Tech China Post #38

MIT and Tsinghua University will join forces to collaborate on the Future City Innovation Connector, a project that will support research and startups focused on finding solutions and building products for China’s massive urbanization.

The CIO survey by Morgan Stanley suggests that Chinese companies will spend much more than U.S. counterparts in buying new technologies. The industry expects that IT spend by Chinese companies will pass 11% annual growth.

WeChat is launching an ad platform to attract Western brands to target its 963 million users, most of which are Chinese consumers. With Facebook and Instagram largely inaccessible in China, international brands will welcome WeChat’s aggressive push in content-based targeted advertising to open doors to reach Chinese consumers.

Baidu named its newest $1.5B corporate venture fund after its AI and autonomous software platform: Apollo. In addition to internal R&D and ecosystem partnerships with domestic and international companies in technology and automotive industries, Baidu, with its new fund, will look to invest in autonomous vehicle startups in the next few years to further accelerate its efforts.

China’s VAT reform restructures economy, encourages entrepreneurship