First-ever 630°C ultra-supercritical double-reheat thermal power unit in operation. Two can save 208,000 T of coal, cut CO₂ emissions by 540,000 T, power 250,000 homes.

World’s first superfast quantum memory for practical computing allows quantum machines to read classical binary data without conversion and work with the world’s existing data.

Chinese AI Large Language Models seize over 50% market, Qwen becomes AI concierge for China’s brands.

Nanoimprint lithography, potential alternative to optical lithography for low- cost, high pattern resolution struggled to achieve widespread adoption. Now Prinano announced delivery of China’s first semiconductor nanoimprint lithography system to a commercial customer.

China cut satellite costs by 96%, from $42 million to $4 million: mass production, modular design, fast iteration that accepts a higher failure rate in exchange for speed and network redundancy.

Five million gallium nitride (GaN) radio frequency chips delivered for space-air-ground integrated network smart terminals, the first large-scale commercial deployment of this cutting-edge semiconductor technology.

Economy & Finance

Merck opens innovation hub in Shenzhen in collaboration with local government, Celanese shifts production to China from Korea.

Seven Chinese companies rank among top 10 in global EV battery market commanding 72.2% market share.

China surpassing US as world’s leading travel and tourism economy.

China’s blueberries reach SE Asia. China doubled its cultivation area and output 2020 - 2025. Berries now reach Kuala Lumpur in days, sell for $7/kg, 50% cheaper than Australian or Japanese fruit.

Team injects moss gene into Xinjiang cotton. Beats fungus, boosts output 22%.

Society & Environment

UNDP Report: China’s Human Development: ‘Cities with very high human development now account for a population of 442 million, or 32% of the nation and cities with high human development account for 916 million people, or 66%. The Theil Index continues to decline, indicating a steady reduction in regional development gaps’.

China may have fewer people living in poverty than the US. One system covers basic needs for its poor while the other doesn’t.

How Emojis Became a Language Within a Language: Ever since emojis became part of everyday lexicon, the Chinese internet has been rife with wordplay and absurdist substi...

Governance

Blue-collar wage growth beats white-collar pay for sixth year as flexible workforce tops 300 million. For the sixth consecutive year, blue‑collar wages in China have grown faster than white-collar pay.

Construction of Three Gorges waterway channel begins after the Gorges reached capacity—173 million tons—in 2025. The channel will accommodat 360 million tons, and vessels up to 10,000 tons.

A nationwide 100-day employment campaign will help graduates secure jobs just before and right after this year’s 12.7 million graduates start looking.

Tsinghua will hold its International Relations Knowledge Proficiency Test next month: Level 1 is open to the public, intermediate and advanced levels for those who have passed the previous stage. A free, closed-book, written, multiple-choice test. The syllabus? Basic concepts, research design, modern and contemporary international history, and, at higher levels, theory and methods.

The True Origins of China’s “Social Credit System”.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

Europe is confronting is a structural condition – an industrial dependency built across two decades of procurement decisions that prioritised cost over strategic risk. Europe chose the cheapest, most efficient global suppliers across its two decades of unchallenged growth. China was, for most of that period, a rational answer to a procurement question. The problem is that Europe has no coherent answer now.

Hambantota Port has become one of the fastest-growing trans-shipment hubs in the Indian Ocean, drawing the largest foreign investment in Sri Lankan history.

Defense

China’s railgun has a field-tested guidance system gives cheap hypersonic rounds mid-flight self-correction to strike moving targets hundreds of km away—at a fraction of missile cost.

Brian Berletic: In late May 2025 US Secretary of Defense (now called the “Secretary of War”) Pete Hegseth warned the world the US was in the process of implementing a division of labor in both Europe and the Middle East while pivoting its attention and all of the interference, instability, conflict, and even war that comes with it toward Asia.

More specifically, Secretary Hegseth stated, “we are reorienting toward deterring aggression by Communist China.”

By “deterring aggression by Communist China,” Secretary Hegseth meant preventing China from defending itself and the stability of the region it is located in from Washington’s attempt to maintain primacy over Asia from the other side of the planet.

Among the manufactured threats Secretary Hegseth cited as justification for US meddling in the Asia-Pacific (referred to as the “Indo-Pacific” by the US government) was China “invading Taiwan.”

Taiwan is recognized both under international law and by the US State Department itself as part of “One China.”

On the US State Department’s official website under, “U.S. Relations With Taiwan,” it states explicitly that, “the United States approach to Taiwan has remained consistent across decades and administrations. The United States has a longstanding one China policy,” and that, “we do not support Taiwan independence.”

In practice, however, the US maintains the political capture of Taiwan’s local administration, arms and politically supports it, while encouraging it to pursue separatism from the rest of China.

This, not “Chinese aggression,” is at the root of US-Chinese tensions, a modern-day continuation of Western colonialism over the Asia-Pacific region spanning generations. China’s growing economic and military power threatens to overturn centuries of Western hegemony.

This is the true “threat” Washington is reacting to - not unwarranted Chinese influence over its own region of the world, but the irreversible end of America’s unwarranted influence over the opposite side of the planet.

Turning Asia Upside Down

Despite hallucinations of a US “retreating” from Asia under the current Trump administration, the US is in the middle of region-wide destabilization carried out by the various tools of US political coercion and capture, namely the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID programs now continuing more quietly under the US State Department itself, and adjacent Western foundations like George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

Much in the same way the US targeted North Africa and the Middle East during the “Arab Spring” in 2011, it is now targeting first Indonesia with deadly riots disrupting the new BRICS member’s participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting which took place in early September, then toppling the government of Nepal right on India and China’s borders with equally deadly violence, and more recently targeting both the Philippines and border regions of India with the same “Gen Z” branded unrest.

By doing so, the US is shaping the region as part of a continued effort to encircle, contain, and undermine China itself.

Those married to the illusion of an America “retreating” from Asia have attempted to sell this recent unrest across Asia as “organic” and “spontaneous,” despite extensive evidence of US NED-funded organizations both leading and promoting the protests and an interim government now taking shape in Nepal in which half of the 8 ministers appointed by mid-September being drawn from US NED-funded fronts - many of which these interim ministers actually founded or directed.

These ministers include Om Prakash Aryal appointed Minister of Home Affairs, who served as a member advocate of the USAID, NED, and Open Society-funded Justice and Rights Institute - Nepal, Jagadish Kharel appointed Minister of Communications and IT who founded the USAID-funded Media Help Line organization, Mahabir Pun appointed Minister of Education, Science, and Technology who directed the USAID-funded National Innovation Centre, and Prasad Pariyar appointed Minister of Agriculture who directed the USAID, NED, CIA-proprietary The Asia Foundation, and Open Society-funded Samata Foundation.

Dr. Sangita Mishra who has been appointed Minister of Health previously served as director of the Paropakar Maternity and Women’s Hospital which regularly took USAID funding with US Embassy statements mentioning her by name during “hand-over ceremonies.” While this funding could be considered on its own potentially “innocent,” together with overtly US-backed figures being appointed alongside her indicates an overwhelmingly pro-US (and US-dependent) interim government taking shape in addition to the US-funded organizations that promoted and led the protests themselves.

In the Philippines, protests were led by Tindig Pilipinas, a member of the US NED-funded International Center for Innovation, Transformation and Excellence in Governance (INCITEGov) and promoted by US NED-funded media outlet Rappler, founded and directed by Maria Ressa who literally has her own webpage on the NED’s official website.

While the current government in the Philippines has been extensively servile to Washington at the expense of the Philippines itself, the unrest could serve as either a means to root out any independent political forces not yet subordinated by the US, or as a means of coercing the current government because it has hesitated to fulfill Washington’s increasingly dangerous demands in regards to confronting China.

US interference and the networks it uses to implement it span the entirety of Asia with additional unrest in other nations across the region all but inevitable.

Continuity of Agenda

Washington’s goal is to surround China with either hostile US-captured client regimes, or instability denying China political, economic, and even potentially military partners.

At the same time, the US continues transforming nations like South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines into militarized battering rams to both provoke China and potentially fight a proxy war against it in the same manner the US is currently using Ukraine and the rest of Europe to fight the Russian Federation.

All of this has taken place through a process spanning the entire 21st century regardless of who sits in the White House or who controls US Congress.

Under the current Trump administration, in the same late-May speech by Secretary Hegseth, he bragged about the development and deployment of US weapon systems specifically designed for conflict with China including the Navy/Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) designed for targeting naval vessels, as well as the Typhon missile system which was previously prohibited under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty President Donald Trump withdrew from during his first term in office.

The systematic unilateral withdrawal from arms control treaties and the subsequent development and deployment of previously prohibited weapons along both Russia and China’s periphery by both the Trump and Biden administrations demonstrate that the US - far from “retreating” - is engaged in a deliberate and methodical escalation toward containment and confrontation with both nations spanning multiple presidential administrations and continuing to this day.

Beyond developing and deploying weapons along China’s periphery, the US is coercing its client states in the region to divert public money away from social programs and infrastructure and toward arms manufacturing and maintenance facilities to sustain US conflict in the region otherwise inhibited by what US policymakers often refer to as the “tyranny of distance” - the reality of the US picking a fight with China on the other side of the planet from where the US and the source of its military industrial production is actually located in on a map.

Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience

Secretary Hegseth described the Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience, PIPR, as “a U.S.-initiated multilateral forum of 14 allies and partners working with industry, capital providers, and key non-governmental stakeholders, to strengthen industrial resilience, expand our capacity, and accelerate deliveries,” involving aircraft and naval vessel repair facilities, the standardization of drones and input components across the region, and the production of US weapons like the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) used by M270 and HIMARS launch platforms.

PIPIR is meant to exploit US client states in the region to compensate for America’s own military industrial shortcomings back home as exposed amid its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine as much as it is meant to provide logical support for large-scale conflict with China from within the region rather than far beyond it.

Despite some analysts cherry-picking episodes of diplomatic posturing by the Trump administration to portray it in “retreat” from Europe or Asia, the very existence of these ongoing programs demonstrates the US’ desire to continue encircling and encroaching upon China both with continuously expanding US military power and through US political interference and regime change targeting China’s allies and partners.

Secretary Hegseth closed his mid-May speech in Singapore by claiming: “The motto of my first platoon, first one I led, was: “Those who long for peace, must prepare for war.” And that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are preparing for war in order to deter war — to achieve peace through strength. And we look out in this room and we look to you — to our allies and to our partners — to join us in this important work.

In reality - the US has been in a continuous state of war throughout the 21st century and continues both waging war and proxy war around the globe today. Secretary Hegseth and the interests he serves are not attempting to “prepare for war in order to deter war,” but rather continuing to wage constant war to deter any sort of equitable peace.

Washington’s sustained campaign of political destabilization, military encroachment, and economic warfare across Asia demonstrates a refusal to accept the reality of a sovereign China and a broader rising Asia which seeks to define its own regional destiny free from Western interference. Washington’s true objective is demonstrably not peace, but the continuation of its historically unwarranted dominance, even at the cost of turning the Asia-Pacific region, or even the rest of the world into spiraling chaos, conflict, and catastrophe.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

Several readers have asked me to find out how stuff in China costs 1/3 to 1/5 of US and European price, so I asked Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波, who has shopped in China and the EU for 25 years. Here’s his answer:

The real reasons why goods cost less in China

China uses the same kind of flour to make bread and noodles, uses the same type of crude oil to power its economy. Why then is the cost of bread and pastries less than half of the cost in Europe? And how is it possible that the cost of diesel in China is 1/3 of that in Europe?

Walk into any European supermarket and the price tags tell a striking story. Nearly everything cost double or more than the cost in China.
A litre diesel fuel costs 2.10 € in Brussels but only 7.26 Yuan (0.88 €) in Nanjing. This pattern repeats across countless everyday products. When in Europe, I’m using my China Mobile SIM card, also for data. Even with roaming costs, it is still cheaper than any European SIM card. In How China and the West manage pharmaceuticals differently I explained why medicines are on average 20 times more expensive than in Europe There are more than a dozen reasons why China can produce at a much lower cost than Europe.

The era of cheap Chinese labour is long forgotten

Western companies once relocated to China for low wages. That time has long passed. Today, the average net spendable income of Chinese workers often exceeds that of their European counterparts. The median monthly take-home pay in China is close to the EU average. After adjusting for purchasing power and lower prices, Chinese workers now keep more of what they earn.

Rising purchasing power leads to a large, sustained increase in sales volume, businesses achieve economies of scale (spreading fixed costs over more units and negotiating better prices from suppliers). This could reduce average production costs in the long run, even if demand-driven cost pressures appear in the short run.

This shift matters enormously for understanding prices. Chinese workers are no longer cheap in absolute terms. They are productive. Productivity gains have far outpaced those of European companies. Gross wage growth has slowed even as efficiency has accelerated. A BYD vehicle requires 77 % less labour cost than an equivalent German model. This is not exploitation. It is automation, skill, and scale working together.

Long-term vision shapes industrial culture

China’s cost advantage stems from strategic planning embedded in its political system. The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) provides a systematic blueprint for accelerating new industrialisation and developing strategic emerging industries. This continuity of vision spans decades, not electoral cycles. Industrial policy has been inextricably embedded in China’s economic planning since the “Made in China 2025” initiative launched in 2015. European businesses operate with quarterly reporting pressures. Chinese manufacturers plan with generational time-frames.

Structural efficiencies driving cost advantage

China’s manufacturing strength comes from complete industrial ecosystems. Districts like Suzhou allow suppliers to access specialised partners and suppliers within a 50-kilometre radius. This proximity eliminates warehousing needs and slashes logistics costs. European industrial districts once operated this way but have steadily hollowed out over decades.

Dark factories redefine production costs

China now operates hundreds of “dark factories” where robots work in near-total darkness. At the Zeeker electric vehicle plant, 885 robots work alongside just 100 human workers, producing up to 1,200 cars daily. Lights remain off because machines need neither illumination nor heating. “With repetitive assembly line work, humans make more errors than machines,” explains Hui Yang, Zeeker’s production director. These facilities run 24 hours daily with minimal energy costs for lighting or climate control. Robots don’t require a canteen, toilets or a HR division.

STEM education builds the talent foundation

China now produces more than five million science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates annually. This figure exceeds the combined total of Europe and the United States. The country’s skills pool includes 220 million skilled workers, with over 72 million considered high-skilled talent.

The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) makes integrated development of education, science and technology a national priority. Universities must accelerate programmes in strategic fields like artificial intelligence, integrated circuits and advanced manufacturing. Newly approved programmes can recruit students within the same year they receive authorisation.

Government spending on science and technology nationwide will reach nearly 1.3 trillion yuan in 2026, a 7.1 % increase from 2025. Basic research funding receives a particularly strong 16.3 % boost. Central government science allocation alone rises roughly 10 %

Female participation drives productivity

China’s female labour force participation rate stands at 60 per cent, significantly above the global average. Women account for 52.3 per cent of higher education enrolment. In e-commerce, female participants represent 68 per cent of workers, with incomes 41 per cent higher than in traditional industries. This talent pool represents an asset few nations can match.

Harsh competition sharpens efficiency

Western companies are sheltered workshops, they do not know what’s real competition. They should benchmark China to know what real harsh competition looks like. Competition in Chinese markets exceeds anything seen in Europe. Thousands of electric vehicle manufacturers have consolidated into dozens through intense rivalry. Companies that fail to optimise costs simply disappear. This Darwinian pressure extends across all sectors. European markets with smaller populations and established players face less relentless pressure to innovate on price.

Clean governance reduces business costs

China’s anti-corruption campaign has systematically targeted graft across all sectors. In 2025 alone, twelve high-ranking officials in fire services faced investigation. The revised Supervision Law enhanced supervisory powers and improved anti-corruption measures.
Companies operating in China face no demands for political sponsorship. They compete on merit, not connections. This transparency reduces the hidden costs that plague many western economies.

SOEs operate with high efficiency

China’s state-owned enterprises generated 75.63 trillion yuan in operating revenues in 2025. Total assets of central SOEs grew from under 70 trillion yuan to over 90 trillion yuan in 2021-2025. Their cumulative R&D investment exceeded 5 trillion yuan, with investment in emerging industries growing at over 20 per cent annually. These enterprises act as “patient capital”, filling gaps where private capital hesitates due to uncertain returns.

Government policy stabilises essential costs

Nowhere is China’s cost advantage clearer than in energy costs. During the recent Middle East conflict, global crude prices surged dramatically. Brent crude rose from roughly 445 yuan per barrel in late February to 734 yuan by early March, a 65 % increase. European diesel prices jumped sharply, with Belgium reaching 2.10 euros per litre.
In China, the story was entirely different. Fuel prices are partly controlled by the government. Authorities asked major refineries to suspend diesel and gasoline exports, keeping more fuel for the domestic market. Retail prices adjust based on international crude movements but changes happen gradually rather than continuously. The result was astonishing. Chinese diesel prices in Nanjing stood at just 7.26 yuan per litre, approximately 0.89 euro. While Europeans paid 2.10 euros per litre, Chinese drivers paid roughly one-third of that price.

Economies of scale transform cost structures

China’s 1.4 billion population creates unmatched economies of scale. Consumer spending will reach approximately 50 trillion yuan in 2025. “With a population of 1.4 billion, any product multiplied by that number becomes a supersize market,” notes Commerce Minister Wang Wentao. Production runs that would supply an entire European nation for a year cover only a single Chinese province. Fixed costs spread across vast volumes, driving per-unit prices downward.

The clothing divide tells the story

The fashion market illustrates this divide perfectly. In Brussels, a pair of men’s leather business shoes (made by Chinese companies in Turkey or Italy) costs €139, roughly 1,090 yuan. In Nanjing, the same quality sells for about 650 yuan. Sports shoes cost €100 in Brussels but 700 yuan in Nanjing. Summer dresses run €36 in Brussels versus 340 yuan in Nanjing. These differences are not about quality. Chinese textile exports to the EU grew 15.6 % in 2025, far outpacing competitors, because Chinese supply chains deliver superior value.

The underlying lesson

Europe’s expensive goods reflect its move away from manufacturing toward services. Industrial jobs have shifted from factory floors to service counters. The continent that began the Industrial Revolution now imports many industrial goods rather than making them. China maintains its industrial base while services expand, ensuring that affordable everyday products remain available to ordinary consumers

The verdict is in

Today, ‘Made in China‘ is the world’s most powerful manufacturing brand, globally recognised for its unmatched scale, technological innovation, and relentless quality advancement, having left ‘Made in Japan’ behind, and now challenging even the once-untouchable prestige of ‘Made in Germany.’ In the global marketplace, ‘Made in USA’ has paradoxically become the weakest of these labels; increasingly synonymous with poor engineering standards, inconsistent quality, compromised safety, and an unreliable supply chain. The world has learned it can no longer depend on the USA label.

Europe must stop pretending this is a temporary anomaly. China’s cost advantage is structural, deliberate and deeply embedded. It will not reverse itself.
This is not a story of cheap labour or currency manipulation. It is a story of superior planning, relentless automation and industrial discipline. Europe has no credible answer to any of it.

The EU chose comfort over competitiveness. It offshored its factories, hollowed out its supply chains and rewarded shareholders over engineers. Now it pays the price at every supermarket till and every fuel pump.

China did the opposite. It invested in talent, protected its industrial base and gave its businesses a horizon measured in decades. The results are not surprising. They were entirely predictable.

European policymakers continue to respond with tariffs and trade barriers. These are the tools of a system that has already lost the argument. Protecting inefficiency is not a strategy. It is a slow surrender dressed up as policy.

The uncomfortable truth is that European consumers are paying a premium not for better products, but for a broken model. They are subsidising bureaucracy, short-termism and industrial neglect with every purchase they make.
China did not win by cheating. It won by working smarter, planning longer and competing harder. Until Europe is willing to confront that honestly, the price gap will only widen.

Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please share your comments here below and join the conversation with our community and read all Franz’ articles at Yellowlion.

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Whole-genome screening (WGS) newborns for monogenic diseases enhances clinical outcomes. Of 10,000 newborns screened, 8 of 19 were missed by traditional screening.

Economy & Trade

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Read more

Healthy China 2030, launched in 2019, set local health officials racing to reach their KPIs. Those who reach all of them—especially if they do so despite inadequate budgets and local indifference—will be featured on national news, emulated nationwide, promoted and invited to a languid summer at the Party’s lakeside campus with famous health experts from across the globe.

Here’s what they’ve already accomplished and what to expect.

2030 Targets

• Life expectancy up from 76.5 in 2015 to 80 years in 2030. [USA will be 79].

• Healthy life expectancy up from 68 to 74.5 years. [USA will be 65].

• Premature mortality from major non-communicable diseases (cardiovascular, cancer, chronic respiratory disease, diabetes) fall 30%. On target.

• National health literacy rate: 30% of the population goal has already been exceeded.

• Main health indicators: To reach the level of high-income countries. On track

• Health equity between urban/rural and different regions. On track

Category Targets

• Healthy Living: 30% —530 million people taking regular physical exercise, reducing salt, oil, sugar intake

• NCD Control: 30% reduction through improved management of hypertension, diabetes, etc.

• Maternal & Child Health: down from 5.6 deaths/100K to 3.5. [USA 5.5]

• Infant mortality: On track to fall from 3.8 to 3.0. [USA 5.3].

• Health Services: Cut out-of-pocket health costs by 25% with universal health

  insurance and better integration. On track.

• Environment & Risk Factors: Improved air quality; Smoking below 20% of population. On track.

• Health Industry: expansion as a pillar of the national economy. Stronger innovation in pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Booming.

Social Health Targets

Fifteen major health campaigns, like health education, physical fitness, tobacco control, mental health, chronic disease management will be scored against 100 detailed indicators.

The plan is to shift everyone’s focus from treatment to prevention, from passivity to responsibility, emphasize healthy lifestyles, physical activity, and addressing risk factors early. Many clinical targets (maternal/child health, insurance coverage) have already been exceeded, while lifestyle and NCD goals remain the bigger challenges.

1. Physical Activity & Mass Participation

• Outdoor sports participants exceeded 400 million last year.

• Winter sports: 220 million already participate, many inspired by Eileen Gu.

• Fitness infrastructure: 171,800 fitness trails totaling 407,600 km built, thousands of new playgrounds, community, and rooftop tracks.

2. Amateur & Local Sports Culture

• Amateur basketball: Extremely popular at grassroots level, with massive local leagues and street/court culture in cities.

• Soccer: Matches in second- and third-tier cities draw strong crowds and community engagement. Spectator sports like the World Cup de-emphasized as policy.

3. School Physical Education & Youth Health

• Two hours of PE day nationwide, PE elevated in importance, fun, skill mastery, cooperation, traditional sports like wu-shi.

• 10 million healthy high-school graduates annually. On track

4. Smoking

• Smoking prevalence among adults ≥15 has declined from 27.7% in 2015 to 24% today, en route to 20%. The strategy is “wait out” older, poorer male smokers while discouraging uptake among youth, where rates are improving.

Supporting Indicators

• Nutrition & obesity control: actively targeting salt, sugar, and oil intake. Childhood obesity rise has slowed.

• Mental health & sleep: Growing focus on 7–8 hours adult sleep and mental wellbeing programs.

• Sports industry value: Winter sports industry already passed $136 billion. [USA $58 billion'].

In other words, another example of superb governance from the world’s most competent government. What further need we say?

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Economy, Finance & Trade

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Families will spend $1.5 billion on elder-care robots this year as the market transitions from verification phase to mass application.

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Foreign investment in China explodes: High‑tech FDI up 20% YoY, to $17 billion, that’s 40% of total FDI. Total accumulated FDI exceeds $3.6 trillion.

EU companies double down on China manufacturing despite EU de-risking push.

China overtakes US as Germany’s main foreign investor for first time in eight years.

Chinese LLMs hold 42% market share, DeepSeek cuts prices 75% on flagship.

Meituan’s drone delivery infrastructure has started commercial service.

First delivery truck network with 120-second recharge, a major step in electrifying urban logistics and reducing transport costs.

Aviation market’s record domestic demand. 70 M seats in May8, 3% of all seats to, from, and within the country.

Society & Environment

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Older Workers Win Guaranteed Minimum Wage and Injury Insurance. Workers employed beyond retirement age no longer excluded from standard labor protections.

Chinese cities used 22 billion cubic meters of recycled water in 2025, as reclaimed water has become a stable second water source for cities.

BYD assumes full, uncapped financial liability for at-fault accidents when its urban driving system is active in China— a commitment Tesla refuses to make.

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Geopolitics

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Diplomacy & Propaganda

Foreign Minister Wang Yi at UN: "We need a new Secretary-General in the United Nations who is not America's puppet, but a true guardian of the United Nations and who will put an end to the era of America's unilateral dominance."

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Defense

Report on the Military Activities of Non-US Extra-Regional Countries in the Western Pacific in 2025, released in Beijing.

U.S. Coast Guard Patrols Near Scarborough Shoal with Philippine Forces Amid Concerns of Potential Chinese Build-Up.

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There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. — Mark Twain

Russian statistical demographer, Prof. Boris Borisov, used Frank Dikotter’s techniques on the US population before and after the Great Depression and found that seven million Americans starved to death. Is America covering up this tragedy, or is there another explanation?

Based on previous demographic trends, the US expected a population of 142-million in 1940, but it reached only 132-million, of which only 3-million can be explained by migration dynamics. What happened to the 7.4-million missing people?

American Famine

According to the US statistics, the US lost 8, 553,000 people from 1931 to 1940. Afterwards, population growth indices change twice instantly exactly between 1930-1931: the indices drop and stay on the same level for ten years. There can no explanation to this phenomenon found in the extensive text of the report by the US Department of Commerce “Statistical Abstract of the United States,” the author wrote.

A lot more people left the country than arrived during the 1930s – the difference is estimated at 93,309 people, whereas 2.960,782 people arrived in the country a decade earlier. Well, let’s correct the number of total demographic losses in the USA during the 1930s by 3,054 people.

There is a remarkable similarity with events taking place in the USSR during the 1930s. Few people know about five million American farmers (a million families) whom banks ousted from them lands because of debts. The US government did not provide them with land, work, social aid, pension – nothing. Every sixth American farmer was affected by famine. People were forced to leave their homes and go to nowhere without any money and any property. They found themselves in the middle of nowhere enveloped in massive unemployment, famine and gangsterism.

Simultaneously, the US government destroyed foodstuffs that vendors could not sell. Market rules were observed strictly: unsold goods should always be categorized as redundant and they could not be given away to the poor because it could cause damage to businesses. A variety of methods was used to destroy redundant food. They burnt crops, drowned them in the ocean or plowed 10 million hectares of harvesting fields. About 6.5 million pigs were killed at that time.

A child recollected about those years: “We changed our usual food for something for available. We used to eat bush leaves instead of cabbage. We ate frogs too. My mother and my older sister died during a year. (Jack Griffin).

Public works introduced by President Roosevelt became a salvation for a huge number of jobless and landless Americans. However, the salvation was only a phantom. The works conducted under the aegis of the Public Works Administration and the Civil Works Administration were about building channels, roads or bridges in remote, wild and dangerous territories. Up to 3.3 million people were involved in those works at a time, whereas the total number of people amounted to 8.5 million, not counting prisoners. Conditions and death rates at those works are to be studied separately.

A member of public workers would make $30 and pay $25 of taxes from this. So a person could make only $5 for a month of hard work in malarial swamps, conditions comparable to Stalin’s GULAG. The Public Works Administration (PWA) bore a striking resemblance to GULAG. The PWA was chaired by “American Beria,” Secretary of Interior Affairs, Harold Ickes, who threw about two million people into camps for the unemployed youth. “Ickes (1874–1952) later interned USA’s ethnic Japanese in concentration camps in only 72 hours (1941-1942).

Famine Fact Check

• The US lost 7 million people due to

  famine during the Great Depression? US Census data shows the population grew from 122.8 million (1930) to 132.2 million (1940), an increase of 9.4 million. There was no multi-million excess death event. US Census Bureau – 1930 & 1940.

• There was a sudden unexplained drop in population growth indices between 1930–1931 that lasted a decade? The decline in growth rate was due to sharply reduced immigration (due to 1920s laws) and falling birth rates during the Depression — both well-documented and explained in official reports. US Census Historical Population Data

• Net emigration of 93,309 people in the 1930s (vs. millions arriving previously). There was net emigration in some years of the 1930s, but the total demographic effect was minor compared to natural population growth.

• Five million American farmers (one million families) were ousted from their lands (“defarming”)? Approximately 2.5 million people migrated out of the Dust Bowl states. 1 million farms were lost or foreclosed during the decade, but the “5 million farmers” figure is not supported by census or USDA data. Library of Congress – Dust Bowl Migration

• US government destroyed 6.5 million pigs and plowed under 10 million acres of crops? True. Under the Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933), the government did slaughter 6 million pigs and plowed under millions of acres of crops to reduce surpluses and raise prices. USDA Historical Records

• Public Works programs (PWA/CWA) were comparable to Stalin’s GULAG; Harold Ickes was “American Beria.” The PWA built infrastructure (dams, bridges, schools) and employed millions. Conditions were harsh, but workers were paid wages and projects were voluntary civilian programs. Ickes was known as “Honest Harold” for anti-corruption efforts. He did oversee Japanese-American internment later, but the GULAG comparison is rhetorical. Harold Ickes Biography

• The US was short 7.4 million people by 1940 compared to expected demographic trends? Official census shows steady (though slowed) growth. Borisov’s projection assumes that high pre-Depression growth rates should continue unchanged. Demographers attribute the slowdown to lower birth rates and reduced immigration.

A perfectly natural explanation

Borisov’s article significantly exaggerates and misinterprets official US Census data to claim a “famine” on the scale of the Holodomor. While the Great Depression caused immense hardship, widespread starvation and excess mortality, there is no credible demographic evidence for millions of famine deaths comparable to Soviet famines. The piece is widely regarded by historians as propaganda rather than rigorous scholarship.

The British and American Governments paid Frank Dikötter $2 million dollars to apply that formula. Prof. Borisov’s paper was stricken from the Western records.

Unitree debuts world’s first pilotable humanoid for $575,000. Sells out immediately.

China’s first ultra-high-frequency optoelectronics. The US still leads in manufacturable, integrated solutions, a classic “performance vs. scale” race.

Stem cells create first laboratory-grown autonomous, sinoatrial node, the heart’s pacemaker. It could transform cardiac disease research and drug screening.

TP Huang interviews Paul Triolo: REE supply chains, AI, and the IP that rules them. Paul does this stuff for a living.

Economy & Trade

Solar Drip System Triples Cotton Yields, Cuts Water 30% in Uzbekistan.

Xining Launches Cold-Climate Vegetable Brand to Supply 200,000 Tonnes to Greater Bay Area.

Exports rose +14% YoY in April, to $359 billion, the highest monthly reading on record. Chip exports up 100% YoY, laptops, tablets, up 47%.

Integrated circuit exports of $104 billion in January–April, up 83.7% YoY, 12.2% of mechanical/electrical export value.

Bristol Myers Squibb’s $15 billion partnership with Hengrui Pharma for 13 early-stage clinical programs.

Hotel sector shines as visa-free travelers account for 78% of inbound visitors.

Environment & Society

Three newborn Hainan gibbons bring population to 44 across seven groups. Asian elephant population hits 400. Abies beshanzuensis, a rare fir species, grew from 3 in 1963 to 4,000 today. Paphiopedilum spicerianum, an orchid species, grew from 10 plants in 2003, to 200.

Crackdown on Disposal of EV Batteries. The black market in illegal recycling of batteries under siege with birth-to-retirement tracking.

First 500 MW solar farm commissioned for direct data center supply under the “computing-electricity coordination” model.

Electricity consumption, a key economic barometer, rose 5.4% YoY, and total power use rose 6% to 820.5 billion kWh in April.

Laws punished men for crying; people with messy handwriting forced to drink ink. Official disciplines in imperial China saw lawbreakers’ hands cut off; eyebrows shaved, faces tattooed.

Elites used water fans, ice, bamboo pillows to cool down. Temperatures in ancient China climbed to 43º C.

Governance & Politics

Saturated, technology-enabled rescue and mobile shelters replace improvised disaster mobilization. In a 2025 quake, the Wing Loong-2H drone surveyed the epicentre and helped pull 407 people out inside 24 hours, while the BeiDou’s satellite messaging service kept everyone in the loop.

“After receiving an application, the Party organization shall, within one month, dispatch someone to speak with the applicant to discuss their study and work experience, understanding of the Party, motivation for joining, observance of law and discipline, family circumstances, and other basic circumstances, and introduce to them basic Party knowledge and the standards and conditions for Party members.” (Of 20 million applicants in 2023, the Party admitted 2.1 million).

Discrimination, rights violations based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression are unlawful, China’s top court responds to a petition, 信访 xinfang, the centuries-old channel for appealing directly to the Emperor.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

Taiwan’s Impossible Bind: “We’ve bet it all on Team America, and now things are very awkward”.

Wingtech Technology sues Dutch chipmaker Nexperia under anti-foreign sanctions law. Power struggle continues.

Beijing nixes US Defense Department visits until Washington stops arming Taiwan.

Revealing: how the White House portrays the visit in videos and photographs. “I worked at the NSC. The images are deliberately chosen and freighted with meaning: Trump is Chinamaxxing”.

Joshua Frank: ‘China’s “green economic imperialism” in Africa and Latin America after Emmanuel Macron condemned China for operating with a “predatory logic” across the continent’.

China’s $400-million lithium sulphate processing plant ends Zimbabwe exports of unprocessed lithium.

China warns Trump over arms sales to Taiwan, talks with Taiwanese separatists, suspends planned visits by U.S. military personnel.

Defense & Security

FPV drones cause 7% of frontline casualties. Cheaper than a meal, they kill with surgical precision. Ukraine makes four million annually. China makes four billion.

Pakistan Air Force J-10C fighters’ 9-0 kill ratio against Eurofighters during simulated combat engagements in Qatar in 2024.

The West possess immense wealth, sophisticated systems, financial influence. But war is fought with shells, missiles, drones, parts, fuel, and production lines that can replenish what battles consume: the West can no longer produce at the scale modern war demands.

American corporations today are like the great European monarchies of yore: They have the power to control the rules under which they function and to direct the allocation of public resources. This is not a prediction of what’s to come; this is a simple statement of the present state of affairs. Corporations have effectively captured the United States: its judiciary, its political system, and its national wealth, without assuming any of the responsibilities of dominion. Harvard Law School.

As we are reluctantly realizing, unregulated capitalism contains from birth the seeds of its own destruction—and ours. By prioritizing private profit over public purpose it inevitably undermines the very nations that permit it. JM Keynes explained this to the US President and his economic advisers. It’s time to revisit his predictions.

Corporate Capture

American corporations today are like the great European monarchies of yore: They have the power to control the rules under which they function and to direct the allocation of public resources. This is not a prediction of what’s to come; this is a simple statement of the present state of affairs. Corporations have effectively captured the United States: its judiciary, its political system, and its national wealth, without assuming any of the responsibilities of dominion. Harvard Law School.

When corporations participate in governance through lobbying, campaign finance, and revolving doors, the state serves shareholder value instead of citizens. Citizens United v. FEC, for example, unleashed unlimited corporate political spending in the US, sufficient to effectively captured the United States’ judiciary, political system, and national wealth, without assuming any of the consequences.

China, by contrast, maintains strict separation between business and political power. The Communist Party directs private companies to serve national goals rather than allowing them to capture the state.

Offshoring and Capital Flight

Read more

Part One, ‘Paper Money’, is here.

Money, War & Inflation

In 1161, when the Jin attacked the Southern Song, the issuance of money vouchers rocketed to 23 million strings of cash and remained there, more or less, until the end of the century. In the thirteenth century, the circulation period would be extended to four, six, nine, and finally ten years, and the number of issues increased as well. Issue ninety-nine, the last, came out in 1234, the year when the Mongol invaders crushed the Jin dynasty.

Besides exchange bills and money vouchers, Song merchants purchased credit instruments, or receipts, from the government and exchanged them for monopolized commodities such as salt, tea, alum, and perfume. A receipt entitled its holder to obtain the monopolized good in a specified quantity and quality at a certain place. Receipts of this nature implied long-distance travel and transport of bulky goods and the willingness of merchants to take risks. But the profits to be had in specialized stores in the capital and other trading localities, where holders of the receipts and the monopolized goods could meet to negotiate business matters and explore price differences, made the risks worthwhile.

Here, merchants had a place to buy and sell receipts and goods with the intention of making even more profit at lower risk. In order to secure its control over the receipt trade and participate in commerce, the government established its own Buying Receipt Office. The receipt system was immensely important for securing military supplies and provisioning troops at the northern border.

Snake Catching And The Two-Tax System

In 780, Yang Yan, a high Tang official, established the two-tax system with the intention of unifying the multifarious existing taxes and alleviating some of the burden on poor farmers. Under this plan, taxes were collected according to local conditions in either one or two payments per year, in summer or in autumn. In 1077, 31 percent of the annual taxes were paid in summer and 69 percent in autumn.

This innovation was a first step toward setting a state budget that would project the government’s annual expenditure and attempt to reconcile it with projected annual income. “An estimate of the national expenditures should first be made every year,” Yang Yan wrote, and on the basis of that projection, the required amount of tax would be apportioned among the various tax counties.

The two-tax system replaced an old system consisting of a land tax paid annually in the form of cereal grains, duty paid in the form of textile fabrics, and compulsory service provided in the form of time and labor. The new tax was a combination of a land tax and a house tax, which included wealth other than land, and it was to be paid in both cash and kind. This reform was intended to rationalize the tax system and in the process get the inflation rate caused by thirty years of civil war under control. Tax on land remained the most important source of government revenue, and for this reason many officials (who at that time belonged to the landed aristocracy) opposed it.In the first decade of the ninth century, when Liu Zongyuan was demoted to Hunan province, he wrote a story about a snake-catcher and his right to pay his tax in kind.

Part of Liu’s job had been to collect taxes, and when he suggested to the snake-catcher that he should pay his taxes in cash instead of snakes, the snake-catcher burst into tears and cried, “Can you not take pity on me and let me go on living? Unfortunate as my service may be, it is not as unfortunate as returning to pay taxes in cash. If I had not done my service this way, I would have come into trouble long ago. It is sixty years since the three generations of my family settled in this village. As time passed by my neighbors incurred more difficulties to earn their living from day to day. They have used up what they produced and income from their houses, appealed for help and finally had to move”. They suffered from hunger and thirst, wind and rain, heat and cold, and breathed poisonous air and died in confession, and I alone have survived on account of my snake-catching”.

Liu Zongyuan concluded that the poison of onerous taxation was worse than that of snakes, and he expressed his hope that those whose duty it is to observe the people’s way of life before making government policy should take note of this case and allow that taxes are paid in kind.

Theoretically, the two-tax system abolished compulsory labor service. However, it soon became apparent that no Chinese government could do without it. During the Five Dynasties period the rate of conscripted laborers increased dramatically, and the service continued to exist in the Song. All men between the ages of twenty and sixty years of age except officials, the household members of officials, monks, and the military were subject to labor service.

Extravagance and Waste

Ouyang Xiu, censor to the emperor, complained about imperial extravagance and the hardship it imposed on forced laborers: “I am informed that in consequence of the recent birth of a princess, a demand has been made on the treasury for no less than 8,000 pieces of silk. Now the rigor of winter is just at its height, and the wretched workmen of the Dyeing Department, forced to break ice before they can get water, will suffer unspeakable hardships in supplying the amount required. And judging by Your Majesty’s known sentiments of humanity and thrift, I cannot believe that this wasteful labor service is to be imposed, though rumor indeed has it that the dyers are already at work.” We do not know the outcome of his complaint.

Furthermore, local people had to fulfill various lower administrative services at the local level without pay.During the Tang dynasty, local tax revenues were divided three ways. One third went to the Central Imperial Treasury at the capital, one third was transferred to the provincial administration, and the remaining third was used to cover the local expenditures of the prefecture. This tax distribution system granted local authorities a certain degree of freedom in managing fiscal matters, but it also represented the central government’s willingness to abandon efficient control over local authorities in return for the benefit of fixed and regular tax returns. In a financial system where the government could not run the state into debt—because the financial instruments for this kind of borrowing had not been invented—the annual tax income had to be sufficient to cover expenditures. Collecting tax in advance was the only method available to pay for impending expenses.

But in practice, the annual revenue of the two-tax system did not cover annual expenses, and thus the state reinstated its monopoly on alcohol, tea, and salt. The sale of these commodities produced added revenue. During the rule of Emperor Xuanzong in the early ninth century, the salt monopoly alone contributed half of the state’s annual income. These monopolies extended into the Song dynasty, when perfume was added to the list. By the 1170s the salt monopoly still accounted for half of state revenues, to which were added taxes from distilleries and breweries (of which 1,861 were reported in 1077).

The Song dynasty also adopted the system of dividing local revenues into three streams, but the Central Imperial Treasury now got most of it: 62 percent of income from silver, 49 percent of income from silk fabrics, 67 percent of silk wadding, 53 percent of cloth, and 35 percent of cereals. — The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China, by Dieter Kuhn.

Reading

Here Comes China

Democratized Money: How China's System Builds Wealth for the Many

The State will own the big banks and the big industrial and commercial enterprises. Enterprises, such as banks, railways and airlines, whether Chinese-owned or foreign-owned, which are either monopolistic in character or too big for private management, shall be operated and administered by the state, so that private capital cannot dominate the livelihood of the people: this is the main principle of the regulation of capital. …

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5 months ago · 12 likes · 3 comments · Godfree Roberts

Coal plant pollution turns into cheap fertilizer. 10,000 tons of CO₂ → 30,000 tons of fertilize. Yields rise 6%.

Polluted wastewater produces ammonia for fertilizer production using AI chemistry.

Coal-to-gas project revived: captures 12% of domestic natural gas needs after the project was shelved in 2014.

Former Harvard scientist rebuilds lab in Shenzen. Charles Lieber, the world’s leading researcher in brain-computer interfaces, BCI.

“The best open-source AI models now come from China. Researchers everywhere are using them,” Yann LeCun, Godfather of deep learning, Turing Awardee.

Scalable 2D Semiconductors, Graphene and Triboelectric Nanogenerators as the Materials Foundation for Digital Westphalia. Read the last paragraph, slowly.

With neutral atom technology, Hanyuan-2 supports two quantum processors simultaneously using 10% of the power of conventional quantum computers.

Industry & Commerce

China’s AI model usage surpass US, Tencent soars 800%, Government releases first AI agent guidelines.

China’s Shipbuilding Completes 15.68M DWT in Q1 with 195% Surge in New Orders, Green Ship Orders up 80%

China's first intelligent production line for deepwater oil and gas equipment process piping starts up. Process piping for oil, water, etc.

Leica swaps Japan for China as it moves to joint in-house sensor development with Changchun-based Gpixel.

China pushes for 70% homegrown silicon wafer use as domestic firms ramp up 12-inch production.

Environment & Society

Beijingers aged 20-29 made up 21.3% of the population in 2015. It’s 11.4% today.

China orders 50,000 tones of deforestation-free Brazilian beef.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

China cuts oil imports 25% from pre-Iran war levels, stabilizing global prices—while USA draws down reserves to stabilize domestic prices.

“Europe could ground more than half of all Chinese commercial planes by withholding software updates for China’s Airbus fleet”. Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Defense

The new AUS70-DP230 mobile drone hunter detects, identifies, and neutralizes threats over military bases, airports, borders, oil fields, VIP events, and critical infrastructure. Its radar locks onto drones at 5+ km with visual detection out to 4 km and infrared to 2 km, jams all major drone frequencies from 915 MHz to 5.8 GHz while spoofing GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and Beidou signals with 360° coverage, one-button deployment and setup in minutes. It turns billion-dollar drone programs into easy targets for any near-peer conflict.

1989: President Bush’s Secret Letter to Deng Xiaoping

On June 20, 1989, after his attempt to call Deng Xiaoping directly failed, President Bush hand-crafted a letter himself, initiating a secret top-level contact with China as his attempt to preserving the US-China relationship. Deng Xiaoping responded immediately to the letter. Bush later published it in his book All the Best.

The letter is an example of American hypocrisy: Bush replaced the US Ambassador to Beijing with Bush’s CIA protege James Lilley whom he had known since the ‘70s when Bush was Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing (1974–1975, before full diplomatic relations) and Lilley was the CIA station chief. Bush usually read Lilley’s reports from Beijing—especially graphic accounts during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown directly.

For a full account of what really happened in 1989, read Tianananmen Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four and Beijing’s Tiananmen Post-Mortem.

—o0o—

His Excellency Deng Xiaoping
People’s Republic of China
Beijing

June 20, 1989

Dear Chairman Deng: [Deng was Chairman of the Military Commission only].

I write this letter with a heavy heart. I wish there were some way to discuss this matter in person, but regrettably that is not the case. First, I write in a spirit of genuine friendship, this letter coming as I’m sure you know from one who believes with a passion that good relations between the United States and China are in the fundamental interests of both countries. I have felt that way for many years. I feel more strongly that way today, in spite of the difficult circumstances.

Secondly, I write as one who has great respect for what you personally have done for the people of China and to help your great country move forward. There is enormous irony in the fact that you who yourself have suffered several reversals in your quest to bring reform and openness to China are now facing a situation fraught with so much anxiety.

I recall your telling me the last time we met that you were in essence phasing out of the day-to-day management of your great country. But I also recall your unforgettable words about the need for good relations with the West, your concerns about “encirclement” and those who had done great harm to China, and your committment to keeping China moving forward. By writing you I am not trying to bypass any individual leader of China. I am simply writing as a friend, a genuine “lao pengyou.”

It is with this in mind that I write you asking for your help in preserving this relationship that we both think is very important. I have tried very hard not to inject myself into China’s internal affairs. I have tried very hard not to appear to dictating in any way to China about how it should manage its internal crisis. I am respectful of the differences in our two societies and in our two systems.

I have great reverence for Chinese history, culture and tradition. You have given much to the development of world civilization. But I ask you as well to remember the principles on which my young country was founded. It is not a reaction of arrogance or of a desire to force others to our beliefs but of simple faith in the enduring value of those principles and their universal applicability.

And that leads directly to the fundamental problem. The early days of the student demonstration, and indeed, the early treatment of the students by the Chinese Army, captured the imagination of the entire world. The wonder of TV brought the details of the events in Tiananmen Square into the homes of peple not just in “Western” countries but world-wide. The early tolerance that was shown, the restraint and the generous handling of the demonstrations, won world-wide respect for China’s leadership. Thoughtful people all over the world tried to understand and sympathize with the enormous problems being faced by those required to keep order; and, indeed, they saw with admiration the manifestation of policy which reflected the leaders’ words: “The Army loves the people.” The world cheered when Chinese leaders were seen patiently meeting with students, even though there were “sit ins” and even though disorder did interfere with normal functions.

I will leave what followed to the history books, but again, with their own eyes the people of the world saw the turmoil and the bloodshed with which the demonstrations were ended. [No such footage existed or exists today—Ed.]. AlVarious countries reacted in various ways. Based on the principles I have described above, the actions that I took as President of the United States could not be avoided. As you know, the clamor for stronger action remains intense. I have resisted that clamor, making clear that I did not want to see destroyed this relationship that you and I have worked so hard to build. I explained to the American people that I did not want to unfairly burden the Chinese people through economic sanctions.

There is also the matter of Fang Lizhi. The minute I heard Fang was in our Embassay, I knew there would be a high-profile wedge driven between us. Fang was not encouraged to come to our Embassay, but under our widely-accepted interpretation of international law we could not refuse him admittance.

In today’s climate I know this matter is of grave importance to you and I know it presents you with an enormous problem; a problem that adversely affects my determination and, hopefully, yours to get our relationship back on track.

We cannot now put Fang out of the Embassay without some assurance that he will not be in physical danger. Similar cases elsewhere in the world have been resolved over long periods of time or through the government quietly permitting departure through expulsion. I simply want to assure you that we want this difficult matter resolved in a way which is satisfactory to you and does not violate our commitment to our basic principles. When there are difficulties between friends, as now, we must find a way to talk them out.

Your able Ambassador here represents your country firmly and faithfully. I feel that Jim Lilley does the same for us; but if there is some special channel that you would favor, please let me know.

I have thought of asking you to receive a special emissary who could speak with total candor to you representing my heartfelt convictions on these matters. If you feel such an emissary could be helpful, please let me know and we will work cooperatively to see that his mission is kept in total confidence. I have insisted that all departments of the US government be guided in their statements and actions from my guidance in the White House. Sometimes in an open system such as ours it is impossible to control all leaks; but on this particular letter there are no copies, not one, outside of my own personal file....

I send you this letter with great respect and deep concern. We must not let this important relationship suffer further. Please help me keep it strong. Any statement that could be made from China that drew from earlier statements about peacefully resolving further disputes with protesters would be very well received here. Any clemency that could be shown the student demonstrators would be applauded worldwide. We must not let the aftermath of the tragic recent events undermine a vital relationship patiently built up over the past seventeen years. I would, of course, welcome a personal reply to this letter. This matter is too important to be left to our bureaucracies.

As I said above, I write with a heavy heart; but I also write with a frankness reserved for respected friends.

Sincerely,

George Bush

Further Reading

Here Comes China

Beijing's Tiananmen Post-Mortem. Part One.

Excerpted From Chen Xitong’s Report to the Central Committee, July 2, 1989…

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2 years ago · 14 likes · 1 comment · Godfree Roberts

Here Comes China

Snipers in the US Embassy, Beijing.

In a previous three-part post, we saw that inflation, not ideology, triggered the Tiananmen demonstrations, and George Soros, the CIA and MI6 seized the moment to stage their unsuccessful Color Revolution. The demonstrations, which capped Deng Xiaoping’s disastrous decade, might have led to serious unrest were it not for Maos’ ten-year Cultural Revolution, during which everyone studied handling…

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2 years ago · 23 likes · 5 comments · Godfree Roberts

China is again the richest country on earth and its currency again so sought-after that, to compete, the US Treasury must pay twice the interest of RMB bonds. The PRC’s money-management is the fruit of thousands of years of experimentation by sophisticated officials, as these excerpts demonstrate.

Paper Currency

In modern monetary theory, everything that performs the functions of money is money. According to this definition, not only cash currency “the circulating treasure”—but also the various sorts of paper money in widespread use were money, even though many Song scholars refused to accept this reality.

Song paper money was the first viable paper currency system used in a national economy in world history, though not a single authentic specimen is known to exist today. The Mongols adopted paper money almost two decades before they defeated the Song. The “silk notes” they issued in i260, which were backed by silk yarn, reached Persia in 1294 and Korea in 1296. The Japanese created their own paper currency in 1334, and the Vietnamese adopted paper in 1396.

In Western countries, paper money was a rather late arrival. It started in Sweden in 1661 and was adopted in America in 1690, France in 1720, Russia in 1768, England in 1797, and Germany in 1806. Paper currency came into use in Song times because several preconditions were met.

1. The Song’s flourishing national economy created a high demand for iron and copper in the production of all sorts of articles, and the introduction of paper money helped to free up these metals for use in manufacturing.

2. The technology for printing paper notes became so advanced that currency could be printed in good quality (mak-ing counterfeiting difficult) and in high numbers.

3. Song scholars who paid attention to the monetary system had a very good understanding of money as a means of payment and exchange, not as a i value in its own right, in the way that silver or gold was valuable.

As Ye Shi (1150—I223 ) explained, “Money, one of those magic things created by man, is useful to its creator only when it is in constant circulation; it loses the meaning of its existence when it is taken away from the market and locked up in an iron-chest.”’ In his view, ease of circulation was the very function of currency, and paper money fulfilled this function better than coins.

But perhaps the most critical factor in the growth of paper currency had to do with the Song’s foreign policy. The government constantly feared that bronze coins, with their high percentage of copper and a face value worth less than the actual metal they were made of would be taken out of circulation, particularly by the Song’s northern and western neigh-bors. The resulting shortage of cash would damage the national economy

Paper money

While strengthening alien regimes, the stability of the Liao dynasty’s economy in particular depended heavily on cash imports from the Song. To keep control of metals and safeguard the stability of its currency, the Song government established segregated currency zones in the border regions. In the 1040s iron cash was extended to all the frontier provinces bordering the Liao and Xi Xia dynasties and copper cash was prohibited. In the middle of the twelfth century the Jin also tried to safeguard their own currency system by prohibiting the use of copper cash in border provinces, especially in the affluent Huainan region.

Low-value currency zones on both sides of the border not only made the lives of commoners in these regions more difficult but also complicated all nationwide commercial activities and tax administration.

The first promissory note

The earliest privately issued “order to pay,” promissory note or exchange bill, was issued in 994 AD . This note or ‘bill’ was a privately agreed-upon deed, and the earliest mention of it was in the context of the uprising of Li Shun, the leader of a short-lived insurrection of craftsmen, artisans, and farmers in Sichuan province.

These insurgents objected to the heavy iron coins that had replaced the small copper coins in use for thirty years. In response to this unrest and after further administrative irregularities, the government established a Bureau for Exchange Bills in 1023 in modern Chengdu and introduced the official exchange bill—a clever, highly efficient, profitable, and comfortable invention for buying and selling goods and services.

This piece of printed paper entitled its holder to receive the amount of cash strings printed on the surface of the exchange bill when he presented it at one of the bureaus. Originally, one exchange bill was one string’s worth of cash and was valid for a circulation period of three years. Later, the printed exchange value could vary between one and ten strings, and exchange rates of 770 coins and less per string became common.

For merchants who needed a large amount of cash to purchase commodities, paper bills immensely facilitated the transfer of funds from one place to another. Nobody had to carry bulky, heavy iron coins over dangerous mountain paths. Very soon the new exchange medium found its way into regions of the north, as merchants and officials saw its value in solving a number of problems related to commodity transfer and payment.Paper money was made from the bark of the paper mulberry tree, which is why it was also called mulberry paper money.

The government manufactured, issued, and controlled paper notes, starting with the raw material and continuing through distribution. Usually silk or other fibers were mixed in to make counterfeiting as difficult as possible. Both the Northern and Southern notes had elaborate and difficult-to-copy patterns and usually bore technical data (date and series of issue, serial number, exchange value in strings, time limit of circulation, seal stamps, and so on) verifying the genuineness of the printed paper.

Counterfeiting

The punishment for counterfeiting bills was usually printed on the note: “By imperial decree: Criminals who counterfeit paper money are to be punished by beheading. The reward [for informers] shall be 1,000 guan.” The government-run Chengdu printing house was established in 1068, and in the late twelfth century the treasury near Hangzhou employed 204 craftsmen. The size of a single note may have measured 11 by 19 centimeters. Exchange bills—and, later, money vouchers—were multicolor prints using multiple impressions.

For better control of use and distribution, the government set up restrictions and conditions for the issuance and circulation of exchange bills. From 1023 until 1107 the Song government circulated forty-three issues, each limited to a total worth of 1,256,340 strings per circulation period (which was three years until 1069). A liquidity backing of 360,000 strings (or 28 percent) per circulation period helped to avoid insolvency. After three years the old exchange bills had to be replaced by new ones or exchanged for cash. A handling fee of 30 coins was charged for each string paid out and each order renewal.

Fractional Reserves & Fiat Money

Liquidity backing was decisive in the early success and the later failure of paper currency. Toward the end of the eleventh century some scholars insisted on 100 percent liquidity backing, while others erroneously thought that the convertibility problem could be solved by introducing a fixed rate of exchange from paper to cash and vice versa. Some scholars insisted that the government should maintain a cash reserve as liquidity backing. Emperor Shenzong thought liquidity backing for exchange bills was unnecessary, because income and expenditures would cause the people to trust the value of money. He held the strikingly modern opinion that the economic power of a national economy was sufficient backing for paper currency.

His advisers did not agree.In 1071, after some of Wang Anshi’s fiscal reforms were put into practice, the demand for exchange bills doubled. Six-year circulation was introduced shortly thereafter, and in 1093 the whole system started to run out of control when exchange bills equal to 13.3 million strings of cash were issued. In 1105 a reform, effective with the forty-fourth circulation, was issued. In 1107, the exchange bill was replaced with the money voucher. The bureaus were renamed accordingly.At the end of the Northern Song in 1127, the total number of old exchange bills in circulation may have amounted to about 70 million strings. When the Song Chinese began their southward migration, the old credit line no longer satisfied demand.

The total worth of money vouchers had to be increased by 30 percent to 1,886,340 strings of cash, and in 1141 the sixtieth issue climbed to an inflationary 5,886,340 strings. In 1145, after the Song had come to an agreement with the Jin and political security at the northern border eased the strain on state finances, the government reduced the issue of money vouchers to the old figure of 1127.

It would not last long.

The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China, by Dieter Kuhn.

Reading

Here Comes China

mBridge Over Toxic Dollars?

History…

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3 years ago · 15 likes · Godfree Roberts

The CIA programs in Tibet, which were very effective in destabilizing it, did not succeed in Xinjiang. There were similar efforts made with the Uyghurs during the Cold War that never really got off the ground. In both cases you had religion waved as a banner in support of a desire for independence or autonomy which is, of course, is anathema to any State. US Ambassador Chas. H. Freeman, Director for Chinese Affairs, U.S. Department of State, 1979-1981. 8/31/18

In 1984, Beijing’s proposed continental land bridge from Xinjiang to Eurasia gave global strategic significance to the distant, rural province. But when construction of the first rail line to Kashi, co-terminus in Pakistan of the Karakoram Highway, Washington sprang into action.

The CIA hired terrorists who publicly declared the strategic rail lines were their target. Gulamettin Pahta, US-paid, Arlington-based leader of the ‘Uighur Liberation Front’, did not mince words. “The Continental Bridge is a Chinese imperialist plot that must be blocked.. They are building railroads, but the people are opposing the railroad, and will destroy the railroad. This is just like the American movies on the history of California. What the Indians did, in fighting the railroads, is what we will do. The same thing is happening. Every train coming into eastern Turkestan is bringing in Chinese. This must be stopped”. — Xinjiang in 1997.

Allegations of human rights abuses soon followed, alarming the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation:

The Commission was briefed on the human rights situation of Uyghur Muslims in China, which shows rising discrimination on the basis of their religion by subjecting them to involuntary conversions in detention camps where they were forced to follow and adopt cultural values and practices contrary to their religious beliefs. The OIC Islamophobia Observatory informed IPHRC that Chinese authorities call these camps as re-education centers to combat violence and extremist ideologies. According to the OIC Islamophobia Observatory, the newly introduced Chinese law namely the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region DeRadicalization Regulations (in October 2018), was excessive in nature as virtually any activity could fall within the scope of its provisions and enables the authorities to justify the presence of detention/re-education camps.

The Commission expressed concern on these disturbing reports on the treatment of Uyghur Muslims and expressed hope that China, which has excellent bilateral relations with most OIC countries as well as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, would do its best to address the legitimate concerns of Muslims around the world. The Commission also recalled that the Constitution of China provides clear and full guarantees for the right to freedom of religion and belief, which makes it obligatory on its authorities to ensure the exercise of these rights

by all its nationals. The Commission further emphasized the importance of ensuring promotion and protection of human rights and due process guarantees while countering terrorism — Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, December 2018.

China promptly invited the OIC to observe the Xinjiang situation themselves and, in March 2019, after the inspection, the OIC reported:

The Council welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat’s delegation upon invitation from the People’s Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People’s Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People’s Republic of China.” Report, Item 20.

James Wood’s Update

Sustained Terrorist Violence

For years, Western media pushed a simple story about Xinjiang: China is committing genocide. That story collapses once you look at the facts.

From the 1990s through to the mid-2010s, Xinjiang was hit by sustained terrorist violence: bombings, mass stabbings, police assassinations, attacks on civilians, mosques and markets. This wasn’t abstract. People were being murdered in public spaces. Uyghurs, Han Chinese, police officers, elderly people, children — all were victims.Groups linked to the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM/TIP), listed by the UN Security Council as a terrorist organisation, openly pushed separatism and violent jihad. By 2013–2014, attacks had escalated into mass-casualty incidents that shocked the entire country.

Prevention, The First Strategy

China looked at that situation and reached a blunt conclusion: Reactive counter-terrorism doesn’t work. Arresting people after civilians are already dead doesn’t prevent the next attack. So Beijing shifted to a prevention-first model. Cells were dismantled. Weapons caches were seized. Recruitment networks were shut down. Extremist propaganda was criminalised. Security was saturated across public spaces. And yes, vocational and deradicalisation centres were established for people assessed as being on the path toward radicalisation.The goal wasn’t subtle and it wasn’t liberal. It was simple: Stop the violence before it happens.

Results: Terrorism’s Collapse

Now look at the outcome. From the late 2010s onward, large-scale terrorist attacks in Xinjiang collapsed to near zero. The knife attacks, bombings and mass-casualty incidents that had plagued the region for years disappeared. Police deaths dropped sharply. Markets, transport hubs and daily life normalised. Even critics and UN reporting don’t dispute this basic fact: the wave of terrorism ended.

Western vs. China’s Counter-Terrorism

Compare that with the West. In the US and Europe, terrorism is managed almost entirely after the fact — intelligence failures, attacks, emergency response, long prison sentences. Radicalised individuals cycle through courts and prisons with minimal ideological disengagement. The result? Repeated attacks, copycats, prison radicalisation and endless “lone wolf” incidents. France, the UK, Belgium, the US — none can claim they’ve solved terrorism.China chose a different path. Instead of letting radicalised individuals drift toward violence or warehousing them indefinitely in prisons, China attempted forced disengagement and reintegration.

The Reality of ‘Re-Education’ Centres

The centres, lazily branded “concentration camps” in Western discourse, were not death camps, not extermination sites and not designed for mass killing. They were coercive, yes, but they focused on language, law, job skills and breaking violent ideological conditioning.The logic was blunt but pragmatic: It’s better to redirect someone than to let them become a murderer, or die as one.

The Genocide Claim Falls Apart

There is no evidence of mass killing. No mass graves. No extermination infrastructure. Even the UN’s own 2022 human rights assessment did not label the situation genocide. It raised serious concerns, but genocide was not its conclusion. Even census data shows Xinjiang’s population grew between 2010 and 2020 and the Uyghur population increased over that same period. That alone destroys claims of extermination. Critics then pivot to falling birth rates in some Uyghur-majority areas after 2017 — a real statistic — but birth-rate decline is not population destruction and it is not genocide.

The Inconvenient Truth

What’s really happening is far less dramatic and far more inconvenient: China prioritised certainty over liberal risk, prevention over reaction, and rehabilitation over endless punishment. The system was heavy-handed, but it achieved something Western counter-terror models repeatedly fail to do: It stopped mass terrorist violence.Re-educating and reintegrating people, even coercively, is fundamentally different from bombing countries, exporting wars, or cycling radicals through prisons until the next attack. Teaching skills and enforcing civic participation is not the same thing as destroying a people.You can debate proportionality. You can debate rights. But you cannot honestly claim China chose chaos, extermination, or collapse.

Conclusion

The West didn’t lose the Xinjiang narrative because China “hid the truth.” It lost because the violence stopped — and that outcome doesn’t fit the narrative.
Note: Some cases and footage are released to the public for the very first time and contains footage which some viewers may find disturbing.

Videos

Fighting terrorism in Xinjiang (Viewer discretion advised).

2: ETIM and terrorism in Xinjiang

3: Memories of fighting terrorism in Xinjiang:

4: War in the shadows: Challenges of fighting terrorism in Xinjiang

5: Darkness over Urumqi

James Wood, @commiepommie, is a British-Australian living in China, is a geopolitical analyst, and author of China in Focus.

Six-module, 198-ton addition to Tiangong space station as ISS era ends.

Tianzhou-10 Cargo Mission delivered 6 tons of supplies to Tiangong space station: a space treadmill, apples, tomatoes, grapes, peaches, steak, chicken wings.

Nobel biochemist Hartmut Michel joins Jilin U. Prof. Michel is also a foreign member of the Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Huawei builds its brand on a regulation that doesn’t yet exist: 2027’s “Minimum Risk Maneuver”. Have a heart attack at 120 km/h, and the car drives itself to the nearest service area and parks.

Economics & Industry

First 48K Large-Tow Carbon Fiber Facility in Ordos. 100% local equipment/supply chain. 30,000-tons/year in 2027. Low cost, high-volume production of the industrial ‘skeleton’ of wind blades, EVs, rail, marine, and manufacturing.

First mass-produced T1200-grade carbon fiber, 1/10 human hair thickness, 10x stronger than steel, 1/4 density. Hundred-ton industrial scale breaks Japan-dominated high-end monopoly for aerospace and defense.

China State Shipbuilding delivers 10,800-vehicle carrier. It features 14 decks, a 19‑knot service speed. Its LNG/dual‑fuel system meets Tier III emissions standards.

China produces half of the world’s tea with brands starting to expand overseas.

Iran conflict boosts electric two-wheeler exports to Southeast Asia.

China and Russia are the world’s sole nuclear superpowers.

Society and Environment

SOEs keep the largest food reserves in human history as The US-Israeli war on Iran triggers global food crisis.

China-EU Carbon Alliance creates a global alliance on carbon pricing launched in Florence.

Prescription eye drops to slow childhood myopia? One of China’s most closely watched pediatric healthcare trials.

China installed 3X more wind power capacity last year as the rest of the world combined—while turbine exports also jumped.

60%+ renewable capacity, infrastructure scaling rapidly. Green H2 capacity exceeded 1 million tonnes, double 2024. 22 million EV charging units, up 47%.

The Middle East crisis is expanding China’s agrochemical influence.

Governance

Communist Youth League has 78 Million Members after adding 9.1 million in 2025.

98,000 Self‑Media Accounts penalized for Misleading, Unverified Content and disrupting the online information environment.

Diplomacy & Geopolitics

Ambassador Freeman on Trump-Xi meeting.

Indiana U professor locked out of lab for criticizing prosecution of Chinese scientists accused of smuggling biological materials into the US.

Here Comes China

Trump's Beijing Nightmare: America The Supplicant?

Mao: How to give “tit for tat” depends on the situation. Sometimes, not going to negotiations is tit-for-tat; and sometimes, going to negotiations is also tit-for-tat. We were right not to go before, and also right to go this time; in both cases we have given tit for tat. We did well to go this time, for we exploded the rumour spread by the Kuomintang that the Communist Party did not want peace and unity. They sent three successive telegrams to invite us, and we went. But they were totally unprepared, and we had to make all the proposals. As a result of the negotiations, the Kuomintang has accepted the general policy of peace and unity. That’s fine. If the Kuomintang launches civil war again, it will put itself in the wrong in the eyes of the whole nation and the whole world, and we shall have all the more reason to smash its attacks by a war of self-defence…

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a month ago · 13 likes · 2 comments · Godfree Roberts

Defense

Y-20B’s WS-20 turbofan engines can haul 66 tons further and cheaper than the Y-20. The largest military transport in production includes the YY-20 tanker and KJ-3000 AWACS.

China’s first naval hypersonic anti-ship missile, the YJ-20, enters mass production. One hit from the Mach 6—10, 1,000–2,000 km range, 1000 lb. payload can sink an aircraft carrier.

China Arms Robot Dogs With Missiles. The PF-070 combines precision-guided anti-armor missiles with a low-profile, acoustically quiet, terrain-agile chassis. Four compact missile launchers, arranged in twin-pack configuration, are derived from man-portable systems already in the Chinese inventory. Electro-optical targeting, thermal imaging, a laser rangefinder, and an effective engagement range of 2-4 k.. The system retains a human operator in the loop for weapons release. Price on request.

Mao: How to give “tit for tat” depends on the situation. Sometimes, not going to negotiations is tit-for-tat; and sometimes, going to negotiations is also tit-for-tat. We were right not to go before, and also right to go this time; in both cases we have given tit for tat. We did well to go this time, for we exploded the rumour spread by the Kuomintang that the Communist Party did not want peace and unity. They sent three successive telegrams to invite us, and we went. But they were totally unprepared, and we had to make all the proposals. As a result of the negotiations, the Kuomintang has accepted the general policy of peace and unity. That’s fine. If the Kuomintang launches civil war again, it will put itself in the wrong in the eyes of the whole nation and the whole world, and we shall have all the more reason to smash its attacks by a war of self-defence.

Now that the “October 10th Agreement” has been concluded, our task is to uphold the agreement, to demand that the Kuomintang honour it and to continue to strive for peace. If they fight, we will wipe them out completely. This is the way things are: if they attack and we wipe them out, they will have that satisfaction; wipe out some, some satisfaction; wipe out more, more satisfaction; wipe out the whole lot, complete satisfaction. China’s problems are complicated, and our brains must also be a little complicated. If they start fighting, we fight back, fight to win peace. Peace will not come unless we strike hard blows at the reactionaries who dare to attack the Liberated Areas.

Some comrades have asked why we should concede eight Liberated Areas. It is a great pity to concede these eight areas, but it is better to do so. Why is it a pity? Because these Liberated Areas have been created and arduously built up by the people, with sweat and blood. Therefore, we must explain matters clearly to the people and make appropriate arrangements in the areas we are going to concede. Why should we concede those areas? Because otherwise the Kuomintang will not feel easy. They are going back to Nanking, but some Liberated Areas in the south are right by their beds or in their corridor. So long as we are there, they will not be able to sleep easily and will therefore fight for those places at all costs.

Our concession on this point will help frustrate the Kuomintang’s plot for civil war and win us the sympathy of the numerous middle elements at home and abroad. All the means of propaganda in China, except the Hsinhua News Agency, are now controlled by the Kuomintang. They are all rumour factories. Concerning the current negotiations, they have spread the rumour that the Communist Party just wants territory and will make no concessions. Our policy is to protect the fundamental interests of the people. Subject to the principle of not damaging the fundamental interests of the people, it is permissible to make certain concessions in exchange for peace and democracy, which the people of the whole country need. In our past dealings with Chiang Kai-shek we also made concessions, and even larger ones. In 1937, to bring about the nation-wide War of Resistance, we voluntarily dropped the name, “Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Government”, changed the name of our Red Army to “National Revolutionary Army” and altered our policy of confiscating the land of the landlords to one of reducing rent and interest.

This time, by conceding certain areas in the south, we have completely exploded the Kuomintang’s rumours before the people of all China and the whole world. It is the same with the problem of armed forces. Kuomintang propaganda has been saying that the Communist Party is just scrambling for guns. But we have said we are ready to make concessions. First, we proposed cutting our present armed strength to 48 divisions. As the Kuomintang has 263 divisions, this means our strength would be about a sixth of the total. Later, we proposed a further reduction to 43 divisions, about a seventh of the total. The Kuomintang then said they would reduce to 120 divisions. We said we would reduce by the same proportion to 24 or even 20 divisions, which would still be only a seventh of the total. In the Kuomintang army the proportion of officers as compared to soldiers is unduly large and the complement of a division is under 6,000. By their standard, we could form 200 divisions out of our 1,200,000 men. But we are not going to do so. Therefore the Kuomintang can say nothing more and all their rumours are bankrupt. Does this mean that we are going to hand over our guns to the Kuomintang? Not that either. If we hand over our guns, won’t the Kuomintang have too many? The arms of the people, every gun and every bullet, must all be kept, must not be handed over.

The above is what I want to say to the comrades about the present situation. Its development shows many contradictions. In the negotiations between the Kuomintang and our Party, why is there agreement on some questions and not on others? Why does the “Summary of Conversations” speak of peace and unity, while fighting is actually going on? Some comrades just can’t understand such contradictions. What I have said is meant to answer these questions. Some comrades can’t understand why we should be willing to negotiate with Chiang Kai-shek, who has always been anti-Communist and against the people. Was our Party right or wrong in deciding at its Seventh Congress that we were willing to negotiate with the Kuomintang, provided they changed their policy? It was absolutely right. The Chinese revolution is a long one and victory can only be won step by step. China’s future depends on our exertions. The situation will remain in flux for six months or so. We must redouble our efforts to make it develop in a direction favourable to the people of the whole country. Mao Zedong, On the Chungking Negotiations. October 17, 1945.

Trump understudied the notorious Roy Cohn from whom he learned Three Rules of Winning:

• Attack, attack, attack

• Always take the offensive. Never play defense. Strike first and hardest.

• Admit nothing. Deny everything, deflect, and counter-accuse.

• No matter what happens, claim victory.

President Xi studied under his father whom Mao named the greatest negotiator in Chinese history.

• Trump’s meeting with Xi in Busan last October was the first time since 1989 the

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Truck-mounted nuclear reactor could power AI data centers.

Nuclear power sector can now build 50 reactors at a time.

Chinese scientists turn carbon dioxide into jet fuel as prices soar.

Lunar rover Yutu-2 was supposed to work for 3 months, lasted 7 years where daytime temperature rise above 150ºC, and drop to minus 180°C at night.

Nationwide, multilayered computing grid hits 1,882 exaflops, (1,882 billion billion calculations/sec), 6,000X more than reported computing power.

AI computing cluster’s 60,000 accelerator chips switched on. The entire stack is produced within China to avoid external control.

China’s pharma dominance begins: it surpasses the US as the global drug development center.

CATL shocks industry with a new 1,500 km car battery that charges in 6 minutes.

Chinese universities surpassed US rivals in AI ranking in 2022, with Peking University at the top.

Finance & Economy

China’s ports handled 8 million vessel calls and 4.8 billion tons of cargo in Q1—up 6.6% and 22% YoY respectively.

China’s shipyards secured 70% of new orders in 2025! Oil tanker orders as Iran conflict drives demand.

For the first time in China’s history, demand for steel from manufacturing has surpassed demand from construction.

China, Indonesia fully link national QR payment networks, a deliberate move to bypass the dollar. Transactions settle directly in rupiah and yuan. No USD in the chain.

Society & Environment

Chinese outbound trips reach 2019 levels, trips to Turkey rise 47% following visa-free policy.

Record high solar exports double in March, clean power surpasses fossil fuels for the first time.

Fossil fuel electricity generation has declined for the first time this century, by 56 TWh in 2025, as record clean power expansion met all domestic demand growth.

Governance, Geopolitics & Diplomacy

Leading scientists rise to the top in the Communist Party as their numbers double.

World’s first laws govern emotional bonding between humans and AI. The behavioral data shows why.

China to refiners: “Ignore US sanctions; conduct your business regardless,” while Beijing reviews US ‘agreement ability’. This decision suggests the answer.

China’s Global Security Initiative building momentum since 2022, wins Global South recognition as the cooperative alternative to traditional security frameworks.

The overall percentage of Americans viewing China as an enemy dropped from 42% in 2024 to 28% now. — Pew Survey

Defense

The U.S. plans to procure foreign destroyer and frigate designs and build warships in overseas shipyards, tanks to the limited capacities of the U.S. shipbuilding industry.

The US War Machine Underwhelms: American military cannot keep up with Iran’s counter attacks or China’s technological leapfrog and cost advantages. Hua Bin.

Pentagon: PLA has 1,350 to 1,500 land-based SAM launchers, suggestsing a daily launch capacity of 8,000 to 10,000, creating a situation that makes the American siege strategy completely unsustainable, and no anti-aircraft battery is capable of changing that sentence.

China exported 60 tons ​of yttrium oxide to the USA in March. Vital for weapons and jet engine makers, it’s the biggest yttrium shipment ever.

The waiting seemed endless, but there was a good-humoured patience which a Chinese crowd seems to be able to maintain without effort. There was an instant alertness, however, when a wave of excitement rippled down the crowd from the far end of the street. A few moments later the banners came in sight. The scene had been dull; black hair, blue clothes, generally dusty and tattered after long years of misery, grey brick walls above open shops, even the gold lettering of the black swinging signs were dulled and unwashed; but all this was suddenly brightened, lit as with the first rays of the sun.

The young were all singing at once—‘there is red in the East’—as the first of the countless red banners rounded the corner.There is little more beautiful, nothing more evocative, than hosts of red silken banners carried in a fluttering sea, high overhead. The golden stars sparkled; there was a great surge of feeling as the flags appeared and then passed us by.

Massive pictures held aloft were then carried past—the bearded German philosophers whose works were beyond us, Marx himself, before and behind them, and great hosts of leaders from every Communist land. But largest, held much the highest, was the father figure of all China, his mole, the seal of heaven’s approval, prominent on his benign face. With him was Chu Teh, the victorious fighter, head of the armies. Stalin and Lenin were there, and then a multitude of smaller pictures of political leaders, almost all of them western, and all very solemn.

Then came the dancers

Performing the yang go, those mythical traditional farmers’ dances which had truly become China’s own. There were troupes who accompanied the armies; but there were also local ones—most perfect of all the Birds of Spring and other young men and women who had learnt with precision on my lawn at Jen Dah. They were now gorgeously dressed in satin which gleamed bright blue and red, with white sashes and turbans; they beat cymbal and drum as they danced on the road.

The military section, in seemingly endless procession, was broken at times by more dancers who brought relief to the watching crowds. Repeated clusters of red banners rested the eyes, wearied from watching men and machines. We had expected to see Russian guns and tanks, and Russian advisers; but they were not there. Some of the guns were certainly German, won from Japan, but nearly all the equipment, guns, jeeps, rifles and tanks, were from the United States of America, either won fairly in battle, or else bought from Kuomintang leaders who valued the cash for personal reasons rather than the weapons they had no will to handle. There is much to be said in any civil war for both sides using guns and rifles of the same make.

There were trucks carrying bands, playing the national anthem, ‘Chi lai, Arise,’ which the young people knew and lustily sang, although until now forbidden. Mules carried machine-guns, trucks dragged the field-guns. There were stretcher bearers and Red Cross contingents, but mostly truck after truck of men and women in their sandy uniforms, bright stars on caps.

When the procession was over, the city had changed

Shops were open, every window flung wide, everywhere red flags were hanging, some hurriedly made, the five yellow stars made of paper, stuck with paste, some on cotton, some on silk. Spaces were cleared in the streets, as with the beating of drums and the rhythmic clash of cymbals, the yang go was danced up and down. The soldiers came to join in the revels; they were well fed and healthy, with clear, eager faces, so different from the ill-fed, dishevelled, hardly-ever-paid soldiers the people had known.

Many of the older people were quiet spectators, they had seen changes so often in their lives; while the rich, apprehensive about their future, doubtless remained behind doors.It was the day of young China, they were all out rejoicing: laughing, hand clapping, singing new songs. Liberation had come.

Out of the city at Jen Dah, the students were also dancing. A huge bonfire was lighted; and round it, in great circles, arms clasped, singing unity is strength, they all were fused in one great fellowship. The unbroken circles widened and then drew in, then out and in, again and yet again. It seemed as though the flames must scorch them.

That evening the newspapers appeared in new form. The Liberation Daily and the Duliang People’s News proclaimed that the era of liberation had commenced. The walls were suddenly bright with posters picturing the new freedom, and showing the shackles being cut from the feet of the poor and the oppressed.

They take babies and kill them

Liberation had come; but, while youth rejoiced, many of their elders secretly wondered what would follow when the singing had ended. High hopes in China had frequently been quickly dispelled and promises proved vain. My helper Mrs Fu, no longer to be thought of as a servant, sought me out in the quiet of my study. ‘You will know as you are a foreigner,’ she said in a whisper, so low I could hardly hear the name—‘speak although “they” ’—she would not mention the name—‘speak such good words and seem so friendly, they are not really good but are evil. They take babies and kill them. The woman at the Jen Dah main gate is frightened about hers, and wants to know if you will tell her what she should do.’ — I Stayed in China. William G. Sewell. A.S. Barnes Pub, NY 1966.

Wealth inequality in modern societies stems less from broad societal gaps and more from a fundamental split between renters and capitalists. As one analysis notes, the world of homeowners is relatively equal and clusters near overall societal means. Inequality arises primarily from differences between those who rent and those who own productive capital, a pattern that appears clearly in wealth distribution data.

China’s wealth Gini coefficient is 0.547 and falling, France’s is 0.730, and America’s is 0.801 and rising. Higher Gini values indicate greater inequality, with 0 representing perfect equality and values near 1 showing a tiny minority holding nearly all wealth while others have almost none.

Globally, the top 10% owns 71% of world wealth, yielding an estimated Gini of 0.804—higher than for income or consumption. As economist Gabriel Zucman observed, this reflects stark concentration at the top. In the United States, the top 1% of households now controls more than half of equity in public and private companies, fueled by strong stock market returns over the past decade. The richest Americans h0ld $35.4 trillion in assets, close to the $36.9 trillion held by the middle and upper-middle classes in the 50th-90th percentile. The top group’s median net worth was $17.6 million in 2019. The next 9% (rich couples) held $2.3 million and the upper-middle segment $796,000.

The bottom 80% are worth a net $67,000. Today, 68% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck amid a persistent cost-of-living crisis. Median retirement savings for working-age adults (21–64) is $955 according to 2026 U.S. Census data. That means half of them have less than $955 and many have zero.

Urban China, by contrast, shows a median net worth around $200,000 (higher in top cities like Shanghai), above Chicago’s median of $93,000 (Federal Reserve) and Berlin’s roughly $49,000 (Bundesbank).

China’s lower wealth Gini reflects broader homeownership, different capital distribution patterns and much higher cash savings. Retirement realities add nuance.

China is raising retirement ages—for males born December 1970, to 61.5 years; for females, 55.25.

With life expectancy near 79 and average annual working hours 2,400, Chinese workers accumulate 4,600 hours per year of retirement. Danes, with life expectancy of 81.5, who work 1,600 hours yearly—need 6,500 hours for each year of retirement! This illustrates how ownership of assets, rather than labor income alone, drives wealth gaps. Capitalists capturing equity gains pull ahead, while renters and those with minimal savings lag.

While home ownership appears to compress inequality, the renter-capitalist divide widens it. As societies grapple with these dynamics, policies addressing capital access and retirement security may prove more decisive than traditional income redistribution alone—and closer to Chinese working people.

With a total workforce of 402 million, China’s labor landscape is vast, youthful (average age 38) and rapidly evolving. 84 million are in new forms of employment (platform, gig, flexible), 300 million are rural migrants, 52% still hold rural hukou and 96% of whom own homes. On average, they’ve received the equivalent of an American junior college degree (70% of truck drivers reached junior high school, 38% of ride-hailing drivers hold college degrees). 83% work in manufacturing and construction, 85% have high school education or above, and 36% hold bachelor’s degrees.

Workers and The Party

Over one-third, 36% of workers, are Party or Youth Party members — a far higher rate of political engagement than we see in Western labor forces — and are increasingly vocal about their quality of life: 70% want to spend more time with family during breaks, 30% want to care for family while still working, and 20% simply want more leisure time. Asked what they want from their union branches drew these unsurprising responses:

• Increased Wages (78%)

• Upskilling (70%)

• Participation in management (32%)

What About American Workers?

American workers’ real wages/purchasing power is little altered since 1975, when 25% of private sector workers were unionized. Today it’s 6% — giving the vast majority of them no collective bargaining power. Many rely on individual negotiation in a labor market where employers hold most of the cards. Their low levels of political engagement is the result of decades of US government policy.

The biggest difference between the two labor forces is that Chinese demands are funneled through a massive, nationwide union structure that has the ear of both companies and the government. Cai Qi, the fifth-ranking member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee, Director of the CCP General Office and Xi Jinping’s de facto chief of staff is the union’s man. Perhaps that’s why so many are Party or Youth League members: they have a direct line to the political system that simply does not exist for non-unionized American workers, who often feel completely disconnected from both major parties.

The Bottom Line

The ACFTU survey reveals a Chinese working class that is:

• Younger and better educated than many outsiders assume

• Actively demanding higher wages and skills upgrading

• Increasingly focused on quality of life and work-life balance

• Operating within a union structure that, while different from Western models, delivers measurable pressure for improvement

By comparison, the average non-unionized American worker faces greater precarity, little institutional representation, and a labor movement in long-term decline. China’s workers are not passive. They are organized, vocal about their needs, and operating in a system that — however imperfect — treats labor as a strategic national priority rather than a cost to be minimized. The data suggests that, on several key metrics, China’s unionized workforce enjoys structural advantages that most American workers can only dream of:

Divers glide effortlessly as robotic exoskeleton slashes oxygen use 40%. It mirrors diver’s motion in real time, reduce fatigue, extends time underwater.

Five million 5G base stations and gigabit optical network access in every county, in all administrative villages, and 95% have 5G.

China-Laos 500-kV AC power interconnection transfers of 3B kWh of clean electricity, 30 times the capacity of previous lines.

Was China’s First Nuclear Bomb Calculated with an Abacus?

Economy & Trade

China exported 68 GW of solar in March, 50% more than the August 2025 record. That’s equal to Spain’s entire installed solar capacity.

Iran war’s unlikely winner: China’s shipyards.

The service sector employs 50% of China’s workforce. Its value-added output accounted for 61.7% of GDP, up 0.4 percentage points YoY.

Real estate recovery broadens, salaries bounce back viewings and transactions well above 2025. Salaries rose 5.7% YoY, the most since 2022.

China will hit EU firms with reciprocal measures if the bloc targets Chinese firms as planned under its proposed cybersecurity regulations, Beijing has warned.

Portugal’s First Offshore Yuan Bond by Eurozone Sovereign. Cheaper, encourages other eurozone countries to follow, accelerating de-dollarization trend.

Ford, Geely Held Talks About Bringing Chinese Tech to America. They discussed a tie-up in Europe, but U.S. collaboration would be politically fraught

Goldman Sachs leads record renminbi borrowing by US banks.

Society & Environment

36-year-old left the U.S. for China—now pays $1,000 rent, $100 for groceries for family of 4: “It’s my ‘version of the American Dream”.

The death rates for lung and nasopharyngeal cancers fall 2% annually: 40% of cancers can be prevented through primary prevention measures.

Governance

State Grid buys 8,500 embodied robots for $1B: 5,000 inspection quadrupeds for transmission lines/substtions. 500 humanoids for live electrical work. 3,000 dual-arm for equipment operation and fault handling. Each saves $100,000 pa in labor cost, improves inspection efficiency 500%.

China’s CO2 emissions declined last year, while India’s did not increase, reports the International Energy Agency.

Diplomacy & Geopolitics

Five‑Year Plans consistently single out energy reserves, strategic metals, and grain/food security (including fertilizers) as state responsibilities. The same structure is visible in the energy sector.

4 Billion KW of installed power capacity = 30% of global total, 3X US America’s. New-energy spending up 50% YoY = 33% of large-scale industrial power output.

Industrial Value Added Grows 6.1% in Q1 as Robot and Integrated-Circuit Output Surges on Upgrading Push

Seven EU companies on export control list for arms sales to Taiwan or collusion with Taiwanese authorities. The measures only target dual-use items.

US Treasury sanctions China’s Hengli refinery + 40 shipping companies.

Emiratis told Treasury officials they may have to use Chinese yuan instead of USD$ for its oil sales.

Social Credit Scores At Long Last? Plan for improving the Comprehensive Enterprise Credit Status Assessment System.

Dr. Liu says armed men roam Kabul’s streets, beggars are everywhere, women have vanished from universities and workplaces and few Chinese nationals remain.

Defense

Type 076 drone aircraft carrier Sichuan entered service last week, in its first ever cross-regional training mission in the South China Sea.

Truck-mounted drone-killer laser hits targets at 4,500 feet, neutralizes drones in 10 seconds. Each shot is powered by electricity and costs $10, and engages targets approaching from multiple directions at low altitude.

The PLA’s new AI task dispatcher automatically calculates real-time fuel levels for all aircraft in range then generates optimised pairing plans between tankers and fighters based on the fuel levels, airspace capacity and flight duration of each aircraft.