly organising pilot traces and buying machines for small-scale manufacturing, enabling them to benchmark regionally made tools and confirm designs for chipmakers and start-ups.
A notable instance is Hubei Yangtze Reminiscence Labs in Wuhan, the place many engineers from main Chinese language chipmaker YMTC, which was added to the US Entity Checklist in 2022, conduct trials and check samples. Comparable labs specializing in superior chip packaging and rising silicon photonics applied sciences are additionally sprouting up in cities like Ningbo and Wuxi.
Beijing’s initiative truly goes past semiconductors, with state-backed labs inspired to launch pilot manufacturing traces in areas from superior supplies and robotics to aerospace and satellites, in keeping with a authorities doc considered by Nikkei.
Investigations and negotiations
China has revived antitrust investigations into expertise giants Google and Nvidia and can be contemplating a brand new probe towards Intel as Beijing seems to be for leverage in talks with Trump.
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation on Tuesday introduced it had opened a contest investigation into Google, write the Monetary Occasions’ Zijing Wu, Cheng Leng and Ryan McMorrow.
Two folks acquainted with the matter mentioned the probe would deal with dominance of the US group’s Android working system and any hurt brought on to Chinese language phonemakers, reminiscent of Oppo and Xiaomi, which use the software program.
Chinese language regulators, who introduced an identical antitrust investigation into Nvidia in December, have been now additionally taking a look at launching a proper probe into Intel, mentioned two folks acquainted with the state of affairs. Nonetheless, the character of the probe into the US chipmaker remained unclear, one of many folks mentioned, including whether or not it was formally launched could possibly be affected by the state of US-China relations.
Beijing’s transfer to construct instances towards distinguished US tech firms comes as they’re more and more caught within the crossfire of rising tensions between the 2 international powers.
The Google probe, which regulators first started in 2019, had been shelved for years, however was reopened in December, mentioned two folks acquainted with the matter. That transfer got here simply earlier than Trump, who had campaigned on guarantees of imposing steep tariffs towards Chinese language items, was sworn in as US president.
Vacation spot: Mars?
Over the previous few years, key tech suppliers to Apple, HP and Nvidia have shifted manufacturing from China to Thailand, India, Vietnam, Mexico and Taiwan, in keeping with US strain to diversify away from Asia’s largest financial system. Nonetheless, this “friend-shoring” technique is now beneath risk from Trump’s unpredictable tariff insurance policies.
In accordance with an evaluation by Nikkei Asia’s Lauly Li and Cheng Ting-Fang, commerce deficits with these economies have considerably widened over the previous few years as a consequence of provide chain shifts, at the same time as America’s commerce imbalance with China has improved. As a result of Trump usually criticises commerce deficits and vows to right them, investments on pleasant shores might not be as safe as they as soon as appeared, creating uncertainty and probably greater prices all through the provision chain.
Chairman TH Tung of Pegatron, a key provider to each Apple and Tesla, even joked that the one approach to be actually secure from new tariffs can be to maneuver to Mars.
Loopy wealthy crypto buyers
Wealthy Asian buyers, significantly in Singapore and elsewhere in south-east Asia, are turning their eyes to cryptocurrency investments, pushed by Trump’s re-election and the rise in bitcoin’s worth, Nikkei Asia’s Dylan Loh writes. In accordance with a survey by Aspen Digital, extra rich people — as much as 76 per cent of respondents — had invested in digital belongings in Asia for 2024 in contrast with an identical ballot in 2022.
This surge has led to rising competitors amongst cryptocurrency platforms and conventional monetary establishments vying for deep-pocketed, high-asset purchasers. Whereas the potential for important returns is attracting substantial funding, dangers stay, together with cryptocurrency’s excessive volatility, geopolitical uncertainties beneath Trump and a altering regulatory atmosphere in Singapore, the place mass-marketing to retail purchasers is strongly discouraged.
Steered learn
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Japan’s Toto brings toilet manufacturing tech to chipmaking (Nikkei Asia)
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SoftBank and OpenAI to set up AI joint venture in Japan (Nikkei Asia)
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Panasonic ‘prepared to sell TV business,’ says president (Nikkei Asia)
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Taiwan’s Yageo to launch unsolicited bid for Japan peer Shibaura Electronics (Nikkei Asia)
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LG’s artificial intelligence unit has lacklustre market debut (Nikkei Asia)
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DeepSeek’s success will undermine the US-China tech war (FT)
