China Tech Talk

I’ve been wanting to do an episode on GLM-5.2 & Zhipu for a while, but didn’t get a chance to do so. Last week, I did a live stream on Carl Zha’s channel and here is my piece on it. I’ve had very good experience with GLM-5.2 so far and will probably move up a level in coding plan if their next release makes a similar level of jump. I’ve also had good experience with Kimi 2.6 & 2.7. Although in ter...

This week, I welcome Andy from Multipolarity podcast onto my show. I’ve been listening to his show for a while and always enjoyed him and Phillip Pilkington’s discussion on geopolitics, European politics and the increasing multiploar world that we live in. We talked about everything for quite a while. I was really interesting in how someone with multipolar view from Europe would look at the Russia...

When I started really getting into Chinese EVs in 2022/2023, there really wasn’t that much material in English about what was going on in China's EV industry. When I did search on YouTube, I would often find content by Wheelsboy, Elliott Richards and my guys today China Driven/Will Sundin . I remember watching some of the earlier content by Will and just seeing his driving experience on various NI...

I had the pleasure this week to welcome Marcel on my show. I would recommend everyone to follow Marcel on X as well as on his website and YouTube channel . A really good guy and we had a great discussion. I first followed and noticed Marcel because of his commentaries on China’s EV industry and especially NIO. However, he actually talks about more than that on both X and our episode. I think he is...

I had the pleasure to join Grace on this episode of AI Proem. We covered a lot of topics here. A lot of stuff on AI, semiconductors and robotics, but obviously also all the other techs that I talk about. I didn’t break ground on anything new, but I did voice my opinion regarding China’s housing market slowdown at the end and how I think people are completely misreading the story. This is a public...

I had the pleasure of joining RWN on his podcast to talk about China and PLA and WestPac conflict. I thank Mark and John for welcoming me on their show and giving me the opportunities to just explain how we got here and why we saw a lot of the alarms from the DC crowd and US security establishment. I talked about game changing political events like the South China Sea Island expansions and the Pel...

Today, I had the pleasure of speaking to Paul Triolo on a host of things. We actually have been talking to each other for a while offline, but I finally got a chance to speak to him in a person today and it was great. And as you will hear in this podcast, we are nowhere close to being finished. I will definitely have Paul back on the show to talk about semiconductor industry in the future. I think...

This week, I had the chance to interview Lou from Z.ai. It was really a great conversation to talk to her about the work that they are doing there and how they look at developing newer models and her view toward AGI. I get the feeling of just incredible hard work that Zhipu is going through as part of their effort to produce the best models and products out there. You can see that with GLM-5.1, wh...

This week, I had the pleasure of doing a crossover episode with Kyle Chan who X profile can be found here . We discussed a wide range of topic related to all aspect of AI. We really had a fun time discussing the full scope of China’s supply chain vs other countries. If we look at things holistically, China is definitely building the same supply chain advantage in AI as it has in other industries....

This week, I welcomed back Qian Yu on the show to talk about China’s AI (especially embodied AI) ecosystem. If you would like to know how Chinese entrepreneurs can start new AI robotics/embodied AI product, this would be a good episode to listen to. We also talked about World Model vs VLA, educational institutions involved in AI industry and some of the projects that we have seen recently like the...

This week, I welcomed back Dan Collins to talk about something that has come to the forefront since the start of the Iran conflict. We are really in a historically unprecedented disruption when it comes to supply chain and energy. What does it mean when this many “molecule” or “atom” get taken off the global market. What will that do to global prices of everything and shortages of things like food...

This week, I welcomed back my friend Snek onto the show to talk about what we are seeing so far in the Iran conflict. We tried to look at it from the view of how the conflict started, how it’s progressing and where it is going. We covered what Iran is likely getting from Russia & China in the form of intelligence and supply chain. We looked at the possible land invasion plans that’s been rumored....

I have joined a project called the China Research Collective to look into providing English language translations of how China thinks about different topics of modern economy. This week, I invited Qian Yu on the show to discuss it and to talk about the first topic we are looking at together: Embodied AI. It is very good to have him on the show, because he is in Tsinghua University right now and ha...

This week, I invited my discord friend “Sagar” on the show to talk about his experience in moving back to China from his finance sector job in America. It is always interesting to broach this topic, because many of us who grew up in the West now see living standard higher in major cities in China than where we live. I thought it was important for someone who made the move to give everyone an idea...

This is an emergency episode of my podcast and I invited Bora back to the show to talk about Type 09V submarine. In my mind, this is possibly the most consequential PLA program of the next decade. Well, this program and the Type 09VI submarine that will likely come along also. This submarine by itself will change the balance of naval warfare globally once it enters service in large quantity in the...

I welcomed back Glenn to talk about something that he knows far better than me. How has China prioritized investment in different industries over the reform period since opening up. China started off by getting investment and investing its own money in export factories to get wealthy through exporting to global market. After the great financial crisis hit, China shifted toward growing its economy...

This week, I welcomed back my friend Bora to talk about where things are at currently. The hot topic of this week is Trump’s capture of Maduro and his operation in Venezuela. We discussed about Greenland also and MAGA’s desire to take it. We also talked about Iran and the Russia/Ukraine conflict. There is a lot of stuff going on geopolitically. But since this is a China based podcast, we also talk...

This week, I’m really excited to welcome Tiezhen/Tom Wang from Huggingface on my show. You can find him here on X . We talked about his background working at Google before he joined HF. Although, we did not get a chance to go really deep into running AI on robotics, but we did discuss the constraints facing AI on edge devices. Basically, 7B parameter model is close to the largest models we can rea...

As we hit the Christmas season of 2025, I have a special episode out to first talk about the 6 future industries that China said it will be focusing on over the 15th Five Year Plan period. The industries are Quantum Computing, Bio-Manufacturing, Hydrogen & Nuclear Fusion, Brain Computer Interconnect (BCI), Embodied AI and 6G Telecom. Embodied AI is something I really care about and talked about qu...

This week, I welcomed my friend Dan on the show. You can find him on x https://x.com/DanCollins2011. He worked extensively in China’s auto industry and actually lived in Shanghai area until a few years again. I welcomed him on my show to talk about his experience in China and now in America with the semiconductor industry. Just like episode 16, I feel the conversation about traditional engineering...

This week, I asked my friend Mr. W to come on the show to talk about China’s progress in traditional industry like chemical and mechanical industry. We also spent a lot of time talking about China’s changes in engineering code and how that has catapulted the quality of their product since 2014. The traditional engineering and hard science industries have much longer development time cycle than mor...

This week, I invited Rick Joe onto my podcast to talk about the commissioning of the CV-18 Fujian carrier. Rick talked about the previous carriers and the steps that PLAN took to get to its first catapult equipped super carrier. We also discussed about how PLAN is likely to use CV-18 initially. Be patient guys. It took 9 years for CV-16 to achieve FOC status after joining service in 2012. It will...

This week, I decided to summarize the thread I have worked on for a while now since the announcement of China’s Rare earth export controls. I spent the first portion of the episode talking about why they did and why it’s effective. I spent the rest of the episode going through the thread I have on twitter/x to talk about the tech breakthroughs that they’ve had in the past year that allowed them to...

This week, I invited Angelica Oung on the show to talk about one of my favorite topics: Nuclear Energy. She is able to give us a very detailed explanation of the nuclear power situation in Taiwan as well as grid situation as a whole. I’m super glad to hear the anti-nuclear stance of the DPP, since I had no idea of its history with that. Also, I was really glad to talk to her about the craziness ar...

This week, I welcomed Eric Yeung (@KingKong9888) to talk about what’s been happening recently going on with China and gold. I asked Eric to discuss what is currently happening on the Shanghai Gold Exchange and Shanghai Future Exchange with respect to Gold Vault. What does it mean for SGEi to be opening up vaults around the world? What does it mean for China to be talking to other countries about s...