China Tech Talk

I have joined a project called the China Research Collective to look into providing English language translations of how China thinks about different topics of modern economy. This week, I invited Qian Yu on the show to discuss it and to talk about the first topic we are looking at together: Embodied AI.
It is very good to have him on the show, because he is in Tsinghua University right now and have access to many of the people involved in China’s LLM and embodied AI industry. Of course, I have my own experience with China’s embodied AI industry which I’ve talked about before. So, I think this is a good thing to explore as I discussed Galbot investment, Xiaomi’s usage of robots in its factories, the entire supply chain, D-Robotics AI chips and services like Tuya (which help customers find suitable model, hardware module & ODM). It is amazing to have access to this supply chain, which allows prototyping in just 4-6 weeks. That’s something not possible if you are working on these projects in America.


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This week, I invited my discord friend “Sagar” on the show to talk about his experience in moving back to China from his finance sector job in America. It is always interesting to broach this topic, because many of us who grew up in the West now see living standard higher in major cities in China than where we live.
I thought it was important for someone who made the move to give everyone an idea of the experience of moving to a tier 1 city like Shanghai and settling down with your friend + looking for a job afterward.
Since we both work in finance, we had a discussion also about Shanghai’s finance sector and what it needs to do to create more service sector jobs to accommodate all the young college grads coming into the work force.
I apologize for audio this week. Due to the fact that Sagar had issue connecting to my usual recording site (vpn problems), the quality of recording was worse than usual.


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This is an emergency episode of my podcast and I invited Bora back to the show to talk about Type 09V submarine.
In my mind, this is possibly the most consequential PLA program of the next decade. Well, this program and the Type 09VI submarine that will likely come along also. This submarine by itself will change the balance of naval warfare globally once it enters service in large quantity in the early 2030s.
Think of a modern Chinese version of Seawolf. That’s what Type 09V is.
And Type 09VI will also be quite the strategic and geopolitical gamechanger because it will be the first non Western SSBN that can get close to CONUS without being tailed. That was never the case for Russian/Soviet SSBNs.
There will be more analysis of Type 09V by myself and others in the future, but I hope this is a good first technical overview online.


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I welcomed back Glenn to talk about something that he knows far better than me. How has China prioritized investment in different industries over the reform period since opening up.
China started off by getting investment and investing its own money in export factories to get wealthy through exporting to global market. After the great financial crisis hit, China shifted toward growing its economy and invest in economy through more emphasis on the real estate and infrastructure. This had actually started after liberalization of housing ownership in the late 90s but was really accelerated with many shovel ready projects in second half of 2000s. Eventually, this was shifted to new productive high tech industries as Chinese businesses continue to get more competitive in the global market. Every phase of development made a lot of sense given where China was in terms of development, economic size and demographics.
As we head toward the 15th Five Year Plan, we should see continued focus on investment in areas like grid toward more clean energy (State Grid is investing 4B RMB over this period) as it seeks more energy and technological independence.


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This week, I welcomed back my friend Bora to talk about where things are at currently. The hot topic of this week is Trump’s capture of Maduro and his operation in Venezuela. We discussed about Greenland also and MAGA’s desire to take it. We also talked about Iran and the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
There is a lot of stuff going on geopolitically. But since this is a China based podcast, we also talked about interesting platforms we saw for the PLA in 2025 and what we are looking forward to in 2026.


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