china

China has almost closed the AI ​​gap with the United States. And he has done it with all the sticks in the wheels

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It is difficult to go into detail about the number of dances in which the United States and China are immersed at the moment. The technological war is the umbrella under which the trade warthe attempt of military conflict in the South China Seathe robot racethat of the energy and that of artificial intelligence. Everything is related to each other and, although the United States has exercised an aggressive technological blockadeStanford University is clear that it has not been of much use. And they are clear that the AI ​​gap between the powers is “practically closed.” The report. When a new model or version of AI is presented, those responsible show graphs and tables in which they comment on how good their product is. It is something that always has to be taken with a grain of salt because the idea is to make your product look good – it would be necessary to do more – and, for this reason, an external analysis is needed to show us the complete photo. In this sense, the annual report from Stanford University (in its ninth edition) is one of the best thermometers for taking temperature in the state of AI. One of the conclusions of study is that the Chinese models are very close to the American ones. If at the beginning of the AI ​​boom those from the US set the tone with an abysmal difference, at the beginning of 2025 the distance was greatly reduced to the point that DeepSeek-R1 equaled the best American models on several occasions. Since then, the absolute top model is that of Anthropic, but currently only with a 2.7% advantage over the best Chinese model. Different approaches. In fact, in the graph with this specific analysis you can see how the distance between the two is closed as the performance of the Chinese models increases exponentially in a very short time. And something that the study highlights is that, although the United States continues to lead the battle because it is the one that produces the most top-level AI models and with the most important patents, China leads in volume of both models and production of those patents. Also in other sectors, such as AI in robotics, for example. sticks in the wheels. And the most notable thing is that China has achieved this evolution without having the best tools. As a result of the technological and trade war, it is known that the United States has done everything in its power to prevent cutting-edge technology will reach the hands of the Chinese industry. For years they prohibited American companies (which are the ones that control the AI leader like NVIDIA or AMD) sold their higher-end platforms to Chinese companies, but also They shorted the European ASML and the South Korean Samsung and SK Hynix. Because the US has the aforementioned NVIDIA and Intel, but ASML is the one that manufactures the most advanced machines for making chips, Samsung is one of the world’s leading foundries and leader in high bandwidth memory along with SK Hynix and then there is the Taiwanese TSMC as the largest foundry on the market. Although the US has more recently shaken hands with China in this regard, there are still restrictions on Chinese companies accessing the latest technology. Counterproductive. However, through innovation, government support and a little bit of smuggling, gray market and reverse engineering, companies like SMIC -the Chinese foundry- or Huawei They have managed to develop their advanced equipment and chips. The US has tried to put all the pieces in the wheels of the Chinese industry, but as some reputable voices in the chip sector have pointed out, this has only served for China to directly and advances its technological sovereignty program. That is to say, the vetoes that had such a hard impact at the beginning have served to light the flame of technological development. Huawei is the best example of this, since was ostracized five years ago and recently showed that not only has he recovered, but he has returned in better shape than ever, even becoming one of the main drivers of AI for Chinese industry. Approach. Something that the Stanford AI study also highlights is how the two countries are approaching this segment of AI. And we talk about money, of course. While private investment in AI in the United States reached almost $286 billion, in Europe The investment was almost 21,000 million and in China it was only 12,400 million. This is tricky, since it involves private financing (and this year among just a handful of American companies 650,000 million dollars will be melted) and the state support from the Chinese government should not be underestimated, but beyond investment, American companies have focused on creating the most powerful models regardless of the price while the Chinese approach is to make a Cheap AI to be almost transparent to the user. The goal in both cases is mass adoption, but here the cheaper the product and better integrated into everyday platformsbetter. Taiwan. There are other adjacent topics. For example, China has the energy for the AI ​​erabut The US has the data centers. According to the report, there are more than 5,400 data centers in the American country, which is more than ten times the amount that any other country has, but all this with a curious counterpoint: it is a Taiwanese company that manufactures almost all of its artificial intelligence chips: TSMC. The company is expanding with foundries in the US, but although a conflict that will break those relationships is not in sight, it is evident that depending on a foreign country is not the best strategy for technological independence. That is why they are injecting a lot of money so that Intel be the great foundry, but the reality is that it is still very far from TSMC and, although the US is making attempts with native companies such as Applied Materials, the main partners continue to … Read more

China prepares a 2nm AI chip to end NVIDIA’s dominance. Your problem is how you are going to manufacture it

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A new chip designer for artificial intelligence (IA) is preparing to take the field in China. And he intends to make a lot of noise. In fact, it is already doing so. It’s called Dishan Technology, and, according to SCMP, is already verifying the prototype of a 2nm AI GPU that uses a hybrid integration technology that combines FinFET and GAA transistors (Gate-All-Around). However, this is not the only thing that has emerged. According to Dishan Technology, this chip will be 40% more energy efficient than its predecessor and will be compatible with CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), from NVIDIA. This latest technology brings together the compiler and development tools used by programmers to develop their software for NVIDIA GPUs, so if Dishan’s chip is really compatible it will be much easier to integrate it into facilities that already have GPUs from this American company. Although, as I mentioned above, Dishan already has a prototype of its chip, it will take another year or two to refine its technology enough to make large-scale manufacturing possible. Be that as it may, what has not been revealed is who is going to manufacture it. SMICthe largest Chinese semiconductor producer, can currently only manufacture 7nm chips using the multiple patterning. And TSMC, Intel and Samsung, which could produce it, will hardly do so in the current geopolitical context due to the demands of the US sanctions on China. We will see how Dishan Technology solves this challenge. China already has three “champions” in its AI chip ecosystem The country led by Xi Jinping you already have three alternatives very clear to NVIDIA. Although not as well-known as Huawei or Moore Threads, Cambricon Technologies is one of the companies specialized in designing GPUs for AI with the greatest growth potential. In fact, in August 2025 it received approval from the Shanghai Stock Exchange (China) to raise $560 million. He is allocating them to the design of four chips for training and inference of AI models, and also to the development of an alternative to CUDA. Moore Threads has developed several GPUs that rival advanced solutions from NVIDIA, AMD or Huawei On the other hand, Moore Threads has developed several GPUs for AI applications that, on paper, rival some of the advanced solutions that NVIDIA, AMD or Huawei have placed on the market. The cards MTT S4000 and MTT S3000 They are its most interesting proposals right now, although, curiously, the MTT S80 card also appears in its portfolio, a proposal for games and content creation that, according to Moore Threads itself, has a computing capacity of 14.4 TFLOPS in single-precision floating point operations. The other indispensable player in the Chinese AI chip industry is Huawei. His most ambitious proposal right now is the chip Ascend 950PRwhich aims to surpass the performance of the GPU NVIDIA H100. However, this Chinese company also launched its chips last year Ascend 910D and 920. This last solution is clearly intended to compete in the Chinese market with NVIDIA’s H20 GPU. Presumably at the end of 2026 it will launch its Ascend 950DT chip, and the Ascend 960 and 970 GPUs will arrive in 2027 and 2028 respectively. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | SCMP In Xataka | TSMC acknowledges that it has considered taking its factories out of Taiwan. It’s impossible for a good reason. In Xataka | The looming bottleneck in AI is neither RAM nor gas: it’s that TSMC’s N3 node is absolutely saturated

We sensed that Iran bombed US military bases with help. Some coordinates have revealed its name, and it is Made in China

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During the Gulf War, a group of Iraqi soldiers were located in the middle of the desert not by ground patrols, but by images taken from satellites that detected recent vehicle tracks in the sand. That episode marked one of the first moments in which looking from space began to be so decisive how to shoot from the ground. A satellite as an invisible weapon. A series of leaked documents held by the Financial Times have revealed that Iran not only had missiles and drones to attack US bases, but also a much quieter and decisive tool: an observation satellite capable of provide precise coordinates before and after each blow. The system, known like TEE-01Bwas acquired by the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in late 2024, after its launch from China, and allowed Iranian commanders to monitor key installations throughout the region, identify targets with a level of detail unprecedented for the country and evaluate the impact of their attacks in almost real time. In other words, what seemed like a direct fire war actually hid a previous layer of orbital intelligence which multiplied the effectiveness of each operation. A secret agreement. The middle counted in its exclusive that behind this capacity is a little visible but strategic agreement with Chinese actors, one that not only facilitated access to the satellite already in orbit, but also to the infrastructure necessary to operate it from any point in the world. This model, based on the “in orbit” transfer and in networks of globally distributed ground stations (a little-known export model by which spacecraft launched in China are transferred to customers abroad once they reach orbit), allowed Iran to overcome one of its main weaknesses: the vulnerability of its own facilities to attack. By outsourcing control and data flow, Tehran turned a commercial asset on a military tool difficult to neutralize. Satellite image of the Prince Sultan Air Base From limited precision to a qualitative leap. The technical impact of this jump is key to understanding its importance. Compared to its previous systems, incapable of clearly identifying complex targets, the new satellite offered high resolution images (the TEE-01B is capable of capturing images with a resolution of approximately half a meter) that allowed aircraft, vehicles and changes in military infrastructure to be distinguished. This transformed Iranian attack planning from general estimates to data-driven decisions, and consolidated a combination of human intelligence, satellite imagery, and external support that significantly elevated Iran’s operational capabilities. Attack on the bases. Among the records they obtained showed that the satellite captured images from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on March 13, 14 and 15. On March 14, Donald Trump confirmed that American planes at the base had been hit. Five US Air Force refueling aircraft were damaged. The satellite also carried out surveillance of the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan and from locations near the naval base of the Fifth Fleet of the United States in Manama, Bahrain, and the airport in Erbil, Iraq, around the date of the attacks claimed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard against facilities in those areas. Launch of TEE-01B And more bases. Other areas monitored by the satellite included Camp Buehring and Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, the US military base Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti and Duqm International Airport in Oman. Also included in the Persian Gulf civil infrastructure monitored was the Khor Fakkan container port and the Qidfa desalination and power plant in the United Arab Emirates, as well as the Alba plant in Bahrain, one of the largest aluminum smelters in the world. Decades of relationship that explain the present. In parallel to FT reportthe New York Times published this morning one piece where he explains that these types of advances are not an isolated event, but rather the result of a relationship built over decades between Iran and China in the military and technological field. Since the 1980s, when Beijing supplied weapons directly, to recent decades, when it has opted for more discreet support based on components, dual technology and knowledge transfer, cooperation has evolved. to adapt to sanctions and regional balances. In that process, China has gone from selling weapons to facilitating capabilities that allow Iran to develop and improve its own without openly exposing itself. Strategic ambiguity as a tool. One of the most relevant elements of this relationship has been its ambiguous characterwhere the border between civil and military is constantly blurred. Commercial companies, seemingly neutral technologies and systems designed for civilian uses end up being integrated into military structures, offering China a way to influence without assuming directly the political cost of explicit support. This approach allows for simultaneous relations with Iran’s regional rivals while strengthening its strategic capabilities. A new type of war. In short, the end result is a scenario in which the battlefield no longer begins on land, but miles away from herin orbit, where information has become the most decisive factor and actor. The combination of satellites, global networks and discreet agreements It redefines that way of waging war, allowing actors with fewer resources to compensate for their limitations through access to advanced technology. In that context, the history of the TEE-01B It is not just that of a satellite, but how a network of cooperation and decades of technological evolution can completely transform the way an attack is planned and executed. Image | US Navy, Planet Labs In Xataka | The US already has the first response to its blockade of Hormuz: a boomerang of unpredictable consequences called China In Xataka | The US has closed all exits from the Strait of Hormuz. And now Iran can put into practice what it has been preparing for 25 years

The Government’s bottleneck slows down its exports to China

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The US Department of Commerce does not give the slightest respite to chip designers to artificial intelligence (AI) Americans. And the largest are NVIDIA and AMD. When these companies receive an order from one of their Chinese clients must apply for an export license to this government entity and indicate which GPU they intend to send to China, their specifications and which client is going to use them, among other relevant information. Once the bureaucracy has been put in place, the Department of Commerce technicians analyze the export requests in the framework established by current regulation and approve or deny the sale of integrated circuits to China. This is the usual procedure, so there is nothing new up to this point. However, as stated BloombergNVIDIA, AMD and other American AI chip designers face a very serious problem: the Commerce Department takes several months to process their export licenses. The US bureaucracy is torpedoing NVIDIA and AMD The staffing of the Department of Commerce has been drastically reduced in recent months, and in the current context this scenario represents a very serious problem. The Industry and Security Office of this entity is not only responsible for processing export licenses linked to AI chips; It is also in charge of carrying out investigations into the tariffs deployed by the Administration led by Donald Trump. And with fewer personnel than in 2024 and 2025 it cannot cope. The Office of Industry and Security has lost 101 employees in recent months According to Bloombergthe Office of Industry and Security has lost 101 employees in recent months, which represents a 19% reduction in staff compared to what it had in 2024. Curiously, the staff who are specifically dedicated to developing regulations linked to the semiconductor industry and reviewing applications for export licenses has decreased by 20%although it has not been revealed at the moment what this personnel flight is due to. Jeffrey Kessler, the Undersecretary of Commerce, wants, according to Tom’s Hardwarepersonally examine all license applications linked to AI chips. Here lies the bottleneck. Many of its office staff are busy with issues arising from the Iran war, and meanwhile NVIDIA has still not been able to send to China not a single H200 GPU. Officially it can do so, but before delivering this chip to its Chinese clients it must receive express approval from Kessler. AMD is in the same situation. It has not yet been able to deliver its MI308 AI GPU to its Chinese customers. However, this problem is not only suffocating exports to China. NVIDIA is still waiting to receive approval from the Department of Commerce to be able to deliver the latest orders it has received from its clients in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. During 2025, the Office of Industry and Security took an average of 76 days to resolve export requests, but this period is increasing in 2026. Very bad news for AMD and NVIDIA. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Tom’s Hardware | Bloomberg In Xataka | We already know what the chips that will arrive until 2039 will be like. The machine that will allow them to be manufactured is close

The US already has the first response to its blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. A boomerang of unpredictable consequences: China

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During a crisis with Japan in 2019, China constantly sent patrol boats and government vessels to the disputed waters of the senkaku islandsmaintaining an almost daily presence without completely crossing the line of direct confrontation. That strategy, based on sustained pressure without shock frontal, showed how Beijing can protect its interests at sea by playing on an ambiguous terrain where every move counts. The block changes the board. USA has finally activated the naval blockade of Iranian ports in response to the failure of negotiations, deploying ships, special forces and interdiction capabilities to cut off the flow of oil and economically suffocate Tehran. The operation does not seek to completely close the Strait of Hormuz, but to control who enters and who leaves of the Iranian energy system, which involves intercepting, diverting or even boarding ships in transit. This movement, long studied by the Pentagon, marks a qualitative leap in war, since it transfers pressure from the air and land to the sea, where the legal, military and commercial implications are much more diffuse. and potentially explosive. The reality of global trade. The fundamental problem of the blockade is not only in its military execution, but in its fit with the global system of energy transport, where the majority of the ships are not Iranian, but from third countries such as India, Iraq or, especially China. Intercepting or pressuring these ships in international waters introduces an entirely different dimension, one where the line between military action and global economic conflict is blurred.becomes extremely thin. Thus, each attempt to stop this flow not only affects Iran, but also removes more crude oil from the market, raises prices and transfers the political and economic cost to the blocker himself. Iran and the long term. I remembered the weekend the new york times that, far from collapsing, Iran has demonstrated remarkable strategic resilience, relying on alternative routes, land trade with Asia and financial networks that include Asian, especially Chinese, banks and partners. Its economy, although under pressure, continues to function thanks to indirect exports, accumulated income and access to credit, while control of the strait allows it to continue conditioning the global energy market. In this context, the time plays in your favor: The longer the crisis continues, the greater the wear and tear on the United States and its allies, both in economic and political terms. Permanent military friction point. The blockade forces the US navy to operate in a extremely delicate environmentone where any interaction with suspicious vessels can escalate quickly. The need to board oil tankers, manage crews or redirect cargo turns each operation into a possible international incidentespecially if those ships are protected or linked to state actors. Added to this is the latent threat from Iran, which maintains sufficient capacity (missiles, drones, fast boats) to turn any mistake or specific confrontation into a major climb. The boomerang effect: China. The great consequence of the blockade at this time has not been long in coming, and it is China’s reactionthe main buyer of Iranian oil and a key player in the region. Beijing has made it clear through a statement that it will continue to defend its energy and commercial interests, keeping its routes open and warning against any external interference. There is no doubt, this introduces a completely new risk to the conflict: that of a direct or indirect shock between US forces and assets linked to China, whether in the form of tankers, escorts or diplomatic and economic pressure. Furthermore, the Asian giant has response tools that go beyond the military sphere, from the use of its commercial weight to the control of critical resources. Dead end scenario. The result is a situation in which the attempt to strangle Iran It becomes a system of crossed tensions with multiple actors, where each movement generates new frictions. Blocking does not guarantee a quick resolutionbut it does increase the chances of miscalculations, incidents at sea and escalations that are difficult to contain. Precisely in this unstable balance, the United States not only faces Iran, but an environment where the consequences rebound outside the region, with China as the actor who turns a regional operation into a first order global problem. Image | US Navy In Xataka | The problem in Hormuz is not that it is closed: it is that Iran has “lost the keys” and without them the balance is broken In Xataka | The most buoyant market right now is selling streaming and satellite images of US movements to Iran.

While half the world wants to distance itself commercially from China, there is a country that is increasingly doing just the opposite: Spain

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Pedro Sanchez Yesterday he took a selfie with the CEO of Xiaomi as part of his official visit to China. In it he has taken advantage of visit also Tsinghua University in BeijingAI talent pool— and of course for meet with the president of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping. But what this official visit tells us is something important about Spain and Europe: we want to depend less on China, but the data says that we are becoming more dependent. The narrative of decoupling. The discourse that we are seeing in general media or in news programs on television networks is usually the same: The West is reducing its dependence on China. There is talk about how supply chains are diversifying or how geopolitics are reordering global trade. Although the message is coherent and is usually supported by European and North American leaders, the reality is different. The numbers simply do not match. The data that dismantles everything. Between 2014 and 2024, EU imports from China increased by 101.9%, while European exports to China grew by only 47%. The relationship between both economic powers is not cooling, but quite the opposite: it is intensifying and, furthermore, becoming unbalanced. In 2024, the EU exported goods worth 213.3 billion euros to China, and imported 517.8 billion euros with a trade deficit of 304.5 billion euros. China remains by far the largest supplier to the EU and represents 21.3% of all extra-EU imports. Behind her are the US with 13.7% and the United Kingdom with 6.8%. Who “buys” more. The three largest importers of Chinese products within the EU in 2024 were Netherlands (109 billion euros), Germany (96 billion) and Italy (50 billion). The only countries with a trade surplus with China in the EU were Ireland and Luxembourg. The case of Germany is paradoxical, because this country leads this discourse of “reducing strategic dependencies”, but at the same time it is the second largest European buyer of Chinese products. One thing is the political message, and another is the commercial reality. Spain has a deficit, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The case of Spain is also special not because of the figures, but because of how it communicates them. In 2024, Spain imported Chinese goods worth 45,174 million euros, only behind Germany. What is striking is that the trade deficit of this exchange was enormous for Spain: 37,706 million, because Spanish exports to China were 7,467 million euros. That is to say: Spain buys China almost seven times more than what it sells. In 2025, imports grew even more, to 50.25 billion euros, but Spain’s discourse is not that of Germany: it does not seem to have any problem with increasing this commercial dependence. The Bank of Spain warns. The products most imported from China were industrial machinery, telecommunications equipment and motors, that is, goods that feed Spanish production. The Bank of Spain warned in 2024 that China is the great commercial weak point for both Spain and the EU. It is due to the volume of imports as well as their concentration and nature. The problem is that this dependency cannot be resolved with speeches: we would need alternative supply chains that are not being created at the moment, at least on the scale necessary to reduce this strategic dependency. Four visits in four years. Pedro Sánchez has visited China in March 2023, September 2024, April 2025 and April 2026. No other European leader has visited the Asian giant with that frequency in this period. It is true that all the presidents of the Government since Felipe González have traveled to China at least once, but none had done so four years in a row. Zapatero also made four trips, but he made them between 2005 and 2011. What Sánchez has done has no Spanish or European precedents. But Europe also builds ties with China. This movement towards rapprochement with China in 2025 and 2026 is not exclusive to Spain. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have visited China in recent months. All these movements are a clear consequence of the tariffs that Donald Trump activated in 2025 and that have accelerated this European conversation about the need to reduce dependence on Washington. Which difference to Spain from the rest of its European partners is that he has been forging that alliance for years. Many visits, but the deficit grows. Although the relations between China and Spain are notable, the trade deficit has been at historic highs for years and Pedro Sánchez’s visits have not only failed to correct them, but have aggravated them. What grows with each trip are the cooperation agreements or investment statements in renewable energy, but that still does not affect the short-term trade imbalance. Not only that: while Spain sells to China automotive components, chemicals or serrano hamChina sells to us our industrial future. There is an asymmetry not only of volume, but also of structure. To reduce strategic dependence, nothing. The conclusion after analyzing the data is uncomfortable. The rhetoric of decoupling, digital sovereignty and the reduction of strategic dependence collide head-on with that commercial reality in which Europe imports products from China as if there were no tomorrow. The difference between Spain and the rest of Europe is that Spain does not maintain this fiction of distance, and this “honesty” may have strategic value. We will see if that ends up serving to reduce the enormous trade deficit with China. In Xataka | We thought that US tariffs would prohibit Chinese cars from entering. BYD wants to challenge them

China has shown that the good and cheap electric car exists. So Citröen has had to get its act together

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China is doing very well with the cheap electric car. And if not, tell them BYD Dolphin Surfa 100% electric vehicle that the company finances at just over 3% for 125 euros per month. Without financing it costs 19,990 euros which, after aid, can become 11,780 euros. Saving exceptions like Dacia Springwhich compete in a much lower league, Western manufacturers have no choice but to respond. And Citröen has been the first to do so. 11,700 euros. Citroen has been lowering the price of its ë-C3 for more than a yeara car that was launched on the market for more than 20,000 euros and that, since its launch, has been reduced by almost half. Now, after aid, the Citröen C3 costs 11,700 euros, with an eight-year warranty. What it offers. With a price practically identical to the Dolphin Surf, an almost identical autonomy (220 km under the WLTP cycle), and a technology relatively similar to that of the Chinese alternative, we are finally talking about a price at which the company can be competitive. What China offers. Both vehicles, in their most economical version, have LFP batteries. The main difference is in the charging system: 65 kW for the BYD and 30 kW for the Citröen. The key, however, is not in the specs: it is that BYD has been offering a competitive price since its arrival in Spain, which has catapulted it into the top 3 of the best-selling electric cars in the country. Beyond Tesla. There is no electric car that sells more than the Model 3 in Spain. This is to be expected, given the reliability, range and price of the vehicle. Just below Tesla, we have the BYD Dolphin Surf, which has sold more than 1,332 units so far this year (compared to 2,489 for the Model 3 and 2,023 for the Model Y). Taking into account that they play in completely different leagues, the BYD case is a resounding success. A purely urban car that sells practically twice as much as its direct rivals. The electric C3 has 634 units sold, placing it in the top 9. The ranking points to something very clear: the price is the main purchasing factor for the Spanish electric companyand Western manufacturers will have to tighten their grip if they want to compete with China. In Xataka | The electric cars with the most autonomy that can be bought in 2026

While the world looked at Iran, China has seized an island in the Pacific without a single shot. And now he is militarizing it

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For some time now, some countries have been capable of creating land where before there was only open sea, modifying entire maps in a matter of years. These transformations, visible even from space, have come to alter trade routes, ecosystems and regional balances without the need for major confrontations. Because sometimes, the most decisive changes do not begin with a conflict, but with a work that no one stops. A conquest without shooting. While international attention was completely absorbed by the crisis in the middle eastChina has executed a quiet but deeply strategic move in the South China Sea. They counted in Forbes which, without the need for direct military force, has transformed a tiny island, a reef barely visible on the map, into a new key piece of your network of maritime control, taking advantage of the global distraction and the lack of immediate reaction. The late response from countries like Vietnam and the initial silence of the international community have allowed this movement to advance practically without opposition, consolidating a fait accompli before the debate even began. From sandbank to strategic base in months. Through satellite images, the Telegraph explained that the pace of construction at Antelope Reef It revealed extraordinary industrial and logistical capacity, with dozens of dredgers working in coordination to create square kilometers of land in a matter of months. What was once a simple sandbank has now become an expanding platform with visible infrastructurefortified perimeters and enough space to house much more complex facilities. This speed not only demonstrates the ambition of the project, but also Beijing’s ability to alter the physical terrain of the conflict before other actors can react. The image on the left corresponds to December 19, 2025. The image on the right corresponds to February 17, 2026 Legality as a tool, not as a limit. China has accompanied this expansion with a parallel strategy based on reinterpreting international law and presenting construction as an internal issue, diluting the legal conflict in a narrative of civil development. The problem? That, under the framework of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, these constructions they do not grant new rights sovereigns, which places the project in a clearly controversial and diffuse area. Still, the combination of fait accompli and legal argument allows Beijing to move forward no need for confrontation directly, moving the conflict to the diplomatic and narrative terrain. Militarization without concealment. Unlike previous phases, where China denied the militarization of its artificial islands, the current development clearly points for military use from the beginning. The dimensions of the land allow the construction of landing strips capable to operate advanced fightersas well as the future installation of radars, missile systems and surveillance networks. In other words, more than a simple base, the enclave emerges as a node within a larger architecture that connects ports, maritime militias and intelligence capabilities, reinforcing control over one of the most strategic routes on the planet. A new balance under the sea. If you will, too, the result of this effort is a quiet but profound shift in the regional balance, one where each new island expands China’s capabilities. to monitor, deter and project power without resorting to open confrontations. From that perspective, these types of movements, cumulative and discrete, allow consolidate strategic advantages that only become evident when it’s too late to reverse them. Thus, while the world’s focus shifted towards other conflictsChina has continued to redefine the map of the Pacific in its favor, demonstrating that in modern geopolitics it is not always whoever shoots first who wins, but whoever builds without being interrupted. Image | Planet L. In Xataka | Satellite images have revealed something disturbing in China: where there were once villages, there are now unmistakable structures In Xataka | The most buoyant market right now is selling streaming and satellite images of US movements to Iran.

China is building a tunnel under the sea for its high speed. It has already reached a record depth

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Under the seabed, dozens of meters deep, there is a work that is progressing with a minimal margin of error. It cannot be seen from the surface, but it is part of a railway infrastructure key in southern China. According to CGTNthe country has reached a new milestone in the construction of a high-speed underwater tunnel: the excavation has already reached 113 meters under the seabed. The figure is not minor, because it places the work at a point where the geological conditions and water pressure significantly increase the technical difficulty. This advance is part of a much larger infrastructure that is taking shape in the south of the country. The 116-kilometer Shenzhen-Jiangmen high-speed line is designed to connect both cities in less than an hour, integrating into the rail corridor that runs along the Chinese coast. In this way, the project has entered a particularly demanding phase, in which the tunnel under the Pearl River estuary becomes one of the most technically complex points of the entire work. A section under the sea that concentrates the greatest technical challenge At the center of this phase of the project is the underwater infrastructure that requires refinement of each step. To execute it, the work relies on a large diameter tunnel boring machine developed in China. The machine, known as “Shenjiang-1”, has kept the excavation going continuously, even during festive periods such as Qingming. It not only drills the ground, it also allows progress while the interior lining of the tunnel is being built, a system that seeks to gain efficiency in one of the most delicate points of the route. From there, the challenge stops being just mechanical and becomes conditioned by the terrain. The TBM must traverse 13 different strata, with five types of composite geology and six fault zones along the route. These types of conditions force the operation to be constantly adjusted, because each layer can respond differently to the excavation. In this context, moving forward does not depend solely on the power of the machinery, but also on maintaining control in a challenging environment. Added to this complexity of the terrain is a less visible, but equally determining factor: the pressure of the water at those depths. The tunnel is planned to reach a maximum of 116 meters below the seabeda level at which hydraulic conditions become especially demanding for the machinery and the structure itself. To operate in this environment, the system uses a sludge circuit that fulfills a double function: on the one hand, it reduces friction at the excavation face and, on the other, it transports the extracted material to the surface, where it is separated and reused in the process. While the machine advances, the tunnel is not far behind. Just behind the excavation face, the teams are assembling the prefabricated concrete segments that form the interior lining. Each one measures around two meters wide and nine are needed to complete a ring in a structure that exceeds 13 meters in diameter. This system allows excavation and construction to progress at the same time, reducing time and helping to maintain the pace of execution. The magnitude of this work is better understood when put into perspective. Official information indicates that this section extends over 13.69 kilometers and crosses several waterways at the mouth of the river, located between Dongguan and Guangzhou. It is a key piece within a line designed to improve the connection in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Beyond the depth already achieved, the project seeks to strengthen regional connectivity and support economic integration in one of the most active areas of the country. Images | CGTN In Xataka | Singapore is literally coming into its own: reclaiming 25% of land from the sea and turning wastewater into drinking water

In China, 470 series made with AI are produced per day. 99.9% of them do not reach anyone

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In January 2026, the platforms streaming Chinese companies recorded the launch of more than 14,600 short series generated with artificial intelligence. There are 470 new titles a day, all ready to be distributed through applications like Douyin or Hongguo. The fact that is not widely disseminated is where almost all of that content went. Long live the microdramatic. The microdramas (either duanju) They are mobile series with episodes of between two and five minutes, usually adaptations of novels previously published in web format, and which are disseminated on pages financed not with subscriptions, but through micropayments and algorithmic advertising. The narrative of these series is extremely formulaic, despite the fact that on paper it seems very varied: the rich also cry, time travel, sentimental revenge, melodramas concentrated in a few minutes, all designed (circular and repetitive plots, characters that enunciate what is happening) to consume between subway stops. The irresistible growth of duanju. The format had been flourishing for years before AI will arrive. The Chinese microdrama market lost revenue from 500 million dollars in 2021 to 7,000 million in 2024surpassing the national film box office that year for the first time. In 2025, the sector was already close to 9.4 billion. It is estimated that more than 830 million users consumed the format, and about 60% of them pay or make transactions on platforms that offer a few free episodes to hook viewers. As in so many other industrial aspects, China has built, without attracting the attention of the rest of the world, the largest serialized entertainment market in terms of volume on the planet. AI Invasion. A live-action microdrama cost more than one million yuan to produce in 2024. With AI tools like Kling or Seedancethe same project It costs between 50,000 and 100,000 yuan (between 6,000 and 12,000 euros). In the cheapest production studios, the figure drops to 30,000 or 40,000 yuan per complete series. The cost per minute of content fell from between 3,000 and 5,000 yuan at the beginning of 2024 to between 200 and 1,000 today. Everything changes. This fall has transformed the structure of the microdrama industry, and has boosted companies specialized in the AI ​​variant of the genre such as Jiangyou Culture, which with the support of China Literature (the publishing group affiliated with Tencent), grew to a thousand employees and has a turnover of around 1 billion yuan annually with net margins of between 20% and 30%. Judian, another production company, generates around a hundred microdramas photorealistic films per month and between one thousand and two thousand audiodramas with synthesized voice. 99.88%. Of the 127,800 AI series in circulation in February 2026, the proportion that crossed the 100 million views threshold was 0.117%. In 2025, the specialized app Douyin launched 60,000 series generated with AI, and only ninety-six reached that same number. That 0.16% success rate has been dropping as production volume has risen. But there are also differences with live-action microdramas: the most watched AI series accumulated about one billion views, and the most successful live-action series, 4.4 billion. Viewers detect the synthetic quality and the uncanny valley the emotional commitment is burdened, which leads, according to experts, to a significant abyss: the viewer does not want to pay for it. Advertising spending. The dominant business model in this million-dollar sector is known as “traffic arbitrage”: produce cheaply with AI, invest aggressively in advertising within the platforms to generate visits and pray to survive on the margin. In March 2026, daily advertising spending on AI microdramas on Douyin exceeded 70 million yuan, surpassing that of live-action productions for the first time. That is to say: the loop can be financially sustained even if the audiences do not attend. The actors suffer. Actor Li Wenhao entered the microdrama industry in 2023 and worked 50 consecutive days. In March 2026, only six worked, according to Hello China Tech. Castings are increasingly rare, microdrama production companies they hire fewer and fewer humans: For example, Chengdu Zhongdu, a medium-sized studio, announced in March that it was abandoning production live-actionconverting its entire workforce to AI. Actress Hao Lei, one of the most respected figures in Chinese dramatic cinema, has said that AI will replace 90% of actors, adding that in certain records it already surpasses the human equivalent. Stolen faces. The displacement of professional actors was foreseeable, but the massive and unauthorized appropriation of real faces was not so predictable. In early 2026, a 72-episode AI-generated historical drama appeared in Hongguo and gained widespread popularity before a blogger specialized in traditional Chinese clothing discovered that one of the characters had her face. The same thing was detected by another content creator, and neither of them was compensated or informed, Hello China Tech also says. And of course, professional actors have also been victims of this type of practice: Yi Yangqianxi (Jackson Yee), Xiao Zhan and Dilraba Dilmurat are some of them. But the cases of semi-anonymous people, like these content creators, are much more bloody: they discovered the theft of their face almost by chance, so anyone who has uploaded enough content to the internet to train an AI may find themselves in a similar situation. Header | pandaily

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