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China Advances Brain-Computer Interface Industry Development with New Policy Framework

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, along with six other government departments, has jointly issued an implementation plan to accelerate the innovative development of the brain-computer interface (BCI) industry. The comprehensive policy outlines ambitious targets for the emerging technology sector through 2030.

By 2027, China aims to achieve breakthrough progress in key BCI technologies while establishing advanced technical, industrial, and standardization systems. The plan specifically targets international-level performance in electrodes, chips, and integrated products. Applications are expected to expand rapidly across industrial manufacturing, healthcare, and consumer sectors, with the creation of 2-3 specialized industrial clusters and the development of new scenarios, models, and business formats.

Brain-computer interfaces create information channels between the brain and machines, enabling collaborative interaction between biological and artificial intelligence. This cutting-edge technology represents the convergence of life sciences and information sciences. The sector continues generating innovative breakthroughs and experiencing accelerated industrial growth, positioning itself as a critical area where technological and industrial innovation deeply integrate.

The implementation plan outlines five major tasks: strengthening basic software and hardware research, developing high-performance products, promoting technology application, expanding innovation entities, and enhancing industrial support capabilities. These are supported by three key projects focusing on core software/hardware development, premium integrated systems, and application expansion, detailed through 17 specific measures.

By 2030, China envisions significantly enhanced BCI industry innovation capabilities, establishing a secure and reliable industrial ecosystem. The plan targets cultivating 2-3 globally influential leading enterprises alongside numerous specialized small and medium enterprises, ultimately building an internationally competitive industry landscape.

Source: People’s Daily, August 15, 2025
https://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/pc/content/202508/15/content_30096117.html

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

HKET: DeepSeek Delayed New AI Model Due to Technical Issues with Huawei AI Chips

Hong Kong Economic Times (HKET), the leading financial daily in Hong Kong, recently reported that Chinese AI vendor DeepSeek delayed its new AI model release originally planned for this May. DeepSeek failed its model training plan due to the use of Huawei Ascend AI chips.

After DeepSeek released its R1 model this January, which caused a major setback in the U.S. stock market, the company was encouraged by the Chinese authorities to use Huawei’s Ascend AI processors instead of NVidia chips to train its AI models.

However, DeepSeek encountered persistent technical problems while training R2 on Huawei Ascend chips. Huawei sent a dedicated team of engineers to DeepSeek’s office to help develop the R2 model using its AI chip. However, even with the team present, DeepSeek was unable to successfully train on the Ascend chip. DeepSeek has now abandoned Huawei AI chips and switched to Nvidia for AI model training. In the meantime, DeepSeek is still working with Huawei to make the R2 model compatible with Ascend chips for inference tasks only.

DeepSeek’s latest woes show that Chinese AI chips still lag behind their American competitors in key tasks, highlighting the challenges China faces in achieving technological self-sufficiency.

Source: HKET, August 14, 2025
https://inews.hket.com/article/3993355

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology US-China Relations

UDN: Micron’s China Branch is Laying Off Employees

United Daily News (UDN), one of the primary Taiwanese news groups, reported that Micron Technology, a major U.S. memory manufacturer, has recently begun laying off employees in China. This personnel change is seen as part of Micron’s global strategic adjustment and is also a clear signal that Micron continues to shrink its business in the Chinese market.

The scale of the layoffs is currently unknown, but they primarily involve R&D, testing, and FAE/AE support teams, affecting employees in several Chinese cities including Shanghai and Shenzhen. Micron officially commented that this move was due to the continued weakness of mobile NAND products in the market, poor financial performance, and lower growth potential than other NAND opportunities. Therefore, it decided to stop the development of future mobile NAND products worldwide. Micron emphasized that this is limited to its mobile NAND product line, and the company will focus on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips for data centers and AI infrastructure, as well as NAND solutions for automotive, industrial and other fields.

In fact, with the background of the U.S.-China technology war, a couple of years ago, the Chinese Cyberspace Administration concluded that Micron’s products “failed cybersecurity review” and required operators of critical information infrastructure to stop purchasing them, which had a negative impact on Micron’s business in China. According to Micron’s financial reports, the proportion of its sales from China has dropped from 14.03 percent in fiscal 2023 to 12.1 percent in fiscal 2024. Micron indicated that some Chinese government-backed domestic competitors also pose a threat of intensified competition and oversupply in the Chinese market.

Source: UDN, August 13, 2025
https://udn.com/news/story/7333/8935871

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology US-China Relations

Xinhua: Breakthrough in Moon Construction – China Develops First Lunar Soil Brick-Making Machine

Recently, China successfully developed its first lunar soil brick-making machine at the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory. This machine uses concentrated solar energy to melt and shape lunar soil, potentially enabling the construction of buildings on the Moon using local materials.

The lunar soil brick maker works by using a parabolic reflector to achieve high-concentration solar energy, which is transmitted via optical fiber bundles. At the end of the fiber bundles, the solar energy concentration reaches over 3000 times the normal sunlight. Through a precise optical system, sunlight is focused onto a small spot, rapidly raising the temperature above 1300°C to melt the lunar soil.

Since the experiment was conducted indoors without direct sunlight, the development team used a solar simulator to deliver energy equivalent to 3000 times sunlight onto simulated lunar soil for melting tests. The bricks produced are made of 100 percent lunar soil without any additives. Moreover, the lunar soil bricks possess high strength and density, making them suitable not only for building houses but also for infrastructure such as equipment platforms and road surfaces.

Source: Xinhua, July 28, 2025
http://www.news.cn/tech/20250728/df414226df8e4e2ca9abf5bb3aac8a5e/c.html

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

Ex-Engineer Details Chinese Navy’s Soldier Monitoring App

Software engineer Liu Dadong, who fled China to the U.S. in 2019, revealed that he once worked on a Chinese Navy project designed to monitor soldiers via smartphone apps. While at a small tech firm in Beijing’s Zhongguancun in 2017, Liu was told to help develop an app for a military bid.

The app had full control over soldiers’ phones – tracking all actions such as app usage, browsing history, calls, typed content, photos, locations, and sensitive keyword searches. The app also maintained a sensitive term list that was regularly updated using official data sources.

Data collected was transmitted to a central server in real time.

Liu said tests confirmed the app’s full access to phone activities. They even tested a “geofencing” (regional monitoring) feature: the app would trigger alerts if a phone moved beyond a preset location range (e.g. 100 meters).

He emphasized that surveillance today reaches all levels of electronic devices, but the most insidious threat lies in chips. “Because chips are tiny and complex, detecting embedded trojans is nearly impossible without blueprints – one reason the Chinese Communist Party is racing to develop domestic semiconductors (to replace foreign chips).”

Source: Epoch Times, July 21, 2025
https://hk.epochtimes.com/news/2025-07-21/80668044

Briefings | | |   Defense/Military Information/Technology

U.S.-China AI Race Heats Up: U.S. Leads in Innovation and Power, China Accelerates in Application

The U.S. and China both recently unveiled their major Artificial Intelligence (AI) development plans recently. Experts view the U.S. as focusing on innovation and computing power, while China is focusing on applications.

Several studies have compared the AI capabilities between the U.S. and China:

  • Stanford AI Index 2025: The U.S. developed 40 influential AI models in 2024, while China developed 15.
  • HumanEval (code generation benchmark): The performance gap between the U.S. and China narrowed from 31.6 percent to just 3.7 percent.
  • Insikt Group: Chinese generative models are only 3 to 6 months behind their U.S. counterparts, though structural disadvantages remain.
  • In computing power, the U.S. controls 75 percent of the world’s AI supercomputing resources, while China holds only 15 percent. Even with plans to boost domestic computing capacity by 50 percent by 2025, China faces bottlenecks due to restrictions on high-end chips.
  • Stanford AI Index 2025: The U.S. private-sector AI investment reached $109.1 billion in 2024 – 12 times that of China. Investment in generative AI alone exceeded $25.4 billion, more than the combined total of China, Europe, and the UK.

Looking ahead, experts say that while China benefits from massive user data and strong state support for smart cities and governance applications, it remains limited by U.S. export controls on chips and its reliance on overseas training for top AI talent. China’s core algorithms and foundation models still lack originality. As one expert noted, “China’s AI advances rapidly at the application layer, but basic research is still largely imitative.”

Source: Epoch Times, August 3, 2025
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/25/8/2/n14565961.htm

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology US-China Relations

China’s 2025 Unicorn Report: Deep Tech Rise, Regional Clusters, and Capital Shift

The recently released GEI China Unicorn Enterprise Research Report 2025 shows that by 2024, China had 372 unicorn companies with a total valuation exceeding $1.2 trillion, with 11 “super unicorns” accounting for nearly 40 percent of that value. The report highlights three key trends:

  1. Capital shifting from “chasing trends” to “laying foundations”:
    The unicorn funding landscape is changing and is now dominated by domestic capital. RMB-based funding accounts for 74.3 percent, and 60 percent of firms have state capital involvement, indicating a deeper, more stable support base for China’s innovation economy.
  2. Structural optimization:
    While the total number of unicorns dropped slightly (21 exited, 18 new entrants), the overall valuation grew due to a shift from saturated markets like EVs and the shared economy to deep-tech sectors such as semiconductors, robotics, and cell therapy. Unicorns now span 41 sectors, with 70.2 percent in frontier technologies like AI, robotics, and chips. Semiconductors lead for the fourth year with 56 unicorns valued at $161.8 billion, including 12 newcomers. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) unicorns raised $38.86 billion in 2024, accounting for 36.7 percent of the global total.
  3. “3+X” regional innovation clusters:
    Beijing (115 unicorns, 71.3 percent in hard tech) leads in valuation and number, driven by academic talent and state-backed capital. Shanghai (65 unicorns) focuses on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and life sciences, and has strong international financing channels. Shenzhen (42 unicorns) excels in Research and Development (R&D) and rapid tech commercialization thanks to its full electronics value chain. Nearby cities like Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Hefei are rising rapidly under the influence of these hubs.

Source: Huanqiu Times, July 21, 2025
https://www.huanqiu.com/article/4Nak0eiALgj

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources Information/Technology

CNA: Beijing Assessing Cybersecurity Risks of Using Nvidia H20 Chips

Primary Taiwanese news agency Central News Agency (CNA) recently reported that the Chinese authorities questioned Nvidia regarding potential security breaches affecting its H20 chips. Nvidia said its H20 products do not contain backdoors that could allow for remote access or control.

China’s Cyberspace Administration (CAC), the cybersecurity regulator, has expressed concern about a U.S. proposal requiring advanced chips exported overseas to have tracking and location capabilities. While the U.S. had just allowed Nvidia to resume exports of its H20 chips to China, the CAC summoned Nvidia to clarify the risks, casting uncertainty over Nvidia’s continued shipments to China. The CAC asked Nvidia to explain whether the H20 chip poses any backdoor security risks, citing concerns about the data and privacy of users in China.

A spokesperson for Nvidia said in a statement: “Cybersecurity is of paramount importance to us. Nvidia chips do not contain any backdoors that could allow anyone to remotely access or control them.”

The U.S. banned Nvidia from selling its H20 chips to China in April, only to allow them to be sold in July. Nvidia developed the H20 chip earlier specifically for the Chinese market.

Source: CNA, August 1, 2025
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/aopl/202508010006.aspx

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology US-China Relations