- 2 days ago
The China Now special program informs about this country's news. Telesur English presents a new episode of “China Now”, a wave media's production that showcases the culture, technology, and politics of the Asian Giant. China Now is a show that explores the past and future of the Asian Giant.
teleSUR
These and more stories now! 🌐Join teleSUR's community and be part of a space where your ideas matter. https://chat.whatsapp.com/KLABTE41aSj3ioYabXQQ6K 🗣 Don't be left behind, join teleSUR's Channel https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va98Z437Noa2tjytCt1N Web💬 https://www.telesurenglish.net/ X🧶 https://twitter.com/telesurenglish Instagram 📸 https://www.ins tagram.com/telesurenglish/?hl=es Facebook 📱 https://www.facebook.com/teleSUREnglishOfficial Youtube ⏯ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmuTmpLY35O3csvhyA6vrkg Tiktok👌🏼 https://www.tiktok.com/@telesurenglish?_t=8hMLCY0a6z7&_r=1
teleSUR
These and more stories now! 🌐Join teleSUR's community and be part of a space where your ideas matter. https://chat.whatsapp.com/KLABTE41aSj3ioYabXQQ6K 🗣 Don't be left behind, join teleSUR's Channel https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va98Z437Noa2tjytCt1N Web💬 https://www.telesurenglish.net/ X🧶 https://twitter.com/telesurenglish Instagram 📸 https://www.ins tagram.com/telesurenglish/?hl=es Facebook 📱 https://www.facebook.com/teleSUREnglishOfficial Youtube ⏯ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmuTmpLY35O3csvhyA6vrkg Tiktok👌🏼 https://www.tiktok.com/@telesurenglish?_t=8hMLCY0a6z7&_r=1
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00:05Hello, Telesur English presents a new episode of China Now, a Wai Media's production that
00:00:11showcases the culture, technology and politics of the Asian giant. In this first segment,
00:00:17China Currents take a deep dive into the week's top stories. From China's market regulators
00:00:22imposed penalties totaling 5.179 billion yuan in Trip.com Group, the country's main travel
00:00:30platform, to the United States imposing new tariffs of 10 to 12.5% imports for 60 economies,
00:00:39including China, the European Union, Japan, Australia and Switzerland. Let's see.
00:00:53Hello and welcome to China Currents. You know this company. Maybe where you live,
00:00:58it's called Ticketmaster. Maybe Booking.com, maybe Airbnb, maybe Amazon. Maybe it delivers
00:01:05your food. At first, the platform is useful. It puts everything in one place. It helps
00:01:11customers find businesses and businesses find customers. Everybody joins. Then, the business
00:01:18discover that they cannot afford to leave. And eventually, the company that was supposed
00:01:23to connect buyers and sellers starts deciding what sellers may charge, where they may sell,
00:01:30and how much of every transaction it gets to keep. In China this week, one of those companies
00:01:36received a bill for nearly $770 million. On July 25th, China's market regulator imposed penalties
00:01:44totaling 5.179 billion yuan on Trip.com Group, the country's dominant online travel platform
00:01:52for abusing its power in the hotel booking market. That includes 3.521 billion yuan in fines
00:02:00and the confiscation of 1.658 billion yuan in illegal gains. Trip.com was also ordered to
00:02:07return 122 million yuan in deposits it had withheld from hotel operators. And even if you have never
00:02:15used Trip.com, never booked a hotel in China, and have no idea how many yuan that is, you might
00:02:21still
00:02:21find this story deeply satisfying. Because you know that feeling. You're searched for a hotel room,
00:02:27a concert ticket, or a rental apartment. The first price looks reasonable. Then come the service fee,
00:02:33booking fee, processing fee, and cleaning fee. You're left wondering what service was performed,
00:02:39what exactly was processed, and whether the cleaning fee includes removing the body of the previous
00:02:45customer. You complain. The hotel complains, the artist complains, the restaurant complains,
00:02:50and the platform sends everyone an updated terms of service. This time, the government sent a platform
00:02:57a bill. So what did Trip.com actually do? The entire case can be understood through one sentence
00:03:02from a Chinese hotel operator. Without Trip.com, we can't survive. But with Trip.com, we can't grow.
00:03:10And once one platform controls enough of the customers, the relationship changes. According
00:03:16to China's market regulator, Trip.com used search rankings, recommendations, and other traffic
00:03:21resources to push some hotels into exclusive arrangements. Hotels that wanted better placements
00:03:27were pressured not to cooperate freely with competing platforms. For hotels that still listed rooms
00:03:32elsewhere, Trip.com demanded what regulators called the lowest price across the internet. It used platform
00:03:39rules and technical tools to restrict hotels' ability to set their own prices and operate across
00:03:44several booking platforms. In other words, the hotel owned the room, Trip.com owned the customer,
00:03:51and eventually, Trip.com started behaving like it owned the hotel too.
00:03:55This problem is not uniquely Chinese. European hotels have fought remarkably similar restrictions
00:04:01from Booking.com. Its so-called parity clauses limited hotels' ability to offer cheaper prices
00:04:07through their own websites or rival platforms. The European Union eventually designated Booking.com
00:04:13a digital gatekeeper. Under the Digital Marketers Act, hotels must be allowed to offer better prices
00:04:19and conditions through other channels without being punished by the platform. Europe's top court has
00:04:25also said these pricing restrictions may reduce competition and are not necessary for Booking.com to
00:04:31operate. Americans know another version of the same frustration from Ticketmaster. For years, fans,
00:04:37artists, and venues complain about high fees, exclusive contracts, and a system where one company
00:04:43seemed to control the concert, the venue, and the ticket needed to enter it.
00:04:48The U.S. Justice Department sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster in 2024. A proposed settlement
00:04:53announced in 2026 would require Ticketmaster to open ticket distribution to competitors,
00:04:59loosen exclusive arrangements, and cap certain service fees. So regulators elsewhere are not doing
00:05:05nothing. But these battles often take years. The company hire lawyers, consultants, economists,
00:05:11and lobbyists. Every enforcement action becomes a procedural war. Every proposed remedy
00:05:17becomes another lawsuit. That is the deeper problem with monopoly. Economic power does not remain purely
00:05:24economic. Once a corporation controls enough customers, suppliers, information, and infrastructure,
00:05:30it gains political power too. It can influence how laws are written, delay how they are enforced,
00:05:36and make governments wonder whether regulating the company would disrupt the entire market. The
00:05:41platform becomes too important to challenge. That is why the Trip.com decision feels unusually satisfying.
00:05:48China is not arguing that large companies should not exist. Trip.com is useful. Millions of travelers
00:05:54rely on it. Hotels need online booking platforms. China needs successful technology companies. But there's
00:06:00a difference between being large because you serve a market and becoming so powerful that you begin
00:06:05privately governing that market. China's regulators drew that lie in the sand. A company does not get to
00:06:12control where hotels sell their rooms. It does not get to take over their pricing. And an algorithm does not
00:06:18make monopolistic behavior acceptable. It only allows the monopolists to squeeze people faster.
00:06:26Trip.com has accepted the punishment and promised to carry out corrective measures. Regulators say the
00:06:31objective is not to destroy the platform, but to stop exclusive dealing, restore hotels pricing freedom,
00:06:37and protect competition. These platforms often feel like private taxes that nobody voted for. They
00:06:44determine the fee, they control visibility, they rewrite the rules, and because everybody else is already
00:06:48using them, leaving is not a realistic option. Usually, all we can do is complain. So enjoy this one while
00:06:55we can.
00:06:56The platform became so powerful that hotel owners said they could not survive without it and could not
00:07:02grow with it. China looked at this arrangement and said, nah, this is nonsense. You do not get to role
00:07:08play the government just because you built an app. All right, let's turn to our second story. Now, if
00:07:14there's one thing the Trump administration has proven remarkably good at, it is finding new reasons to impose
00:07:21tariffs. Trade deficits, national security, fentanyl, and now forced labor. Last week, the United States
00:07:28imposed new tariffs of 10 to 12.5% on imports from 60 economies, including China, the European Union,
00:07:36Japan, Australia, and Switzerland. The official reason is serious. Washington says these economies have
00:07:42failed to adequately stop goods made with forced labor from entering their own markets. But there is
00:07:47something rather convenient about the timing. Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court struck down
00:07:53Trump's sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, ruling that the law
00:07:58simply did not give the president that power. The administration immediately reached for another law,
00:08:04Section 122 of the Trade Act, and imposed a temporary 10% global tariff. There was just one problem.
00:08:10Section 122 only allows those tariffs to last 150 days. That deadline arrived on July 24th. And almost
00:08:19perfectly on cue, a new set of tariffs arrived under another law, Section 301. The legal justification
00:08:26changed. The tariff survived. Now, none of this means the forced labor issue itself is fake. USTR spent months
00:08:34investigating, it consulted foreign governments, held public hearings, and received thousands of comments.
00:08:39But look carefully at what Washington is actually alleging. The United States is not saying that all
00:08:4660 economies use forced labor. It is not even saying that every product being tariffed was made with
00:08:52forced labor. It is saying that those governments have failed to create or adequately enforce systems
00:08:58preventing goods made with forced labor somewhere else from entering their markets. That's a much broader
00:09:04claim. And the punishment is broader still. These tariffs cover economies responsible for more than 99% of American imports.
00:09:12Countries with radically different labor laws, political systems, and enforcement records have been put into
00:09:18essentially two buckets. 10% or 12.5%. That naturally raises a question. How exactly did Washington calculate those
00:09:27numbers? Because if these were primarily about fighting forced labor, you might expect the punishment to focus on
00:09:33specific companies, factories, supply chains, or products where abuses have actually been identified. Instead, most goods from
00:09:41entire economies get taxed, and some of America's closest allies are not exactly sure why they're on the list. EU
00:09:48foreign
00:09:49policy chief Kajakalas caused the allegation against Europe unfunded and said Brussels was asking
00:09:54Washington for clarification. Switzerland rejected the accusation too. Australia called the tariffs
00:09:59completely unjustified. And that is what makes this story interesting. You do not have to settle every
00:10:05argument about forced labor in China, in Xinjiang specifically, or anywhere else to notice what is
00:10:10happening. The Trump administration wants tariffs. When one legal route disappears, it finds another one. And forced
00:10:17labor now just provides a particularly powerful justification because who wants to be the
00:10:22politician standing up and say they oppose fighting forced labor. But serious human rights policy should
00:10:27require serious evidence. What products? Which companies? What abuse? What exactly did each government
00:10:34fail to do? And most importantly, what would they have to change to get the tariff removed? Instead, even AP
00:10:42noted that the administration has released relatively little detail explaining why countries with vastly
00:10:48different records received the same tariff rates. And the timing is difficult to ignore. The temporary
00:10:54global tariff expires, a new global tariff structure appears. Different law, different justification,
00:11:01remarkably similar result. Representative Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee,
00:11:07criticized the move, saying Trump had once again searched through existing laws for justification
00:11:12to maintain his trade policies. Forced labor deserves a serious response. It deserves investigation into
00:11:19actual products, actual companies, and actual abuse. What it should not become is another blank space in
00:11:26America's tariff mad libs. The accusation changes, the legal authority changes, the countries being targeted
00:11:32change. Somehow, the tariff remains. At some point, you have to ask, are these tariffs serving a policy?
00:11:39Or is this a tariff policy searching for its next excuse? Okay, enough about tariffs. Let's talk about
00:11:45something actually worth getting excited about. For decades, Chinese mathematicians seem to be just one
00:11:51step away from winning the world's highest honor in mathematics. Now, that moment has finally arrived.
00:11:57Recently, Chinese mathematicians Deng Yu and Wang Hong were awarded the Fields Medal, becoming the first
00:12:04mathematicians with Chinese nationality to receive this prestigious honor. Often described as the Nobel Prize for
00:12:11Mathematics, the Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under the age of 40 who have made
00:12:17outstanding contributions to the field. For many years, the winners of the Fields Medal mainly came from western
00:12:24mathematical powerhouses. But in recent decades, China's influence in mathematical research has
00:12:29continued to grow. From pure mathematics to cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence,
00:12:34cryptography, and quantum computing, more Chinese mathematicians are gaining international recognition.
00:12:41Born in 1991 in Guilin, Guangxi, Wang Hong, together with her collaborators, solved the three-dimensional
00:12:47kakeia conjecture in 2025. It was a century-old problem that had challenged mathematicians around
00:12:54the world. Deng Yu, born in 1989 in Shenzhen, Guangdong, is currently professor of mathematics at the
00:13:00University of Chicago. Together with his collaborators, he made a breakthrough in a major branch of the sixth
00:13:06problem on Hilbert's List, a problem that had remained open for 125 years. His work provided the first rigorous
00:13:14mathematical framework connecting the motion of microscopic particles with large-scale fluid
00:13:20equations. Both Deng and Wang graduated from Peking University's School of Mathematical Sciences.
00:13:26Their awards are not only personal achievements that will reflect decades of investment and development
00:13:32in China's mathematical education and research system. Of course, mathematics is not simply a competition
00:13:38for medals. The more important question is whether a country can continue to cultivate people
00:13:43who are able to ask new questions and explore unknown areas. And this field's metal milestone has once
00:13:50again drawn global attention to the challenging landscape of Chinese mathematics. And the good
00:13:55news out of China doesn't stop there. China's semiconductor industry has just reached another major milestone.
00:14:01Chinese memory chip manufacturer CXMT, or Changxin Memory Technologies, saw its share price surge
00:14:09466% on its first trading day after listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The IPO offered 6.688 billion
00:14:18new shares and raised 57.92 billion yuan, making it the largest IPO in Asia in 2026 and the biggest
00:14:27semiconductor fundraising event in China's history. CXMT mainly produces DRAM memory chips, a type of
00:14:34semiconductor widely used in computers, servers, smartphones, and artificial intelligence systems.
00:14:40For decades, the global DRAM market has been dominated by Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, while Chinese
00:14:47companies have remained in a catch-up position. That is why CXMT's listing is being seen as another
00:14:53step forward for China's semiconductor industry as it moves deeper into core chips technology.
00:14:59Of course, a 466% stock surge does not mean China has already surpassed global chip giants. The
00:15:06industry still faces major challenges in areas such as advanced technology, market share, and high-end
00:15:12products. But the market enthusiasm around CXMT sends a clear signal. As the United States continues
00:15:19tightening restrictions on China's semiconductor sector, Chinese companies are accelerating efforts
00:15:24to build their own supply chains. From chip manufacturing equipment, to design, to memory
00:15:30technologies, China is trying to strengthen every part of the semiconductor ecosystem. And CXMT's debut
00:15:36may only be the beginning of a much bigger competition in the global chip race.
00:15:53We have a short break now, but don't go away because we'll be right back.
00:16:20We have a short break now.
00:16:47welcome back to china now in the second segment roughly chinese podcast features
00:16:52china not just a travel with eric ovajim american political commentator who visited the world
00:16:59artificial intelligence conference in shanghai and will walk us throughout this experience let's
00:17:05have a look my name is eric ovajim today we're live here at the beautiful world ai conference
00:17:14in shanghai china there's a lot going on here there's tencent there's a bunch of wonderful
00:17:18chinese ai companies presenting their new technologies the president of china is here
00:17:22this is a big deal we're really excited to see what's inside let's go check it out
00:17:30let's get through it
00:17:55oh sorry oh i'm almost tripping on the robot dog that is being walked in front of me
00:18:00with anime girls in the front
00:18:05ladies and gentlemen we are live at the tencent booth here at the world ai conference in shanghai
00:18:10china they have ai all over the place they are using ai to make emojis for wechat they're using
00:18:17ai for productivity they're using ai for cars they're using ai for a little bit of football
00:18:23or as we say back home in america the four quarter sport of soccer ladies and gentlemen there's a lot
00:18:30happening here at tencent and we're going to sit inside this car and see what the hell's going on
00:18:34in chinese evs combined with tencent technology this is a software we can order mcdonald's on the car
00:18:43for example i can say帮我点一个板烧鸡腿宝
00:18:49that's very cool okay as an american you can order mcdonald's
00:18:53that easily
00:18:54yeah and you can directly pay yeah this is a
00:19:00yes so we successfully paid and create the order so we can just directly
00:19:09start navigation to the mcdonald's yeah you order you order the mcdonald's and then it
00:19:15you can pay immediately from the car and then it gives you the directions to the mcdonald's yes
00:19:21that's incredible oh my god wow um what else can you do with the software
00:19:27so you can also to buy the movie ticket no way that's so cool actually yeah like
00:19:34when i'm driving i don't i i i it's not convenient to like tap everything yeah so i i can
00:19:43just say
00:19:44what i want to do what i want to do so it's it's just automatically help me to
00:19:52tap that's so cool yeah wow okay cool is there anything else to show off here
00:19:58so if i'm interested with one like article that shows like the travel plan so and i want to like
00:20:08navigate to the uh the travel plan poi so i don't need to just search and tap and blah blah
00:20:19blah yeah
00:20:19what i need to do is just like save the picture and i can just using wechat
00:20:28to send the picture to my car my car save the picture and yeah this picture i said
00:20:40and you can see this is a travel plan from here what wait okay can you hold your phone like
00:20:47right
00:20:47here so then i can get both so you have you have a map of different points of interest yes
00:20:54on
00:20:54shao hong shu yeah and you send a screenshot yes and the screenshot to my car this is my car
00:21:01like
00:21:01cloudbot and wow okay so literally cloudbot ai okay yeah and my car said yes i saved the picture
00:21:11and help me to like process the picture and get that to poi list so i can just click
00:21:22one of the poi and start navigation that's crazy so from a single picture you send it to your
00:21:28your car yeah and then it generates a map of how to get there and in real time can navigate
00:21:35you there
00:21:36simply based off a photo from shao hong shu yeah that's crazy wow okay okay that's cool that's very cool
00:21:42damn
00:21:51we got some we got some patriotic robots here at the world ai conference we got robots waving the
00:21:58flag of china celebrating the glorious technological achievements of this wonderful nation that is so
00:22:04funny to see even the robots here in china are patriotic i am here joined with rose rose and rose
00:22:14you are
00:22:14from the wonderful nation of laos from the ntn specifically correct yes okay and what are you
00:22:19doing here in china uh i'm studying a master degree in china at ecnu and i just graduated no way
00:22:26okay so
00:22:27what's your master's in um international relations international relations how are they nowadays the
00:22:32countries are they getting along yeah pretty good china is like really good countries how's the
00:22:38relationship between laos and china oh yeah it's really good um and now there's um a lao china real
00:22:45way have you ever heard about it what's it vientian to kunming is that right yeah
00:22:49i was dying to take it i was going to take it and then it didn't work out with the
00:22:54plan i was going to
00:22:55fly to kunming and then there's the whole railway thing but it looks like an incredible railway
00:22:59so i ended up flying to vientiane and it was beautiful yeah it's a genuinely like incredible
00:23:05beautiful city and the food was nothing like i'd ever had before the people were all incredibly kind
00:23:11and one thing i will say too many french people yes a lot of too many too many not just
00:23:17a lot too many
00:23:17i think they gotta they gotta reduce the amount of french people in in vientiane but it was a beautiful
00:23:22city everyone was very nice i was very interested in talking with locals in vientiane to hear what
00:23:28they thought about china and overwhelmingly they seemed apprehensive but generally in favor of china
00:23:34what do you think about that is that fair to say yeah and now and nowadays there's a lot of
00:23:39like
00:23:40Chinese people come to um uh to to work in laos and um how do you say to open a
00:23:51company here yeah
00:23:52to start a business yeah like entrepreneurs or something yeah yeah yeah and generally speaking
00:23:57are folks are people in laos are they excited for chinese folks to come in and work together with them
00:24:02welcome chinese people here yeah and now that it does a lot of like um school that they open for
00:24:08like lao people to study chinese and also like uh a school for chinese people to study lao yeah yeah
00:24:15it sounded like earlier it sounded like you were speaking chinese do you speak chinese yes i speak
00:24:19chinese how did you learn chinese i learned chinese when i was like young my dad like want me to
00:24:24study
00:24:24chinese and after that uh on my bachelor degree i studied in chinese language my major is in chinese
00:24:31language in chinese language oh wow okay so you're like fluent at this point you are you're very
00:24:35fluent that's incredible so what are you doing right now here in china how'd you find your way
00:24:38over here is it simply to study for the master's program or do you want to live here long term
00:24:42you
00:24:43think i want to leave here long term yeah i'm still looking for a talk yeah in shanghai specifically or
00:24:48yes yeah yeah um and in this conference what do you think like the development of technology here in
00:24:55china whether it's ai or whatever it might be whether it's the high-speed rail oh what like what is
00:24:59the
00:24:59relationship between china's technology or just the technology we're seeing here and the development of
00:25:05laos as a country and like a few months ago our um president of laos uh come to hangzhou and
00:25:14beijing
00:25:15to visit uh alibaba and other like other company around china and that our president like was so proud
00:25:25that china got like a lot of tech technology that's like so developed like for example like a robot and
00:25:34ai and drones and stuff that's so amazing yeah yeah it's so incredible and so and uh because laos we
00:25:42still
00:25:42need like um uh still need like help from developed country uh or many countries like a good technology to
00:25:50help us to um develop our country yeah yeah but it seems like it's developing very quickly it seems
00:25:57like it's very much so it seems like it was going in the right direction at least when i was
00:26:00there a few
00:26:00months ago yeah it's pretty good yeah no that's very exciting do you see the advent of ai as a
00:26:07threat to
00:26:08jobs in laos or do you see it as a way for people there to simply augment their existing businesses
00:26:14and
00:26:14careers i think it's more helpful it's not a threat it's like it's more helpful for us for example like
00:26:20and now today um we have we got ai to help us like to make like for example simple like
00:26:27um ppt like
00:26:28powerpoint or write stuff it makes our life and working life like easier and faster yeah uh for
00:26:36example we need to translate and stuff like documents if you got ai they help you a lot
00:26:42it's gonna be faster yeah yeah no that makes sense okay well uh are you excited to see anything
00:26:47in particular at this conference anyone in particular you're like going around you're like
00:26:50oh i can't wait to see yeah or whatever you know yeah i can't wait to see ten cents like
00:26:55i it's like
00:26:56it's a big company that i want to visit like the create wechat and many ai that i want to
00:27:03um visit
00:27:03like for example work buddy that i want to know more about it yeah yeah yeah okay well thank you
00:27:09so much
00:27:09for this interview or as they say in laos cup chai cup chai yeah is that right yeah you remember
00:27:16damn all right cup chai for the interview and shout out thank you shout out prince suwanawong
00:27:20suwanawong what's the prince prince suva shout out prince suva okay thank you so much for the interview
00:27:25thank you bye bye
00:27:29oh wow look at this yeah the robots are taking over what the hell
00:27:35wow wow look at the fine motor skills of this that's crazy all right we are here with sean and
00:27:46what is this company called what are we looking at here with all these robot hands oh our company is
00:27:50called changing tech and we are mainly sold the dextrotal hand and the two fingers that capture these
00:27:57hands are crazy wait can you show me these hands let me flip around the camera and let's show everyone
00:28:00these hands okay so you want to see this yeah yeah let's see what's going on here so let me
00:28:05let me
00:28:05let me introduce you this kind of textual hands and this is our four fingers dextrotal hand and it's
00:28:12it's meaning with the eight degrees of freedom and why why would we use a four fingers dextrotal hand
00:28:18because we because my one by the way if you if if this one finger is broken you still have
00:28:25the three
00:28:25fingers to to work and this is incredible this is so cool i can't believe this there's like multiple
00:28:32degrees of actuation this is incredible so what sort of applications can these hands be used for
00:28:37aside from being attached to a robot like that one yeah our our main use is in factorial air so
00:28:43like
00:28:43you you want to classify things or move heavy things and you we can use these four fingers to capture
00:28:50is you know for human we can we can do almost everything with our three fingers so why we use
00:28:58the four fingers because one finger is broken we still have three fingers to complete our work so you
00:29:04can you can find time to repair them and continue their own work i see i see okay so you
00:29:11are an engineer
00:29:12here at this company so what is your main job are you mostly mechanical engineering are you doing the
00:29:15software how do you how do you build these hands so i'm a system engineer okay you know i i
00:29:21i work from
00:29:21the mechanical to the everything so i i do all the all the things of this hand and for this
00:29:29hand we need
00:29:30we need to start from you know the mechanical design so we we need to make sure he has a
00:29:34stuff stuff tough
00:29:35and the stiffness body first yeah and they we need to have a powerful motor so the finger will be
00:29:42more
00:29:42powerful to catch things and one more time we will need a uh you know the smart everything so you
00:29:49can
00:29:49understand what you we what you want to cut it like it's the tomatoes or the carrots so they can
00:29:55you
00:29:55can use uh through camera you can find the things and and repair the capture to find other things oh
00:30:04crazy
00:30:04what is the main application of these robot hands specifically what is the target goal for these hands
00:30:10to be able to grab something and put it back down so we our products all mainly used in the
00:30:14factory
00:30:16like into some schools or some big parts or some some you know the high security parts at least
00:30:23more they're very very very expensive so manufacturing yeah in particular i see so you if you if you
00:30:29you just use these two fingers uh creepers it won't have don't have so uh you know the
00:30:36like quick strength or something like that it won't it won't be able to grab them as as good
00:30:40like it won't have the thumb i feel like you need an opposable thumb right i mean let me show
00:30:44everyone
00:30:44the the two-finger ones okay so this two two-finger ones is mainly have the powerful grip grip force
00:30:53again catch around 18 newton 18 newton so wow wait let me come over here i'll show them from this
00:31:00angle
00:31:00i feel like it's so cool seeing these claspers grip oh wow oh yeah so what is the application of
00:31:08a
00:31:08robot hand like this with two fingers versus something like this with a thumb and three other fingers oh
00:31:13okay i will let you know the difference for the two fingers we we are we already called it as
00:31:19gripper
00:31:19and we see this is the dexterous hand dexterous hand for for gripper we mainly use you know some easy
00:31:25things like just capture some easy things like the you know the rectangular things something small
00:31:32something small complicated and the shape is very easy yeah so you can directly use the two fingers
00:31:37to catch them a simple shape i see but if you have some you know the the hard to catch
00:31:41by this
00:31:42complicated shape i see yeah you can you you need to use this they can destroy i see okay okay
00:31:47and then for something like this there's actually a third type of hand here
00:31:52with fingers that go in all directions they can hand they can grab with three different fingers
00:31:57together it's a part it kind of goes all over the place what's the application of a hand like this
00:32:02oh this this this this is among what you need it can also use in the you know the factory
00:32:08or there's
00:32:08some home home here you know because because it the three fingers had 90 degrees of freedom i see it
00:32:15it also can move skis three kilograms things or it has a smart degrees of gradient you can do a
00:32:21lot of
00:32:21hope you're gonna posture it's very very very smart you can you can catch anything you want
00:32:26anything you want yeah wow you can either circle things or the regular things you can change this
00:32:32time yeah to catch any type of things i see okay let's go over here let's check out these robots
00:32:38can
00:32:38you tell me what you're working on with these robots over here okay these are some big robots yeah this
00:32:43is
00:32:43our you know we recorded seven it's a heavy duty war humanized robots yeah the one of him is a
00:32:5315
00:32:53kilogram and the two of them is 30 kilograms wow okay so this is having these they can pick up
00:32:59these
00:32:59waters yeah yeah i didn't open it yeah so what's the practical use case for a robot like this uh
00:33:06many
00:33:06use in the factory also factory so all for manufacturing that's incredible yes because he has a
00:33:12heavy duty yeah yeah you can move uh huge things yeah like you you you you manufacture this on your
00:33:19human is hard for carry heavy things okay most importantly if you were to get into an arm wrestling
00:33:24match with this robot would you win or would the robot win oh the robot would win because you know
00:33:29you can't you can you can you can you can you can move it is this strong okay wait let
00:33:34me try it let me
00:33:35let me try you you can you can i don't want to break it oh wow wait that is really
00:33:39strong it's very
00:33:40very very very stupid that's crazy it's actually it's so sturdy that's kind of remarkable wow i see
00:33:46i mean maybe it's because the the joints are only so they fold forward rather than side to side
00:33:52so probably gives us a lot of like rigidity right it probably makes it very stable with this with this
00:33:56huge joint he has a huge in the working ear yeah it's not only the front of him yeah and
00:34:01you can
00:34:02move forward you can have more more air to work interesting a big working area i see and what's the
00:34:07point of the head is there are the cameras up here wait let's see the head from the front this
00:34:11is
00:34:11there's one one camera here this camera so this camera is in the actual head is it one single camera
00:34:17one one uh two eyes camera two eye camera yeah and then what are in these eyes right here are
00:34:24those the
00:34:24actual cameras or is this the sensory unit up here and this is also an other sensor i see it
00:34:28helps the
00:34:29robot to you know contact the situation i see and we in case of someone someone is moving and he
00:34:36needs to he need to stop instead because sensors here too right and this is mainly for the the camera
00:34:43to watch watch the table what it's doing on the table interesting this is for the front interesting i see
00:34:50i see in total how many sensors are in this robot including cameras okay uh one two three and then
00:34:56two camera and one one situation here and then like one later and and down there oh down there as
00:35:02well
00:35:02oh and also also there there is a microphone here so you can you can talk to him you can
00:35:08talk to the
00:35:08robot what do you say to the robot but but but it didn't open here okay but what in theory
00:35:13what what
00:35:13are you supposed to say like hey what's going on robot how are you oh so so because first we
00:35:18we don't have
00:35:18our own ai modeling we just use other ai model what are you using uh maybe from ali or the
00:35:26you know
00:35:26ali ali model is you mainly used some language modeling the alibaba model yeah yeah you can talk
00:35:32to him and ask the weather or asking to some daily things i see i see i see just just
00:35:38for sure yeah
00:35:39all right that's cool all right well thank you so much for showing around this is great thank you so
00:35:43much thank you you're welcome cool all right okay guys our producer's about to get a drink but he's
00:35:51getting it from a robot our producer's about to get a drink from this robot right here let's see how
00:35:58it goes okay we're going to get a soda from a robot
00:36:08okay we're currently ordering what are you ordering soft drink soft drink we got a soft drink
00:36:15no free advertisement for the soft drink but the robot is deliberating
00:36:18it's thinking it's thinking about all of its life choices up until this very moment in time
00:36:22i'm thinking about every every electron pulsing through each and every one of those wires thinking
00:36:27wow i was trained on such a great ai model that i can grab this bottle of liquid
00:36:34turn around and hand hand deliver
00:36:40come on the money shot drop it off huh wow
00:36:45oh that's something guys come try it incredible guys live at this conference the president of china
00:36:55just announced that they are starting a world artificial intelligence cooperation organization
00:37:01born in shanghai uh right here at this conference live at this conference and what's very notable is
00:37:07that it is not only china it is not only russia but it is the overwhelming majority of the global
00:37:13south
00:37:13it excludes the united states north america europe it excludes japan it is largely africa latin america
00:37:21all throughout the global south southeast asia this is a very big deal this is a crazy development
00:37:27both politically and technologically what we're seeing here is the chinese president stated china
00:37:34will provide 5 000 places for developing countries to study and train on artificial intelligence in the
00:37:40next five years to build an international artificial intelligence application cooperation center for
00:37:45acn the arab league the african union caracom seo and brics nations
00:37:53look at this robot man what the hell
00:37:58that's unreal apparently not only do we have these big mecha robots we have the normal humanoid robots we
00:38:07then looks like we have some dog fighting over here it's fighting against the very famous unitary robot
00:38:13that they love showing off oh my god wait those are actually kind of crazy hold on we gotta get
00:38:19a
00:38:19closer look at this
00:38:24maybe i should become a robot influencer if my whole career doesn't pan out because i mean very clearly
00:38:29the robots are taking over basically everything at this point take a look at these robots man
00:38:45so it looks like it's doing some sort of a traditional chinese style dance we have what
00:38:51appears to be i think an ai video in the background although it's not entirely clear at this point my
00:38:57mind has been so fried by all the ai around me that i really cannot tell fact from fiction
00:39:02but this robot seems to be doing a bit of a a jig of sorts dare i say this is
00:39:08the unitree robot the
00:39:10brand new unitree i don't know what the model is but i can make up a number and you won't
00:39:14know the
00:39:15difference it is inside of a what looks like a boxing ring and it's doing a sort of dance of
00:39:23sorts it
00:39:24has a little friend coming to join it in a little dog it's running around having a good time
00:39:30these dogs thankfully they don't they don't pee and poop everywhere at least not yet maybe that'll
00:39:36be the next feature and this one of course does handstands i'm not even impressed at this point i
00:39:40feel like this is just this is normal now this is what china's been able to produce in a remarkably
00:39:46short period of time
00:39:51i remember even a few years ago in the united states we had those videos of the boston dynamics robots
00:39:56which
00:39:56were impressive very very cool and those would go incredibly viral of doing a quarter of what we
00:40:02see here even at this little this little boxing ring at this convention and it's remarkable to see
00:40:13a dog robot waving
00:40:21of course my big fear as an american is my big fear as an american is having these robots ultimately
00:40:29used by my government against us but hey here in china they're meant for dancing i just saw you
00:40:37looking at those random robots there are a lot of random robots when i came in i actually realized
00:40:41that there are more robots than people here there are a lot of what's your impression after seeing so
00:40:45many robots here too many robots a lot of them look humanoid it's very it's very disconcerting it was
00:40:51very strange when we first walked in they were rolling around a robot on what looked like a gurney of
00:40:56some sort that would like prop them up sometimes they have those in american hospitals because us
00:41:01we americans are known for being a little large so if you gotta prop them up in a hospital you
00:41:06put
00:41:06on basically like a crane and pull them up and this robot was on some device of that nature and
00:41:11they
00:41:12were wheeling it around and then all of a sudden they stopped it and the robot got off and just
00:41:16started
00:41:16walking around and i was like what the hell's going on it was very disconcerting it was about five feet
00:41:20tall it was a big robot there's a lot there's a lot of uh of scary looking humanoid robots and
00:41:25then we just
00:41:26saw what looked like a dog robot i don't know where it ran off to it scurried off to hearing
00:41:30it just
00:41:31went somewhere it was like a dog on wheels i don't know what they got going on over here in
00:41:35china but
00:41:35it's crazy man what do you think of them actually to be honest i have no idea what is the
00:41:41world going
00:41:41to be like in 30 years yeah it kind of scares me a bit too many robots yeah when i
00:41:48was coming to this
00:41:49event i was looking at video clip how robots are having the fox match they're already very competitive
00:41:57i saw that they were like kickboxing or something they're kickboxing yeah that's a little scary like
00:42:02what if the opponent's not a robot it's going to be a human right try to imagine robots walking around
00:42:08the streets and kind of in gta when they saw somebody and just pound him in the face
00:42:15let's hope rockstar games doesn't make any of the robots i hope so gta 6 is going to come out
00:42:21this
00:42:21year so hopefully it stays inside the consoles and the computers maybe not in the robots themselves
00:42:26yeah so except for the robots because the event is mostly about ai yeah what's your impression on
00:42:32the ai softwares that are presented here it's very interesting i feel like in the united states and
00:42:38i think the west more broadly people are very skeptical very hesitant about ai and then you come here to
00:42:42china people are very eager they're very excited they see ai as a tool for in many ways liberation
00:42:48to move them beyond the chains of their day-to-day work and their jobs that are so tedious in
00:42:54in many
00:42:54ways and folks in the west don't really see it that way and i think it really goes down to
00:43:00it
00:43:00boils down to how people view the state control over the technology that either makes their lives better
00:43:06or you know puts them in positions where they have to go work their asses off so i think it'll
00:43:11be
00:43:11very interesting to see the differences in the way that china approaches that final question for you
00:43:15i realized that in china they really have kind of motivation to connect ai with the practice yeah
00:43:22with with the machines but the united states is mostly commercialized and it's more like ai agents yes
00:43:29so is the ai now functioning in the reality in machines in practice in united states or is still on
00:43:38i think in many ways i think this is a very long and complicated answer but i think in many
00:43:42ways
00:43:43it's the way the united states organizes economy versus that of china in the united states it's very
00:43:49easy to dump capital into uh individually organized projects privately backed companies that can very
00:43:54rapidly iterate on software projects to ultimately turning profit and if you mess up a piece of software
00:44:01with a little bit of money you know it's not the end of the world you know you have a
00:44:05little bug
00:44:05maybe some people lose some money no one's gonna die generally speaking however china takes a much
00:44:11different approach where a lot of the organization of the economy is centrally organized they pour lots
00:44:15of money into uh publicly state-owned enterprises that can take big risks with large hardware endeavors
00:44:23and if you mess up a piece of hardware like evs or something of that nature people's lives are at
00:44:27stake and i think it is very emblematic of china taking the state-run uh method of of trying to
00:44:34build out future technology whereas the united states has largely delegated that responsibility
00:44:39to private investors who are largely risk-averse and i think that is still going to play out
00:44:44probably tenfold in terms of ai where you can very cheaply now make a software model whereas making
00:44:51hardware to go alongside it that takes a lot of capital but we'll see what happens
00:45:00that's a wrap here at the world ai conference we've seen a lot we saw a lot of robots we
00:45:05saw
00:45:05a lot of ai models we saw a lot of demos that quite frankly were a little half-baked but
00:45:10i will say the
00:45:11ones that were working were kind of remarkable kind of scary i mean as an american i'm very interested in
00:45:19seeing the sort of technological progress china's making and i mean quite frankly i think america's
00:45:24kind of getting lapped i think it's very interesting to see the different approaches that different
00:45:29companies are taking as to whether or not they want to automate away not only sort of manual labor
00:45:33the crappy annoying stuff like moving boxes from uh shipping containers to production lines or vice versa
00:45:41versus the companies that are more interested in focusing on the creative elements i haven't seen a
00:45:47lot of generative ai here which is kind of surprising i thought there would be considerably more but i
00:45:51think that might lead one to believe that there's not as much appetite for generative ai as there was
00:45:56even just a year ago which i think is great i'm so sick and tired of seeing ai videos i
00:46:01think they've
00:46:01gotten good enough and quite frankly i would not be upset if we moved beyond them but the ai tools
00:46:05that
00:46:06i have seen for creators here do kind of excite me and that is a scary sentence to say because
00:46:12i know at the
00:46:12end of the day this is our livelihood creating stuff videos content commentary that is how we pay our bills
00:46:19that's how we make a living that is ideally the footprint we want to leave on the world and seeing
00:46:24any
00:46:24sort of technology step into it step into our place and try to replace us that is of course a
00:46:30little
00:46:30terrifying but hopefully you learned something here today i think i definitely did hopefully this gave you a
00:46:36future of ai here in china and as we learned today maybe in the global south more broadly thanks so
00:46:43much for tuning in i'll see you in the next one the birth rate is is low if we're being
00:46:48real and the
00:46:49more of these ai girlfriend robots they got running around i don't know it's not looking too hot for
00:46:54humanity i'm a minus 18 am i getting frame mocked guys i'm currently joined by these wonderful dog
00:47:06walkers they are in anime outfits walking their dogs i don't know what the hell this conference is anymore
00:47:12i'm so confused today we're live here at the world ai conference my name is eric ovium and we are
00:47:17here in
00:47:18shanghai china it's a very hot sweaty day but inside these conference halls behind me some of the biggest
00:47:23technology companies in the world are demonstrating their new ai capabilities to take china to the
00:47:29next stage let's go check them out in the wise words of greek american philosopher stavros halkius
00:47:48it's very strange and very disappointing that it seems like ai has started to do all the fun things
00:47:53like make art and fun pictures whereas humans are still stuck in amazon warehouses today we're at
00:47:59this ai conference to see whether or not china can fix that issue there are two real life humans performing
00:48:07one lady filming a guy photographing everything and robots being suspended in midair playing the drums
00:48:15playing the guitar and playing the piano truly what a time to be alive it is right now
00:48:22who plays it better the real artist or the robot artist of course the real artist that's the thing
00:48:26i definitely i want my robots in the factories i want them building things for me but i don't
00:48:31necessarily want my robots producing the music to give me enjoyment see this is what i want this i want
00:48:36you to pick up the package i want you to put it on that conveyor belt i want you to
00:48:39ship it off to my home
00:48:40i don't want to see you i don't want to deal with you for art for music for anything of
00:48:47that nature i
00:48:48don't want the robots touching it but for conveyor belts sure thing enjoy it i'm not even impressed at
00:48:53this point i feel like this is just this is normal now this is what china's been able to produce
00:48:59in a
00:48:59remarkably short period of time my big fear as an american is having these robots ultimately used by
00:49:04my government against us but hey here in china they're meant for dancing all right we are about
00:49:10to order i believe a soda or something like that we're going to get a soda from a robot okay
00:49:16we're
00:49:16currently ordering what are you ordering soft drink soft drink we got a soft drink no free advertisement
00:49:23for the soft drink but the robot is deliberating it's thinking it's thinking about all of its life
00:49:27choices up until this very moment in time thinking about every every electron pulsing through each and
00:49:33every one of those wires thinking wow i was trained on such a great ai model that i can grab
00:49:37this bottle of
00:49:39liquid turn around and hand hand deliver come on the money shot drop it off huh wow
00:49:52wow that's something guys come try it incredible after getting served the beverage by a robot and
00:50:01subsequently seeing anime girls walking their robot dogs i was feeling a little dismayed at the future
00:50:06of humanity in 10 years from now will we work real jobs do we even work real jobs right now
00:50:12and are
00:50:13young folks graduating in a rather dismal job market going to be forced to walk the robot dogs of the
00:50:18trillionaires of the future to answer these questions i forced our new intern to share his
00:50:23thoughts on camera with me you recently graduated college you recently finished your bachelor's degree
00:50:28your undergrad and now you're looking at a job market that's potentially being replaced by all the
00:50:32companies around you how do you as an average 22 year old guy in china feel about the conference we're
00:50:38at right now and the potential risks of boosting up these ai companies that might ultimately make the
00:50:45job market that you're graduating into a little bit harder to get a job in i think it's already like
00:50:51happening you know right now because i'm now have my internship in the company but before that i was
00:50:59like looking for all the jobs in the job market yeah and i can sense that it's getting harder and
00:51:08harder for
00:51:08uh for graduates to get a job it's very excited to you know to see all the products or the
00:51:16technology
00:51:17it's very excited but yeah but i can also feel that you know especially looking at the products in the
00:51:24factories you know the manufacturers because it means like a lot of replacement of the jobs in the
00:51:30factories i can sense that all right ladies and gentlemen we're going to try on the robot hand glove
00:51:44you're going to see my hand oh okay which one are we controlling oh wow wait bring the camera over
00:51:50here take a look at these models that you can see in real time you can look these wow that's
00:51:55crazy
00:51:56easy in real time you can see it actuates with every single movement of my fingers you can see
00:52:03look at this boom i move my thumb boom it moves you can see it not only does it do
00:52:07it like a regular hand
00:52:08but it also has a two finger model look at how crazy that is look at the precision look at
00:52:15all the
00:52:15different degrees of control the different axes that it's able to actuate in real time and the level
00:52:20of precision i think you can really get to see it in this one in the top right it might
00:52:24be hard to see on
00:52:24camera but it can get extremely precise movement
00:52:30dude my girlfriend my robot girlfriend is going to love this wow chat chat we are so cooked bro china's
00:52:39birth rate is not high enough to justify having girlfriend robots that look this realistic she's
00:52:45currently being walked on a leash like a dog but let me get ahead of her we'll see her from
00:52:50the front
00:52:51this is a very interesting experience seeing a man take his robot lady on a leash out for a walk
00:52:59the walking is a little a little janky at times however maybe she had a little bit too much baiju
00:53:05last
00:53:05night and they are leaching her back in you can see she's being controlled by this looks like a logitech
00:53:11controller how interesting one thing that i'm honestly a little confused about is robots right
00:53:18here that are humanoid in nature but they don't quite look like humans yet very clearly they've
00:53:24given them cleavage why is there cleavage on robots that don't even look like humans they don't have
00:53:31faces but they were like yo let's slap some boobies on there what's up with that we're live at the
00:53:36conference
00:53:36right now and we're getting breaking news that the president of china has announced a major initiative
00:53:41to support global ai development that means there's a new organization called waico the world ai
00:53:48cooperation organization which i believe is slated to bring together global south countries in addition
00:53:56to china and russia with the notable exceptions of the global north including the united states europe and
00:54:03japan it's going to be very interesting because very clearly this organization is going to be pouring
00:54:07billions if not trillions of dollars into ai development domestically here in china but also
00:54:12in the global south this is a very big deal this is a crazy development both politically and
00:54:18technologically china will provide 5 000 places for developing countries to study and train on
00:54:23artificial intelligence in the next five years honestly hearing the news that china is going out of its
00:54:29way to partner with the global south to accelerate their development renewed my sense of hope in what's
00:54:34to come now we head to one of the technological leaders of not just china but frankly the entire
00:54:39world over here at the tencent booth ladies and gentlemen we are live at the tencent booth here at the
00:54:45world ai conference in shanghai china they have ai all over the place they are using ai to make emojis
00:54:52for
00:54:52wechat they're using ai for productivity they're using ai for cars they're using ai for a little bit of
00:54:59football or as we say back home in america the four-quarter sport of soccer ladies and gentlemen
00:55:05there's a lot happening here at tencent and we're going to sit inside this car and see what the hell's
00:55:10going on in chinese evs combined with tencent technology this this is a software we can order mcdonald
00:55:18on the car for example i can say
00:55:27no way that's very cool okay yeah as an american you can order mcdonald's that easily yeah and you can
00:55:35directly pay yeah this is for those of you outside china tencent is the maker of one of the world's
00:55:42largest communication apps based here in china called wechat it's honestly way more comprehensive than
00:55:47anything we have in the west mostly because you can use it to not only just like talk or facetime
00:55:51with friends there's also mini apps that you can use and even an entire payment ecosystem itself
00:55:56so the whole wechat ecosystem works natively here in the software yeah so you order you order the
00:56:02mcdonald's and then it you can pay immediately from the car and then it gives you the directions
00:56:08to the mcdonald's yes so after you get mcdonald's you can get your food and go yeah i see that's
00:56:17incredible oh my god i want to buy the ticket at seven o'clock so all you have to say
00:56:30is you want to buy
00:56:30the ticket at seven o'clock and then oh wow that's crazy actually yeah yeah
00:56:45so it's using it's using an ai agent yes to go through everything there's an ai agent behind
00:56:52those like when i'm driving i don't i i i it's not convenient to like tap everything yeah so if
00:57:02i'm
00:57:03interested with one like article that shows like the the travel plan so and i want to like navigate to
00:57:14the uh the travel plan poi so i don't need to just search and tap and blah blah blah yeah
00:57:23what i need
00:57:25to do is just like save the picture using wechat to send the picture to my car and my car
00:57:36get the picture
00:57:38and wait a second my car save the picture and yeah this picture i said and and you can see
00:57:49this is a
00:57:50travel plan from here what so from a single picture you send it to your your car yeah and then
00:57:57it generates
00:57:58a map of how to get there and in real time can navigate you there simply based off a photo
00:58:04from
00:58:04yeah that's crazy that's a wrap here at the world ai conference we've seen a lot we saw a lot
00:58:11of
00:58:11robots we saw a lot of ai models we saw a lot of demos that quite frankly were a little
00:58:15half baked
00:58:15but i will say the ones that were working were kind of remarkable kind of scary i mean as an
00:58:24american i'm
00:58:25very interested in seeing the sort of technological progress china's making and i mean quite frankly
00:58:30i think america's kind of getting lapped i think it's very interesting to see the different approaches
00:58:35that different companies are taking as to whether or not they want to automate away not only sort of
00:58:39manual labor the crappy annoying stuff like moving boxes from uh shipping containers to production lines
00:58:46or vice versa versus the companies that are more interested in focusing on the creative elements i
00:58:53haven't seen a lot of generative ai here which is kind of surprising i thought there would be
00:58:56considerably more but i think that might lead one to believe that there's not as much appetite for
00:59:01generative ai as there was even just a year ago which i think is great i'm so sick and tired
00:59:06of seeing
00:59:06ai videos i think they've gotten good enough and quite frankly i would not be upset if we moved beyond
00:59:11them but the ai tools that i have seen for creators here do kind of excite me and that is
00:59:16a scary sentence
00:59:17to say because i know at the end of the day this is our livelihood creating stuff videos content
00:59:23commentary that is how we pay our bills that's how we make a living that is ideally the footprint we
00:59:29want to leave on the world and seeing any sort of technology step into it step into our place and
00:59:35try to replace us that is of course a little terrifying but hopefully you learned something
00:59:39here today i think i definitely did hopefully this gave you a little bit of insight into the future of
00:59:43ai here in china and as we learned today maybe in the global south more broadly thanks so much
00:59:49for tuning in i'll see you in the next one and this was another episode of china now a show
00:59:58that opens
00:59:59a window to the present and future of the asian giant hope you enjoy it see you next time
Comments