REVOLUTION IN TECHNOLOGY OF CHINA

World At The Cusp Of New Technology Revolution

It is no exaggeration to say that technology has changed our lives like never before. It has revolutionised modern living. As we step into yet another new decade of 21st century, more than ever the world is seeking the refuge of science and technology to tackle daunting challenges. Advances in science and technology offer the promise of providing solutions to the real-world problems. The phenomenal transformation in general living conditions with the advent of technology in modern times is seamless.

Triggering the spark of innovation, technology seeded the development of gadgets, which changed the way we communicate, access information, voice our opinions, conduct business, shop for goods and services. It radically transformed television viewing experiences and added a new realm to the entertainment industry. Technology is enriching and enhancing our lives like never before. Unlike in the past, people are no longer sceptical about embracing new technology. They are technologically savvy. By consciously welcoming and adopting new technologies current generation is heralding innovation. This wider acceptance is paving way for faster evolution of technology.

With time, the creation of these technological tools has become the most profitable and wealthiest of ventures. The accelerating pace of technology has substantially increased ease of doing business and generated immense business opportunities. Enthused by a perceptible change brought about by new technologies, venture capitalists and prospective businesses are investing billions into companies indulging in development of cutting-edge technologies. Marshalling the World into the "4th Industrial Revolution", the next decade will portend the advent of "frontier technologies or deep tech" which includes- Artificial intelligence or machine learning, Robotics, Computational biology, Extended Reality (XR), Personalised and predictive medicine, quantum computing, space technology, advanced manufacturing using 3-D printing and block chain technology.

Steadily Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving as a useful replacement in service sector. It is now increasingly employed for improving customer experience and streamlining business activities. Last year, China has reportedly rolled out cyber courts with AI judges and verdicts being delivered on chat apps. The pilot program is now closely monitored for its largescale implementation. Under the banner of digitisation of its sprawling judicial system, China is putting cyber technologies to use. Since the launch of the mobile courts in March 2019, reportedly three million legal cases and judicial procedures were handled by these cyber courts. India which is grappling under the burden of judicial pendency can certainly take a leaf out of Chinese book.

Similarly, AI-monitored autonomous driving is another important aspect which is being increasingly experimented in developed countries. Google sister company Waymo has successfully completed the trial of autonomous taxis in California last year. While there might be glitches in the adoption of autonomous vehicles in public transport, they can be extremely beneficial in shipping and truck industry.

Various health parameters which are collected by the smart phones and other wearable devices are now used to diagnose ailments if any. This health data is becoming an important primer for the popular stream of personalised medicine. Instead of one size fits all approach, personalised and predictive medicine is evolving as an effective method to address specific disease conditions. Another important outcome of the deep technologies has been the 3-D organ printing. 3-D bioprinting of tissues and organs for transplanting has become heart and soul of the regenerative medicine. While the 3-D bioprinting is in formative stages of development for functional organs, it is successfully developed for skin and bones. Recently San Diego based Organovo, successfully implanted 3-D prints of human liver tissue patches in mice.

Already computational biology with its immense potential to study biological, ecological, behavioural and social systems through application of data-analytics, theoretical methods, mathematical modelling and computational simulation techniques have marvelled the world with the power of the interdisciplinary integration of knowledge systems. New technological advances will perceptibly enhance our understanding of the biological systems. Indeed, evolving technology will bolster the allied fields of computational biology like applied mathematics, statistics, biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology, genetics and genomics. Advancements in computational power will concomitantly help in data management, imaging & sensing technologies and material sciences as well.

Latest devices endowed with computer vision capable of facial or image recognition are changing the contours of surveillance and monitoring. Google's Image search is an offshoot of this technology. Gadgets equipped with computer vision are now extensively used by aviation sector. Dubai and Changi Airport which experience heavy footfall of passengers have opened cutting edge digital terminal for automatic check-in through facial scanning. Akin to the accessing smart phones through facial recognition, these technologies are now put to use to monitor crowds, identify criminals in some countries. Though it has potential danger of eroding privacy, given its inherent facial recognition capabilities law and order maintenance agencies are milling the large-scale use of these technologies to identify criminal elements.

With its immersive digital experience and capacities to create surreal experiences, virtual, augmented and mixed reality is taking the world by a storm. This computer-generated virtual world had added a new dimension to the entertainment industry. Virtual Reality (VR) which has been a part of infotainment and high-end videogames is now being put to business use as well. VR is used for training and simulation offering new ways to interact with customers. VR together with block chain technology are offering fascinating possibilities. Block-Chain is a ledger of transactions secured due to its encrypted and decentralised nature. Employing the block chain technology, Facebook planned to launch crypto currency Libra. Though it couldn't take off, the possibilities offered by the rising tide of improvised technologies is vast.

Unfortunately, despite its huge demographic dividend and sizeable technology savvy enthusiasts, India hasn't been a cradle of technological development. While India has firmly established itself as a prominent player in space technology through commercial satellite launching, it is not home to the big technological ventures as yet. However, booming technology startups are offering a new hope.

The debate is still on whether to call 2020 the end of a decade, or do we wait for 2021 to begin; it is amazing how we come back to the same argument decade after decade. However, going by the popularly accepted theory of convenience, we shall call 2020 the beginning of a new decade. And as one looks back at the one that's gone by, one can't but exclaim and say what a decade it had been. And how it started with revolutions, natural disasters and deaths! US has seen Obama win followed by the rise of Donald Trump, and how can we forget the infamous Osama Bin Laden, who was discovered and killed in the year 2011. India has had its share of new order with Narendra Modi becoming the prime minister as he goes on to stay ahead unvanquished in the second term as well. What marks the last decade majorly is the massive advancement in technology and communication impacting every aspect of our lives – literally every aspect – our daily routine, jobs, the way we eat, the way we buy things, our lifestyle, social life, and even our relationships – technology has had its impact everywhere. It is only uphill from now on. And it is only apt to say that it is indeed going to be technology that will be dictating the world order in the coming years. As we begin this decade with a series of articles on what to look forward to in the coming decade, the 2020s as we call them; Ramaharitha Pusarla looks at aspects like artificial intelligence, 3D imaging and virtual reality that are going to play a major role in the 2020s

China’s Education Technology Revolution

By Benjamin Vedrenne-Cloquet, EdTechX Holdings

China’s private education market is already large (US$260 billion) and growing at 9% annually. From live tuition in learning centres in the heart of urban shopping malls to personalized tutoring on mobile devices during their train commutes, Chinese consumers are becoming true lifestyle learners. Ubiquitous access to quality education and upskilling opportunities is a key consideration in where families and young professionals choose to work and live.

The numbers reflect this — the education technology investment bank, IBIS Capital, estimates that online tutoring will be utilized by over 30% of Chinese in education (versus 10% now) — rising 20 times to US$150 billion by 2030. The penetration of English language training currently only represents 2.5% of the Chinese population and is set to double in the next 10 years. Likewise, the Chinese vocational training market is set to triple in size to a US$300 billion market.

The most successful players capitalizing on these trends are reaching urban Chinese learners via a sophisticated omnichannel distribution strategy combining a dense retail presence of learning urban centres with cutting-edge digital delivery.

This is the case of TAL Education Group, a Chinese education and technology enterprise, that operates a dense network of more than 600 urban tutoring centres (versus less than 100 in 2010), including more than 130 in Beijing alone. It also operates Peiyou online, a digital platform that delivers online tuition and captures data about students’ level of understanding by using facial and voice recognition technologies.

The New Oriental Education and Technology Group has adopted a similar strategy with the same success, recently spinning off its digital tutoring platform Koolearn Technology on the Hong Hong stock exchange in 2019 with a market cap in excess of US$2 billion.

Both TAL and New Oriental are listed on the NYSE with market capitalization that have grown to US$25 billion and US$20 billion, respectively, representing a ten-fold and six-fold increase in just 5 years!

These stock market success stories and the insatiable appetite of the urban Chinese consumers for education are becoming increasingly attractive to international investment. TAL and New Oriental count hundreds of international institutional investors among their shareholder base and have paved the way for a flurry of Chinese education companies going public on the US stock exchange, the most recent being Youdao and GSX.

In fact, there are now more Chinese education companies listed on Nasdaq and NYSE than any other countries in the world, the US included. This signals China’s growing soft power and dominance over the West in the field of education.

A case in point is Meten English, headquartered in Shenzhen at the heart of the Chinese Silicon Valley, who has grown to a market leader position in English learning training for adults in China, beating at their own game renowned international brands such as Wall Street English, Rosetta Stone or EF. Like TAL, Meten combines a network of 130 urban learning centers with a hugely popular digital tutoring platform, Likeshuo, to provide premium English tuition to young adults aspiring for more cosmopolitan lifestyles and careers.

Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have together become recognized as the largest hotbeds and ecosystems for education technology (edtech) start-ups, ahead of the Bay Area, New York, Boston and London. More than 4,000 edtech companies are headquartered in these three cities, representing the highest global concentration of edtech companies per capita and more edtech companies than Europe or US have ever produced.

The vision of China as an industrial power, the factory of the world, is an outdated Western view. The reality is that the China of tomorrow, with its extremely highly educated workforce, will dominate the global knowledge economy.

Benjamin Vedrenne-Cloquet is CEO of EdTechX Holdings, the first Nasdaq-listed SPAC to focus on education and education technology

*This article was first publishing in The Asset, where you can read here.

GUEST EDITORIAL: On The 70th Anniversary Of China’s 1949 Revolution

China’s Communist Party recently marked the 70th anniversary of its 1949 revolution, and the fireworks and military parades celebrate the country’s rise to become the world’s second largest economy. Yet there is no denying that this anniversary comes with a paradoxical unease about China’s place in the world. China is more powerful but less free than it was a decade ago and the world views its external aggression with growing concern.

China’s rise since Deng Xiaoping set the Party on the path of market reform 40 years ago has few historical parallels. China has taken advantage of open markets in the West, and the lure of its domestic market of 1.4 billion people to foreign investors, to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty and become an export and increasingly a technology behemoth. The U.S. And the world have for the most part benefited from this development. Imagine the alternative if China had remained stagnant and its people sought to emigrate in the millions.

For a time, even after the massacre at Tiananmen Square, it seemed possible that China might also evolve to tolerate more political freedom. Lawyers were allowed to represent dissidents and more religious worship was tolerated. Tens of thousands of Chinese educated abroad returned home with a taste of economic and political freedom. The hope was that China might evolve, if not into a Western or Japanese democracy, perhaps into a state on the Singapore model of relatively tolerant and uncorrupt one-party rule.

Those hopes have been dashed, starting in the years of Hu Jintao and especially in the ascendancy of President Xi Jinping. At home, economic reforms have stalled as the Party maintains political control over finance and refuses to reform state-owned industries. Donald Trump’s policies have exposed a vulnerability in China’s export-dependent economic model that relies too much on theft and predatory behavior against foreign companies. Beijing must impose currency controls to stop capital flight by Chinese who want a safe haven abroad.

This retrenchment in economic reform has coincided with increasingly draconian political control at home. Self-confident regimes don’t jail human-rights lawyers, crack down on churches or create a Great Firewall and employ tens of thousands of censors to control the internet. Most horrifying has been the effort to eliminate the culture and religion of the Uighur Muslim population in the western region of Xinjiang.

Then there is China’s attempt to dominate the Asia-Pacific, often by bullying its weaker neighbors. It has illegally occupied islands in the South China Sea and turned them into de facto military bases. Its burgeoning navy harasses foreign ships in international waters.

But Chinese leaders also know that their behavior is producing a global backlash that they should not underestimate. Trump’s policy reflects a new bipartisan American consensus that China’s economic abuses must be confronted.

We are not among those who believe that China’s economy must be decoupled from America’s or that China must be “contained” a la the Soviet Union. At least not yet. China’s economy can’t be sent into recession without damaging consequences for American workers and companies. The U.S. Needs to co-exist with a rising China, cooperating when it makes sense but pushing back when China violates global norms. This will be the great test of statesmanship for a generation or more.

Yet how this drama turns out will depend more on how China’s ruling Communist Party behaves. The Party’s legitimacy depends on economic growth that will be harder to sustain as it must innovate to prosper. The rest of the world will no longer let China steal its way to dominance, and it will not passively allow the Indo-Pacific to become part of a modern Chinese dynasty. China will prosper more if it plays by the rules of world order.