from its 61 sites during lockdown, but there were still bills to pay. and the company says it has burned through £10 million over the past five months. it's a challenge, and we're just really grateful now that we can start seeing some revenue coming in, and we can get our team back to work. also given the green light today, indoor weddings with up to 30 people. but the rule change comes as a blow for this man, whose venue in croydon usually caters for hundreds of guests, sometimes more than 1,000. he's had to adapt to stay afloat. we decided to turn one of our smaller suites into a restaurant, to have some kind of income stream coming in. and so far, we think we've made the right choice. much of the economy is now trading again. but for many businesses, a return to normality is still a long way off. vivienne nunis, bbc news. now it's time for a look at the weather

with tomas shafenaker. for most of the uk the weather really isn't going to change much for the rest of the weekend. saturday are pretty dull, drizzly day, thunderstorms in the forecast too but it's not all bad. there is some sunshine and pleasantly warm weather across northern wales, north—west of england, south—west of scotla nd north—west of england, south—west of scotland and the western isles so it is certainly not cloudy everywhere. the temperatures typically in the low 20s but a lot cooler on the north sea coast. thunderstorms are possible broadly speaking across the southern half of the uk as we go through the rest of today and tonight. the overnight hours. a very muggy night. 18 degrees in london. around the mid teens expected in scotland. showers expected tomorrow. the possibility of thunderstorms again, probably the heaviest ones across more southern areas. a little brightness possible now and then, but on the whole, a lot of cloud the uk.

this is bbc news. the headlines... prince charles leaves commemorations to mark the 75th anniversary of vijay day, the day world war ii ended with victory overjapan. thousands of holiday—makers have arrived back in the uk after a last—minute dash to avoid a mandatory two week quarantine which came into effect at 4am. the government has said it will cover the cost of appeals against a level results in england after nearly 40% were downgraded. now it's time for click. the us‘s biggest rival is moving in on social

media and communications and the us is pushing back hard. this week we ask what is going on in china. this week we will bring you up—to—date with one of the most important parts of the technology world, a place which is a long way from silicon valley both geographically and culturally, a place that is now challenging the west's tech dominance. i am talking about china.

this is tiananmen square in beijing. when i first went to china nearly 15 yea rs when i first went to china nearly 15 years ago it was already clear that ina mighty years ago it was already clear that in a mighty dragon was awakening and the next technology superpower was rearing its head. fast forward to 2020 and chinese companies have broken into the west in a big way. probably the best—known of these tiktok and huawei. and they have outgrown criticism to say the least. later in the programme we will look at tiktok but the biggest fish here is huawei. it has been in uk

telecoms for 20 years, most recently beginning to be a part of the uk's sg beginning to be a part of the uk's 56 network. injuly the government banned it. to understand what is going on now, banned it. to understand what is oin on now here's banned it. to understand what is going on now, here's a quick refresher. it might look like paris but this is huawei's brand—new campus in shenzhen, china. a huge site where employees take a train between office buildings, each of which is modelled on a different european city. few journalists which is modelled on a different european city. fewjournalists have visited this disney world —like project, the brainchild of the companies founder. he has been compared to the likes of steve jobs, growing his company from a small workshop to a global tech giant now employing 180,000 people. huawei is currently enjoying huge success with reve nu es currently enjoying huge success with

revenues last year in excess of $100 billion. but this is also a company facing some serious issues. the biggest is that the us is coming for huawei in a big way. we have met the enemy and it is huawei and china. right now while went through access to unlimited capital from the chinese government, all this technology is built—in, cyber spying for espionage because that is what the chinese do. he was once a member of chinese people's liberation army and that has raised suspicion about his links to the state and whether it and while white may have each other‘s backs. america is adamant that huawei is a poem for chinese authorities. in 2017 china the national intelligence rule which

says if asked all chinese companies and citizens must help the government to assist national intelligence efforts. china claims this is part of an effort to safeguard its security but the fear is that if huawei supplies any country's sg is that if huawei supplies any country's 56 network, the chinese could exploit it. in a future where oui’ could exploit it. in a future where our entire infrastructure, our economy and our lives are run by computers talking to each other over asg computers talking to each other over a 56 network, what would happen if someone a 56 network, what would happen if someone shot that network down? the future of warfare will not necessarily be with armies, it will beat cyber warfare so with not firing a shot you could take a country out. it feared the chinese state could order or our way to build secret back doors in the sg

network that would leave a country vulnerable to a nationwide cyber attack and that could be catastrophic. in may the us government published a piece of legislation which had a massive impact on technology. this means if your economy uses american tools and software to make stuff for huawei, you will break us law. the us will blacklist you. so this stops most companies from supplying huawei forfear most companies from supplying huawei for fear of most companies from supplying huawei forfear of angering most companies from supplying huawei for fear of angering the us. most companies from supplying huawei forfear of angering the us. for example, the chips which huawei used to run its products were manufactured by companies like taiwan —based tsmc and tsmc uses some american software to help

design and build the chips. so under this new rule, tsmc cannot make chips for huawei and carry on trading with the us. this means for many companies, it's a choice between china and the us. the way chips are produced is reliant on techniques that are owned by a small number of american companies and what the american government has done is site you can no longer use those, these chinese companies can no longer use those so if they carry on using it it will be done illegally or they will have to look for alternative sources and if they find those, it is more like a black box to us because we have less understanding from a security assurance point of view and that tip you into the point where you cannot be short enough about it so you will have to not using it.

so, what can be done now?

governments around the world and the operators are keen to open in some way and to introduce alternatives to nokia and ericsson. governments are keen to open the way for several players to become alternatives to these companies. welcome to the week in tech. this week the court of appeal ruled that south wales police's use of facial recognition trilogy is in breach of human rights. protests in belarus. and after 35 years in the laptop game, toshiba sold its last share of its last stake in the personal computer since. google plans to build the biggest earthquake detection system. using your phone. it uses tiny

accelerometers built into smartphones to act as a seismometer that detects tremors. is this the future of photography? google has developed an ai model to create 3d models of new and complete scenes using still photographs. the model can even capture lighting changes without compromising the image. finally, if you are in need of a cuddly friend without the long—term commitment... this could be the closest thing to a real life pat. developed by vanguard industries, this pet robot is powered by ai, it has sensors and uses an algorithm to map human emotions so it can learn and evolve over time. china's influence on the

world is truly global. most cities like london have a china town and the us is no different. there are an estimated 5 million chinese people living in the states. president trunp‘s focus on banning tiktok talk has stolen most of the headlines. but it is targeting of wee chat that could have a more profound effect on relations. that is because wechat has morphed into a colossus. less of an app, more like an operating system. this is a chinese student studying in london explaining what it is. you can find out where hospitals are, theatres, movie tickets, restaurants, booking hotels.

if you want to find out a pay station, i have an account for business, selling things on it. everything in your life is on the app? it has become essential to its more than 1 billion users. how important is it? it is my life. people only know how to send a message, it is so important to them. the family connection, the home feeling, if i don't have this i feel lonely. the owners won't say how many users it has outside china, but it is thought to run into the tens of millions. it has caught the attention of the us authorities. president trump has mentioned impending action on tiktok. and for good reason. with parent

companies based in china, these apps are significant threats to the personal data of american citizens. tiktok says it doesn't hold any of its data inside china and would never give that to the chinese government. many security experts believe it is wechat that holds a greater security risk. this is the former security officer for yahoo and facebook. of all the chinese companies to worry about, tiktok isn't even in the top ten, i find it to be a bit ofa the top ten, i find it to be a bit of a symbol here for the entire chinese territory. i would be most worried about can sent. people run companies on wechat, they do things that could open them up to black belt so those are the kind of apps i

would worry about. wechat has long been criticised for censoring users in china. a canadian analytics company looked into how it moderated its users outside of china. we find routinely topics related to perennial taboo issues like tiananmen square, hong kong, anything to do with tibet or the dalai lama, those are pretty routinely censored. the people we spoke to didn't seem to be too concerned about security issues. the reason why he is saying he doesn't want it in the us is because he thinks some of the data from users goes to the chinese government. this is not true. it is important to the country. i think that is the good part

for us, because if there was not government control something bad would happen. research has found wechat censoring political content and content related to covid—19. we looked in particular at censorship around covid—19 and found that discussions about the pandemic very early on were censored, which is highly significant because, of course, physicians who were on the front line warning about the pandemic even before it had a name had their communications censored. tencent deny this and told bbc click... data security isn't the only reason trump has decided to ban wechat. it is far more political than that. to be honest, it is hard to look past the

fact these tech companies have been sucked into a wider geopolitical battle between two superpowers. the battle over social media and especially who owns our personal data, is seen by many as the next big emerging rivalry between china and the us. in march, the chinese owners of internet hook—up app grindr sold up for $600 million. they had been forced to sell by the us regulators over national security concerns relating to the data on the app. in may, chinese social media company kuaishou launched an app in the us called zynn, which after becoming one of the most popular apps, was removed from both the google play store and apple's app store after being accused of plagiarising videos.

but tiktok is now under pressure from us regulators and may be banned by the white house. i set a date of around september 15, at which point it will be out of business in the united states. but over in china, social media has been evolving in a different way. earlier this year, before the pandemic took hold, stephen beckett went to beijing to meet some of the major players in the chinese social media landscape. when it comes to social media, china is a world away from the west — that's in part because of long—term government blocking of us tech giants like google and facebook, and that's partially 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 in much the same way as apps like whatsapp and facebook messenger. perhaps not a surprise, then, but for a time, china had the reputation

of a copycat nation. china, with its huge population of over 1.3 billion people has plenty of room for social ideas. and the competition is intense. these are the head offices of kuaishou, they're one of the biggest social networks here, they've got over 200 million active users, but unless you're in china, you probably haven't heard of it. kuaishou has made a name for itself by targetting china's relatively—untapped rural population, and that's a lot of people — around 40% don't live in cities. and that has led to a platform where the stars aren't necessarily what you expect. kuaishou's secret sauce is the options it gives streamers to make their streams pay. translation: i'm a professional musician. i also give lectures via kuaishou in my spare time, which teach people how to play the chinese sorna. i try to popularise chinese traditional music and knowledge. between sales of recorded lessons, purchases of virtual gifts during livestreams,

he says he makes around £15,000 a month, and that is after kuaishou takes their 25% commission. but kuaishou's 200 million users isn't quite so impressive when you compare it to china's social titan tencent, and their so—called mega app wechat. and now wechat is becoming a daily part of life, thanks to something called mini—programs. translation: wechat mini—programs are an app that doesn't require you to download and install, they are sub—applications within the wechat ecosystem, and a new tool developed by wechat. many programmes allow third parties to add new features to wechat on demand. it's a bit like having the entire app store already on your phone. the idea is that you can pretty much do everything you could ever want on your phone without ever closing wechat. so this convenient store is set up on the campus

of wechat‘s head office. and the idea is you canjust walk around, pick up whatever you like and then walk out the door, it will get automatically charged to your wechat account. wechat relies on users handing over big chunks of their personal data and now that now even includes yourface. these vending machines are set up to use wechat‘s new facial pay feature. the idea is you opt into it in the app and once you've done that, you can use your face to buy anything from these machines. it basically links your face to your face to your wechat account and your government id. but, is the convenience worth the possible cost to privacy? in 2016, amnesty international awarded the parent company of wechat, tencent, zero out of 100 for their privacy practices. i think there's a common perception that people in china don't care about their privacy, and that perception is completely false. the government over the last few years has been trying to roll out its own cybersecurity regulations and trying to educate consumers about the dangers of data being lost or leaked.

wechat‘s privacy policy says it will provide the chinese government access to much of what you do in the app when legally required, including the things you type and data like your location. it's hard to deny that social apps in china have taken on a life of their own, if not outpacing, then going in new directions to competitors in the west. the big question is whether more chinese apps can follow tiktok in going global, despite the concerns around privacy and censorship. or, if not, it could it be the turn of tech companies in the west to play copycat themselves? that was stephen beckett's view of china. and since the explosion of tiktok in the west, other apps have been springing up to try and compete. and chris fox has been looking at some of the alternatives that are available. if you can't get enough of short, hyper—edited videos, luckily there are plenty of apps that have cottoned on to the format.

this is triller, which i think is fair to say, has taken a bit of inspiration from tiktok. you can record clips with special effects and share them onto an endless scrolling feed of content. triller seems to have done quite well out of all this uncertainty, at the start of august, it topped the app store charts on both i0s and android and has managed to attract some big—name tiktok stars and celebrities over to its platform, including mike tyson and magician dynamo. another app offering a similar experience is byte, which has also been popping in and out of the app store top download charts. like tiktok, it offers you creative effects for your videos, although it is trailing behind triller, it's been downloaded over1 million times on google play, whereas triller has had more than ten million. tiktok‘s biggest competition may come from instagram reels, instagram's newly—launched rival. it has incorporated many of tiktok‘s core features, including that

endlessly—scrolling feed of short videos. just in the past few weeks, mark zuckerberg has appeared at a congressional hearing about big tech companies using their power to neutralise the competition. isn't ripping off tiktok essentially doing that? there is innovation everywhere and people are constantly inspired by what they see. it's no longer a surprise to see a feed in a mobile social product, that wasn't the case until facebook brought that to scale. we brought stories to instagram in 2016. and give full credit to snap for inventing that format, but evolved it from there. so what is instagram bringing to the table with this format, that makes it different to tiktok? i think the ability to be discovered is unique to reels. i think in instagram, historically, if you had a large follower base it was easier to kind of get bigger. this is now a product specifically designed to help creators find an audience. now, to be fair to tiktok, i think the idea that you never know what video is going to go viral or who get discovered is what draws people to tiktok.

it's certainly not unique to instagram reels, but i think companies are seeing tiktok has refined a winning formula and they want a piece of the action. and that's it for this week. next week, we're going to be looking at another hugely important topic — the technology being used to fight climate change. until then, you can keep with us on social media, on youtube, facebook, instagram and twitter @bbcclick. thanks for watching, and we'll see you soon. hello. the weather has changed

across some parts of the country in the last couple of days, we had the heatwave and now its grey skies, drizzle and the clouds rumbling in the distance and that is what we have for the next 2a hours and possibly the next few days, very cloudy, rainy, showery, thundery weather in the humid air is still coming in from the south, swirling around an area of low pressure, you can see that moisture and cloud from the south and basically this bank of cloud will be stuck across much of central and southern britain through the rest of saturday and within it there is a lot of drizzle and rain at times but also the possibility of thunderstorms. temperatures are still nudging up into the low 20s we re still nudging up into the low 20s were the cloud is but it's especially cool on the north sea coast because here we also have mist rolling off the north sea, that chilly missed with that breeze coming out of the east. this is what

it looks like end of the night on sunday, 17 degrees so that humid air has not gone, its mid—teens across the north of the country overnight so here is sunday's weather forecast and the blobs of blue main ring and the potential for thunderstorms during sunday, even if you don't get there as the chances are it will be a mostly cloudy day, i'd end bits and pieces of drizzle, temperatures are around 23 degrees, the possibility of a bit more sunshine developing across southern areas. sunday into monday come with a low pressure with the cloud and that potentially a thunderous weather is still with us, look at the blobs of blue across northern areas of the country, glasgow and edinburgh getting some rain and look at the midlands and wales, all this could be thundery as the slow—moving area of low pressure which has decided to park itself over us churns our way

and drives our weather. not much change expected through the first half of the week before this low pressure comes our way which is expected to bring some unsettled conditions towards the end of the week and into the weekend but as far as the week ahead is concerned, it looks very changeable on the weather front.

this is bbc news. the headlines at 11... exams regulator 0fqual has set out the criteria for what will determine a "valid" mock for appeals of gcse, as and a——levels in england. it follows anger a—level results in england, after nearly 40% were downgraded. the minimum i needed was abb, i only needed three c to get into the foundation course which was the back—up but on thursday i discovered i had been awarded three ds. prince charles leads commemorations to mark the 75th anniversary of vj day, the day world war ii ended with victory over japan. we salute all those who remain among us and offer our most heartfelt