China Tech Talk

This week, I’m really excited to welcome Tiezhen/Tom Wang from Huggingface on my show. You can find him here on X.We talked about his background working at Google before he joined HF. Although, we did not get a chance to go really deep into running AI on robotics, but we did discuss the constraints facing AI on edge devices. Basically, 7B parameter model is close to the largest models we can reasonable run on a phone and small board type of device due to memory constraint. Although, Tom has been raving about OpenGLM’s open sourced 9B parameter AI agent that can reach your phone GUI and handle tasks.We then talked about what you can do to fine tune models. For those out there that are interested, I would definitely recommend trying it with one of the 3B to 8B parameter Qwen models and use your own data. You can also try quantizing it (which may require data set depending on which NPU you are running off).Open sourcing is very exciting and collaborative for many AI researchers. That’s why they are working so hard on it. I get that. And you can see with the number of projects and check ins on AI projects, many of them are just done by Chinese researchers. Chinese devs are not only rolling out open source models, but also involved in help building all the tools used in AI work.Toward the end, we spoke more about the economics involved in AI right now. Why certain AI labs are racing to IPO. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tphuang.substack.com

As we hit the Christmas season of 2025, I have a special episode out to first talk about the 6 future industries that China said it will be focusing on over the 15th Five Year Plan period.The industries are Quantum Computing, Bio-Manufacturing, Hydrogen & Nuclear Fusion, Brain Computer Interconnect (BCI), Embodied AI and 6G Telecom. Embodied AI is something I really care about and talked about quite a bit on this episode. Especially as it relates to EV and smart phones. Hydrogen and Embodied AI will have huge 2026 in China. Keep an eye on the number of consumer embodied AI products like toys, little gadgets and companions that will come online next year.I also talked a little bit about H200 and the EUV news. I’m not too worked up by either news. I think H200 purchase will have a positive effect for the small AI labs like DeepSeek, Zhipu, Moonshot and Minimax. But the biggest players in China’s AI world are still ByteDance and Alibaba. ByteDance made a very strong move recently with Doubao Phone. They are only going to push further ahead here next year with more OEM partners. Xiaomi and Huawei are likely going to use their own LLMs. Xiaomi’s recently released model was really good. I’m generally not too surprised by EUV news. I think it shows that there are so many people know about the projects that even Reuters found out about it. Getting this into risk production and HVM will require them to fine tune the entire process and get all the little details right. We will see how long that will take. I would think 2028 would be on the later side. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tphuang.substack.com

This week, I welcomed my friend Dan on the show. You can find him on x https://x.com/DanCollins2011. He worked extensively in China’s auto industry and actually lived in Shanghai area until a few years again. I welcomed him on my show to talk about his experience in China and now in America with the semiconductor industry.Just like episode 16, I feel the conversation about traditional engineering and hard sciences is really important. Mechanical and chemical engineering on traditional pillars of industrialization. Too much focus has been on China’s new tech sector and not enough time has been looking at China’s advancement in traditional engineering sector (outside of the EV sales).We also talked about the China and US relationship. I welcome his optimistic outlook of the relationship. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tphuang.substack.com

This week, I asked my friend Mr. W to come on the show to talk about China’s progress in traditional industry like chemical and mechanical industry. We also spent a lot of time talking about China’s changes in engineering code and how that has catapulted the quality of their product since 2014.The traditional engineering and hard science industries have much longer development time cycle than more “sexy” new industries like software and AI. It takes long period of R&D (just incredible amount of test and trials) to develop the right procedures, material science and building standard. The West has decades of R&D head start vs China in these areas. So even though people that work in these industries in North America are generally older (without a lot of young blood), they are still ahead in many areas. China will have to do the grind to catch up across the board. Although, it has already caught up in many areas. We talked about how the enforcement of engineering code has significantly moved China up the value chain. The only way China can get past the news stories of “lead painted toys” and “cheap Chinese crap” is through consistently improving quality.But the interesting part is just how losing the older generation of traditional engineering talents will have on US industrial competitiveness in the future. You can see this video here where an American tried to make a BBQ brush with all American components only to find it impossible to find machinists to do many of the simple tools needed for the brush. If a “simple” expertise like making basic components on BBQ brush can go away so completely over time, it would be catastrophic to lose machinists from Boeing & chemical engineers from Dow Industry over the next decade or two. After we recorded the podcast, news came out that China had developed 17m super long super high pressure steel pipe after 13 years of R&D. This can used to transport high-temperature, high pressure, flammable/explosive oil, gas and chemicals. The manufacturing of 10m+ pipes in this segment had long been monopolized by foreign countries, so huge step by Norinco to develop this.And finally, we discussed how the advanced economies will hate China for taking away the fat margins that they get in these traditional higher value added industries. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tphuang.substack.com

This week, I invited Rick Joe onto my podcast to talk about the commissioning of the CV-18 Fujian carrier. Rick talked about the previous carriers and the steps that PLAN took to get to its first catapult equipped super carrier. We also discussed about how PLAN is likely to use CV-18 initially. Be patient guys. It took 9 years for CV-16 to achieve FOC status after joining service in 2012. It will probably be faster for CV-18, but give it sometime to fully develop and operate all the necessary aircraft.We then talked about all the aircraft that are likely to operate off CV-18. KJ-600 may be the most interesting and important one.After that, we moved onto our next topic of 9/3 parade and the general PLA development in the past year. The drone discoveries are very interesting and so are all the missiles. Rick offered his thoughts on those platforms also. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tphuang.substack.com