Day: September 29, 2023

But it was the company’s launch of new 5G handsets powered by a new central processing unit (CPU) – first identified by Chinese benchmarking website AnTuTu as the Kirin 9000s, developed by Huawei chip design unit HiSilicon – which resulted in intense speculation about where and how the chip was made under strict US trade sanctions. Both Huawei and SMIC have continued to stay mum about the mainland-produced system-on-a-chip (SoC) used on the new Mate 60 Pro series. But that has not stopped a strong outpouring of patriotic fervour on…

China’s local governments are spending billions – and amassing more debt – to recapitalise the nation’s cash-strapped small banks amid growing default risks facing many regional economies. American credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings estimated that local governments in China have borrowed a total of 152.3 billion yuan (US$21 billion) so far this year to replenish the balance sheets of small banks in China’s financially weaker regions of Liaoning, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Henan and Heilongjiang. In 2022, the borrowing totaled 63 billion yuan, the agency said. China’s regulators…

US President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday named veteran diplomat Mark Lambert as its top China policy official, at a time of tense relations over issues including Taiwan, trade and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Lambert will be deputy assistant secretary for China and Taiwan, and will head the Office of China Coordination, informally known as China House. That team was created late last year to unify China policies across regions and issues. An Asia expert who did two stints at the US embassy in Beijing, Lambert most recently served as…

China’s next lunar mission – Chang’e 6 – remains on schedule to launch next year on a mission that will see the lander return samples from the far side of the moon to Earth, while hauling payloads from the European Space Agency and Pakistan. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) also posted on its Weibo account on Friday that the Queqiao 2 communications relay satellite is on course to launch in the first half of 2024. The spacecraft will enable communications between the Earth and the probe, which will land…