They say that politics, and certainly that of the geo-political variety, weaves itself into every walk of life. Well, it seems that this is no more true than in the major announcement the other week of the possible US$40 billion acquisition of Arm by Nvidia. It probably doesn’t take a tech genius nor economics whizz to figure out how far-reaching the implications of this could potentially be.

On Tuesday June 23, China successfully launched the final satellite of the third generation Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS-3), completing global coverage of China’s own GPS-type navigation system, while marking China’s independence of the US-owned GPS.

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to grip most countries of the world, some definite shoots of recovery are taking hold, not least in China.

Now plunged into absolute crisis by the outbreak of coronavirus Covid-19, Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, is an astonishing dynamo at the heart of China’s push for high-tech development, building directly on the city’s growth into an established industrial base. Home to 11 million, this huge manufacturing centre is frequently dubbed ‘the Chicago of the East’, and ‘four times the size of London’.

While China is often assumed to be a generation or two behind in chip-making skills, design engineers are now flocking to a bunch of ‘disruptive’ AI startups in China.