Tsai holds the key to a China tech revival

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There’s a certain logic to Alibaba Group bringing back Joseph Tsai following his foray into owning the Brooklyn Nets basketball team.

The future of China’s most-watched tech player presents one of the most tantalizing jump-ball moments in global finance. Looked at one way, putting Tsai back into the game is a savvy move by Alibaba’s board.

The company’s leadership team seemed to decide that Daniel Zhang wasn’t the right chairman and CEO to execute a sweeping restructuring to split Alibaba into six separate units.

So who better to turn around the struggling e-commerce giant than Tsai as chairman and fellow co-founder Eddie Wu as chief executive officer?

Of course, only time will tell if pulling Tsai off the bench is the right decision. Some argue that Alibaba might do better with a new generation of leaders, not members of the old guard so close to founder Jack Ma.

Yet Alibaba’s ability to return to strong profitability looms in the background as Chinese Premier Li Qiang takes his first shots on the world stage.

This week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s No 2 is visiting Germany and France. The ostensible goal of Li’s first official foray abroad is to sell his China-is-back-in-business campaign and to stabilize ties with Europe’s top economic powers.

Looming in the background of every meeting, though, is Beijing’s perceived inhospitality toward multinational companies keen to harness China’s rise. The same goes for the Xi era’s tolerance for tech disruption at home.

This latter question has complicated foreign direct investment decisions since late 2020, when Team Xi pounced on Alibaba’s Ma.

Days after Ma criticized Beijing regulators for antiquated thinking in a Shanghai speech, the regulatory empire struck back. A planned November 2020 initial public offering by Ma’s Ant Group was scrapped.

Jack Ma has been in Chinese regulators’ crosshairs. Photo: AFP / Philippe Lopez

Xi’s move shocked global finance circles. Ma had long been the face of Chinese innovation, a regular presence on the Davos set whose spectacular success heralded the nation’s global tech ambitions. Ant’s IPO, which would have been the globe’s biggest ever, aimed to supersize the point.

Six years earlier, Alibaba’s splashy IPO in New York set the stage for China Inc’s internationalization. Only this time, Ma’s fintech outfit planned to sell about $37 billion in shares in Shanghai and Hong Kong. It would’ve signaled China’s arrival as a tech and finance titan.

The crackdown that followed was the ultimate economic buzzkill. After sidelining Ma, regulators turned their sights on Baidu, Didi Global, Tencent and others.

At the time, Xi’s government went after Alibaba for what it argued was monopolistic behavior. Since that period, Alibaba shares lost roughly 70%, killing more than half a trillion dollars of value.

China’s most watched company never quite got its groove back. Competition from companies like ByteDance Ltd and PDD Holdings didn’t help. Now, Alibaba also must work to regain market share in cloud services, which will now be Zhang’s focus.

The good news here is that the “transition enables Zhang to dedicate fully to cloud, as it is in the best position to embrace AI opportunities ahead,” says Jefferies analyst Thomas Chong. “We expect AI is a priority for all business lines of Alibaba.”

In a broader sense, though, Tsai taking the reins at Alibaba could play into Premier Li’s pitch that China is re-prioritizing private sector innovation while Beijing claims it wants to tame trade tensions with the US.

Here, Vey-Sern Ling, managing director at Union Bancaire Privee, speaks for many when he calls Alibaba “a China proxy” that can be “dragged down by geopolitics and China’s economy.”

As such, the board’s move to put Tsai in charge is a very big deal says analyst Rui Ma, founder of advisory Tech Buzz China. “Alibaba is constantly reshuffling its leadership, but rarely at the topmost level,” Rui says.

Adds Yale University law and history professor Taisu Zhang: “I suspect I’m not the only person surprised by Joe Tsai’s re-ascendancy at Alibaba in such uncertain times.”

Alibaba could become a global investor darling again. Image: Agencies

The biggest previous shakeup was in 2019, when Ma formally stepped away from Alibaba’s management. Tsai’s ascension suggests that Ma’s vision for where the company plans to head next is once again guiding Alibaba.

As such, says analyst Fawne Jiang at Benchmark Co, there’s reason to “believe that Joe’s takeover as the chairman should help to boost investors’ confidence.”

Brian Wong, an early Alibaba employee and former special assistant to Ma, told Bloomberg that Tsai’s rise is “exactly what an organization as big as Alibaba needs, and one that has international aspirations. He’s in a very good position, given his background and skills, to kind of play that role and really help bridge the company from China to the world, and vice versa, the world to China.”

Tsai will need to be all this and more as he tries to execute Alibaba’s plans to split its business into six separate units, the most radical restructuring in the company’s quarter-century history.

Each business group will have separate lines of management and will be empowered to raise outside funding and go public.

In March, when the plan was first announced, Alibaba said the shakeup is “designed to unlock shareholder value and foster market competitiveness.”

At the same time, analysts at S&P Global Rating argue that Alibaba’s earlier payment of a fine over alleged monopolistic behavior removes “a significant overhang” for Alibaba shares. The settlement, S&P concludes, “removes the possibility of more serious consequences.”

Analyst Zerlina Zeng at CreditSights notes that “we think that the corporate reorganization reduces the risk of cash burn for Alibaba to fund unprofitable business lines.”

Apart from Taobao & Tmall, most other Alibaba business units “are loss-making,” Zeng says. They include cloud services, food delivery arm Ele.ma, logistics arm Ampa and overseas e-commerce platforms like Lazada and AliExpress.

“We estimate that a large chunk of Alibaba’s capex and investments over the past few years were used to expand these business units,” Zeng says. “We expect the potential separate equity fund-raising (including IPOs) of these business units to help ease the cash burn for Alibaba, a credit positive in our view.”

All this gives Tsai space to reboot a corporate behemoth that’s had a decidedly rough few years. The stakes are even higher than that considering that Alibaba’s “split-up could also serve as a template for Alibaba’s peers” over time, notes Evercore ISI analyst Neo Wang.

Tsai, 59, is a Taiwan-born, US-educated innovator with a uniquely eclectic background. Along with buying a NBA basketball empire, Tsai was a key player in Manhattan commercial real estate, Hong Kong finance at Reorient Group Limited and more recently a blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiast.

Premier Li’s inner circle was almost certainly consulted on Tsai’s taking over at Alibaba. Given Li’s own background with Alibaba, this could prove to be an intriguing partnership of sorts.

China’s newly-elected Premier Li Qiang takes an oath after being elected during the fourth plenary session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on March 11, 2023. Image: Pool / Twitter / Screengrab

In the 2010s, Li served as governor of Zhejiang province, where Alibaba is headquartered. Reportedly, Li was close to Ma. Hence the reasons why many observers think Li’s rise to the top of Beijing’s power pyramid augurs well for the high-tech sector’s return to economic prominence.

This is expected to be a key talking point that Li will advance in Europe. In Berlin on Monday, Li told German business executives that increased cooperation between China and Europe is vital to global prosperity.

Li and Chancellor Olaf Scholz voiced support for binding their economies more closely together and working to reduce climate change risks.

Li told reporters that “China and Germany, as two influential major powers in the world, should join hands to cooperate closely.” Beijing, he said, is keen on cooperating in sectors including manufacturing, electric vehicles and green finance.

Still, much of Li’s sales pitch in Europe is that, today’s economic challenges and Sino-US trade tensions aside, the future is bright for Chinese growth, innovation and foreign investment.

For a case in point, all Li needs to do is point to how Alibaba is raising its game – and, perhaps, offering pointers to other China Inc disrupters.

Follow William Pesek on Twitter at @WilliamPesek

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100,000 evacuated as cyclone threatens India and Pakistan

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MANDVI, India: More than 100,000 people have been evacuated from the path of a fierce cyclone heading towards India and Pakistan, with forecasters warning on Wednesday (Jun 14) it could devastate homes and tear down power lines. Biparjoy, meaning “disaster” in Bengali, is making its way across the Arabian SeaContinue Reading

IPEF recognizes that supply chains aren’t linear

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On their own, the Covid pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or the climate crisis would have each disrupted global supply chains, leading to shortages of critical goods. As it turned out, however, each magnified the impact of the others, creating havoc.

In attempting to deal with these crises, governments learned just how little they knew about global supply chains.

The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework initiated by US President Joe Biden took a giant first step toward finding ways to mitigate future global supply shocks with the Substantial Conclusion of IPEF Supply Chain Agreement Negotiations in Detroit in May.

As the first-ever multiparty framework dedicated to supply chains, including with direct business and labor participation, the 14 members of IPEF have a framework in place to make supply chains more resilient while better respecting and protecting worker rights.

Now, the members must flesh out the framework with details to allow the IPEF initiative to give countries and companies the comfort they need to have faith in regional supply chains, and to protect their respective citizens from future harm.

Covid illustrated fragility of supply chains

With governments’ lack of understanding of supply chains and no inter-governmental network to address disruptions, supply chains were bound to falter as soon as the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

The term “supply chain” itself underscores why governments were unequipped to deal with the crisis.

As retired Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan puts it, “The very metaphor of a ‘chain’ understates the complexity, because a chain is an essentially simple linear structure. A more appropriate metaphor is the root system of a tree leading to its trunk, leading to branches, twigs, and leaves. The global system comprises a thick forest of trees intertwined with each other across continents.”

When Covid hit, each government focused on its own supply chain and did not take into account the root system. As a result, all hell broke loose.

For example, the grounding of passenger aircraft at the country level led to a severe reduction of air-cargo capacity. As a result, critical health-care goods competed with escalating online demand for consumer goods for the limited capacity across the globe. 

Even as governments recognized the need for business continuity for essential goods, they forgot the critical role of air and maritime crew to support the movement of these goods, creating some of the toughest conditions for operators, and exacerbating the shock.

As a result, the logistics industry struggled with staffing issues. A talent challenge that had already existed pre-pandemic became a crisis. 

During the pandemic, governments created task forces to focus on domestic health outcomes, but did not account for how complex supply chains would contribute to the fight against the spread of the virus. 

Lockdowns and movement-control orders affected the production, distribution, import and export of parts, components, and finished goods. Constantly changing measures including testing and quarantines strained capacity, added costs, and challenged planning, forecasting, and production timelines.

National pandemic responses including stockpiling and nearshoring did not account for long and complex supply chains, raising costs of business at home while decimating suppliers and partners overseas.

IPEF to address supply-chain challenges

The IPEF Supply Chain Agreement takes up these lessons learned by contemplating the establishment of bodies to facilitate cooperation. These include the following.

The IPEF Supply Chain Council is to establish a mechanism for the partners to work collaboratively to develop sector-specific action plans for critical sectors and key goods to enhance the resilience of IPEF partners’ supply chains, including through diversification of sources, infrastructure and workforce development, enhanced logistics connectivity, business matching, joint research and development, and trade facilitation.

Similarly, the IPEF Supply Chain Crisis Response Network would establish an emergency communications channel for the partners to seek support during a supply-chain disruption and to facilitate information sharing and collaboration among them during a crisis, enabling a faster and more effective response that minimizes negative effects.

Recognizing this significant first step, Singaporean Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yon said, “Singapore joins other IPEF partners in welcoming an innovative Supply Chain Agreement that will enhance our individual and collective efforts to strengthen the resilience and connectivity of our supply chains. This will also put us in a stronger place to anticipate and respond to any future disruptions to these supply chains.”

Worker rights

IPEF incorporates the Biden administration’s “worker-centric” trade policy by establishing a Labor Rights Advisory Board consisting of government, worker, and employer representatives to support the promotion of labor rights in their supply chains, promotion of sustainable trade and investment, and facilitation of opportunities for investment in businesses that respect labor rights.

Singapore’s tripartite structure consisting of unions, employers, and the government works successfully in addressing wage, productivity, and talent issues. However, whether a tripartite model across the 14 IPEF countries can be as successful remains an open question.

What standards apply when it comes to determining if a worker’s rights are being respected? What will be the enforcement mechanism if there is an allegation of unfair labor practices at a specific facility? Will it be up to each IPEF member to address the allegation of worker abuse in a manner consistent with its domestic laws and regulations? How is this feasible when IPEF will not be a binding legal agreement (at least to start)?

Persuading certain IPEF members to adopt and implement tougher labor standards, especially without the promise of increased US market access, will be a challenge and will take time.

IPEF should move fast

As IPEF’s Supply Chain Pillar has only been “substantially concluded,” each of the 14 parties now engages in domestic consultations and legal review. 

The multiple global crises are on no such timetable. The climate crisis is worsening. There is no end in sight to the war in Ukraine. The US, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and Australia continue “de-risking” from China, as China itself implements its own dual circulation strategy, each of which have supply-chain consequences. The next pandemic could strike tomorrow.

In the meantime, Donald Trump leads in the polls to become the Republican nominee for president of the United States again. The US will pull out of multiparty frameworks such as IPEF if he wins.

The Supply Chain and Crisis Response Networks, where governments work with one another and with business and labor, recognizing that supply chains are no longer chains, needs to be established soonest, given there are so many crises on the horizon.

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PM wants swift action on ‘Patani State’ probe

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Security agencies looking into reports that activists are promoting independence referendum

A soldier takes part in a routine security patrol in Pattani municipality in the southern border province. (Post File Photo)
A soldier takes part in a routine security patrol in Pattani municipality in the southern border province. (Post File Photo)

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Tuesday urged security agencies to speed up investigating a group of activists calling for a referendum on establishing an independent Muslim “Patani State” in the South.

Emerging from the weekly cabinet meeting, Gen Prayut said the government’s legal team and security agencies were investigating, and the authorities were checking media reports about a politician pulling strings.

However, he insisted the issue would be dealt with under the law.

“The most important thing is that we agree the gravity of the unrest in the far South should not go back to being as intense as before,” he told reporters.

“We intend to maintain peace in the region much as we can through the peace process.”

The prime minister added, however, that there could be disruption to peace efforts during the transition to the new government.

The authorities were spurred into action by the establishment of Pelajar Bangsa (“National Students”), a youth group representing students from the three southernmost provinces, during a seminar on the Pattani campus of Prince of Songkla University last week.

It is believed the group is the latest incarnation of the Federation of Patani Students and Youth (PerMas), which was disbanded in November 2021.

The seminar was titled “Self-Determination and Patani Peace”.

Speakers at the seminar included Worawit Baru, deputy leader of the Prachachat Party and MP-elect for Pattani; and Hakim Pongtigor, deputy secretary-general of the Fair Party.

The two parties are part of the prospective coalition led by the Move Forward Party, which is seeking to form the next government.

At the seminar, participants were given a ballot paper on which they were asked to vote for a referendum on an independent “Patani” state — the spelling preferred by those in favour of self-determination.

A picture of the ballot shared on social media prompted a reaction from netizens as well as security agencies.

However, both Prachachat and Fair have denied having anything to do with the ballot. They insisted they never entertained the thought, let alone acted, to support an independent state of Patani.

Move Forward Party leader and prime ministerial candidate Pita Limjaroenrat has also said he opposes the idea of an independence referendum.

Lt Gen Santi Sakuntanak, the commander of the Fourth Army Region that is responsible for the South, chaired a meeting on Tuesday to follow up on the investigation into the Patani State seminar.

He said the investigation was making headway as it was looking into details of the seminar and who is behind the independent Patani campaign.

He said the investigation gave strong indications that the law was violated at the seminar, adding that he had instructed investigators to gather evidence quickly.

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Russia slowly shifting toward a total war economy

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As Russia’s progress in Ukraine has stalled, with enormous losses in material and people, the frustrated head of the Wagner mercenary force Yevgeny Prigozhin has called for Russia to shift to a total war economy:

The Kremlin must declare a new wave of mobilization to call up more fighters and declare martial law and force ‘everyone possible’ into the country’s ammunition production efforts. We must stop building new roads and infrastructure facilities and work only for the war.

His words echo similar sentiments expressed by the head of Russia’s state broadcaster RT, Margarita Simonyan – an influential supporter of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – who said recently:

Our guys are risking their lives and blood every day. We’re sitting here at home. If our industry is not keeping up, let’s all get a grip! Ask anyone. Aren’t we all ready to come help for two hours after work?

Already facing Western sanctions since its annexation of Crimea and occupation of territory in Ukraine’s eastern provinces in 2014, Russia has had to adapt to life under an increasingly harsh series of economic punishments.

And, while Putin had apparently planned for a relatively short “special military operation”, this conflict has become a protracted and expensive war of attrition.

The Economist has estimated Russian military spending at 5 trillion rubles (US$60.5 billion) a year, or 3% of its GDP, a figure the magazine describes as “a puny amount” compared to its spending in the second world war. Other estimates are higher – the German Council on Foreign Relations (GDAP) estimates US$90 billion, or more like 5% of GDP.

But the international sanctions have hit the economy hard. They have affected access to international markets and the ability to access foreign currency and products. And the rate at which the Russian military is getting through equipment and ammunition is putting a strain on the country’s defense industry.

So the Kremlin faces a choice: massively increasing its war efforts to achieve a decisive breakthrough, or continuing its war of attrition. The latter would aim to outlast Ukraine in the hope that international support may waver in the face of a global cost of living crisis.

Equipment shortages

Russia has lost substantial amounts of arms and ammunition.

In March 2023, UK armed forces minister James Heappey estimated that Russia had lost 1,900 main battle tanks, 3,300 other armored combat vehicles, 73 crewed, fixed-wing aircraft, several hundred uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) of all types, 78 helicopters, 550 tube artillery systems, 190 rocket artillery systems and eight naval vessels.

Wanted: more modern tanks. Photo: Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP

Russia has to contend with several important military-industrial challenges. For one, its high-technology precision-guided weapons require access to foreign technology.

This is now unavailable – or restricted to sanctions-busting deals which can only supply a fraction of what is needed. Most of the high-tech electronic components used by the Russian military are manufactured by US companies.

So it has to substitute these with lower-grade domestic components, which is probably why the Russian military is using its high-tech weaponry sparingly. But the artillery shells on which it has been relying are running short.

US think tank the Center for Security and International Studies has reported US intelligence estimates that since February 2022, export controls have degraded Russia’s ability to replace more than 6,000 pieces of military equipment.

Sanctions have also forced key defense industrial facilities to halt production and caused shortages of critical components for tanks and aircraft, among other materiel.

Make do, mend – and spend

There are clear signs of increasing efforts to address the shortages.

According to a report in the Economist, Dmitri Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, has recently announced plans for the production of 1,500 modern tanks in 2023. Russian news agency Tass reported recently Medvedev also plans to oversee a ramping up of mass production of drones.

The government is reported to be providing substantial loans to arms manufacturers and even issuing orders to banks to do the same. Official statistics indicate that the production of “finished metal goods” in January and February was 20% higher compared to the previous year.

The GDAP reported in February: “As of January 2023, several Russian arms plants were working in three shifts, six or seven days a week, and offering competitive salaries. Hence, they can increase production of those weapon systems that Russia is still able to manufacture despite the sanctions.”

So it appears the Kremlin is playing a delicate balancing act of redirecting significant resources to the military and related industries while trying to minimize the disruption of the general economy, which would risk losing the support of large sections of the population.

There appears to be little shortage of consumer goods in Russia, but shoppers say quality has deteriorated. Photo: EPA-EFE via The Conversation / Maxim Shipenkov

The International Monetary Fund has projected Russia’s economy to grow by 0.7% this year (which would trump the UK’s projected growth of 0.4%). This will largely be underpinned by export revenues for hydrocarbons as well as arms sales to various client countries happy to ignore Western sanctions.

Meanwhile diversifying import sources has kept stores stocked. However, Russian public opinion pollster Romir has reported that while most people aren’t worried about the absence of sanctioned goods, about half complained that the quality of substituted goods had deteriorated.

So ordinary Russians – those who haven’t lost loved ones on the battlefield or to exile – remain relatively sanguine about everyday life. But a longer, more intense conflict, requiring a shift to a total war economy, could be a different matter altogether.

Christoph Bluth is Professor of International Relations and Security, University of Bradford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Inauspicious debut of NATO-armed Ukraine offensive

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Investment Strategy: Feeling good about our portfolio of trades

David Woo writes that Market reactions to Ukraine’s anticipated counteroffensive have been muted so far, but the potential for an oil market disruption and gold’s resilience amid geopolitical risks present investment opportunities, while a long Turkish lira position emerges as a low-correlation trade option.

The Strategic Chessboard Favors the Russians

Uwe Parpart sees Ukrainian military probes in the country’s south as having yielded little strategic advantage, while the Russians have position themselves favorably, potentially setting the stage for a wider war and highlighting the risks of Ukraine resorting to actions that may draw NATO into the fight.

Devastating losses raise questions about long-awaited Ukrainian offensive

James Davis analyzes Ukraine’s latest offensive to liberate territories occupied by Russia. Ukrainian forces suffered heavy losses, with their armor destroyed by Russian helicopters, revealing weaknesses in Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense and the need for air cover in future offensives.

New RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) works around sanctions

Scott Foster explains how the RISC-V Software Ecosystem’s (RISE) aims of supporting the open standard RISC-V International and strengthening the development of RISC-V poses challenges to the US government’s efforts to hinder Chinese high-tech advancements.

Screen Holdings may be too optimistic about China

Scott Foster writes that despite the Japanese government’s plans to impose export restrictions on semiconductor production equipment to China, Japanese equipment makers, such as Screen Holdings, do not anticipate significant damage to their business due to a shift in Chinese investment focus.

Meet the GPM team

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Open-standard, open-source tech body defies US sanctions

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The launch of a new RISC-V software association makes open-standard integrated circuit design and open-source software even more of a challenge for the US government’s efforts to stop the development of Chinese high-tech and bend Europe to its geopolitical will.

On May 31, Linux Foundation Europe announced the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE), which it described as,

a new collaborative effort that brings together global industry leaders committed to accelerating the availability of software for high-performance and power-efficient RISC-V cores [processing units] running high-level operating systems for a variety of market segments.

Those market segments include cloud computing, data centers, automobiles, mobile phones and other consumer electronics. Hosted by Linux Foundation Europe, RISE supports the global open standard activities of RISC-V International.

Gabriele Columbro, General Manager of Linux Foundation Europe, notes that,

The RISE Project is dedicated to enabling RISC-V in open-source tools and libraries (LLVM and GCC, etc) to speed implementation and time to market. RISC-V is a cornerstone of the European technology and industrial landscape so we’re honored to provide a neutral, trusted home for the RISE Project under Linux Foundation Europe.

Gabriele Columbro, Gabriele Columbro, general manager of Linux Foundation Europe. Photo: Twittter

Thirteen companies from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China form the RISE Governing Board: NVIDIA, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel, Samsung, Google, Andes, Red Hat, Imagination Technologies, Rivos, SiFive, Ventana and T-Head.

It’s significant that T-Head is included. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba, a fabless semiconductor design company that develops application-specific ICs for artificial intelligence, cloud computing, industrial, financial, consumer electronics and other applications. In effect, it is the Alibaba group’s semiconductor division.

According to T-Head Vice President Jianyi Meng,

T-Head has been contributing to the software ecosystem through initiatives such as putting various operating systems onto RISC-V and contributing an integrated development environment to the RISC-V community. Together with other global business leaders for the RISE Project and our partners across sectors, we can further drive the growth of the open-source software ecosystem.

Speaking at a conference in Shanghai at the beginning of March, Meng said,

The development of RISC-V requires global innovation collaboration, from chips to software, applications and terminals. T-Head is pulling together the major ecosystems so that global developers and partners can better use and develop RISC-V technologies.

At that time, T-Head and Alipay also announced plans to enable secure payments on wearable devices using embedded RISC-V processors.

The rise of RISC-V, particularly in China, is likely to be negative for Arm and its Japanese owner Softbank, which plans to take Arm public later this year. Proprietary instruction-set architectures from Arm are seen as high-risk by the Chinese due to potential US influence on their owner.

RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture based on reduced instruction set computer design principles. It was conceived at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2010.

The RISC-V Foundation was established in Delaware in 2015 to support and manage open-source technology, with the Institute of Computing Technologies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as one of the founders.

Other founding members include Google, Qualcomm, Western Digital, Hitachi and Samsung. Other Chinese members include Huawei, ZTE, Tencent and Alibaba Cloud. Altogether, the association has more than 300 corporate, academic and other institutional members around the world

Foundation fled the US

In 2020, the Foundation was incorporated in Switzerland as the RISC-V International Association, moving out of the United States to avoid potential disruption caused by then-president Donald Trump’s anti-China trade policy. For more information about this, see Open-source IC architecture taking off in China.

The GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) mentioned by Gabriele Columbro is part of the GNU Project, a collaborative effort for the development of free software founded in 1978 by Richard Stallman at MIT.

Linux, the open software kernel created by the Swedish-Finnish software engineer Linus Torvalds in the early 1990s, is normally used with the GNU operating system.

Linux mascot Tux. Image: AnalyticSteps

GCC consists of free software programs from the GNU Project and other parties, created in an open environment in order to “attract a larger team of developers, to ensure that GCC and the GNU system work on multiple architectures and diverse environments.” GCC is one of the world’s largest free software programs.

GNU defines itself as “an operating system that is free software – that is, it respects users’ freedom.” Its “four essential freedoms” are,

  • The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
  • The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
  • The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others.
  • The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others, By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Freedom to distribute “means you are free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere.”  

The explanation goes on to note that:

Sometimes government export control regulations and trade sanctions can constrain your freedom to distribute copies of programs internationally. Software developers do not have the power to eliminate or override these restrictions, but what they can and must do is refuse to impose them as conditions of use of the program. In this way, the restrictions will not affect activities and people outside the jurisdictions of these governments. Thus, free software licenses must not require obedience to any nontrivial export regulations as a condition of exercising any of the essential freedoms.

According to the Linux Foundation, open-source technologies that are published and made publicly available are not subject to the Export Administration Regulations of the Bureau of Industry and Security of the US Department of Commerce.

China has involved itself in RISC-V from the beginning and that – particularly in view of the Biden administration’s liberal and expanding use of sanctions – has turned out to be a very good idea.

Follow this writer on Twitter: @ScottFo83517667

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Will China build a military presence in the Middle East?

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Beijing’s political and military ambitions in the Middle East have been the focus of intense speculation ever since China brokered the a & nbsp, Saudi-Iran peace deal, in March.

Although the majority of observers concur that China’s regional strategic objectives go beyond conventional energy trades, there is debate over whether it should send troops to work its power in the Middle East in order to remove the United States.

Those two inquiries are naturally related and moral. Beijing’s capacity to influence home and intra-regional dynamics is expanding as China becomes more involved in local socioeconomic, political, and diplomatic affairs.

Strategiticians can’t help but wonder what this means for America’s position in the region and the security structures its existence has enabled in light of the great-power competition between the US and China.

In the oil-rich place, China obviously has national security interests to safeguard. More than & nbsp, or 53 % of Beijing’s crude oil imports, comes from the Middle East, a source of hydrocarbons that Beijing cannot risk losing. It makes sense to believe that China would want to have troops in the area given this dependence and the danger it presents in case of a military issue. & nbsp,

reasonable, but is the presumption accurate? Perhaps no.

Production and transportation are the two factors that have an impact on Beijing’s power supply. The biggest dangers to the past are inter-state conflicts or local unrest. The difficulties in protecting strength transportation are more varied and include, in the worst-case scenario, a naval blockade, local instability, disruption to sea-lane communications, and piracy.

The risk of disturbance to production and transportation will continue to exist as long as China’s reliance on Middle Eastern energy resources is great.

The leaders of China, however, are pragmatic and make a distinction between risk and vulnerability. Beijing believes it is vulnerable but not necessarily resilient despite its significant reliance on Middle Eastern strength. This is due to the fact that both China and the Middle East depend on one another for their crude. There is a shared dislike of upheaval.

Moreover, China wouldn’t be the only survivor in the event of a regional problems that interfered with production or transportation. Oil-importing nations from Asia to Europe may be impacted, a circumstance that neither China nor the US wants. In addition, & nbsp,

Taiwan is currently the biggest possible battlefield between the US and China. Washington could use its government to obstruct or suffocate China’s energy transport lanes in the event of hostilities it in an effort to control Chinese operations in Taiwan Strait. China will likely need to fortify its strength transports from the Middle East in order to prepare for that situation.

However, the Chinese see this exposure from two very distinct angles. A US naval blockade on energy imports would worry China less than the prospect of a full-scale conflict with its power rival, on the one hand. Global power market upheaval would be important, but it is unlikely to be the deciding factor in any US-China conflict.

However, despite Beijing’s concerns about a possible US blockade of Middle Eastern energy imports, the cost-benefit analysis does not support the presence of Chinese troops there. Beijing would need to deploy at least a near-peer military in order for China to build efficient and ample capabilities to combat the US. Anything less would not solve China’s flaws in any case.

The US’s regional military budget currently exceeds$ 70 billion. China will have a$ 224 billion defense budget in 2023. Beijing would need to spend at least one-third of China’s overall defense budget if it were to match the level of military spending Washington is currently making in the area.

Given that the West Pacific, which receives the majority of China’s military interest, is its main theater and most serious geopolitical threat, this is obviously not cost-effective.

As a result, China has created alternative, less expensive strategies to reduce its challenges to energy security. Beijing has worked to mediate harmony agreements between long-standing rivals in order to put an end to regional wars.

It is integrating and entwining itself with the local players’ future economic architecture. Additionally, it is attempting to foster interconnectedness between China’s 1.4 billion people and energy-producing nations.

These resources, when combined, might be far more efficient than military equipment ever was. & nbsp,

Regarding China’s expanding appearance in the Middle East, whatever form it takes, National strategists have conflicting opinions. Many experienced American diplomats are also slowly excited to see China be enmeshed in a location that is plagued by conflicting conflicts, even though Washington is convinced that Beijing wants to replace the US as the country’s security guarantor.

However, regardless of whether the US finds it interesting or appropriate, China will still participate in the area in its own method. The country’s social, economic, and political existence will be a force to be reckoned with even if Chinese troops always deploy in large numbers to the Middle East.

The Syndication Bureau, which holds rights, provided this content.

At the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, Yun Sun serves as the director of the & nbsp, China & NbSp program and a co-director for the AndnBsP, East & NBP, Asia program.

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