$600K Mecha Monster. Chip Exports Double. Gibbons Thrive. China's Week, May 26
Chinese J-10C beat Eurofighters 9-0. First lab-grown sinoatrial node. Chip exports up 100% YoY. 400 Asian elephants now. Taiwan’s impossible bind.
Science & Technology
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.
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.
Buried in the trade data: $104 billion in IC exports over four months, up 83.7% YoY. US chip restrictions were built on the premise that China is a semiconductor consumer. Those numbers say producer, and every country now importing Chinese ICs becomes a constituency against tightening controls further. Taiwan's bind goes deeper than "Team America" loyalty. Its leverage depends on being irreplaceable in the chip supply chain, and 83.7% growth across the strait challenges that assumption from both sides.