Nina Xiang on DeepSeek, US-China AI Competition

Nina Xiang provided expert commentary on CGTN, discussing DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence sector, and U.S.-China AI competition.

Some comments beyond the TV interviews:

“The AI war/competition framework is misguided. The key issue isn’t technological (who’s got the most advanced models or open/closed source). The real battleground is cultural or civilizational.

China invented gunpowder, yet historically, it wasn’t primarily used for military dominance in the same way it was in the West. Similarly, the compass was invented in China, but there was no desire to establish global sea trade routes as seen in European exploration.

The computer vision AI wave (2014-2019) is a clear example of how the global AI landscape is shaped by value choices, not just technological ones. Chinese companies utilized computer vision for surveillance, for both good and sometimes excessively invasive use cases – something the West largely shunned.

Gen AI could be shaping up to be another clash of civilizations, where knowledge and perception of reality become increasingly divided along cultural lines. If social media deepened societal fractures, Gen AI has the potential to go even further—reshaping our cognition according to preexisting values and narratives.

No single country will dominate AI. The real choices are cultural. We should know how those cultural choices would be made in the East and West. Those don’t change.”

A Collection of Nina Xiang’s Latest Publications on Forbes and Nikkei Asia

Here is a collection of Nina Xiang’s latest publications on Forbes and Nikkei Asia (online and on print).

U.S. should learn from its failure to take down Huawei
Feb 2, 2024
Nikkei Asia

Huawei Technologies’ return to the smartphone market last August with a 5G model competitive with Apple’s iPhone came as a surprise to U.S. policymakers who thought that Washington’s sanctions on the company had largely knocked it out of market contention…

China’s AI sector has no time for end-of-the-world worries
Dec 18, 2023
Nikkei Asia

The annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference, hosted in the sleek Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Center, is China’s showcase event for what has become one of the world’s hottest sectors…

Chinese Telecom Giant Huawei Pushes Forward With Ambitious Plan To Dethrone Android
Dec 13, 2023
Forbes

Hundreds of technical experts from many of China’s biggest state-owned and private companies, including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China Telecom, Meituan, and Baidu, all gathered in Beijing last month. The purpose behind the meeting was for their staff to receive training so they could be certified as developers on Huawei’s Harmony Operation System (OS)…

Metaverse No More? ByteDance And Tencent Scale Back VR Ambitions
Nov 17, 2023
Forbes

Two years after ByteDance acquired Chinese VR (virtual reality) headset manufacturer Pico for a whopping $1.3 billion, the tech giant is now reportedly downsizing and restructuring its VR division…

Chinese AI is not the threat the U.S. thinks it is
Nov 10, 2023
Nikkei Asia

It is high time for the world to realize that China is not becoming the artificial intelligence superpower that many have feared. ChatGPT came from the U.S., not China. Despite an official goal of leading the world in AI by 2030, Chinese technology companies are struggling to catch up with their U.S. counterparts. It is a safe bet that foreseeable groundbreaking AI innovations will not come from China either…

Chinese Smartphone Makers Aim To Beat Apple And Samsung In Generative AI
Nov 6, 2023
Forbes

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook recently declared that they “never felt an urgency to be first, we’ve always felt an urgency to be best, and that is how we go into this [artificial intelligence] as well.” The company is reportedly planning to start implementing generative AI on the iPhone in late 2024…

Nina Xiang Attends D3 Bahamas Web3 Conference

Nina Xiang is invited to speak at D3 Bahamas Web3 Conference held on Oct 10-12, 2023 at Atlantis Paradise Island Bahamas.


The conference featured speakers including Philip Edward “Brave” Davis, the prime minister of the Bahamas, and other high-level government officials from the Bahamian central bank and securities commission.

Nina Xiang Scheduled To Speak At Three Prominent Conferences

Nina Xiang is scheduled to speak at three prominent events, please register if you are interested in attending virtually or in person.

31 May – 3 June 2022; Singapore

Asia Tech x Singapore is Asia’s flagship tech event where technology intersects with society and the digital economy.

9 June, 2022; Washington DC

Our Immersive Digital Future: How Extended Reality May Affect International Relations

7-9 November 2022; Banff, Alberta, Canada

Cyber Summit 2022 is a gathering of Western Canada’s public, education and start-up technology leaders.

Decentraland To Host First Book Launch In The Metaverse: Nina Xiang’s New Book, Parallel Metaverses, Officially Available At Virtual Event

– The first metaverse book launch event inside the metaverse will feature a virtual author meet-up, Proof Of Attendance Protocol (POAP) token giveaways, and lucky draws to win free books

HONG KONG, March 29, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The first book launch event inside the metaverse will be held with the official launch of Nina Xiang’s new book Parallel Metaverses, who is the founder of China Money Network. The virtual event will be held inside Decentraland, one of the most popular decentralized metaverse platforms in the world.

As the metaverse becomes widely accepted as the next chapter of the internet, companies have embraced the concept by holding product launch events, fashion shows and developer conferences inside the metaverse. Nina Xiang’s book launch event will be the first book launch event to be held inside the metaverse, featuring a virtual author meet up, giveaways of Proof Of Attendence Protocol (POAP) tokens, and a lucky draw to win free copies of the book.

“This will definitely be a different book launch event than what I’ve done in the past when I sat behind a desk and signed books for readers,” says Nina Xiang. “Three years into the Covid pandemic, authors need to find new ways to connect with readers. I’m excited to meet everyone inside a lovely comfy parcel on Decentraland for a brand new experience that will probably redefine future book events in our 3D virtual world future.”

Proof Of Attendence Protocol (POAP) tokens are tokens on the Gnosis Chain (formerly xDai) Ethereum side-chain that serve as evidence of having been to an event. These tokens have become popular in Decentraland events and more players are interested in collecting POAP tokens.

The new book, Parallel Metaverses: How the US, China and the Rest of the World Are Shaping Different Virtual Worlds, written by award-winning journalist and author Nina Xiang, launches today online with both e-book and paperback versions available on Amazon.com.

Readers can order the book now at this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RN764WF

The official book launch will be accompanied by a virtual book launch event taking place inside Decentraland at 9am-10am, Hong Kong time, on April 3, 2022. Nina Xiang – as an avatar – will interact with participants and answer audience questions. Participants will receive their unique POAP token, and have a chance to win free copies of the book.

Everyone is welcome to join at this link: https://events.decentraland.org/event/?id=47640abf-3912-4081-b4f1-5b881155a6e7

Readers can visit as guests or set up their own accounts on Decentraland. Then it’s as simple as clicking the link to be teleported to the virtual land where the event is taking place. The time and date is Hong Kong time, so readers in other locations should convert the time to their local time to participate. Please plan to first spend about 30 minutes to setup avatars and to get logged into Decentraland before the event’s starting time.

Parallel Metaverses is the first attempt to examine how the U.S., China, Europe, South Korea, Japan and other global technology hotspots are building their respective metaverses. The book reviews what major tech companies, including Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Apple, Google, Tencent, ByteDance, Alibaba, Baidu, Huawei, Samsung, Sony and Nvidia, are doing to construct their versions of the future 3D internet.

The book looks into major metaverse technologies including AR, VR, MR (XR) hardware, game engines, virtual human, blockchain, and their respective competitive landscape. Finally, Xiang provides insights on the business opportunities of the metaverse, along with the risks and challenges.

“There will be many metaverses existing in parallel, and the future virtual worlds will ride on the existing rails of the internet,” says Nina Xiang. “Games will be the starter and the main course of the metaverse banquet, while the blockchain-based metaverse is going to play a marginal or minor role. Ultimately, the metaverse will likely mirror the messy and chaotic nature of our physical world.”

The book provides readers a comprehensive and deep dive into how the metaverse will likely be shaped across the globe. Business leaders, company executives, entrepreneurs, investors and career professionals can then use this knowledge to become better equipped to formulate their development strategies, find growth opportunities, and seek investments for their own organizations as the next chapter of the internet unfolds.

The book is released ahead of its previously announced schedule of a May 3, 2022 release date.

About Nina Xiang

Nina Xiang is a renowned author and award-winning journalist, and an expert on the Chinese venture capital and technology sector with nearly twenty years of financial and business media experience. She has held editorial positions at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Euromoney Institutional Investor, China Radio International, and China Business Network in Beijing, New York, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

In 2011, she founded China Money Network, a platform tracking China’s smart investments and technology innovation.

Nina Xiang is part of the team winning an Excellence in Human Rights Reporting honor in SOPA Awards in 2007. She was awarded a Foreign Press Association Annual Scholarship in 2007.

She is an agenda contributor for the World Economic Forum and was named Female Entrepreneur of the Year at the ChinaBang Awards 2019. She appears frequently in a range of international media, including the BBC, CNN, Financial Times, Nikkei, and CGTN.

Her previous books “Red AI: Victories and Warnings From China’s Rise In Artificial Intelligence” and “US-China Tech War: What Chinese Tech History Reveals About Future Tech Rivalry” were both the number one new releases in their respective categories.

Nina Xiang’s New Book “Parallel Metaverses” On Pre-Order, To Be Released In May 2022

The new book, Parallel Metaverses: How the US, China and the Rest of the World Are Shaping Different Virtual Worlds, written by renowned author and award-winning journalist Nina Xiang, who is also the founder of Asian tech intelligence and data company China Money Network, has gone on pre-sale on Amazon.com.

The book is the first such publication to examine how the U.S., China and other global technology hotspots are building respective metaverses that will be largely independent and distinctive from each other.

“The metaverse is the next gigantic opportunity for investors, entrepreneurs, creators, and businesses to tap into the biggest revolution of digital technology that we have ever seen,” says Nina Xiang. “This book fills the knowledge void for readers who wish to have a comprehensive understanding of how the metaverse will likely be shaped across different regions globally.”

The materialization of the metaverse will take place amid persistent US-China geopolitical and technological rivalry. This means there may be greater divergence among the two countries’ metaverse ecosystems related to major players, content creation, infrastructure outlays, applications, product formats, laws and regulations, and investment opportunities.

Despite the differences, there will be some familiar trends. American companies are once more the front-runners exploring the cutting edge of the metaverse’s possibilities. Chinese companies, meanwhile, are attentively looking westward for affirmative evidence that can be adopted for the massive Chinese market.

It seems certain that in the metaverse revolution, the US and China will again play to their respective strengths. But the geopolitical tensions will complicate the evolution of “the next chapter of the Internet”, presenting companies with more complicated business decisions that go far beyond commercial considerations.

“It feels quite like déjà vu when you see how ByteDance, Tencent, and Baidu launch their products or make investments taking cues from Meta (Facebook) and Microsoft,” says Nina Xiang. “At the same time, China’s reliance on foreign core technology is again likely to define and constrain the country’s metaverse build-up. Conversely, American companies are consciously reevaluating their supply chains by incorporating the ‘China risk’ factor.”

The book examines the entire metavese ecosystem to highlight the differences and shared characteristics of the development in the U.S. and China. From major companies and their metaverse development strategies; metaverse infrastructure (chips, data centers, cloud services); man-machine interfaces (XR, AI); applications; and product matrixes, a comparative analysis of the two tech superpowers’ next computing transformation will give readers unparalleled understanding of humanity’s technology future.

Other countries and regions including South Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe will also be covered to contrast the two tech superpowers’ blueprints.

This book will provide readers a comprehensive and deep dive into how the metaverse will be generated and built around the world. Readers will therefore be better equipped to find the best development strategy or growth opportunities for their own businesses or organizations in the age of the metaverse.

The book is currently on pre-sale in e-book format here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RN764WF

The e-book will be released on May 3, 2022 while a paperback format will be available at the same time.

Nina Xiang Comments On BBC and CGTN, Appears On the FT

Nina Xiang commented on the China Mobile IPO on the BBC on the Asia Business Report segment broadcast live from Singapore on January 5, 2022.

Nina Xiang was quoted on the BBC.com in a piece about China Mobile’s Shanghai debut on January 5, 2022.

Nina Xiang commented on China’s development in the robotics sector with CGTN’s anchor Rachelle Akuffo on January 24, 2022.

Nina Xiang was quoted by the FT in a piece titled The scramble for semiconductors is our era’s industrial Great Game, written by John Thornhill.