The 2018 World Internet of Things Exposition is being held at the Wuxi Taihu International Expo Center in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, from September 15 to 18. The IoT expo offers new experiences in areas including intelligent driving, shopping, catering, agriculture and healthcare.

The LTE-V2X, the world’s first citywide car networking application system, is showcasing the concept of intelligent traffic. The V2X, short of vehicle to everything, covers vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, vehicle-to- internet and vehicle-to-pedestrian communications. The LTE-V2X also plays an important role in automatic driving. By analyzing real-time traffic information, the system can choose the best driving route automatically, reducing traffic congestion dramatically. Sensors can perceive the vehicle’s surroundings and react swiftly to avoid road accidents as much as possible. During the Expo, Wuxi launched a car networking system covering 226 intersections and five elevated highways across the city, aiming to serve 100,000 vehicles.

The national intelligent transportation comprehensive testing base in Wuxi plans to start public road testing
of autonomous vehicles. The base is the first and only one of its kind initiated by the Ministry of Public Security so far. Unveiled in August last year, the testing base will cover more than 138,600 square meters upon completion at the end of 2019. The closed road for testing will be 3.53 kilometers and at least 150 different driving scenarios are included in the testing base. Total investment is about CNY1 billion. SAIC Motor and Audi China were granted testing licenses for their autonomous cars. Audi China will set up a center in Wuxi in the first quarter next year to conduct research and development as well as testing. BMW and Daimler previously already obtained licenses issued by the municipal governments of Shanghai and Beijing respectively.

An unmanned supermarket developed by China Telecom and convenience store chain Lawson is another highlight of the Expo. In the supermarket, customers can pay for goods by scanning their faces, with a half price discount included courtesy of China Telecom. According to the organizing committee of the 2018 World IoT Expo, more than 450 enterprises are taking part in the event, among which 35 are Fortune Global 500 companies. A record 180,000 visitors are expected to attend this year’s Expo. Dozens of high-level forums, discussing intelligent manufacturing, the industrial internet, artificial intelligence, big data, IoT information security, intelligent agriculture and intelligent environmental protection, will be held at the expo. Currently, more than 1,000 IoT companies have settled in Wuxi’s High-tech District, which cover all the sectors of the IoT industry chain, including semiconductor chips, cloud computing and big data, the China Daily reports.

A recent report from market consultancy IDC predicted that China will become the world’s largest Internet of Things (IoT) market by 2022. The IoT market in China was already worth more than CNY1 trillion last year, and is expected to maintain rapid growth in the next few years. Smart cities, the industrial IoT, internet of vehicles and the smart home have emerged as the major four market segments. Gartner estimated that 8.4 billion connected devices were in use globally in 2017, with a 31% increase year-on-year.

Nio, the start-up trying to take on Tesla in China, has slashed its fundraising size by nearly half as it became the first Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker listed in the U.S. Backed by Tencent, Nio is offering 160 million American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) at USD6.26, near the bottom of the indicative range of USD6.25 to USD8.25 per ADR. The fundraising’s value now stands at USD1 billion, down 44% from the previous target of USD1.8 billion in its initial prospectus published on August 13. “An important issue is about the overall outlook of the Chinese EV sector,” said Angus Chan, Shanghai-based Analyst for Bocom International. “The competition is fierce, as many players are entering the market, while there is only so much demand, and EV makers’ short-term profitability is being questioned.”

Nio’s shares closed 10% up on their New York IPO debut in one of the year’s largest Chinese public offerings in the U.S. Nio raised USD1 billion and has a goal to turn profitable within three to four years.

Nio is a relative newcomer to the rapidly growing Chinese market. Founded in 2014 by Li Bin, it only launched its first production vehicle the ES8 – an all-electric, seven-passenger SUV – in December last year. The company claims its cars match Tesla’s models in performance, but at half the list price. The ES8 sells at a base price of CNY448,000, while Tesla’s Model X comes with a whopping CNY920,000 price tag in China. The company has delivered 1,381ES8s, and also has deposit-backed orders for another 15,700, it claims. Nio only started generating revenue this year, with USD7 million in the first six months. But it suffered a net loss of more than USD502 million during the same period. The company expects its capital expenditure to reach USD1.8 billion over the next three years.

Xie Zhicai, Analyst for Huatai Securities, said that “the clock is ticking for electric vehicle start-ups to raise capital. Car making is a capital-intensive and technology-driven industry. Early-stage development already requires significant investment. It’s better to be early than late to launch an initial public offering (IPO) to support subsequent capital needs from the secondary market.” Chinese EV car markers are also now faced with the challenge of fighting off foreign competitors, as the country lifted the ban on foreign ownership of local car ventures at the end of July.

Tesla is preparing to set up its “Gigafactory 3” in Lingang near Shanghai’s free-trade zone, with an annual capacity to produce 500,000 electric vehicles. “As soon as Tesla starts mass-producing in China, it will have a direct impact on domestic car firms,” Jia Xinguang, Executive Director of the China Automobile Dealers Association (CADA), told a public forum on the future of China’s EV industry in Shandong province. “There is only a window of three to five years for Chinese EV makers to come up with competitive products and services,” he added. The Chinese government forecasts there will be 2 million EVs on Chinese roads by 2020, and five years later, they will be accounting for a quarter of all car sales.

But years of massive government subsidies have led to overcapacity risks. Total production capacity had already reached 5 million vehicles by the end of last year, according to an estimate by China Automotive Technology & Research Center. The government is also phasing out subsidies, affecting the profitability of domestic EV makers, the South China Morning Post reports.

Even the China’s leading player in the sector, BYD, has been hit by the cut in government handouts. It said last month its net profit crashed 72% in the first half, which it blamed on the policy change. BYD said it will direct more resources into developing electric cars with longer driving ranges.

China’s auto sales fell for a second month in August on weak consumer demand but new-energy vehicles, with sales surges of nearly 50%, “have become the driving force for growth,” the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said. In August, sales of NEVs soared 49.5% to 101,000 units, while production jumped 39% to 99,000 units. Sales of electric vehicles increased 31.7% to 73,000 units while 28,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles were sold last month, a jump of 130.8% from a year earlier.

China’s home prices rose at their fastest pace in almost two years in August, increasing the likelihood of more government tightening in the housing market. New-home prices increased 1.49% from the previous month, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data for 70 cities released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). That compared with a 1.2% increase in July. It was the sixth straight monthly acceleration. Of the 70 cities, the biggest month-on-month price increase in August was a 3.4% gain in Wuxi. In Beijing, where still more tightening was announced, prices were unchanged; in Shanghai, they were up 0.1%.

The government is likely to maintain property curbs, based on fears that any relaxation will lead to another round of price surges, Zhu Haibin, Chief China Economist at JPMorgan Chase, said. Officials are seeking to keep housing affordable and limit the risk of destabilizing bubbles. “The government worries a lot. At this stage, there’s no intention to relax the housing tightening,” he said. For Zhu, the biggest worry in the housing sector is the diminished role of market forces in pricing and sales, as the government’s “temporary” administrative restrictions become permanent. Tightening measures – including purchase and resale curbs, increased down-payments and price caps – have been rolled out in 114 cities, according to brokerage CLSA. Despite this year’s price gains, China’s developers are facing their gloomiest outlook for eight years, weighed down by a squeeze on financing, a looming property tax and home-purchase curbs, according to Standard Chartered.

The property market remained lukewarm in some of the country’s biggest cities, however. Prices in Guangzhou and Shenzhen in Guangdong province, were up 0.9% and 0.5% respectively month-on-month. The coastal city of Xiamen experienced a 0.1% slump in prices for new homes in August, while its year-on-year rise was 0.3%. In 2017, the city had recorded the country’s lowest average rental yield of just 1%, according to a report by Shanghai-based E-house China R&D Institute. At that rate, investors could expect to wait 100 years to recover their initial investment if they relied solely on rent. Sanya and Haikou, the two hottest destinations in Hainan province not only for tourists but also for home buyers, posted month-on-month increases of 0.1% and 0.9% respectively, compared with a year-on-year surge of over 20%, the South China Morning Post reports.

China is beefing up efforts to boost the development of the industrial internet, which serves as a key growth engine for its digital economy. More efforts are needed to make breakthroughs in key technologies — such as chips and smart sensors — participate in international standard-setting activities, apply new industrial internet technologies and products to key industries, and accelerate development of the internet of vehicles and the internet of things (IoT), according to Miao Wei, Minister of Industry and Information technology. The industrial internet, a new type of manufacturing automation that combines advanced machines, internet-connected sensors and big data analysis, is expected to boost productivity and reduce costs in industrial production.

“We will make a big push to develop the industrial internet in three aspects,” Miao said. “First, we will promote the construction of a high-speed broadband network, including 5G connections. Second, we need to build internet application platforms for large firms and public service platforms for small and medium-sized companies. Third, we must attach great importance to the safety of industrial data.” Miao made the remarks at the 2018 World Internet of Things Expo in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. The industrial internet “helps give impetus to industrial transformation and upgrading, and promote energy saving and emission reduction as well as streamlined management,” Miao said.

Liu Yunjie, Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, cited a McKinsey Global Institute report, saying new approaches to boosting productivity could generate USD5.6 trillion in additional Chinese GDP by 2030. “The industrial internet will help enhance labor production and reduce costs,” Liu said. Sun Pishu, Chairman of the Chinese server maker Inspur Group, said the industrial internet was key to the integration of the internet, cloud computing, big data, AI and the real economy. Inspur Group said that it had set up more than 10 million processors in the country’s granaries, which will provide real-time information such as temperature and humidity figures, the China Daily reports.

China is building the world’s largest container ships, each of which will be able to carry more than 23,000 standard containers. The construction of the first two megaships started in late July at the Jiangnan Shipyard Group and Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group, both in Shanghai. Both companies are owned by the China State Shipbuilding Corp. The ships are expected to be delivered to CMA CGM, a French container transportation and shipping company, in 2020.

The Marine Design and Research Institute of China, a CSSC research arm that designed the ships, said they will be the latest and biggest in its Heracles class — named after the hero of Greek mythology. Each of the vessels will be 400 meters long and 61.3 m wide, and will be capable of moving 220,000 metric tons of cargo. They will be propelled by liquefied natural gas (LNG), making these the first large container ships to be driven by the eco-friendly fuel, as opposed to diesel, the traditional propellant for large vessels, the institute said. Polluting emissions will be exponentially reduced, it added. CSSC beat five world-class competitors – including Japan’s Imabari Shipbuilding Co, South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Co and Hyundai Heavy Industries – to sign a contract for nine 23,000 container-capable vessels with the French carrier. Yu Lai, Chief Designer of the new ships at the Shanghai institute, said that the design and construction of the gigantic vessels makes China a leader in the field of container shipping. “In the past, we followed others; now we are running ahead of them,” he said. “Compared with its predecessors, this new class of container ship is larger, has a high level of automation and features better safety and environmental
performance.” He added that the ships will require only about 30 crew members to operate.

Currently, the largest container ships are the six vessels built by South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries for the Hong Kong-based container shipping and logistics service company Orient Overseas Container Line. They can hold 21,413 containers, the China Daily reports.