Tech China Post #16

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FAW Jiefang, a truck manufacturer in China, showed a set of early features of a self-driving truck. FAW is one of the big 4 automakers in China and has joint ventures with foreign automakers such as GM, Audi, and Toyota.

Baidu has announced “Project Apollo” to provide an open software platform for self-driving cars. Qi Lu, Baidu’s COO who recently left a senior position at Microsoft, announced the ambitious project and Baidu’s goal to build an ecosystem on top of this platform. Baidu has been working on self-driving technology as early as 2015. Baidu is not the only Chinese firm interested in self-driving and intelligent automotive. Didi opened its AI lab in the U.S. early this year.

China’s Ant Financial raised its offer for MoneyGram to $1.2 billion. The proposed acquisition of MoneyGram is highly strategic to Ant Financial to add a global remittance network covering 200 countries to its full-stack lending and payment platform for consumers, merchants, banks.

Industry analysts discuss mobile payment and Alipay’s business model extending into credit scoring and data. Alipay alone has 45M users. Its competitor WeChat is equally ambitious to get a piece of the pie.

Subtel, Huawei exploring possible Chile-China fibre link

China launches 1st cargo spacecraft destined for its space station

China’s top social network paid a salary nearly double that of Apple’s highest paid person