Xi Jinping praises ‘improved cyber ecology’, government innovation • The Register

Asia in brief Chinese President Xi Jinping has opened the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party by calling on the nation he leads to win the race to develop “core technologies” and become self-sufficient in strategic technology.

The speech marked a change in President Xi’s language from his remarks at the same event five years ago when he spoke of markets driving innovation. In his Sunday speech, he spoke of innovation that is oriented towards national strategic requirements – therefore led by the state – and linked the development and implementation of information technology with national security.

Xi also spoke about China’s internet industry, saying that “cyberecology” has continued to improve over the past five years of his rule. It’s almost certainly an indication that China’s internet has been largely purged of content the party doesn’t approve of — and perhaps also a nod to China’s recent crackdown on big tech companies on the grounds that their activities put profit and growth ahead of the national interest place.

Xi’s speech made no mention of which technologies China sees as “core” or priorities for development. But the president said China plans to nurture top global talent to build it.

The speech also included a promise to reunite (peacefully) with Taiwan, which would give China access to world-leading technology, but did not rule out a violent reunion.

Communication was a key theme of the speech. Xi promised to ensure that the party line can always reach the eyes and ears of the people.

– Simon Sharwood

Samsung, TSMC and Qualcomm under investigation for patent infringement

On Friday, the US International Trade Commission voted to investigate Samsung and TSMC semiconductors and Samsung and Qualcomm integrated circuits following complaints of patent infringement.

An investigation notice [PDF] States that the relevant patents “cover integrated circuits or wafers, including third-party fabricated wafers manufactured using: Samsung’s 14nm and smaller process nodes; or TSMC’s 16nm and smaller process nodes; (b) mobile devices consisting of smartphones, tablets and smartwatches containing the same; and (c) components of such semiconductor and mobile devices.”

The complaints come from New York-based Daedalus Prime LLC.

The above technologies are big money spinners for Samsung and TSMC, making this a promotion to watch.

The Hong Kong democracy group claims PayPal has shut down the service

The League of Hong Kong Social Democrats (LSD), one of the few remaining active pro-democracy groups in the territory, claims PayPal has stopped allowing donations to its cause.

On its Facebook page, the league cites an email it claims to have received from PayPal Hong Kong, which reads: “Upon reviewing your account, we found that there are excessive risks”.

State-controlled Chinese media have labeled the League a “cult” – a term often used to describe the religious organization Falun Gong, which is banned in China.

PayPal has not responded to our request for comment on the allegation.

– Simon Sharwood

Vietnam is stepping up digital transformation

Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh last week reiterated the importance of digital transformation to the country’s reform agenda.

In a speech on National Digital Transformation Day, Pham pledged to pursue five priorities:

• Improving the number and quality of administrative procedures offered online by providing a national online authentication system;
• Increasing Vietnam’s talent pool by focusing on developing skills required for digital transformation;
• Encourage faster adoption of digital services by businesses, seeing shared digital infrastructure as a way to make these efforts faster and cheaper;
• Educate stakeholders about the benefits of digital transformation to drive adoption;
• Build infrastructure and institutions to enable the above, then watch Vietnam rocket up the eGovernment efficiency rankings.

– Simon Sharwood

Ant Group’s distributed database is available on AWS

OceanBase, a database developed by Alibaba’s financial services arm Ant Group, has been listed for sale on the Amazon Web Services marketplace.

Offered as an alternative to MySQL, the distributed relational database solution has the pedigree of operating Ant’s colossal payment services, as well as extensive implementations at major Chinese financial institutions.

The AWS Marketplace page for the product describes that it can store more than 320 billion rows of data in a single table.

“It can be smoothly scaled in or out online (more than 100 nodes in a single cluster) and automatically achieve load balancing without stopping system operations after scaling in or out, which is transparent to applications,” claims OceanBase.

While China is a major source of enterprise hardware, little software from the Middle Kingdom reaches the rest of the world. The debut of OceanBase on AWS is therefore significant.

– Simon Sharwood

Australian telecoms provider Optus says hacking victims don’t need to replace passports

Australian airline Optus issued an update on Friday in a stock market report regarding the cyberattack it faced in late September, which exposed customer details in sufficient quantity that an attacker could potentially open a bank account in a victim’s name. “As a result of discussions with the Australian government, Optus is now advising customers whose passport numbers were exposed in the cyberattack that they do not need to replace their passports,” the telco said [PDF]. Optus went on to say that the company is working with the government to “protect customers from the possibility of identity crime, including advising on actions affected customers should take, if any.”

The company was widely criticized by the public at the time of the attack for failing to adequately notify victims. The data breach is currently under investigation by regulators to determine whether Optus has taken reasonable steps to protect customers’ personal information.

Singapore says yes to Coinbase, which sells digital payment tokens

U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced last week that it has received regulatory approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to offer digital payment token products and services in the island nation. MAS has so far approved 15 companies, although it does not shy away from its skepticism about cryptocurrencies. The regulator has repeatedly warned retail investors against investing in Alterna-Cash.

Cyber ​​attacks in Vietnam are increasing by 20 percent annually

Vietnam’s National Cyber ​​Security Center released statistics on cyberattacks, including a nearly 20 percent year-on-year increase in attacks on businesses and organizations in September. A total of 998 cyber attacks in September 2022 bring the total for 2022 to date to more than 9,500 and counting.

Toshiba narrows the field of bidders

Toshiba has reportedly selected Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) as the preferred bidder to purchase the company. JIP is reportedly hoping to acquire troubled Japanese MNC with help from Orix and Chubu Electric Power. Negotiations are rumored to focus on price and funding.

In other news

Our regional coverage last week included news of the US granting exemptions to its latest round of restrictions on the export of advanced chips and equipment to China. SK Hynix, Samsung, TSMC and Intel were all given a one-year grace period of compliance.

Toshiba introduced a commercialized robotic inspection service for turbine generators in power plants.

The Chinese city of Shenzhen offered hefty subsidies to boost its chip industry as US sanctions continue to apply.

China has launched a sun-observing satellite that, if all goes according to plan, will study the sun for at least four years.

Samsung’s headquarters in Ukraine was damaged in a Russian attack on Kyiv that targeted civilians.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has coupled the solution to costly, slow and inefficient cross-border payments to the implementation of industry-led blockchain stablecoin transactions and multi-CBDC platforms.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) went into damage control mode after a launch of its Epsilon rocket was ended with a self-destruct order on Wednesday.

Fujitsu and Japan’s Keio University want the Internet to have a verification feature that will verify information and prevent fake news.

India’s Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology has indicated he is very likely to extend the deadline to comply with sweeping new information security rules laid down in the name of national security.

In India, too, the IT minister hinted at the imminent release of a revised privacy law that would drop sovereign data retention requirements – a result big tech would be happy to see.

The illegal war in Ukraine has led to a small and strange boom in Chinese electric blanket exports to Europe.

Singapore-based Australian telecommunications company Optus is under investigation after its train crash over a data breach at the end of September.

Also in Australia, the union representing Apple Store employees has called a strike to increase wages and improve working conditions.

Toyota has revealed an outsourced developer who left the key to customer information on a public GitHub page for five years, exposing nearly 300,000 email addresses and account management numbers of T-Connect customer service users.

Finally, a policy expert opined that US trade restrictions on semiconductor technology will make life very difficult for Chinese-American technicians working and living in China. ®