In the house on impeachment itself which is expected next week. And american stocks have been given a boost after the us and china struck a preliminary trade agreement, easing tensions between the worlds two biggest economies. Now on bbc news, click. This week tiktoks troubled, wechats winning, and can robots high five . High five no, maybe not. Theme music Silicon Valley the home of google, facebook, twitter and all those other big social Media Companies that dominate our lives. World changing in their day, but more recently its all getting a bit samey, dont you think . Some say social media Silicon Valley style has stopped innovating. But new rival companies are emerging that are starting to shake things up, and theyre coming from china. Tiktok is the 15 second looping video app thats captured the heart of teenagers across the world. And with 1 billion users, its firmly on the radar of big tech. And while Silicon Valley may be worried about its huge number of users, it also argues that the companys home country should also give the west cause for concern. In china, things are happening and happening fast. Innovation is rife and Silicon Valley is starting to look over its shoulder. As part of the bbc rivals season, were taking a look at Weather China is about to change the global Power Dynamics of the internet. Nowadays, Silicon Valley has a genuine rival in chinese internet companies. Were now seeing genuinely Innovative Products coming out of china, things that the west is now looking on quite enviously and saying we would like to be more like that. Technology supremacy between beijing and washington, it is not only about technology about innovation in itself its also about who writes the rules of those technologies in the future. And that currently the United States has been able to enjoy that exorbitant privilege of having Technology Standards set up by themselves, and followed by the Chinese Companies as well as the american companies. The internet in almost every country outside of china has been defined by american platforms with strong Free Expression values. But theres no guarantee that these values will win out. So what we can expect to see is facebook wanting to emulate Something Like chinas wechat. Which is, notjust the messaging component, but also all of the financial activity that you can do via that platform. Facebook would love to enrich its business model, to take its dependence from just advertising on our facebook feeds and towards to, for example, internet based payments. They are looking very enviously at wechat in china. They say it basically does everything. Its all on wechat. You dont really have to get out of the wechat app to get many things done. I can order food delivery, i can buy concert tickets, i could book an airline ticket, hire a car, hire a bike and do online shopping, and i can pay for everything on wechat pay. Which allows individuals in china to live their entire lives on wechat. There are going to be all sorts of different percentages that you might be able to take, not just advertising, you might get commissions. You can start linking advertising to shopping habits. From the ad itself to the point of purchase, and you can track it all through, there are also ways you would be able to grow and monetise that. Right now facebook is just making its money from ads. This is a way of building forward. But if you look at tiktok, tiktok is a chinese company. But its gone into the heartlands of the global battle. Its faced off with instagram, youtube and the facebooks of the world and succeeded. You know, its very popular among teens, for instance, in the United States, so right in Silicon Valleys backyard. Here is the problem. Its owned by a chinese company, and under chinese law, that means the communist party has access to all of the data that tiktok scoops up and it scoops up a lot. So tiktok is changing the rules, because this is the first time a Chinese Social Media Company has gone genuinely beyond its borders. And that changes the rules, because these issues around how is this data being used, becomes an issue that it wasnt before. Is china censoring the content that is created and broadcast and disseminated through tiktok . And that we saw recently. This was about a young girl who very cleverly was mimicking a make up tutorial, and while she was doing her curling of her eyelashes, was actually narrating quite subversive content. Curl your lashes obviously, then put them down and use your phone to search up whats happening in china, how they are setting up concentration camps in china, putting innocent muslims in there. Shortly after, her account was suspended. Had there been a scenario in the future where there is a potential class between the operations of the company and the bottom line Chinese National values, their national interest, i think these companies would go for a preservation and safeguarding of Chinese National values, there is no doubt about that. I dont think it is deliberately the Chinese Government telling them what to do, but i think it is a natural awareness of those companies. If they want to be on the right side of the trench, they have to, somehow, to show their loyalty to the party. As the big us Silicon Valley based Companies Look at Chinese Companies, there is some envy, some fear. They see those companies with seemingly very deep pockets to invest in the technologies of the future, often with a complicit government. Without the same need to make profit that they, as western companies have, and that makes them incredibly nervous. Because they dont feel that those Chinese Companies are playing with exactly the same rules as they are. We have heard how the giants of Silicon Valley are starting to take notice of chinese innovation. And what is being developed in china is unlike anything that we see in the west. Stephen beckett is in china to find out how social media has advanced in very different ways. When it comes to social media, china is a world away from the west. That is in part due to long Term Government blocking of us tech giants like google and facebook. And that is partly why the country has evolved its own completely distinct online ecosystem. Alibaba is a bit like ebay, weibo is similar to twitter and wechat started life as something similar to whatsapp and facebook messenger. Perhaps not a surprise, then, but for a time china had the reputation of a copycat nation. Yes, china has had its reputation for copying from others, but now i think we are seeing the reverse. American Companies Like uber copying from Chinese Companies. The pattern we saw 5 10 years ago, we copy everything from Silicon Valley, so i think if you are here 5 10 years ago, almost every time we see, oh, i am doing the chinese facebook or chinese twitter. China, with its Huge Population of over 1. 3 billion people, has plenty of room for social ideas. The competition is intense. So, these are the head offices of one of the Biggest Social Networks here, they have over 200 million active users. But unless youre in china, you probably have never heard of it. They have made a name for themselves by targeting the relatively untapped rural population, that is a lot of people, around 40 dont live in cities. And that means the stars arent necessarily what you expect. Their secret sauce is the option to give streamers monetisation. Translation i am a professional musician, i also give lectures via kuaishou on music. This man says he makes around £15,000 a month, and that is after kuaishou takes 25 on commission. Because of the purchase of gifts, he says he makes 15,000 a month. That is before they take their commission. I would say china is very good at not just products, they are good at marketing products. In the future we will probably see more of these models which are driven by the Live Streaming areas. But the Live Streaming areas. The 200 million users is | impressive but the 200 million users is not as impressive as tencent, and the titan wechat. And leisure market is the largest social media platform in china. It has become a lifestyle in china. We have1 billion users from 200 companies. Does my countries. We offer services on all aspects of life. Now wechat is becoming an even greater part of daily life, thanks to something called mini programs. Translation wechat mini programs dont require you to download and install, they are sub applications within the wechat ecosystem and a new tool developed by wechat. Mini programs allow third parties to add new features to wechat on demand. Its a bit like having the entire app store already on your phone. The idea is you can pretty much do everything you would ever want on your phone without closing wechat. This Convenience Store is set up on the campus of wechats head office. The idea is you can walk around, pick up whatever you like and walk out the door, and it will get automatically charged to your wechat account. 0n the other side of guangzhou, another Mini Programme lets you find and pay for your parking, and if you register your numberplate in wechat, you can just ride out and be automatically charged to your account. Wechat relies on users handing over big chunks of their personal data, and that even includes your face now. These vending machines are set up to use wechats new facial pay feature. The idea is you opt in in the app, and you can use your face to buy anything from these machines. It links your face to your wechat account and your government id. But, is the convenience with the possible cost to privacy . In 2016, Amnesty International awarded the parent company, tencent, zero out of 100 for their privacy practices. I think there is a misconception that people in china dont care about their privacy. That is completely false. The government has been trying to roll out its own cybersecurity regulations and trying to educate consumers about the dangers of data being lost or the. Wechats Privacy Policy says it will provide the Chinese Government access to much of what you do in the app when legally required, including things you type, and data like your location. Translation it will not use the data for other products. We comply with local laws and regulations to protect users privacy and data. Its hard to social apps in china have taken a life on their own in china. Going in new directions to competitors in the west. The big question is whether more chinese apps can follow tiktok, going global despite the concerns around privacy and censorship. Or, if not, it could be the turn of Tech Companies in the west to play copycat themselves. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week amazon sued the Us Department of defence claiming the President Donald Trump applied improper pressure to stop it winning a billion dollar military contract. Youtube banned clips that include malicious insults and veiled threats to to prevent abuse based on race, gender identity or sexuality. And caitlinjenner, Prince Andrew and borisjohnson were among the most searched for celebrities of year, google has revealed. Other popular searches concern game of thrones, the dance flossing and how to eat a pineapple. In the us, a tesla crashed into a police car while operating on autopilot. The company says the car should not be considered autonomous. The driver said the accident occurred while he was checking his dog in the back. Fortunately no one was injured. Bioshock, the First Person Shooter game trilogy that sold over 33 Million Units is getting a fourth instalment. The games creators said industry veteran Kelly Gilmore will be leading the release. And finally, wibbly wobbly robots could become much more commonplace thanks to a breakthrough from scientists at mit. Creating simulations of soft robots completing tasks has previously been a huge challenge, but researchers say their model understands how springy and stretchy forms can move in an infinite number of ways. The next step, bringing thesejiggly jelly forms to life. Star citizen combines elements of a massively multiplayer role playing game, spaceship sim and First Person Shooter. All in a vast persistent universe. Thanks, wendy it has a large, loyalfan base. Previously we could not have done a planet like this before. When i was a kid, i wanted to be an astronaut. I ended up being a dentist. I always used to fantasise about being a spaceman and that is what this is. Star citizen is important