China will further open up its services sector by expanding a pilot program for innovative development of trade in services. The pilot program will be rolled out in 17 areas, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, from this July 1 to June 30, 2020. A series of opening-up measures will be piloted covering telecommunications, tourism, engineering consulting, finance and legal services. Restrictions will be gradually lifted or eased, and customs clearance and visa arrangements will be streamlined for a freer flow of goods and people. “Developing services trade is instrumental in transforming China’s development model and achieving high-quality development. The services sector is still an area of weakness in our country’s overall development,” Premier Li Keqiang said.

According to the Ministry of Commerce, China’s trade in services totaled CNY4.7 trillion in 2017, up by 6.8% year-on-year. Exports of services increased by 10.6% to CNY1.54 trillion, while imports rose 5.1% to CNY3.16 trillion. Li emphasized: “Our tourism sector is falling woefully short at the moment. Efforts are needed to make the services at scenic spots and payment methods more overseas tourist-friendly. The possibility of two-way opening-up in emerging services should also be fully explored.” The Chinese government has decided that trade in services in such areas as R&D and design, inspection and testing, international settlement and exhibition will be expanded. Tax exemption policies will be made available for services exports and eligible exporters can enjoy zero tax rates. Exports of emerging services that are guided by the Internet Plus will be encouraged, the China Daily reports.

At least 46 big-budget semiconductor projects are scheduled to be built in China within two to three years, as part of the nation’s broader push to reduce reliance on foreign chip manufacturers. The move comes as China is expediting its research and development of core chip technologies, narrowing the gap between its integrated circuit industry and those of the world’s leading nations in this field.

To realize the goal, a number of provinces and municipalities are seeking to attract semiconductor companies to build factories and R&D centers. In Guangdong province, two semiconductor projects are under construction and will be completed by 2020, with a combined investment of CNY18.6 billion. Another two projects are scheduled to break ground this year, with their total investment reaching CNY4.6 billion, according to the province’s 2018 key project plans. Meanwhile, 15 chip-related projects are either under construction or will be built in Jiangsu province, including plants that make chips for cameras and automobiles, as well as factories producing semiconductor equipment. Companies such as Tsinghua Unigroup and SK Hynix are participating in these projects. In Anhui province, two semiconductor projects will be constructed, with a combined investment of CNY3 billion. A national innovation center for smart sensors will be built to overcome crucial technological bottlenecks.

Shanghai Huali Microelectronics Corp, the city’s largest integrated circuit investment project, saw its first lithography machine imported from Dutch ASML installed on its 12-inch wafer silicon assembly line. The NXT 1980Di is the most advanced immersion lithography tool in the Chinese market. Construction of Huali’s 12-inch wafer silicon assembly line started on December 30, 2016, and has attracted a total investment of CNY38.7 billion. Construction is due to be completed by the end of 2022, when it will have a monthly production capacity of 40,000 wafers. According to global chip market consulting firm DRAMeXchange, 10 production lines for 12-inch wafers were in operation in China by the beginning of this year. Another three production lines are being planned and 11 others are under construction, including the one at Huali.

The intensified push comes as China attaches growing importance to microchips. In recent years, China has spent more than USD200 billion on imported chips annually, more than it spends on crude oil imports, the China Daily reports.

China cannot miss out on being a front runner when it comes to blockchain, which could have huge implications for its economy, Chen Lei, Chief Executive of Xunlei, a U.S.-listed technology company, said at a conference on blockchain in Beijing. “I believe there will be a main blockchain that dominates the market,” Chen said during the conference, that was supported by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). “I think China needs to encourage and invest in building one for the nation,” he said. Chen said U.S. companies had dominated the technology behind mobile operating systems, global position systems and microchips, and that it was important for Beijing to lead on blockchain.

At the conference, the Ministry launched a white paper detailing areas that China should focus on: the application of blockchain in industries such as trade finance, transaction settlement, insurance and securities, along with intellectual property, wealth management, big data, energy and health care. Zhang Lei, Founder and Chief Executive of start-up Yeecall, a messaging app that facilitates cross-border payments, said that companies should focus on areas supported by the government, and not on developments such as initial coin offerings (ICOs). China last year became the first country to ban ICOs, a form of crowdsourced fundraising by which companies exchange newly created cryptocurrencies, or tokens, for payments in an existing currency, which can be cash or, most often, an established cryptocurrency. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said about 90% of ICOs launched in China had been fraudulent. The government also shut down local exchanges for virtual currency trading, such as Okcoin and Huobi.

China has been a force to reckon with in the mining industry, but the government is also cracking down on this sector. Jihan Wu, co-founder of Bitmain, which operates one of the world’s biggest bitcoin mines, said that the company was expanding into the U.S. and was currently building mining facilities.

Venture capital funds on the other hand are more and more investing in blockchain. The government of Hangzhou is investing in a CNY10 billion fund, which claims to be the world’s biggest fund investing in blockchain projects. The fund is managed by Tulan and INBlockchain, a company founded by virtual currency entrepreneur Li Xiaolai, the South China Morning Post reports.

Over the next three years, the cutting-edge technology is expected to be widely integrated into sectors such as product traceability, copyright protection, bill verification, precision marketing, energy and healthcare, said Yu Jianing, Director of the Institute of Industrial Economics at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). As of March, the number of blockchain tech companies in China exceeded 456. The year 2017 marked the peak year for blockchain development in China, with 178 new companies emerging in the sector. In December, the Standardization Administration approved a project to establish the country’s first national standard for blockchain technology. The standard is expected to be ready as soon as the end of 2019. It will cover operations and applications, processing and methodology, and information security, the China Daily added.

Air Canada, Lufthansa and British Airways are among airlines that have begun referring to Taiwan explicitly as a part of China, despite the White House’s call this month to stand firm against such demands by China. Associated Press found 20 carriers, including Air Canada, Lufthansa, British Airways, Finnair, Garuda Indonesia, Asiana Airlines and Philippine Airlines, that now refer to Taiwan as a part of China.

If airlines refuse to adjust the wording, they may face consequences that some say could cripple their China business. The spread of “Taiwan, China” on the drop-down menus and maps of airline websites represents an alignment with the wishes of Chinese President Xi Jinping for foreign companies to conform to China’s geopolitical vision. As China steps up efforts to isolate Taiwan diplomatically, the list of multinationals that have adopted Beijing’s position is long, and growing. U.S. clothing retailer The Gap apologized this month for selling T-shirts with a map of China that omitted Taiwan, and pulled the offending merchandise from stores around the world. In January, Delta Air Lines, Marriott, Zara and Medtronic all publicly apologized for referring to Taiwan as a country.

“You can’t just say ‘no’,” said Carly Ramsey, a regulatory risk specialist at Control Risks, a consultancy in Shanghai. “Increasingly, for situations like this, non-compliance is not an option if you want to do business in and with China.” On April 25, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) sent a letter to 36 foreign airlines ordering them to explicitly refer to Taiwan as a part of China. In a strongly worded statement 10 days later, the White House called that demand “Orwellian nonsense”.

China’s Foreign Ministry hit back the next day, saying Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao are “inalienable” parts of China’s territory and foreign companies operating in China “should respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, abide by China’s laws and respect the national sentiment of the Chinese people”. Major U.S. carriers have not yet changed their wording, the South China Morning Post reports. “For most carriers, their China routes are much more important revenue contributors and higher growth markets compared to Taiwan so it makes commercial sense for them to comply, even if it offends Taiwan,” said Corrine Png, Chief Executive of transport research firm Crucial Perspective.

On May 25 the CAAC extended the deadline to comply to July 25 after a majority of carriers said they needed more time to iron out technical problems. Only 18 of the 44 companies it contacted last month had so far complied with its request to make clear that Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao are all parts of China.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which is planning to raise USD10 billion in a Hong Kong public listing this summer, has launched sales in France and Italy. In France Xiaomi will sell products through its first Mi Store in Paris, via its own e-commerce platform mi.com, and on other online and offline platforms including Amazon and Cdiscount. The plan is to open five authorized Xiaomi stores in Paris in 2018. The Beijing-based smartphone brand has established agreements with telecoms carriers in France, including Orange, SFR, Bouygues and Free. To date the company has established a presence in 74 markets around the world.

Smartphone shipments in western Europe slowed in the first quarter, declining 13.9% year-on-year compared to a 6.3% drop for all of Europe, according to market research firm Canalys. The French market saw one of the biggest declines, with shipments down 23.2% in the quarter over the same period a year ago. However, Xiaomi and fellow Chinese smartphone brand Huawei Technologies bucked the trend to post solid growth in Europe in the first quarter, boosting shipments by more than 999% and 38.6% respectively, while leading brands Samsung and Apple saw 15.4% and 5.4% declines respectively.

Six months ago Xiaomi entered Spain, its first stop in western Europe, reaching the No 3 spot in that country in the first quarter. In the same period Xiaomi was ranked the No 1 smartphone vendor in India, accounting for about 30% of the market, and was the second largest smartphone maker in Indonesia. Xiaomi won fourth place in terms of volume in Europe, shipping 2.4 million smartphones with around 1,000% year-on-year growth, accounting for 5.3% of total smartphone shipments to Europe.