China's Week, January 4, 2026
Killer anti-ship missile; Megaton hydrogen steel line; China dominates remote sensing, caviar, foie gras, diamonds (!); 75% of multinationals boost China investment.
In keeping with tradition, this first issue of 2026 is free for all 4,000 of you, our faithful subscribers. Happy New Year and thanks for your interest, your support and your contributions!
Science & Technology
World’s first commercial supercritical CO2 power generator converts waste heat from a steel plant into usable electricity.
Hydrogen replaces coke in first’ million-ton hydrogen-electric steel line.
China quietly takes over another trillion dollar industry: remote sensing.
Tsinghua receives more patents than MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard combined.
Young scientists pitch “moonshot” projects, Beijing funds hunting unknown particles, building artificial cells from scratch, decoding the solar system’s first solids.
MIT scientist Charles Forsberg on China’s molten-salt reactor: “If you assign several hundred engineers to the problem you will learn very, very rapidly.”
China’s new medicine discoveries equal America’s, tripling from 30 in 2013 to 400 today and testing competing theories of how breakthroughs actually happen.
After her ear was torn off in an industrial accident, surgeons grafted it onto her foot, reattached to the woman’s scalp months later.
Safe, Wireless, and Fully Inside: First Fully Implanted Brain-Computer Interface works like a charm.
AS700 Manned Airship Enters Mass Production after 600 flight hours. For large-scale delivery, tourism, urban security and public service operations.
Economy & Trade
World’s largest smart 750 million volt-ampere DC transformer handles renewable energy shocks, like low wind swings.
Fortune, AI experts return from China stunned, “The US grid is so weak, the race may already be over”.
China adds two Germany’s worth of electricity annually while US electricity supply hasn’t budged in a decade.
AgiBot’s humanoid robot rentals; Unitree pays $14 M for its robots to dance for Spring Festival TV Gala’s 16.8 billion viewer impressions, 79% audience share.
Total cost of robot ownership cannot exceed $42,000 over two years, including purchase, maintenance, electricity, and software subscriptions
TikTok signs agreement to create US joint venture, Bytedance remains largest single shareholder with 20%.
China is the dominant producer of luxury foods: caviar, foie gras, premium cherries and macadamias.
China overtakes OPEC as the global oil market price-maker.
75% of multinationals maintained or increased China investment in 2025, Mercedes invests in smart cockpit firm.
The threat to German auto producers isn't from Chinese cars flooding Germany. It's from Chinese cars flooding emerging markets and killing them for German cars.
Imported Car Sales Hit Decade Low. 2020 exports, 1 million; 2025, 7.6 million. 2020 imports 1 million, 2025, 520,000.
China’s EV battery recycling market hits $78 billion, could top $280 billion by 2030.
Singapore and China roll out digital renminbi pilot for tourists, Singaporean tourists now use digital renminbi in China.
Helgstrand Dressage opens China branch with its own stables, staff, horses from Europe.
Shanghai subsidizes gaming development, ups IP protection, builds incubation parks, lowers startup costs to build a world-class gaming and e-sports cluster.
Total operational high speed rail surpassed 50,000 km in 2025.
The 14-mile Tianshan Shengli Expressway Tunnel, the world’s longest, opened to traffic in Xinjiang, increases links with Central Asia.
Nexperia China’s Dongguan fab produced 11 billion chips since mid-October, a 14% drop in production YoY.
When China cut off exports of gallium, Ericsson and Nokia fell behind Huawei. Gallium allows 5G base stations to be lighter, smaller, faster cheaper.
Without ever-larger quantities of yttrium you can forget about AI data centers, thanks to the increased use of multi-layer ceramic capacitors.
Neither rare earths nor RE permanent magnets can move anywhere–even from one company to another–without explicit, written permission from Beijing.
Chile’s state-owned Codelco, the world’s leading copper producer, and China’s SQM create giant company to exploit the country’s abundant lithium.
Society & Environment
Top 10 Chinese buildings of 2025.
Glass windows on men’s toilet doors turn transparent when users smoke, after no-smoking warnings, slogans failed.
Fetal Sex Testing Rings Smuggled 100,000 pregnant women’s blood samples out of the mainland for sex tests banned under Chinese law.
Hangzhou Health Ordinance to Curb Obesity, with nearly half of adults classified as overweight or obese: the first time a city has enacted reforms directed at weight loss.
Pregnancy Tests Aren’t Selling, But Sex Toys Are Booming: New Consumer Trend.
World’s largest, $4.3 bn. green hydrogen-chemical integrated plant: 3 MkW wind, photovoltaic. Produces 800,000 T of green synthetic ammonia, methanol annually.
Scientists drop tons of cyanobacteria on the desert. After rain they spread fast form a tough, biomass-rich crust that stabilizes the dunes for future plant growth.
2,200 year old, four lane, 900 km Qin Straight Road’s sophisticated aligned trench passes, rammed-earth slope reinforcements, compacted roadbeds and filled valleys.
Governance
China restricts silver exports, echoing rare earths, gallium, diamonds playbook. A strategic mineral for the high tech sector, @ $90/oz, it’s 400% above average price.
Understanding China’s land-centric financing and its role in infrastructure investment & poverty alleviation: Project Finance with Kweichow Characteristics.
China Pays Interest on Digital Yuan to Boost Adoption. Commercial banks will pay interest to clients on the amount of virtual currency they hold, says PBOC.
All employers, permanent, flexible, gig, informal workers must carry pension insurance and not label workers “contractors,” “service providers.”
Beijing Labor Arbitration Case: Dismissing employees because their roles have been replaced by AI constitutes unlawful termination.
Geopolitics & Diplomacy
China blockades artificial diamonds, and the tools to make them. See video above.
China sits at the centre of today’s geopolitical tensions because it’s the dominant supplier in many goods, while remaining far less exposed to others in return.
Chinese embassy’s extreme shock, indignation over demolition of Chinese monument in Panama.
Defense
New YJ-20 anti-ship missile, above, fits all ships. 9m x 100cm, rocket + scramjet for Mach 6 cruise, Mach 9 strike velocity. A Type 052D destroyer can sink entire fleets.
The YJ-21, above, 2,000 km range, Mach 6 cruise, Mach 10 strike speed, above, is the most capable anti-ship missile types in the world.
Electric ICBM mobile launcher silently crab walks through tight, obstructed terrain, ‘fundamentally overturns’ conventional heavy-vehicle design.
China commissioned seven 8,000-ton Type 052D destroyers in 2025, each with 64 vertical missile launch cells. The US Navy launched one Arleigh Burke destroyer.
Is This China’s Truck-Mounted Electromagnetic Catapult? Truck-based catapult for land-launched drones opens new operational possibilities.