#China

#China

On Friday morning, the S&P 500 was less than a couple of points from another all-time high. Then, after a single social media post from President Donald Trump, $2 trillion in market value was wiped out. The unraveling shows the sway the president's one-man trade policy still has over the fate of the global economy. Trump at 10:57 a.m. ET wrote on his Truth Social platform that China was "becoming very hostile" with the rest of the world, especially when it comes to its control of rare earth metals. He accused China of holding the world "captive" because of its "monopoly" on these crucial resources.

I think that most economies want to expand their clean electricity, but some are more strategic and seizing on the opportunity than others,

US export controls have had mixed results in stemming the flow of chipmaking equipment into China, according to a congressional investigation, which found US and allied companies sold $38 billion worth of semiconductor tools in 2024 alone. Those sales, it should be noted, were mostly older equipment that's either exempt from US export rules or was sold to unregulated parties in China. In other words, these equipment vendors did nothing wrong and were acting in compliance with US export control rules.

In its most recent threat report [PDF] published today, the GenAI giant said that these users usually asked ChatGPT to help design tools for large-scale monitoring and analysis - but stopped short of asking the model to perform the surveillance activities. "What we saw and banned in those cases was typically threat actors asking ChatGPT to help put together plans or documentation for AI-powered tools, but not then to implement them," Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI's Intelligence and Investigations team, told reporters.

"The Soybean Farmers of our Country are being hurt because China is, for 'negotiating' reasons only, not buying,"

According to data collected by Helgi Library in 2021, China accounted for over 25% of the world's potato consumption. In total, the population ate around 66,437 kilotons of potatoes that year. To put that in perspective, there are 1000 tons in a kiloton - we're talking about a heck of a lot of potatoes. The World Population Review has even higher figures for the following year: 69,109 kilotons, or 47.4 kilograms per person.

When former lawyer Zhang Zhan posted hundreds of videos from Wuhan during the chaotic early months of the COVID-19 outbreak, she became one of China's most prominent citizen journalists. Jailed in 2020 for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" a charge Chinese authorities often use against journalists and activists she was sentenced recently to another four years for the same offense.

There has long been a contest between East and West, whether its competing militaries, economies, and ideologies. The ascendance of China in the last few decades has been at record pace and gives credence to its economic and military power. While Western countries, mostly NATO nations, have been at the forefront of economic and military might as a result of their alliances (EU and NATO), it is still interesting to draw a comparison between these two massive powers on the world stage.

The University of Arizona is quietly shutting down its four microcampuses in China at the end of this semester, in response to a government report released earlier this month that criticizes branch campuses of U.S. institutions in China.

A former Meta executive who wrote an explosive expose making allegations about the social media company's dealings with China and its treatment of teenagers is said to be on the verge of bankruptcy after publishing the book. An MP has claimed in parliament that Mark Zuckerberg's company was trying to silence and punish Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former director of global public policy at Meta's precursor, Facebook, after her decision to speak out about her time at the company.

As a low-cost, easy anytime snack or a super-fast meal in a pinch, it's hard to beat instant ramen. Whether you love the spicy instant noodles or you like to add fresh ingredients to upgrade your ramen, you can't deny its popularity. Instant ramen is a worldwide phenomenon, though some countries eat more of this pantry staple than others. Perhaps unsurprisingly, China consumes the most instant ramen of any country. If you thought it was Japan, they actually rank fifth in the world.

Zhang Zhan, who was released from prison in May 2024 after serving four years behind bars, is expected to go on trial on Friday at the Shanghai Pudong New Area people's courtfor picking quarrels and provoking trouble, a catch-all term used to target government critics. Antoine Bernard, a director of advocacy and assistance for Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a press freedom NGO, said Zhang's trial this week was not only prosecution, it's persecution.

Nvidia started producing chips tailored for the Chinese market after former US President Joe Biden banned the company from exporting its most powerful products to China, in an effort to rein in Beijing's progress on AI. Beijing's regulators have recently summoned domestic chipmakers such as Huawei and Cambricon, as well as Alibaba and search engine giant Baidu, which also make their own semiconductors, to report how their products compare against Nvidia's China chips, according to one of the people with knowledge of the matter.

According to data from World Population Review, people in China consume an average of 14.3 kilograms of garlic each year, which is 31 and a half pounds. That is more than double second-place South Korea at 6.2 kilograms, and more than five times third-place Bangladesh. While garlic bulbs vary in size, there are usually around 8 per pound, which means the average Chinese person eats around 250 bulbs of garlic a year.

OPINION - You can never count Russia out. More than three years after Vladimir Putin's failed blitzkrieg on Kyiv, Moscow is proving it still has plenty of punch on the world stage as Putin continues to pursue his brutal war on the conventional battlefields of Ukraine and expand his war of sabotage, propaganda, and political action against the United States and its allies around the world.

"The United States cannot expect this behavior to change," he said, adding the nation "must send a message this behavior is unacceptable" and should come with a cost to foreign rivals. "I'm committed to marshalling a unified, whole of nation approach on this, working in lockstep with our allies who share our commitment to democratic values, privacy and liberty," Cairncross said.

The body camera hung from the top of the IV drip, recording the slightest twitch made by Yang Guoliang as he lay bloody and paralyzed in a hospital bed after a police beating with bricks.By then, surveillance was nothing new for the Yang family in rural China, snared in an intricate network based on U.S. technology that spies on them and predicts what they'll do.

The China-hosted Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit concluded on Monday, highlighting Beijing's push to advance its vision for a new global security and economic order in the age of Trump 2.0. Joined by more than 20 world leaders, including from India and Russia, the bloc's largest summit wrapped up with a joint declaration signed by ten member states, pledging a deepened strategic alliance in the Global South.