While it’s tempting to simplify the Chinese tech sector to 'soft' versus 'hard' tech, this is not the reality.
In recent months, there’s been a lot of noise made about China’s pivot away from “soft tech” (the internet) to “hard tech” (e.g., semiconductors). It’s an intuitive distinction, because unlike in English, where we use the word “tech” as a catchall, the Chinese language separates “internet” companies from “science & technology” driven ones. Even I was taken in by this easy narrative initially, not least because it would sometimes show up in joking banter with Chinese
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