china

Four years ago, China had a chipmaker in the global top 20. Today he has three

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China has gone from having one chip equipment manufacturer in the world’s top 20 in 2022 to having three at the start of 2026. US sanctions, designed to limit Chinese access to this advanced technology, have ended up driving just the opposite: the local industry has become stronger and continues to increase its independence. Why is it important. This advance questions Western technological dominance in such a critical sector that has led to a trade war. The manufacturing of machinery to make semiconductors was a Chinese weakness and is now becoming a real alternative. And the speed at which it is happening tells us that trade restrictions may end up being counterproductive. The protagonists: The context. Three years ago, China manufactured just 10% of its semiconductor equipment locally. Today that figure is between 20% and 30%, according to Tetsuo Omori, an analyst at Techno Systems Research in statements to Nikkei Asia. The government has put in a lot of money through national and local funds, and that has caused an explosion of manufacturers that now cover all stages of production. Between the lines. Western and Japanese companies have two problems on the table: In the short term, more competition in the Chinese marketwhich grew 35% in 2024 to $49.5 billion. In the long term, see how its technological advantage is being curtailed while the Chinese supply chain gains muscle. Yes, but. China still has not mastered the most advanced technology. Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systemsessential for 2 and 3 nanometer chips, are only manufactured by ASML. ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet He said it will take China “many, many years” to develop that capability.. It sounds like a message of calm for the West, but China’s recent history does not encourage us to take anything for granted. In dispute. The race for leadership in semiconductors is now played on two boards. One is technological: who manages to manufacture the most advanced chips. The other is self-sufficiency: who manages to control more links in their supply chain. China is losing in the first but is advancing very quickly in the second. And that could change the rules we knew even more. In Xataka | The ASML-Mistral alliance reveals the European plan B: if we cannot manufacture chips, at least we will control how they are manufactured Featured image | ASML

China has been writing an endless novel about how to overtake Europe for 16 years, and it has become a political weapon

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Somewhere on the Chinese internet there is a science fiction novel which has been written since 2009 and will probably never end. It is titled ‘Illumine Lingao’ (临高启明, translatable as “The Morning Star of Lingao”) and accumulates millions of words distributed over thousands of chapters. It does not have a single author: it has been written collectively by hundreds of people, mostly engineers, technicians and military history fans who have been contributing chapters, technical corrections and secondary plots over almost two decades. It has generated more than 1,400 derivative works. And it has never been translated into any Western language. What is it about? The premise is simple: more than 500 21st century Chinese citizens, armed with modern technical knowledge, travel back in time through a wormhole to the year 1628, to the death throes of the Ming Dynasty. They settle in Lingao County, on the island of Hainan, and from there they unleash an industrial revolution that alters the course of history. The goal: make China reach modernity before Europe. How it arises. The text began to take shape in 2006 as a discussion on SC BBS, the oldest military-themed forum in China, from a question that struck a chord: “What would you do if you could travel to the Ming dynasty with modern knowledge?” The debate crystallized three years later in a collective writing project led by a user known as Boaster, whose real name is Xiao Feng. The first installment was published in 2009 on Qidian Chinese Network, the country’s largest web literature platform. In 2017, China Radio, Film & TV Press published the first volume in print format. What makes it special. What sets ‘Illumine Lingao’ apart from other time travel fantasies is its obsession with technical detail. The chapters include long discussions on how to make nitric acid from scratch, what materials are needed to build chemical synthesis towers, or how many tons of industrial equipment would be needed to begin mechanization without prior machines or tools. Chinese readers have dubbed it “the encyclopedia of time travel.” Some critics They consider it “a unique phenomenon of contemporary Chinese literature.” But… what sensitive chord does this work touch? Needham’s puzzle. In 1942, the British biochemist Joseph Needham He traveled to China as a diplomatic envoy. During those three years he discovered that the Chinese had developed techniques and mechanisms that preceded their European equivalents by centuries. The printing press, the compass, gunpowder, paper money, suspension bridges, toilet paper… all had emerged in China long before Europe even conceived of it. Needham returned to Cambridge and documented this in ‘Science and Civilization in China’, 25 volumes that asked why modern science and the industrial revolution developed in Europe and not China, if China was so far ahead. This question, known as “Needham’s puzzle”, touches the most sensitive nerve of Chinese historical consciousness. Historians have proposed dozens of answers. Some point to geographical factors: while Europe competed fragmented into rival states that stimulated military and commercial innovation, China remained unified under a bureaucratic system that did not need change to survive. Others point to philosophical reasons: Confucianism valued social harmony over disruption. And some say that the key difference was European access to the resources of the American continent. For Chinese intellectuals, the “Great Divergence”, the moment when Europe overtook China, is not an abstract problem for historians. It is the question that explains the “century of national humiliation” (1839-1949), the opium wars, the burning of the Summer Palace and the Japanese occupation. That is why in ‘Illumine Lingao’ we travel to the Ming dynasty: 1628, sixteen years before the dynasty collapsed due to the Manchu invasion. For these Chinese intellectuals, the Ming dynasty represents the fateful fork: it is the moment when China chose the wrong path and Europe took the lead. Rewrite history. ‘Illumine Lingao’ belongs to a literary genre that enjoys enormous popularity in the chinese web literature: chuanyue (穿越), time travel stories in which contemporary protagonists use their modern knowledge to alter the course of history. In China, this genre has an implicit nationalist charge. It is not about looking at the past or resolving temporal paradoxes, but about correcting it, giving China a second chance. ‘Illumine Lingao’ takes this premise to the extreme: the documentation of each step with obsessive technical rigor turns the novel into something more than entertainment. It is a manual and a manifesto. A manifesto of a specific party. More than entertainment. As has been analyzed in academic circles, ‘Lingao’ reorganizes the historical narrative of Chinese socialist construction around the framework of industrialization and technological progress, with a clear nationalist sense. Its roots are in the so-called Industrial Party, which is not a real party, but rather a label to designate a current of thinkers, online commentators and influencers who share a vision of the world based on industrialization as a supreme value. For them, the material transformation produced by industrialization is an objective measure of national success. At the beginning of this century, its area of ​​theoretical development was the Internet, going against the grain at a time when the Chinese economy was betting on low-cost manufacturing and foreign direct investment. At that time, the idea that China could manufacture advanced semiconductors It sounded like science fiction. The Industrial Party made the leap to public influence in 2012, when the news website Guancha It began to include party members among its editors, defending the Chinese government from ultranationalist positions. Cultural battle. ‘Lingao’ has also largely become a political tool. When in 2011 a high-speed train rammed another convoy from behindcausing 40 deaths and 192 injuries, the Government wanted to manage the information so that the idea of ​​prosperity at any cost was not clouded. But on social media, negative opinions about the accident even surpassed state censors and They questioned the idea of ​​”progress” that the government maintained. Was the speed of development exacting an unacceptable price in human terms? ‘Illumine Lingao’ became a reference text in … Read more

China urgently needed a train station, so it was built in nine hours with 1,500 workers and 23 excavators.

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Anyone who has done a work at home will have already experienced firsthand that they know when it starts but not when it ends, something that happens in domestic works and that we also see from time to time with public works. And large infrastructures take time, although we have seen real records such as this 10-story building in just 29 hours. Of course, in China. Precisely there, in the city of Longyan in the southeast of the country, is where they have made a train station overnight. Literal. And although the work is a milestone in 2026, the reality is that this reform in record time took place in January 2018 and that left Elon Musk with his mouth openwhich had no qualms in stating that “China’s progress in advanced infrastructure is more than 100 times faster than that of the United States.” As China Central Television narratedat 6:05 p.m. the station closed and only 17 minutes later the remodeling kicked off in an action that more than a construction seems like a synchronized swimming number until 3:30 in the morning, the time of the end. A kind of “open heart operation” in public works Only nine hours for a project that, although it is true that it was not a new station from scratch, was not exactly small: it consisted of a remodeling and connection of roads between a new high-speed line between Longyan and Nanping and three existing railway lines. Furthermore, they decided to do it at night so as not to interrupt daily rail traffic. Because at 6:22 p.m., 1,500 workers grouped in seven units were executing seven different simultaneous tasks, such as Zhan Daosong tolddeputy manager of China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group, China’s leading railway construction company. To carry it out, they relied on seven trains and 23 excavators. Thus, while one group installed monitoring and signage equipment, another paved the land. The millimeter precision and rapport is such that Reminiscent of open heart surgery but transferred to public works: with workers distributed over a range of 1.5 kilometers in their assigned places and 23 coordination teams to ensure compliance with deadlines and processes. Something like this is not done overnight, but before the day of truth They did six large-scale drills to prepare. The decision to do it at night has an explanation: not to interrupt the day’s rail traffic because in fact, at 1:56 in the morning they already had the first test train accessing the new station. Because they had also estimated a verification period of three and a half hours in which three other trains accessed the facilities. At 5:53 in the morning the rehearsals were over: K297, a normal passenger train, arrived at the station. As impressive as the speed of the project, which involves enormous planning work and prior studies, was the achievement achieved: reducing the travel time between both cities from seven hours to just an hour and a half thanks to the high-speed train that travels along the track at 200 km/h. In Xataka | 100% autonomous factories where it is not necessary to turn on the light: China is already considering manufacturing cars only with robots in 2030 In Xataka | Tesla’s dwarfs continue to grow: the Model 3 is no longer the premium electric that sells the most in China Cover | CGNT

monitor every move of Russia and China in the Arctic

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First World War II and then the Cold War turned Greenland into a magnificent surveillance platform belonging to Denmark but granting the United States a VIP pass that it now wants to switch to annexation. Because that piece of frozen land (less and less) has rare earthsbut the most attractive thing has always been its strategic location. Old radars are not enough. The melting of Greenland has opened new sea routes that Russia and China have welcomed with open arms. the advantages it offers compared to traditional routes. Of the 15 military bases that the US had in Greenland in 1945, now only one remains: the Pituffik Air Base or Thule. And a problem: outdated and insufficient systems to monitor what happens there, such as acknowledged the Pentagon first and the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies after. So they have gotten to work to solve it: the United States Department of Defense agency responsible for the development of cutting-edge technologies for military use (DARPA) has requested a new technology collected in Frosty. This program aims to develop new radars that operate reliably in the harsh Arctic environment. DARPA is seeking proposals capable of detecting aerial targets at least 75 kilometers away with a detection probability greater than 90%. The coveted new polar “silk road”. The launch of this new radar is important because it would mean having a real lookout in the Arctic and on the new route that has appeared so that the great world powers can gain commercial and military advantage. China has already made clear what do you want be a “great polar power”“. The immediate advantage is reduce shipping times to Europe from up to 50 days to less than half (on its route through Suez). This recent academic article In its security report, the United States Coast Guard reviews other possible risks such as the expansion of its fishing grounds, access to natural resources for scientific cooperation and mentions the existence of its advanced fleet of modern icebreakers and Chinese submarines capable of operating under the ice. Spoiler: With current technology, they are difficult to detect from the surface. For Russia, the new passage route that is being opened is a threat to the current North Sea route, which operates under its jurisdiction. Furthermore, Greenland is part of the GIUK bottleneck (shared with the United Kingdom and Iceland) that its northern fleet must pass through to reach the open waters of the Atlantic, at the gates of the United States. We are talking about nuclear submarines as advanced as the Borei-A class and the Yasen-M. Also at stake is the sovereignty of the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain range that links it to Greenland, which could eventually give it exclusive rights to vast hydrocarbon reserves. And that’s without talking about the massive rare earth deposits The technical challenge of being so far north. The northern lights are very beautiful, but they generate a huge amount of electromagnetic noise when they occur. Since the Earth’s magnetic field lines also converge at the North Pole, the ionosphere is unstablegenerating scintillation that corrupts the GPS signal and absorption in the polar cap. In short, conventional radars not only fall short, but sometimes also go blind. The DARPA wish list. What the US agency wants It is essentially transforming the electromagnetic chaos of the Arctic into a detection tool with a brain in the form of processing software with advanced algorithms that dynamically “filter” interference from geomagnetic storms to isolate potential threats. Furthermore, it would not be a single giant antenna, but rather a mesh of small mobile nodes that share data to triangulate targets. These are the radars you request: A passive environmental noise radar that does not simply emit a signal and wait for the bounce, but uses natural radio frequency noise from the environment to detect objects. That is, it does not treat noise as an interference, but as a source. If a ship passes through that noise, it generates a disturbance that can be detected. Radars Over-the-Horizon that, unlike line-of-sight ones, which travel in a straight line and collide with the curvature of the Earth, these are capable of bouncing waves off the ionosphere to be able to detect objects beyond the Earth’s curvature. They are indicated to detect maritime vessels or aircraft flying at low altitude, thus evading conventional radars. An externally illuminated radar with high-power transmitters located at great distances as power sources, like Alaska’s HAARPwhich allows objects to be illuminated indirectly. For when. As mark your roadmapthe receipt of industry proposals for the tender ended on January 30 and the next 18 months will focus on algorithm development, offline implementation and laboratory testing. Between 2027 and 2028, the integration of the software into real hardware would take place, with field tests in Point Barrow and Poker Flat, Alaska. Therefore, to see this new and ambitious radar network in action we will have to wait until 2028. In Xataka | Russia and China already had an advantage over the US in the Arctic. After Greenland, it has multiplied In Xataka | Now that Europe has sent its troops to Greenland, a question emerges that no one wants to ask: what happens if the US invades it? Cover | JoAnne Castagna / US Army Corps of Engineers (Public domain)

that China approves the purchase of its H200 chips

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China has given the green light for the first time to the purchase of NVIDIA’s H200 chips for AI, which has allowed several of the country’s main technology companies to import these semiconductors. We had been waiting for a few weeks for Beijing to comment on the matter, since NVIDIA was multiplying its chip production to be prepared for this moment. Although there are some rules that companies must follow. The decision. According to account Reuters, ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have received authorization to acquire more than 400,000 H200 chips in total, an operation valued at approximately $10 billion. More Chinese companies are expected to receive the go-ahead in the coming weeks, although specific conditions have not yet been detailed. Visiting. The authorization comes during NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to China this week. Huang has toured Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen on his traditional annual trip ahead of the Lunar New Year celebrations. However, according to account the Wall Street Journal, has not met with senior Chinese officials. Why is it important. The approval breaks a stalemate that has lasted for months. In April, the United States initially banned the sale of H20 chips to China, a less powerful version that NVIDIA had designed specifically for the Chinese market. Although Washington turned back with the H20, Beijing then told companies not to buy themalleging cybersecurity issues that NVIDIA denied. After a meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping In South Korea last October, the United States authorized the export of the H200, a significantly more powerful chip. Now, China is doing its part by approving the import of these chips into the country. The Beijing dilemma. The issue is that China was preparing for a world completely independent of American technology, so after approval it dances in a delicate balance. On the one hand, Beijing wants its best AI developers to be able to build new models and applications quickly, something that NVIDIA chips would greatly facilitate. On the other hand, it has been cultivating a self-sufficient semiconductor industry for years. Although according to account WSJ, the country has encountered resistance especially from private sector companies accustomed to using NVIDIA software products and tools. The conditions of the agreement. According to Reutersthe approvals include restrictions that are still being defined. But what is known is that Chinese companies that want to buy American chips have had to submit documents to authorities explaining how they plan to use them. The country’s authorities have indicated that any purchase must be for uses considered necessary, such as advanced research and development in AI, according to inform WSJ. Some companies have also included plans to purchase chips made in China in their agreements, as authorities require companies to use locally produced semiconductors for some AI training tasks and most inference-related workloads. btechnological right. The H200 represents a significant qualitative leap, exceeding the performance of the H20 by approximately six times. Although Chinese companies like Huawei now they have products which rival the performance of the H20, they are still far behind the H200. And in order not to be left behind in the AI ​​race, large Chinese technology companies have lined up to order more than two million H200 chips, far exceeding NVIDIA’s available inventory. Impact. NVIDIA had seen its share of AI chips in the Chinese market fall from 95% to virtually zero as it awaited actions from both governments, according to declared Huang in October. Meanwhile, Chinese companies have tried fill that void using a large number of lower power chips to increase processing capacity. And now what. According to account WSJ, Huang is soon scheduled to travel to Taiwan, also part of his annual routine, where he is expected to speak with suppliers about manufacturing more H200 chips to feed demand in China. After the October trade truce between the US and China, it seems that the waters have calmed down, at least on the surface. Cover image | Arthur Wang and NVIDIA In Xataka | Meta, Google and TikTok have condemned an entire generation to “doomscrolling.” And now they are going to be judged for it

China studied the secret of falcons to hunt their prey. Now your drones only need 5 seconds against their targets

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Throughout history, armies have always observed nature to learn to hunt, defend themselves and coordinate better, from way to attack in group to the selection of the weakest enemy. Today, that old military tradition makes sense again in a radically different context, one marked by algorithmsautonomous machines and a new technological race that is reminiscent of other great military leaps of the past. AI as the axis of combat. In this scenario it appears China, which is systematically promoting the use of artificial intelligence in the military sphere, especially in swarms of drones and autonomous systems capable of operating with little or almost no no human intervention. counted the wall street journal this week that they are in possession of patents, academic papers and procurement documents showing that the People’s Liberation Army sees future warfare as an environment dominated by algorithms, where swarms replace individual platforms and the mass of cheap systems can overwhelm defenses, attack targets and resist electronic warfare. The Ukrainian experience reinforces this vision by demonstrating that drones are already decisive and that autonomy becomes increasingly valuable when human control degrades. Learn about animals. To solve how to coordinate swarms in real time, Chinese researchers are modeling algorithms inspired in animal behavior. For example, in an experiment developed at Beihang University, defensive drones trained as “hawks” They learned to identify and destroy the most vulnerable targets, while attacking drones imitated “pigeons” to avoid threats. In a five-on-five simulation, the defenders They eliminated all the attackers in just 5.3 seconds. Beyond the success of the results, the interest was in the method: adapt hunting, escape and animal cooperation rules to realistic combat scenarios, where drones fly, maneuver and make decisions under pressure. Mass production. The Chinese bet combines these algorithmic advances with a clear industrial advantage: factories capable of producing hundreds of thousands or millions of cheap drones per year. This allows us to think of swarms as a main weapon and not as a complement, something much more difficult for, for example, the United States, which produce fewer drones and at a much higher cost. Systems such as mobile launchers of dozens of drones, mother models capable of releasing swarms in flight or even “robot wolves” Armed forces show a doctrine oriented towards coordinated quantity, not individual technological excellence. Centralized control. The appeal of autonomy also reflects a structural distrust in the capabilities of Chinese middle managers, a recognized problem for years by the political and military leadership itself. The swarms controlled by algorithms They fit better with a centralized command culture, where decisions are designed from the top and executed without improvisation. For Beijing, AI offers a way to compensate for the lack of real combat experience and reduce reliance on human commanders in chaotic situations. One soldier, 200 drones. Added to this line of development is the massive deployment capacity that the People’s Liberation Army has begun to publicly display, with tests in which a single operator is capable of supervising swarms of more than 200 drones released in a very short time. In images and data released According to Chinese state television, the drones, trained through simulations and real flights, are capable of flying in precise formations, dividing reconnaissance, distraction and attack tasks, and changing functions on the fly thanks to autonomous algorithms that allow them “negotiate” among themselves without constant human orders. The implicit message is clear: China is not only investigating how to make swarms more intelligent, but how to put them in the air on a large scale with very few personnel, a force multiplier that reinforces its commitment to coordinated quantity as a central feature of its future doctrine. In the background, Taiwan. Of course, the approach is not without risks: Systems can fail under real conditions, be neutralized by countermeasures or, at the opposite extreme, make lethal decisions that are difficult to explain or control. Even so, the WSJ reported that the documents and analysis suggest that one of the most likely scenarios for the use of those chinese swarms It would be a conflict around Taiwan, where they could be used to saturate air defenses, locate targets and facilitate subsequent attacks. The result is a dangerous race, in which China seems to advance rapidly despite the uncertainties, bringing closer a type of war that until recently seemed pure science fiction. Image | USFWS Mountain-Prairie日本防衛省・統合幕僚監部 In Xataka | China’s new futuristic drone is already flying alongside the J-20 fighters. And Beijing has shown it without saying a word In Xataka | China has just crossed the same red line as Russia: for the first time, a military drone has invaded Taiwan’s airspace

In China, glaciers have become a tourist attraction. So you’re protecting them from global warming with XL blankets

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Located in the province of Sichuan, just 300 kilometers from Chengdu, the Dagu glacier offers such fabulous landscapes that every year it receives several hundred thousand tourists. They come from other parts of the country or the planet to enjoy the snow and the views from their cable car. For scientists, however, Dagu is more than just a white paradise. In his opinion it looks more like a “terminally ill”a patient they must care for to avoid (or at least delay) the fatal outcome: the slow and unstoppable loss of ice due to climate change. For this purpose, a group of Chinese researchers has had a curious idea, to say the least: ‘covering’ part of the glacier with a gigantic blanket. A threatened paradise. Dagu is more than a glacier the tibetan plateau full of landscapes instagrammable. It is also a fundamental piece in the region’s economy. The enormous mass of ice attracts more than 200,000 tourists per year, which keeps an industry that employs thousands of people, and its melting supplies the populations with drinking water and even energy thanks to hydroelectric generation. Neither one nor the other has stopped scientists from referring to Dagu as a “dying glacier” or “a terminal patient.” Thus, in such a heartbreaking way, he defined it a few months ago Wang Feiteng, glacier expert and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Is your condition that serious? The data are certainly not encouraging. In an article published in 2025, the Chinese organization recalls that since the 1960s its ice has “fragmented into scattered remains” and the frozen surface of the glacier has been reduced more than noticeably. And the trend does not seem to ease. “During the last four years the terminal end retreated another 20 meters,” warn from the academy, which insists that if nothing stops the process the situation of the glacier will be critical and irreversible at the end of this same decade. “Without urgent intervention, the Dagu glacier will disappear by 2029.” Beyond Dagu. The Chinese academy is not the only one to warn of the degradation of the environment. In 2003 Bloomberg dedicated him a chronicle in which he already pointed out that in the last half century alone the glacier has lost more than 70% of its ice. Regarding the reason, researchers have few doubts: The retreat of the ice mass is explained by the climate and the increase in temperatures. The problem is actually much bigger. Dagu may be one of the most vulnerable, but China has many other glaciers spread across its vast geography. Many. It is estimated that about 69,000, the tenth part of the glacial mass of every planet. And only between 2008 and 2020 its frozen surface receded by about 6%. If we broaden the perspective, since the 60s it has shrunk 26%. A blanket for the sick. Dagu’s situation may be critical, but… “As a doctor, can one just walk away?” he wonders Wang Feiteng. Convinced that the answer is ‘no’, a few years ago he and his colleagues decided to apply a striking strategy on the Tibetan glacier. They are dedicated to covering part of their frozen surface with a blanket that protects it (at least in part) from the effects of global warming, slowing down the loss of ice. It may sound strange, but the key is in the physical properties of that ‘protective quilt’. What they use are “glacial blankets”layers that stand out for their reflective capacity and provide thermal insulation, minimize the absorption of shortwave radiation and improve the albedo of the glacier, that is, the proportion of reflected solar radiation. The result? Less ice loss. The technique is not exactly new. It is inspired by what they already wear decades doing the ski resorts of Austria or Switzerland to protect the snow, although the approach does change. The idea was put into practice in Dagu in 2020 with six rolls of white cloth covering a selected area of around 500 m2. And does it work? It seems so. The program has been attractive enough to attract the attention of UNESCO, which a year ago published an article by professors Kang Shichang and Du Wentao, both linked to the CAS, in which some results of the experiment are described. To begin with, experts have found that the melting rate in the area covered by the glacial blanket was reduced by 34% between 2020 and 2021. “Even a year after removing the fabric, the area melted 15% slower due to the extra ice,” clarify from the CAS. The scientists were not limited to Dagu. In an attempt to go further, they used “more advanced nanomaterials” to cover a section of the Urumqi glacierin the Tian Shan Mountains. Thanks to the use of nanofibers, the researchers claim that they have managed to reduce the melting rate up to 70% in summer. The key is in a new material that, according to a team from Nanjing University, is capable of reflecting more than 93% of sunlight and dissipates the heat to which glaciers are exposed, reducing ice loss. Not everything is advantages. The results They are hopeful, but they leave some questions raised and also have limitations, such as recognize Kang Schichang and Du Wentao: “Covering glaciers with blankets has been mostly applied to small, tourism-focused glaciers on the brink of disappearance. While it has been proven effective in slowing their retreat, it poses environmental risks, high costs, and can only be applied in small environments. Large-scale retreat of glaciers cannot be addressed using nanomaterials alone.” The Chinese Academy itself recognize that Dagu is “an atypical case”, since unlike most of the glaciers in China, which are remote and difficult to access, this one “is located in the center of an urbanized tourist destination, which has electricity and access to water all year round.” That’s important for several reasons. First, because it has generated an infrastructure that makes it easier to deploy programs such as blankets or the … Read more

The Model 3 is no longer the best-selling premium electric vehicle in China

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The automotive industry is giving us not-so-subtle clues about its changes and the baton it picks up. China as an influential country in this sector It is taking more and more shape. Just two years ago, dethroning the Tesla Model 3 as the best-selling electric sedan might seem like a joke. However, this same thing has happened in China, as it is the Xiaomi SU7 the one that has taken that position from him, and even more of an achievement if we take into account that it is the first car from the now also automobile manufacturer. Figures. Xiaomi’s SU7 reached 258,164 units sold in China during 2025, exceeding the 200,361 deliveries of the Model 3 by almost 30%, according to data of the Chinese Passenger Car Association (CPCA). It is the first time that a Chinese manufacturer has managed to take the lead from the Tesla model in its category since it began to be assembled in the Shanghai Gigafactory at the end of 2019. Context. Xiaomi has only been delivering vehicles since March 2024, making this success even more significant. With a huge user base on its mobile devices and other technological products, the Chinese manufacturer has managed to boost sales of its first vehicle with very outstanding features such as its sophisticated autonomous driving system preliminary and software and technology that has become a reference. There in China, the basic model of the SU7 has a price of 215,500 yuan (about 26,400 euros at the exchange rate), 9% cheaper than the Model 3, which starts at 235,500 yuan. The decline of Tesla in China. Elon Musk’s brand has seen how its market share was plummeting from 16% in 2020, when it began producing the Model 3 in Shanghai, to 6.9% in 2024. Tesla’s total deliveries in the country fell 4.8% in 2025 to 625,698 units, representing just 4.8% of total electric vehicle sales in China. “Tesla’s Chinese competitors are able to make technologically comparable vehicles while offering them at lower prices,” counted Eric Han, from the consulting firm Suolei, to the SCMP media. Lights and shadows of SU7. Despite Xiaomi’s great success, the SU7 has also been marked by tragedy. And in March 2025, three people died in an accident with an SU7 in the province of Anhui while the driving assistance system was activated, which led the Chinese authorities to tighten supervision over these technologies. In October, another fatal accident in Chengdu involving a SU7 Ultra once again generated debate, this time because neither the members of the vehicle, nor the people who wanted to help them, were able to open the doors of the burning vehicle. New versions. The company presented in early January a renewed version of the SU7 with a range of more than 900 kilometers on a single charge, launched in pre-sale from 229,900 yuan (about 28,000 euros at the exchange rate). The top-of-the-range edition reaches 902 km of autonomy, compared to 830 km for the Pro version that currently exists. Tesla doesn’t look good in Europe either. Things are starting to look ugly for Tesla, because if we are going to its overall figuresElon Musk’s company delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025, compared to 1.79 million in 2024, accumulating two consecutive years of declines. In Europe, where Tesla launched trimmed versions of the Model Y and Model 3 to defend volumes, registrations fell 25% in the eight main markets. Its share in our market fell from 2.4% to 1.7% until November, according to the European association ACEA. Between the lines. Nor can we say that Tesla already has everything on order, especially considering that the Model Y remains the best-selling SUV in China. However, the ability of Chinese manufacturers to compete in the premium segment with technologically advanced vehicles and more competitive prices is redrawing the map of the sector. We were recently talking about BYD surpassed Tesla as the largest electric vehicle manufacturer in the world, with 2.25 million units sold in 2025. Of course, the fragmentation of the Chinese market, which already has more than 50 electric vehicle manufacturers, and the fierce price warraise doubts about the long-term profitability of the sector. Cover image | David von Diemar In Xataka | There is an unexpected victim of the rise in RAM memory prices: the very modern connected cars

For thousands of years, human beings have avoided crossing the Taklamakan Desert. Now China is raising fish there

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For more than 1,500 years, the merchants who traveled the Silk Road dared with oceans, mountains and jungles, they dared with endless walks, with warlords, with hunger and pain and the cold; with one of the most destructive epidemics in history; but they did not dare with the Taklamakan. That sand hell (whose name comes from the word ugiur for “abandon, leave alone, leave behind”) is not only the second largest dune desert in the world, but it moved, invaded and devoured everything around it. It’s been a nightmare for thousands of years. Well, now, China is farming fish right there. As? As it sounds, Xinjiang has been committed to producing fish and seafood “in the middle of the desert” for years. And no, obviously, it has nothing to do with “releasing fish in the sand” as if it were worms from Arrakis. The key is saline-alkaline water, lined ponds and recirculation techniques. It is not a revolutionary approach (already We have talked about similar techniques), but without a doubt Chinese producers are taking it to another level. Xinjiang aquaculture production was 196,500 tons in 2024. And, of course, the “desert seafood” boom raises questions about water, energy and scalability. From the promise of fresh fish… We are talking about a very harsh physical context (annual rainfall of less than 100 mm, very high evaporation and salinized soils): thus, the entire Tarim sub-basin depends on melting snow to provide water. Therefore, on the table, there are two clear approaches: the first, which has become popular in the Westtalks about the construction of monitored ponds. And this is already, in itself, very effective: “species such as grouper, mullet, shrimp, oysters and pearl musselsyes reach commercial size with survival rates close to 99%”, always according to the available data. But that’s just the beginning; just a proof of concept. …to the promise of mar. As explained by several chinese mediathe final horizon of the project is much more ambitious: creating a sea in the middle of the desert. That is, take advantage of the water associated with saline-alkaline soils and saline lakes to simulate marine conditions with technical adjustments, circulation systems and cultivation of microorganisms. And thus be able to breed species normally linked to the sea. But can that be done? Of course you can. We have the technology to do it. In a world where aquaculture already exceeds extractive fishing in volume, the interesting question is not that: the question is whether the model is scalable without aggravating tensions over water in a hyper-arid region dependent on snowmelt. What the industry that sees tons of fish emerging from the desert is asking is something even more basic: is it possible that the beginning of the end of commercial fishing is beginning? Image | On Magnet | China is exporting millions of shrimp with antibiotics to the world. And they could end up on your table

China has a solution that only takes 0.1 seconds

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In the age of electricity, time is no longer measured in minutes, but in milliseconds. As Fatih Birol explainsexecutive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world has fully entered a new era where electricity consumption grows twice as fast as general energy demand. However, this advance has an “Achilles heel”: network stability. Renewable energy, although necessary, is inherently unstable. The great fear of operators is that a small failure in a network saturated with solar and wind energy will cause a domino effect that ends in a total collapse. Faced with this scenario, China has deployed technology capable of detecting, isolating and recovering the network from a failure in just 0.1 seconds. From hours of darkness to the blink of an eye. Historically, managing power grid failures was a slow and manual process. As a South China Morning Post report recallsrestoring power after a community blackout typically required between 6 and 10 hours of work. That year, China already marked a milestone by testing an artificial intelligence system that reduced that time to 3 seconds. However, that is no longer enough. The recent achievement of 100 milliseconds (0.1 seconds) It is the result of a collaboration of more than a decade between elite universities (Tianjin and Shandong), the state corporation State Grid and automation specialists such as Beijing Sifang Automation. This technology is not only faster, but is capable of identifying “micro-currents” of just 100 milliamps, almost invisible faults that previously went unnoticed until it was too late. “Self-healing” versus intermittency. The fundamental problem, detailed in the study published in Energy Informaticsis that modern networks are much more complex. The massive incorporation of renewables and extreme weather conditions make traditional diagnostic methods based on static rules fail due to lack of precision and adaptability. This advancement means that the Chinese power grid —the largest in the worldwith projected consumption in 2025 of more than 10 billion kWh—is moving from a reactive system to a “self-healing” one (self-healing). This capability is so strategic that China already has exported the technology to 12 nationsconsolidating its influence not only as a panel manufacturer, but as the architect of global electrical safety. The algorithms behind the miracle. To understand how this speed is achieved, we must look at academic study by Qi Guo and his team. The system is supported by a dual structure of intelligent algorithms: Fault Location Algorithm (FLA): Uses a fault classifier Support Vector Machine (SVM) with a radial basis function (RBF) kernel. This “brain” analyzes variables such as voltage, line impedance and weather conditions to predict with 92% accuracy where exactly the problem has occurred. Fault Isolation Algorithm (FIA): Once the critical point is located, a decision tree logic comes into play that evaluates the severity. According to the research, if the fault is critical (such as a short circuit near a substation), the system orders the immediate isolation of that section and redirects the energy along alternative routes almost instantly. This hybrid approach allows the system to learn from historical data and adapt to dynamic conditions, something that conventional distance protection systems simply cannot do as effectively. The new geopolitical battlefield. The energy transition not only redefines how energy is produced, but also who controls the rules of the new industrial system. While the West focuses its response on ensuring the supply of critical minerals through initiatives such as ReSourceEU, China advances in less visible terrain but more decisive: the standardization, digitalization and integration of the infrastructures that will sustain the low-carbon economy. Rather than competing for resources, the dispute revolves around who designs the technological architecture on which global growth will function. The ability to recover a network in 0.1 seconds is not just a technical record; It is the life insurance of a highly electrified economy. The greatest current risk is that this clash of strategies between powers ends slowing decarbonization. However, in the race for stability, China has shown that while the rest of the world continues to search for the switch in the dark, they have already designed a system that never lets the light go out. Image | Unsplash Xataka | China dominates the world of renewable energy, but it has an Achilles heel: it depends on the West more than it admits

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