Tech China Post #46

Competition for self-driving car continues to heat up. Changan, one of the major auto makers in China, has obtained a self-driving car permit in California to start conducting public road test of self-driving cars. Changan is a member of Baidu’s Apollo artificial intelligence program.

Amazon is selling some of its cloud infrastructure assets to a local Chinese firm for a reportedly $300M. While Amazon did not say that it is exiting the Chinese enterprise cloud market, the divestiture is another example of the continued challenge for large foreign technology companies to establish meaningful business in China. On e-commerce, Amazon has lost market share to Alibaba over the years in the fast growing domestic e-commerce market.

Partnering with BNP Paribas, WeChat is bringing its mobile payment platform to France. The WeChat Pay will integrate with a number of large retail and hospitality chains in France. France is one of the top destinations for Chinese tourists.

Chinese fintech company, Jianpu, IPO’ed on the New York Stock Exchange. Jianpu is similar to NerdWallet in the U.S.