Shanghai Street View: Technology Frenzy
Something seemed strangely familiar when I read a story this week about a new $1 billion joint venture here in Shanghai between local TV giant SMG and a US company called Jaunt. I could swear that perhaps I’d read the story before, or at least something similar. But then I realized my sense of deja vu was prompted by the term “virtual reality”, or VR, which was the focus of this new tie-up and has become a sudden buzzword in our local media.
VR isn’t the only high-tech word buzzing around our media here in Shanghai these days. In addition, we’re suddenly getting swamped with stories about high-tech incubators, as well as robots and artificial intelligence (AI). The new robot craze seems particularly pronounced, and a search for the word on Shanghai Daily’s website returned a staggering 889 results, including 15 in May alone.
Among those were stories on a robot roulette dealer in Macau, a Shenzhen maker of robot kits that just received new funding, and the growing use of robots to do many household chores. If I were being cynical, I might say that this sudden media fascination with high-tech looks slightly engineered, as the government tries to harness our city’s high-tech spirit and move beyond the traditional manufacturing that powered China’s growth for most of the last 3 decades.
The fact of the matter is that China really does need to move beyond traditional manufacturing to keep its economy growing and stay globally competitive. But this kind of sudden frenzy of activity seems equally aimed at meeting government targets as it is at true innovation, and I suspect that many of these newly announced VR, AI, robotic and other initiatives will ultimately turn out to be clunkers.
SMG’s new VR initiative looked like many of the other reports, hyping the big role that virtual reality will play in the future world of entertainment. SMG’s Oriental Pearl unit made the actual investment with US-based Jaunt, saying they will work together on the project with smart TV maker Whaley Tech. In its announcement, SMG boasted that it was China’s first broadcaster to announce a VR strategy.
Perhaps that’s the case, though SMG certainly isn’t the first to discuss VR. A similar search on that term turned up a more modest though still sizable 41 results, including the new SMG joint venture and 5 others in May.
Starting with AlphaGo
The current fascination with these high-tech topics seems to date back to earlier this year, when China was captivated by an AI-powered robot named AlphaGo that challenged South Korean master Lee Sedol in a 5 game match playing the ancient board game of go, or weiqi in Chinese. AI enthusiasts will know that after declaring he would handily defeat the computer at the complex game, Lee ended up losing the match by a decisive 4 games to 1.
Ever since then the terms AI and robot have become a part of the local lexicon, especially on the TV news where images of robots of all shapes and sizes performing different tasks makes for lively viewing. In all fairness, this kind of bandwagon reporting is also fairly common in the west, and many argue that western media often set the public agenda by what they choose to report on.
The issue of climate change was unknown to most people just a couple of decades ago, but has become almost a daily feature in the news today due to the global media’s fascination with the topic. High-tech drones have also captured the western media’s imagination, and are a regular feature in the news.
The last time I remember this kind of frenzy in our local media was around 3 years ago, when Shanghai launched its Free Trade Zone in Pudong, the first of its kind in China. Back then, it seemed like no day would ever pass without some mention of the zone, which came to be known affectionately as the FTZ in English and zimaoqu in Chinese.
There were stories featuring officials discussing the FTZ’s new policies, plus regular features on new companies setting up shop and updates on the number of firms that had registered in the zone. Fast forward to the present, when it’s almost uncanny how the topic has almost completely disappeared from the news these days.
I argued long ago that a lower-key approach was what was really needed for the FTZ, and that the city should focus more on making the zone a friendly place for business and worry less about a media blitz for mainstream consumers who weren’t really that important to its success. It’s hard to say if the same will happen with this latest high-tech crazy, since the topics do seem a bit more scattered and also have some relevance to ordinary consumers. But I do expect the frenzy will die down by the end of this year, as our media’s fascination with the topic wanes and it moves on to the next big thing.
