sustainable business hitchhikers guide to china 2020 - 260SmithWatt 70Neumann 50F.Abed , AI20s.com Fei-Fei Li, Zbee2024-03-29T07:08:37Zhttp://normanmacrae.ning.com/forum/topics/sustainable-business-hitchhikers-guide-to-china-2020?feed=yes&xn_auth=nosco
withoutyh the sco major #…tag:normanmacrae.ning.com,2018-09-07:6339278:Comment:268302018-09-07T14:23:35.254Zchris macraehttp://normanmacrae.ning.com/profile/s0neqm9lsoui
<p>sco</p>
<p>withoutyh the sco major #BR3 projects probably wouldnt have happend</p>
<p>25 coluntrues across Eurasia now share a railway line- critical for massive landlocked nations and in many ways the biggest hope of any nation still caught up in conflicts that spun from bityh cold war and pist-cold war era- typically the stans in west and central regions of Eurasia and how this also spill over to all nations facing the gulf and in the middle iof the future of oil</p>
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<p>without…</p>
<p>sco</p>
<p>withoutyh the sco major #BR3 projects probably wouldnt have happend</p>
<p>25 coluntrues across Eurasia now share a railway line- critical for massive landlocked nations and in many ways the biggest hope of any nation still caught up in conflicts that spun from bityh cold war and pist-cold war era- typically the stans in west and central regions of Eurasia and how this also spill over to all nations facing the gulf and in the middle iof the future of oil</p>
<p></p>
<p>without meaning to be ride the rissian peoples are arguably the most misunderstood firce in teh world- they own the largest amount od land even now after the split up fromk the old ussr - they are less than 2% of population and of formal economic valuation but one of the 2 bigest nuclear powers; they have often been the target not the iniatir of history's war - eg when the french tried to inc=vade rfussian under na;poloen or even is siding with the allies against hitelr in world war2 - but in our opinion mush of todays' wetern misunderstanding stems from the fact that stalin was the scond worst leader in the modern world almost as tryrnaical as hitler- </p>
<p></p>
<p>it seems very logical to us that the chiense people would ant to help rissina people have more enjoyable livelihood and that goal is something all who join belt road movemenst can also celebarte wherever rissia's progress towards the future all youth want is inpired by china's youth</p>
<p></p>
<p>The Shanghai Five grouping was created 26 April 1996 with the signing of the<span> </span><i>Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions</i><span> </span>in<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai" title="Shanghai">Shanghai</a>, China by the heads of states of<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China" title="China">China</a>,<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan" title="Kazakhstan">Kazakhstan</a>,<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrgyzstan" title="Kyrgyzstan">Kyrgyzstan</a>,<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia" title="Russia">Russia</a><span> </span>and<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajikistan" title="Tajikistan">Tajikistan</a>.</p>
<p>On 24 April 1997, the same countries signed the<span> </span><i>Treaty on Reduction of Military Forces in Border Regions</i><span> </span>in a meeting in<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow" title="Moscow">Moscow</a>, Russia.<sup id="cite_ref-20" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation#cite_note-20">[20]</a></sup><span> </span>On 20 May 1997, President of Russia<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin" title="Boris Yeltsin">Boris Yeltsin</a><span> </span>and prime minister of China<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Zemin" title="Jiang Zemin">Jiang Zemin</a><span> </span>signed a declaration on a "multipolar world"<sup id="cite_ref-21" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation#cite_note-21">[21]</a></sup>.</p>
<div class="thumb tright"><div class="thumbinner"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shanghai_Five_Leaders_2.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Shanghai_Five_Leaders_2.jpg/220px-Shanghai_Five_Leaders_2.jpg" width="220" height="147" class="thumbimage"/></a><div class="thumbcaption"><div class="magnify"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shanghai_Five_Leaders_2.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge"></a></div>
Russian President<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin" title="Vladimir Putin">Vladimir Putin</a>, Kazakh President<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursultan_Nazarbayev" title="Nursultan Nazarbayev">Nursultan Nazarbayev</a>, Chinese President<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Zemin" title="Jiang Zemin">Jiang Zemin</a>, Kyrgyz President<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Askar_Akayev" title="Askar Akayev">Askar Akayev</a>, and Tajik President<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emomali_Rahmon" title="Emomali Rahmon">Emomali Rahmon</a>, at one time the leaders of the Shanghai Five.</div>
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<p>Subsequent annual summits of the Shanghai Five group occurred in<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaty" title="Almaty">Almaty</a>, Kazakhstan in 1998, in<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishkek" title="Bishkek">Bishkek</a>, Kyrgyzstan in 1999, and in<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dushanbe" title="Dushanbe">Dushanbe</a>, Tajikistan in 2000. At the Dushanbe summit, members agreed to "oppose intervention in other countries' internal affairs on the pretexts of 'humanitarianism' and 'protecting human rights;' and support the efforts of one another in safeguarding the five countries' national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and social stability."<sup id="cite_ref-22" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation#cite_note-22">[22]</a></sup></p>
<p>In 2001, the annual summit returned to Shanghai. There the five member nations first admitted<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbekistan" title="Uzbekistan">Uzbekistan</a><span> </span>in the Shanghai Five mechanism (thus transforming it into the Shanghai Six). Then all six heads of state signed on 15 June 2001 the<span> </span><i>Declaration of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation</i>, praising the role played thus far by the Shanghai Five mechanism and aiming to transform it to a higher level of cooperation.</p>
<p>In June 2002, the heads of the SCO member states met in<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg" title="Saint Petersburg">Saint Petersburg</a>, Russia. There they signed the<span> </span><i>SCO Charter</i><span> </span>which expounded on the organisation's purposes, principles, structures and forms of operation, and established it in international law.</p>
<p>In July 2005, at the summit in<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astana" title="Astana">Astana</a>, Kazakhstan, with representatives of<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India" title="India">India</a>,<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran" title="Iran">Iran</a>,<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolia" title="Mongolia">Mongolia</a><span> </span>and<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan" title="Pakistan">Pakistan</a><span> </span>attending a SCO summit for the first time, the president of the host country, Nursultan Nazarbayev, greeted the guests in words that had never been used before in any context: "The leaders of the states sitting at this negotiation table are representatives of half of humanity".<sup id="cite_ref-23" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation#cite_note-23">[23]</a></sup></p>
<p>By 2007 the SCO had initiated over twenty large-scale projects related to transportation, energy and telecommunications and held regular meetings of security, military, defence, foreign affairs, economic, cultural, banking and other officials from its member states.<sup class="noprint Inline-Template Template-Fact">[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed"><span title="This claim needs references to reliable sources. (June 2017)">citation needed</span></a></i>]</sup></p>
<p>In July 2015 in<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ufa" title="Ufa">Ufa</a>, Russia, the SCO decided to admit<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India" title="India">India</a><span> </span>and<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan" title="Pakistan">Pakistan</a><span> </span>as full members. Both signed the memorandum of obligations in June 2016 in<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tashkent" title="Tashkent">Tashkent</a>, Uzbekistan, thereby starting the formal process of joining the SCO as full members.<sup id="cite_ref-IndPakMemo_24-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation#cite_note-IndPakMemo-24">[24]</a></sup><span> </span>On 9 June 2017, at a summit in Astana, India and Pakistan officially joined SCO as full-fledged members.</p>
<p>The SCO has established relations with the<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations" title="United Nations">United Nations</a><span> </span>in 2004 (where it is an observer in the<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly" title="United Nations General Assembly">General Assembly</a>),<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_States" title="Commonwealth of Independent States">Commonwealth of Independent States</a><span> </span>in 2005,<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Southeast_Asian_Nations" title="Association of Southeast Asian Nations">Association of Southeast Asian Nations</a><span> </span>(ASEAN) in 2005, the<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Organization" title="Collective Security Treaty Organization">Collective Security Treaty Organization</a><span> </span>in 2007, the<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Cooperation_Organization" title="Economic Cooperation Organization">Economic Cooperation Organization</a><span> </span>in 2007, the<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Office_on_Drugs_and_Crime" title="United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime">United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime</a><span> </span>in 2011, the<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conference_on_Interaction_and_Confidence-Building_Measures_in_Asia" title="Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia">Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia</a><span> </span>(CICA) in 2014, and the<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Economic_and_Social_Commission_for_Asia_and_the_Pacific" title="United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific">United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific</a><span> </span>in 2015.<sup id="cite_ref-25" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation#cite_note-25">[25]</a></sup></p>
<p>In 2017, SCO's eight full members account for approximately half of the world's population, a quarter of the world's GDP, and about 80% of Eurasia's landmass.</p>
<h2><span class="mw-headline" id="Organisational_structure">Organisational structure</span><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: Organisational structure">edit</a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></h2>
<div class="center"><div class="floatnone"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Structure_of_the_SCO.png" class="image"><img alt="Structure of the SCO.png" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e7/Structure_of_the_SCO.png/550px-Structure_of_the_SCO.png" width="550" height="346"/></a></div>
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<p>The Council of Heads of State is the top decision-making body in the SCO. This council meets at the SCO summits, which are held each year in one of the member states' capital cities. The current Council of Heads of State consists of:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almazbek_Atambayev" title="Almazbek Atambayev">Almazbek Atambayev</a><span> </span>(Kyrgyzstan)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emomalii_Rahmon" class="mw-redirect" title="Emomalii Rahmon">Emomalii Rahmon</a><span> </span>(Tajikistan)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavkat_Mirziyoyev" title="Shavkat Mirziyoyev">Shavkat Mirziyoyev</a><span> </span>(Uzbekistan)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping" title="Xi Jinping">Xi Jinping</a><span> </span>(China)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursultan_Nazarbayev" title="Nursultan Nazarbayev">Nursultan Nazarbayev</a><span> </span>(Kazakhstan)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin" title="Vladimir Putin">Vladimir Putin</a><span> </span>(Russia)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Nath_Kovind" title="Ram Nath Kovind">Ram Nath Kovind</a><span> </span>(India)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamnoon_Hussain" title="Mamnoon Hussain">Mamnoon Hussain</a><span> </span>(Pakistan)</li>
</ul>
<p>The Council of Heads of Government is the second-highest council in the organisation. This council also holds annual summits, at which time members discuss issues of multilateral cooperation. The council also approves the organisation's budget. The current Council of Heads of Government consists of:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sooronbay_Jeenbekov" title="Sooronbay Jeenbekov">Sooronbay Jeenbekov</a><span> </span>(Kyrgyzstan)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokhir_Rasulzoda" title="Kokhir Rasulzoda">Kokhir Rasulzoda</a><span> </span>(Tajikistan)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulla_Aripov" title="Abdulla Aripov">Abdulla Aripov</a><span> </span>(Uzbekistan)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Keqiang" title="Li Keqiang">Li Keqiang</a><span> </span>(China)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakhytzhan_Sagintayev" title="Bakhytzhan Sagintayev">Bakhytzhan Sagintayev</a><span> </span>(Kazakhstan)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Medvedev" title="Dmitry Medvedev">Dmitry Medvedev</a><span> </span>(Russia)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narendra_Modi" title="Narendra Modi">Narendra Modi</a><span> </span>(India)</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imran_Khan" title="Imran Khan">Imran Khan</a><span> </span>(Pakistan)</li>
</ul>
<p>The Council of Foreign Ministers also hold regular meetings, where they discuss the current international situation and the SCO's interaction with other international organisations.<sup id="cite_ref-26" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation#cite_note-26">[26]</a></sup></p>
<p>The Council of National Coordinators coordinates the multilateral cooperation of member states within the framework of the SCO's charter.</p>
<p>The Secretariat of the SCO is the primary executive body of the organisation. It serves to implement organisational decisions and decrees, drafts proposed documents (such as declarations and agendas), function as a document depository for the organisation, arranges specific activities within the SCO framework, and promotes and disseminates information about the SCO. It is located in Beijing. The current SCO Secretary-General is Rashid Alimov of Tajikistan, appointed to the office of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Secretary-General on January 2016.<sup id="cite_ref-27" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation#cite_note-27">[27]</a></sup></p>
<p>The Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), headquartered in<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tashkent" title="Tashkent">Tashkent</a>, Uzbekistan, is a permanent organ of the SCO which serves to promote cooperation of member states against the<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_evils" class="mw-redirect" title="Three evils">three evils</a><span> </span>of<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism" title="Terrorism">terrorism</a>,<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separatism" title="Separatism">separatism</a><span> </span>and<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremism" title="Extremism">extremism</a>. The Head of RATS is elected to a three-year term. Each member state also sends a permanent representative to RATS.<sup id="cite_ref-28" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation#cite_note-28">[28]</a></sup></p>
<p>The official<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_language" title="Working language">working languages</a><span> </span>of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation are<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese" title="Standard Chinese">Chinese</a><span> </span>and<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language" title="Russian language">Russian</a>.</p> https://www.technologyreview.…tag:normanmacrae.ning.com,2018-09-07:6339278:Comment:268262018-09-07T14:08:28.047Zchris macraehttp://normanmacrae.ning.com/profile/s0neqm9lsoui
<p><a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610219/inside-the-chinese-lab-that-plans-to-rewire-the-world-with-ai/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610219/inside-the-chinese-lab-th...</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/annual-meeting-of-the-new-champions" rel="noopener" target="_blank">https://www.weforum.org/events/annual-meeting-of-the-new-champions</a> TIANJIN AND Dalian</p>
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<p>The Annual Meeting of the New Champions is the…</p>
<p><a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610219/inside-the-chinese-lab-that-plans-to-rewire-the-world-with-ai/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610219/inside-the-chinese-lab-th...</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/annual-meeting-of-the-new-champions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.weforum.org/events/annual-meeting-of-the-new-champions</a> TIANJIN AND Dalian</p>
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<p>The Annual Meeting of the New Champions is the foremost global summit on innovation, science and technology, promoting entrepreneurship in the global public interest. Established in 2007, the meeting convenes the next generation of fast-growing enterprises shaping the future of business and society, and leaders from major multinationals, government, media, academia and civil society. Join a community of over 2,000 participants from 111 countries on 18-20 September 2018 in Tianjin, People’s Republic of China, for a global experience that addresses today’s intertwined global challenges relating to the Fourth Industrial Revolution - economic, political, societal, and environmental.</p>
<p>Global collaboration is needed to define the necessary principles of the Fourth Industrial Revolution - including artificial intelligence, blockchain and the internet of things - and the standards to ensure global interoperability.</p>
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<div id="g-549370747" class="grp cms-block-type-headline link-to-swatch link-to-font element-custom-block-245434243 x6 layoutGrp"><div id="element-custom-block-245434243" class="element"><div class="sf content headline" id="sfid-245434243"><div class="title grp p0"><p>GGV 996 </p>
<p>Silicon Valley</p>
<p>Meetup</p>
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<p>6:30pm-8:30pm</p>
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<p>Stanford Campus, Palo Alto</p>
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<p><strong>(Specific location will be included in the confirmation email that you will receive upon registration.)</strong></p>
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<div id="g-912189790" class="grp cms-block-type-content element-custom-block-245434270 x6 layoutGrp"><a class="nav-jump" id="to245434270" name="to245434270"></a><div id="element-custom-block-245434270" class="element"><div class="sf content content" id="sfid-245434270"><div class="body grp p0"><p>Meet hosts of the 996 Podcast and other members of the 996 Community in the Bay Area!<br/><br/>Hans Tung & Zara Zhang of GGV Capital will conduct a short panel and Q&A, followed by happy hour and networking. <br/><br/>Open to anyone who follows the 996 Podcast/Newsletter.<span> </span><br/><br/>RSVP is required and space is limited.<br/><br/>Hearing about "996" for the first time? Check us out at<span> </span><span><a href="http://996.ggvc.com/">996.ggvc.com</a></span>.</p>
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<p>Managing Partner, GGV Capital</p>
<p>Co-host, 996 Podcast</p>
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<p>Analyst, GGV Capital</p>
<p>Co-host, 996 Podcast</p>
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<p>“996” is a biweekly podcast on entrepreneurship in China hosted by GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang. In the show, they interview movers and shakers of China’s tech industry as well as tech leaders with a US-China cross-border perspective. Past guests on the show include Jerry Yang (founder of Yahoo!), Andrew Ng (former chief scientist of Baidu), Kai-Fu Lee (former president of Google China), Liu Zhen (SVP of ByteDance/Toutiao), Nathan Blecharczyk (co-founder of Airbnb), Tao Zhang (founder of Dianping), and Lin Bin (co-founder of Xiaomi). You can listen to the show on<span> </span><span><a href="https://996svmeetup.splashthat.com/Toutiao),%20Nathan%20Blecharczyk%20(co-founder%20of%20Airbnb),%20Tao%20Zhang%20(founder%20of%20Dianping),%20and%20Lin%20Bin%20(co-founder%20of%20Xiaomi).%20You%20can%20listen%20to%20the%20show%20on%20iTunes,%20Spotify,%20Overcast,%20SoundCloud,%20XimalayaFM...%20just%20search%20%E2%80%9C996">iTunes</a></span>,<span> </span><span><a href="https://overcast.fm/itunes1336107529/996-podcast-with-ggv-capital">Overcast</a></span>,<span> </span><span><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/0YB9SXmMOTXQJF0w8GQvpH?si=YIs2yV4cQP6aM7wE90M3Bw">Spotify</a></span>, <span> </span><span><a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-88747378">SoundCloud</a></span>, XimalayaFM... just search “996" wherever you listen to podcasts. GGV also produces a biweekly email newsletter on tech trends in China, also called 996. You can subscribe at<span> </span><span><a href="http://996.ggvc.com/">996.ggvc.com</a></span>. Join our followers' community via WeChat/Slack at<span> </span><span><a href="http://996.ggvc.com/community">996.ggvc.com/community</a></span>.</p>
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<p><strong>About GGV Capital</strong></p>
<p>GGV Capital is a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. With $3.8 billion in capital under management, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in social/internet, commerce/new retail, frontier tech, and enterprise/SaaS.</p>
<p> <br/>GGV has invested in over 290 companies with more than 45 companies valued at more than $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, ByteDance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi, Grab, Hellobike, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, Opendoor, Peloton, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaomi, Xiaohongshu, and YY. Find out more at<span> </span><span><a href="http://www.ggvc.com/">ggvc.com</a></span>.</p>
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<div class="block w100 image media relative"><div class="l-article-topper l-article-topper--horizontal"><div class="article-topper__header-wrap"><div class="article-topper__hgroup"><div class="article-topper__hgroup--top"><h1 class="article-topper__title">Inside the Chinese lab that plans to rewire the world with AI</h1>
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<div class="article-topper__hgroup--bottom"><h2 class="article-topper__subtitle">Alibaba is investing huge sums in AI research and resources—and it is building tools to challenge Google and Amazon.</h2>
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<div class="article-body__content"><p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he ticket kiosks at Shanghai’s frenetic subway station have a mind of their own.</p>
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<p>Walk up to one and state your destination, and it’ll automatically recommend a route before issuing a ticket. It’ll even check your identification (a necessary step in China) by looking at your face. In the interest of reducing the rush-hour stampede, the system is set up to let you find information and buy tickets without pushing a button or talking to a person.</p>
<p>More impressive still, all this happens successfully in the middle of a crowded, noisy station. Each kiosk has to figure out who is speaking to it; zero in on that person’s voice within the crowd; transcribe the incoming speech; parse its meaning; and compare the person’s face against a massive database of photos—all within a few seconds.</p>
<p>To do it, the kiosks use several cutting-edge machine-learning algorithms. The really interesting thing, though, isn’t the algorithms themselves. It’s where they live. All that image processing and speech recognition is served up on demand by a cloud computing system owned by one of China’s most successful companies, the e-commerce giant Alibaba.</p>
<p>Alibaba is already using AI and machine learning to optimize its supply chain, personalize recommendations, and build products like Tmall Genie, a home device similar to the Amazon Echo. China’s two other tech supergiants, Tencent and Baidu, are likewise pouring money into AI research. The government plans to build an AI industry worth around $150 billion by 2030 and has called on the country’s researchers to dominate the field by then (see “<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609038/chinas-ai-awakening/">China’s AI awakening</a>”).</p>
<p>But Alibaba’s ambition is to be the leader in providing cloud-based AI. Like cloud storage (think Dropbox) or cloud computing (Amazon Web Services), cloud AI will make powerful resources cheaply and readily available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection, enabling new kinds of businesses to grow.</p>
<p>The real race in AI between China and the US, then, will be one between the two countries’ big cloud companies, which will vie to be the provider of choice for companies and cities that want to make use of AI. And if Alibaba is anything to go by, China’s tech giants are ready to compete with Google, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft to serve up AI on tap. Which company dominates this industry will have a huge say in how AI evolves and how it is used.</p>
<h3>Think bigger</h3>
<p>Jack Ma created Alibaba Online, a simple e-commerce marketplace, in 1999, in his apartment in Hangzhou, on China’s east coast. Today the company’s headquarters, which I visited in January, consists of several large buildings housing tens of thousands of workers; the front entrance is guarded by a gigantic version of the company’s cartoonish orange mascot.</p>
<p>Alibaba’s core business remains selling goods and providing a platform for business-to-business trade. But this has spawned other lucrative operations, including a platform for logistics and shipments, an advertising network, and cloud computing and financial services. The company’s ubiquitous mobile payments app, Alipay, is run by a sister company, Ant Financial, which also offers loans, insurance, and investing via smartphone.</p>
<img class="article-img article-img--text-col" src="https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/seangallupgetty.jpg?sw=600&cx=0&cy=0&cw=3500&ch=2276"/><br/>
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Jack Ma<br/>
<div class="article-illustration">SEAN GALLUP | GETTY</div>
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<p>Last year on “Singles Day,” a shopping event on November 11 that Alibaba invented, the company sold more than $25 billion worth of merchandise. By contrast, on last year’s Cyber Monday (November 27), the biggest online shopping day in the US, all retailers combined brought in $6.59 billion.</p>
<p>The company’s success has also helped shape Hangzhou’s vibrant tech scene. The city is home to dozens of incubators, funded in part by government subsidies, that are filled with entrepreneurs who previously worked at Alibaba.</p>
<p>Alibaba’s colorful founder apparently doesn’t take any of this for granted. “Jack Ma believes we have been successful because of our business model, a hard-working team plus the operation,” says Xiangwen Liu, the company’s director of technology development. “In the next era of company competition, Jack’s belief is the business model cannot give success for a giant like Alibaba. His belief is in technology.”</p>
<div class="l-automated-related--single"><div class="automated-related-heading"><span class="automated-related-label">Related Story</span></div>
<a class="automated-related-picture" href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609452/alibabas-ai-fashion-consultant-helps-achieve-record-setting-sales/"><img class="automated-related-picture-img" src="https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/chinashoppingx2760.jpg?sw=180&cx=0&cy=288&cw=2760&ch=1552"/></a><a class="automated-related-link" href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609452/alibabas-ai-fashion-consultant-helps-achieve-record-setting-sales/">Alibaba’s AI Fashion Consultant Helps Achieve Record-Setting Sales</a><br/>
<div class="automated-related-dek">AI will blur the line between online and offline retail.</div>
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<p>Last October Ma announced that his company would spend $15 billion over the next three years on a research institute called the DAMO Academy (“discovery, adventure, momentum, and outlook”), dedicated to fundamental technologies. The Chinese name for the institute, 达摩, references Dharma, a legendary Indian monk said to have brought Buddhism to China in the fifth century.</p>
<p>China has long since shaken off its reputation for simply copying Western innovations. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), R&D spending in China grew tenfold between 2000 and 2016, rising<span> </span><a href="https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm">from $40.8 billion to $412 billion</a><span> </span>in today’s dollars. The US still spends more—$464 billion in 2016—but its total has increased by only one-third since 2000.</p>
<p>Alibaba is already China’s biggest R&D spender, forking out $2.6 billion in 2017. DAMO will effectively triple its research budget, to more than $7 billion. That most likely means Alibaba will overtake IBM, Facebook, and Ford and will narrow the gap with the world’s leaders, Amazon and Alphabet, which spent $16.1 billion and $13.9 billion respectively on R&D in 2017.</p>
<p>DAMO will include a portfolio of research groups working on fundamental and emerging technologies including blockchain, computer security, fintech, and quantum computing. But AI is the biggest focus, and it seems like the one with the greatest potential.</p>
<p>DAMO clearly takes inspiration from the great commercial research labs of the 20th century. Liu mentions, for instance, AT&T’s Bell Labs, which conducted fundamental research on materials, electronics, and software, producing breakthroughs including the transistor, the laser, and the charge-coupled device for digital imaging, as well as the UNIX operating system and the programming languages C and C++. Liu says Alibaba is also inspired by the way the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funds different teams competing on the same project.</p>
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<p>Alibaba is clearly learning from the likes of Alphabet and Amazon, too. Like them, it has released a cloud machine-learning platform. The first from a Chinese company, it was launched in 2015 and upgraded significantly last year. The tools it offers are similar to those on Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services, including off-the-shelf solutions for things like voice recognition and image classification.</p>
<p>Developing these tools was a major technical undertaking for Alibaba. It signals both how ambitious the company is to shape the future of AI and how big a role cloud computing will play.</p>
<p>Another such signal is that Alibaba’s cloud supports several other companies’ deep-learning frameworks, including Google’s TensorFlow and Amazon’s MXNet. Deep learning—a technique for training machines to recognize things by feeding lots of data into a many-layered neural network—is the most important approach in AI right now, used for everything from controlling autonomous vehicles to transcribing speech. Tech companies build their own deep-learning frameworks in part to get users onto their cloud platforms, because those frameworks typically run best on their infrastructure. By supporting its competitors’ frameworks, Alibaba gives developers a reason to use its platform instead.</p>
<p>And that’s not all: Liu hints that Alibaba may be working on its own deep-learning framework, something that could help it get even more engineers hooked on its cloud. When asked if Alibaba might release some of the code it has developed, she answers: “When it’s mature.”</p>
<h3>Smart answers </h3>
<p>There have been other glimpses of Alibaba’s progress in AI lately. Last month a research team at the company released an AI program capable of reading a piece of text, and answering simple questions about that text, more accurately than anything ever built before.</p>
<p>The text was in English, not Chinese, because the program was trained on the<span> </span><a href="https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/">Stanford Question Answering Dataset (SQuAD)</a>, a benchmark used to test computerized question-and-answer systems. Alibaba’s program uses several novel machine-learning techniques, and it notched a higher score than entries from Microsoft, Samsung, and others. Remarkably, it scored better than the average human being (although this is a bit deceptive; it doesn’t mean the program actually understands what it is reading). </p>
<p>More remarkable, though, is how fast Alibaba rose up the leaderboard. The company only submitted its first entry to SQuAD in September 2017. “Quite a few of the top 10 teams represent top Chinese institutions, reflecting the ongoing democratization of AI,” says<span> </span><a href="https://rajpurkar.github.io/">Pranav Samir Rajpurkar</a>, a PhD student at Stanford who runs the SQuAD contest.</p>
<p>Alibaba has already used the program to improve the automated customer support on its online marketplace, says Si Luo, a member of the team. And it hopes to deploy language understanding across its platforms and technologies.</p>
<p>Alibaba’s AI researchers are working on other cutting-edge projects, such as generative adversarial networks, or GANs. In this exciting new machine-learning approach, developed by a Google researcher, two neural networks are pitted against one another; one tries to generate data that seems as if it comes from a real data set, and the other tries to distinguish real examples from fake ones. The technique lets computers learn more efficiently from unlabeled data, and it can be used to create realistic-looking synthetic images and video (see “<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610253/the-ganfather-the-man-whos-given-machines-the-gift-of-imagination/">The GANfather: The man who’s given machines the gift of imagination</a>”).</p>
<img class="article-img article-img--8col" src="https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/alibabawanghegetty.jpg?sw=1080&cx=0&cy=0&cw=2999&ch=1999"/><br/>
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<br/>
<div class="article-illustration">WANG HE | GETTY</div>
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<p><strong>Gathering clouds</strong> </p>
<p>One advantage China’s tech companies have over their Western counterparts is the government’s commitment to AI. Smart cities that use the kind of technology found in Shanghai’s metro kiosks are likely to be in the country’s future. One of Alibaba’s cloud AI tools is a suite called City Brain, designed for tasks like managing traffic data and analyzing footage from city video cameras.</p>
<p>There are such experiments in the West too, such as Alphabet’s Sidewalk project, which plans to transform a suburb of Toronto with autonomous vehicles, delivery robots, and AI-based management systems. But China will most likely want to do things on a larger scale, which will give its companies an edge in the global marketplace for AI.</p>
<p>The Chinese authorities’ interest in using technology for social control also helps. There are plans for a “social credit system” that would track and score citizens’ everyday behavior with a view to perks or punishment. Face recognition software from Chinese companies like SenseTime is being used to find criminals in surveillance footage, and to track suspected dissidents.</p>
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<p>Another advantage Chinese firms enjoy is access to vast amounts of data—because of China’s huge population— with relatively few restraints on how it can be used. Ant Financial’s Alipay, for instance, has more than 520 million users, and the company determines a person’s creditworthiness, in part, by examining his or her daily financial transactions and social connections. This wouldn’t fly in Europe or the US, where strict rules dictate what kinds of data can go into a credit score. But in regions like Africa, where China has a strong economic foothold, such technologies could become the norm.</p>
<p>Alibaba is already exporting AI technology. It is the world’s<span> </span><a href="https://datacenternews.asia/story/alibaba-gives-aws-microsoft-and-google-run-their-cloud-money/">fifth-largest cloud-computing provider</a>, behind Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and IBM, and its cloud machine-learning platform is available in several languages, including English. This week, Alibaba launched a version aimed at developers and companies in Europe; it also announced a new AI lab in collaboration with Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.</p>
<p>In some places, Alibaba is arguably ahead of the competition. Last December, it announced a collaboration with the Malaysian government to provide smart city services, including a video platform that can automatically detect accidents and help optimize traffic flow.</p>
<h3>AI with Chinese characteristics</h3>
<p>So if the world’s AI is supplied by China, what sorts of values will it come with? In the West there is<span> </span><a href="https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/21/algorithmic-bias-in-2018/">growing concern</a><span> </span>about issues such as biased algorithms and job losses to automation. That kind of debate is less often heard in China. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, recently, Jack Ma, Alibaba’s boss,<span> </span><a href="https://www.thenational.ae/business/technology/jack-ma-ai-and-robots-will-kill-many-jobs-1.698838">acknowledged the risks</a> that come with AI; but unlike its US counterparts, Alibaba isn’t involved with ethics groups like the<span> </span><a href="https://www.partnershiponai.org/">Partnership on AI</a>. And unlike, say, DeepMind, the AI-focused subsidiary of Alphabet, it doesn’t have an internal ethics division.</p>
<p>As China becomes more proficient in AI, it will help determine how the technology reshapes the world. And Alibaba will undoubtedly be an important part of this picture.</p>
<p>“Well before anybody used the term artificial intelligence in a business context, Alibaba was a major innovator,” says<span> </span><a href="https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=409749">William Kirby</a>, a China expert at Harvard Business School. “In my view, the company has done more to change the way business is done in China than anyone; they are ambitious on every front.”</p>
<div class="callout--tagged-event-promo"><p class="callout__copy">Keep up with the latest in AI at EmTech MIT.<br/>Discover where tech, business, and culture converge.<br/><br/>September 11-14, 2018<br/>MIT Media Lab</p>
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