China's Week, Sunday January 25
Fusion Fashioned; Permanent Pacemaker; Free Starch; $574 Bn Grid Upgrade; Heavy-Duty e=Truck Revolution; 100% Renewables by 2051.
China’s Week: January 25, 2026
Science & Technology
First indigenous, high-energy, hydrogen ion implanter goes live, critical for making gallium nitride, GaN, power semiconductors for EVs.
EAST Fusion Reactor exceeded a long-standing density barrier, proved that a tokamak can pack way more atoms into its plasma before destabilizing.
Personal, AI-driven weather service gives hourly forecasts, clothing guidance, tourism, energy operations. (Tsinghua + Public Meteorological Service).
A Tsinghua symbiotic pacemaker converts heartbeats into electrical energy to feed back into pacemaker, which operates continuously w/o needing to replace battery.
5 years after increasing the conversion of CO2-to-starch tenfold, they’re commercializing it. A 1 cu.m. bioreactor = the yield of 1 acre of corn.
Economy & Trade
Coal-to-olefins (CTO) factories turn coal into plastics, reduces oil imports. Of 36 CTO approved plants, 20 are operational), with 24 Mt of annual capacity.
China Adds 275 GW of Solar, Total Reaches 1.16 TW in 2025. Cuts Power Sector CO2 by 3%
275 GW of photovoltaic capacity added between Jan - Nov 2025, up 42% YoY, bringing the national installed PV total to 1.16 terawatts,
China’s deflation is the monetary shadow of a real-economy productivity boom, the
expression of a profound structural transformation, not a macroeconomic slowdown.
45,000 heavy-duty e-trucks sold in December, up 300% YoY. Heavy duty electric trucks save $170,000 fuel costs. CATL’s standardized battery swap packs for HDTs will drive electrification to 50% by 2029.
Can Alibaba collapse its app layer into an agent layer? If Qwen builds trust, it earns something rare in consumer AI: permission to act.
Real wages have risen due to falling consumer prices. Average per capita disposable incomes rose 5.4%, despite 4% nominal wage growth.
Less than 15% of TSMC’s advanced manufacturing processes will be relocated to the USA by the end of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term in office.
Environment & Society
China will transition to 100% renewables, across all energy sectors, by 2051, when the US will be paying higher costs for electricity while China uses world's cheapest.
Population Shrinks as Chinese Birthrate Falls for Fourth Year, with 7.92 million births vs. 11.31 million deaths, for a smaller, older population–as the economy booms.
Guidance on Zero-Carbon Factories jointly issued by five departments, including the MIIT and powerful NDRC. Exemplary factories are models for their sectors.
Governance
$15 billion in bitcoin seized, ex-head of the central bank’s digital currency research institute accused of corruption, and a scam centre kingpin.
India’s central bank has proposed that BRICS countries link their official digital currencies to make cross-border trade and tourism payments easier,
China invested a record $214 billion of new BRICS projects in metals, mining, fossil fuels and new technologies in 2025, for a cumulative $1.4 trillion since 2013.
State Grid will invest $574 billion in upgrading its power grid between 2026-2030.
Private enterprises comprise 40% of the top 100 listed Chinese companies by market value.
Geopolitics & Diplomacy
US-China flights down 70%. China-resident American expats are down 50-75%, Americans studying in China are down 90% since 2020.
Japan’s obsession with Taiwan highlights its illegitimate Ryukyu occupation and the basis for waiving war reparations to China.
The USDA stops researchers from collaborating with scientists from “countries of concern,” China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.
China’s autonomous deep-sea drilling and in-situ monitoring robot’s mission is to secure critical minerals, leveraging China’s unrivalled processing dominance to turn seabed mud into geopolitical advantage.
Defense
CNS-18 Fujian. CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford.
The PLAAF added 300 fighters in 2025: 120 J-20A and J-20S stealth fighters and 100–170 additional fighters, including the J-16/D, J-15/T/DH/DT, and J-10A/B/C.
Cargo ship carrying containerised weapons, sensors, catapult for drones. Hudong, Shanghai.
China’s PADJ-X analyzes data, finds Design Flaws in B-21 Raider. PADJ-X integrated aerodynamics, propulsion, electromagnetics, infrared signature and sonic boom – and found major shortcomings.