GUANGZHOU, China — China’s know-how sector has taken a wild journey over the previous yr, with rules tightened, billions of {dollars} wiped off corporations’ market worth, and a seamless push from Beijing for technological self-sufficiency.

These are among the many vital themes that might be addressed at CNBC’s annual East Tech West occasion within the Nansha district of Guangzhou in southern China.

This is a take a look at the highest issues and focuses of China’s know-how sector proper now.

In November 2020, what would have been a world record-setting preliminary public providing of fintech big Ant Group was suspended.

Following that, Beijing launched a slew of latest guidelines in areas from antitrust for web platforms and a bolstered information safety regulation. Each e-commerce big Alibaba and meals supply agency Meituan have confronted antitrust fines.

That has weighed closely on China’s web names. For instance, Alibaba’s shares are down 41% year-to-date.

A number of questions are swirling:

• Will China introduce extra new regulation and in what areas?
• What corporations might be focused subsequent?
• What does it imply for development of the tech sector in China?

CNBC tackled a few of this in a current episode of the “Past the Valley” podcast under. These conversations will proceed at East Tech West.

The persevering with know-how rivalry between the U.S. and China has added urgency to Beijing’s push for elevated self-sufficiency throughout quite a lot of sectors. A type of is semiconductors, that are crucial for all the things from vehicles to cellphones.

However China is struggling to meet up with the U.S. and different international locations, and that is due to the complexity of the semiconductor provide chain, which is dominated by international corporations.

A great instance is the sphere of chip manufacturing. SMIC, which is China’s largest contract chip producer, is a number of years behind Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung. SMIC is definitely unable to fabricate the most recent cutting-edge chips required for main smartphones.

International corporations dominate probably the most superior instruments and tools required for the manufacture of high-end chips. U.S. sanctions have denied China entry to a few of these instruments. Chinese language corporations cannot compete.

How China will increase its home chip trade within the face of these hurdles is a significant, ongoing debate.

The semiconductor trade is only one of many industries the place China is attempting to spice up its credentials.

In its five-year improvement plan, the 14th of its sort, launched earlier this yr, Beijing mentioned it could make “science and know-how self-reliance and self-improvement a strategic pillar for nationwide improvement.”

The plan identifies areas which Beijing sees as “frontier know-how” — synthetic intelligence (AI) and house journey.

China has made notable progress in house, together with launching its personal house station. It has ambitions to ship its first crewed mission to Mars in 2033.

In relation to synthetic intelligence, Chinese language know-how giants from Baidu to Tencent are investing closely.

One other space that China is emphasizing — and one which traders know nicely — is electrical autos. The trade is a part of its drive to cut back emissions and pledge to develop into carbon impartial by 2060.

For a number of years, the Chinese language authorities has supported the event of so-called new vitality autos by way of subsidies and different favorable insurance policies. That has led to tens of hundreds of corporations getting into the trade, although many have by no means produced a single automobile.

About 1.1 million electrical autos had been offered within the first half of this yr, almost as many as had been offered in all of 2020, in line with market analysis agency Canalys. China is the world’s largest electrical automobile market.

That development has attracted plenty of new gamers with a know-how background. Xiaomi, which is understood for smartphones, expects to mass produce its personal electrical autos within the first half of 2024, whereas search big Baidu has arrange its personal electrical automobile enterprise with Chinese language automaker Geely.

China’s know-how giants now are having to deal with a slowing Chinese language economic system.

Plenty of components together with energy shortages and efforts to rein in debt-fueled enlargement in the actual property sector have added to different financial challenges, akin to sluggish shopper spending.

It is beginning to filter by way of into company monetary outcomes. Alibaba slashed its income steering for the present fiscal yr.

Tencent Chief Technique Officer James Mitchell mentioned on the corporate’s earnings name that he expects promoting to “stay tender for a number of quarters as a result of macro challenges and rules affecting sure key promoting sectors.”