2020 Year in Review: The Tech News That Kept Us Distracted, Excited, and Confused

2020 Year in Review: The Tech News That Kept Us Distracted, Excited, and Slightly Confused

Drew Pittock, Contributing Editor | Dec 16, 2020 11:30 am | Add a comment | 311 reads

The 20th year of this millennium has been the longest yet, and boy are we ready to say goodbye. But hey, if we had to spend it anywhere, then Beijing ain't a half shabby place to do so. In 2020 Year in Review, we're taking a look back at all the happenings in this city that somehow managed to keep us sane while the world went crazy.

The year was 2020 and citizens of the world were dressed in all manner of silver garb, darting between galaxies in hyper-speed vehicles and downing pills containing all the necessary nutrients for a healthy 200-year life… Just kidding! For all of our technological advancements, 2020 was in fact marred by something altogether more primitive: an organism even less complex than common bacteria. Way to go, humanity! That’s not to say our technological abundance didn’t mitigate the devastation that could have been brought by COVID-19, however, it was a wake-up call of sorts. The undeniable fact that despite how “advanced” we think we’ve become, we are just humans after all, no less vulnerable than those who came before us. Having said that, driverless taxis and other cool shiny things!

RELX got a new generation of robots hooked on vaping

This year started off with a bang – or at least a puff – when RELX, China’s largest e-cigarette manufacturer launched Project Sunflower, a new facial recognition system that alerts store personnel to an underage patron trying to purchase the company’s products. The news came on the heels of a series of vape-induced deaths stateside, which was enough to put the fear into Chinese regulators who summarily banned the online sale of e-cigarettes altogether. Initially rolled out at their flagship store in Shanghai, the facial-recognition system hit a store in Beijing’s 798 Art District shortly thereafter.

That wasn’t the only futuristic tech the shops began touting, either, as they also debuted a robotic arm dedicated to shaking up the perfect mix of flavors at the request of customers, with another robot on hand to engrave e-cigarette devices. In fact, RELX had a host of ambitious plans for “immersive shopping” in 2020, which you can read all about right here.

Tencent picked a spicy legal battle

Not all of 2020’s tech news was gadgets and gizmos. In fact, one story that dominated headlines was rooted in something 70 years old. That is, the time China’s tech behemoth, Tencent, got itself in a legal tussle with the country’s most beloved chili sauce, Lao Gan Ma, and Tao Huabi, the face of the company and acclaimed “Hottest Woman in China.”

Last July, news broke that a Chinese court had frozen Lao Gan Ma assets worth RMB 16.24 million following an unspecified complaint filed by Tencent. Initially, the story was nothing more than routine litigation, with Tencent claiming that Lao Gan Ma had “failed to pay Tencent advertising fees to promote its chili sauces for a long time.” In response, Lao Gan Ma issued a statement claiming they had “no commercial cooperation with Tencent” and denied any malpractice.

It wasn’t until a few days later, however, that the story took a turn for the weird when Guiyang police arrested three people accused of scamming Tencent by pretending to be representatives of Lao Gan Ma's marketing department, forging official company stamps, and signing a promotional contract with Tencent.

Case closed… We’re just glad that Lao Gan Ma and Tao Huabi came out of the tussle unscathed, and that we can continue enjoying the spicy national treasure free from the stain of shady business practices.

Black market bio traders saved face(s) for profit

Ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal that rocked the Western world in 2018, we’ve been well aware of data harvesting for questionable means, but here on the mainland, that was ratcheted up a notch when Xinhua reported in July that online “vendors” were selling suspicious merchandise called “human faces tool kits,” which turned out to be a laundry list of personal information including facial recognition data pulled from various platforms. Adding insult to injury, one face – perhaps your face – was going for a measly RMB 0.5, no more than the price of a plastic grocery bag.

One small step for green space enthusiasts, one giant leap for Beijing’s parks

In local news, September saw the announcement of Beijing’s plans to turn all of its parks “smart” by 2022 as part of the national Smart City pilot program. Under the auspices of the Guide for the Construction of Beijing Smart Parks, the municipal government began automating many elements of park maintenance and increasing the interactivity of parks with local visitors.

While it’ll still be some time before every green space is outfitted with the new bells and whistles, some began the transformation this year such as Xihai Wetland Park, which now features streetlights that go above and beyond mere illumination, and are capable of monitoring, public broadcasting, and emergency management, meaning if you see someone rollerblade into a tree or you can’t find your way out of the park, simply press a button on the nearest smart light pole and help will be on the way! Other features include ramped up video recognition technology to – ostensibly – assist with crowd control and maintenance, QR codes on lamp posts and signs to teach visitors about the local flora, and robo-gardeners in charge of making sure everything looks pretty.

Meanwhile, in Haidian Park, new facial recognition cameras are in place to track visitor’s fitness information and keep them abreast of their performance, as well as smart trash cans that use AI voice recognition technology to publicly shame people when they don’t sort their trash correctly.

Cryptocurrency went mainstream, still confusing as hell

Up until this year, cryptocurrency was the domain of irritating people at parties who would drone on and on about that which the rest of us are too much of a Luddite to fully comprehend, or simply don’t care about it. Nevertheless, 2020 was the year that cryptocurrency – or digital currency to the non-hackers among us – went mainstream when China announced back in April that it would be the first economic superpower backed central bank to bring its monies into the 21st century. What followed were a bunch of buzzwords like blockchain architecture and I-thought-WeChat-was-a-digital-currency, followed by the slow rollout in some of China’s most tech-savvy regions such as Chengdu, Suzhou, and Shenzhen. Then, last month, it was announced that the digi-kuai would begin its second round of testing in Beijing and was further tested on e-commerce juggernaut JD.com during last week’s 12.12 shopping bonanza.

In terms of when this thing will actually become commonplace, it was also recently announced that the digital yuan should be fairly functional by the 2022 Winter Olympics when hordes of tourists will be able to use it at Olympic hotspots such as hotels, restaurants, and stadiums. Keep an eye out for our 2021 Year in Tech Review for more updates!

Autonomous vehicles embarked on a journey of self-discovery

2020 was the year of the autonomous vehicle as the country approved testing licenses for 77 different self-driving automobiles from 13 different companies. The breakout stars? Baidu and Shenzhen-based AutoX, which both made headlines this year as they began testing driverless taxis. Back in May, it was announced that 52 roads would be opened up in Haidian so that driverless cars could begin testing in anticipation of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Then, in September and October, Baidu’s Apollo GO launched in Haidian and Shunyi, albeit on limited routes that were only capable of picking up passengers at designated stops along few roads, all while a person oversaw the trip in case of an emergency. Things must have gone smoothly, however, because this month Baidu was granted permits to do away with the supervisors, making them the first to launch fully unmanned taxis in Beijing, and the second to do so in China, behind AutoX.

Save for simply testing the cars, in September Beijing also began literally laying the groundwork when they built roughly 100km of a new expressway connecting the capital to Xiong’an. It all seemed pretty unimpressive until we learned that the stretch of road incorporated two dedicated lanes for driverless cars and that the whole thing was built exclusively by driverless construction vehicles! The future is now, folks.