Inside China Tech explores China's ever-evolving tech scene and brings essential tech background, trends, and analysis from China to listeners. It was awarded Asia’s Best Technology Podcast in 2019.

I was the producer, editor, sound designer, and occasionally the host of Inside China Tech.

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People around the world are adapting the ways they mourn their loved ones amid the coronavirus pandemic. Live-streamed funerals are being organised, while social media accounts of the dead are being transformed into virtual memorial pages. However, these digital presences can be vulnerable. On this episode, we look into how technology has changed the way we die and mourn.

SCMP editors and Yang dissect how Chinese telecoms giant Huawei found itself in Washington's cross-hairs and where it might go from here.

In China, one way or another, at least 260 million students and 15 million teachers had to migrate their entire offline learning and teaching activities to the internet.

Digital educational centers, applications and tools have seen a surge in demand. National curriculum classes are being recorded by teachers across all levels, and are being broadcast on TV for free. We look into the technologies that facilitate this migration and ask: are we closer to education equality in China?

We're digging deep into China's version of TikTok called Douyin. How different is Douyin from its international version? Why are there two almost-identical apps out there? And how are Chinese people using Douyin differently from users of TikTok?

To truly understand Douyin, we attended a weekend class that costs about US$1,400 in Shenzhen, China, about how to get rich on the app.

China's economy might be taking a big hit, but tech companies in China are seeing new markets and opportunities emerging under the pressure of the coronavirus outbreak. On this episode, we’re to find out how tech is offering help in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease as well as facilitating the continuation of people’s daily life under lockdown.

Two SCMP tech reporters are among the hundreds of millions of people whose lives have been directly affected by China’s coronavirus lockdown. Celia Chen, who’s based in Shenzhen, and couldn’t go back home to Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province and the epicentre of the outbreak, talks about how her family spent this Lunar New Year bonding over news and mobile apps. Another tech reporter, Jane Zhang is going to tell us about being trapped in her hometown Enshi, Hubei.

To better understand how TikTok works in its domestic and international markets, our producer Yang went to visit a TikTok star who initially moved to Los Angeles for developing an acting career.

China is no stranger to vegetarian food. If anything, the Chinese have invented countless vegetarian dishes that imitate meat throughout their centuries-old history of Buddhism.

In this episode, we try Impossible Meat, and its counterpart in China; we talk to people who sell it and who study the market; and we ask – how should companies introduce, or perhaps reintroduce, meatless meat to China?

What are China's DNA-testing companies doing differently? What does your DNA test result really mean when it tells you that you're 58% Chinese? How reliable is it and what's at stake when you give away you most personal data – your DNA – to a private company? We speak to 23Mofang’s CEO, and a geneticist from the University of Hong Kong, to find out.

A simple a task as counting could become a complex issue in the case of estimating an accurate number of protesters. Raymond Wong, the founder and managing director of C&R Wise AI, set up 7 cameras on the main streets where a protest took place on July 1. Wong’s project concluded that 265,000 people demonstrated that day, while organizers said 550,000 people marched and the police estimated it was 190,000. On this episode of Inside China Tech, we discuss with Wong why that number is so important and so difficult to agree on, and how can artificial intelligence help.

E-commerce giant Alibaba started trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange on November 26, 2019. The company raised a whopping US$13 billion, making it the largest share launch of the year, beating out Uber and Lyft. On the back of its listing, we got a chance to speak to Daniel Zhang, executive chairman and chief executive of Alibaba, while he was in Hong Kong.

When Alex Zhou, chief executive of US-based e-commerce site Yamibuy, first moved in 2009 to study at a university in the Midwestern state of Kansas, he never imagined obtaining items like soy sauce would entail a two-hour drive. On this episode, Zhou shares his story about building a US$100 million business initially due to homesickness, and then discovering a growing market beyond Asian communities.

What really sets Singles’ Day apart from other shopping fests? Why are people shopping on a day that’s not even a holiday? And … is that Taylor Swift at Alibaba’s Singles’ Day gala?

We spent the day where it all began: at Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou.

Dr Xiao Jianxiong is the founder and CEO of AutoX Inc, a high-tech company working on self-driving vehicles, and has over 10 years of research and engineering experience in computer vision, autonomous driving and robotics. Chua Kong Ho, the SCMP’s technology editor, speaks with Dr Xiao about what this means for the company and the future of self-driving cars in general.

There are more than 700,000 active podcasts on the market today. And while they are becoming more popular, there is still one big problem – most podcast platforms serve only one function, and that is to offer a way to listen to content.

Renee Wang, the CEO of Castbox, tells us about getting her dream job at Google after nearly 10 attempts and then quitting to build one of the largest third-party podcast platforms on the market today.

Why hasn’t China produced a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk? Do you need political freedom to be creative? How important is individualism when it comes to producing great entrepreneurs and tech visionaries? And will the current technology war with the US help accelerate China’s technological capabilities?

To find out, we speak to a variety of experts, including Stanford University’s Steve Blank, author of The Lean Startup Eric Ries, as well as Yu Zhou of Vassar College and Andy Mok, a research fellow from the Centre for China and Globalisation.

Sandbox VR is a Hong Kong-based start-up that specialises in producing immersive, location-based virtual reality experiences. Steve Zhao, founder and chief executive of Sandbox VR, talks to Zen Soo on this episode to share his start-up journey and why he decided to bet his life savings on creating a real-life Holodeck (of Star Trek fame).

In 2018, the World Health Organisation classified “gaming disorder” as an official disease. That came 10 years after China officially recognized the broader concept of internet addiction. Since then, many so-called internet addiction treatment centres have sprung up and controversies have ensued over how such diseases should be treated. We paid a rare visit one of the treatment centers.

Zen Soo speaks with GSMA's Head of Policy for Greater China Joe Guan to find out what's the big deal about 5G and why there is a big spectrum debate going on for the next-generation mobile network.

We also look at why space agencies are concerned that 5G could mess with weather forecasts, and why 5G needs to use radio frequencies that no other mobile network has ever used before.