China’s Internet giants from Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) to ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) have shared details of their prized algorithms with Beijing for the first time, an unprecedented move aimed at curbing data abuse that might end up compromising closely guarded corporate secrets.
China’s Internet watchdog on Friday published a list describing 30 algorithms that firms including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) and Meituan (美團) employ to gather data on users, tailor personal recommendations and serve up content.
Although the public list stopped short of revealing the actual code, it was not clear the extent to which Internet firms may have revealed their underlying software to regulators in private.
The algorithms that decide which TikTok videos, WeChat posts and Instagram photos users see are considered the secret sauce of many online services, critical in capturing user attention and driving growth.
China in March adopted regulations that require Internet firms to disclose such tools, an effort to address complaints about data abuse that also helps regulators keep Internet firms on a tighter leash.
Tech industry algorithms are jealously guarded and have been at the heart of political controversies around the world.
That disclosure requirement sets China apart from countries such as the US, where Meta Platforms Inc and Alphabet Inc have argued successfully that algorithms are business secrets, even as lawmakers and privacy advocates seek to better understand how they curate content and manage data.
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) requires only basic information from the companies, but it might seek more details to investigation allegations of data contraventions, said Zhai Wei (翟巍), an executive director of the Competition Law Research Center at East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai.
China has been tightening regulations to rein in the once-unchecked expansion of the country’s tech giants. Last year, the country introduced the Personal Information Protection Law and the Data Security Law to set out tougher rules for how companies handle user data.
The algorithm list available for public review is confined to short descriptions of how they work, and the product and use cases where they apply.
For example, ByteDance says its algorithm discerns a user’s likes and dislikes to recommend content on apps including short-video platform Douyin (抖音), TikTok’s Chinese cousin. Meituan says its algorithms help dispatch meal orders to riders in the most efficient way based on their downtime and delivery route.
Under the regulations, companies must also submit nonpublic information to the CAC, including a self-appraisal on the security of the algorithms, the data they collect, whether that encompasses sensitive biometric or identity information, and what data sources are used to train algorithms.
The administration — which issued the guidelines in tandem with the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security and the State Administration for Market Regulation — said it would keep updating the list.
“The information provided by the companies to the CAC are much more detailed than what was published for sure, and that involves some business secrets, which is not possible to be released to the public,” Zhai said.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
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