china

China has just launched three giant carbon fiber lines: bad news for the US and Japan

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China has taken a new step in its race to dominate the advanced materials sector. And the state giant CNBM (China National Building Material Group) has launched three new high-performance carbon fiber production lines at its Lianyungang plant in Jiangsu province, operated by its subsidiary Zhongfu Shenying Carbon Fiber. The new facilities cover the three main categories of the material (general use, high resistance and high modulus) and add to the advances that the country has been announcing in recent months in this field. Why is it important. High-performance carbon fiber has been around for decades being a strategic material controlled by very few actors. Japan and the United States have historically dominated its production, and for years China has had restricted access to the most advanced variants through international export control agreements. With these three lines, Beijing reinforces its capacity to produce at home a material that is key for sectors such as aeronautics, energy, robotics or consumer electronics. In detail. The three lines put into operation are, according to has reported the Chinese state agency Xinhua, the largest in the world in their respective categories. The first is a high-capacity line for 5,000 tons per year, which uses the subsidiary’s own spinning technology and whose material is mainly used for wind energy and electric vehicles. The second, with a capacity for 1,000 tons per year, produces T1100 grade fiber, designed for aerospace applications that require very light structures with high load capacity. And the third, of 600 tons per year, manufactures SYM40 grade high modulus fiber, aimed at precision applications in the seabed, deep mining, space or competitive sports equipment, according to they collect from Global Times. A relevant fact about this announcement is that, depending on the mediumthe new lines have achieved a localization rate of more than 95% in their main equipment. That is, almost all of the machinery used to manufacture the fiber is domestically manufactured, which confirms that China not only produces the material, but also much of the technology necessary to do so on a large scale. The context. This announcement comes in the midst of a technological pulse with the United States and Japan. According to South China Morning PostWashington and Tokyo have recently tightened controls on the export of equipment and technology to manufacture high-strength carbon fiber, precisely to make it difficult for Chinese companies to produce it. Ma Jie, an analyst at Guoyuan Securities, explained in a report that these restrictions have pushed the Chinese industry to pursue technological self-sufficiency and control its entire supply chain, and recalled that the sector has gone from basic T300 fiber to today reaching standards that are among the most advanced in the world. Furthermore, just as we counted A few months ago, CNBM had presented at the JEC World fair in Paris the world’s first mass production of T1200 fiber, the strongest variant of the scale, with more than 8 gigapascals of tensile strength. Added to this news, at the beginning of June, was the announcement by Shanghai Petrochemical, a subsidiary of Sinopec, about the large-scale production of T1000 fiber using its own process. Supply. Zhou Yuxian, president of CNBM, pointed out Xinhua that these new lines help solve two structural problems in the sector: the shortage of high-end carbon fiber products and the lack of a complete offer that covers all categories of the material. The manager added that the production “will reinforce the security and resilience of the Chinese supply of strategic materials.” It is worth remembering that, until now, the world market has been dominated by a handful of manufacturers. Three Japanese companies (Toray Industries, Teijin and Mitsubishi Chemical) together controlled just over half of the global market in 2025, according to a report from Nikkei Asia. The American Hexcel is another of the major players in the sector, especially in the aerospace and military fields. morenda. China’s push for carbon fiber responds to a demand that continues to grow. And according tothe report According to Guoyuan Securities, global demand for carbon fiber exceeded 220,000 tons in 2025, with a growth of 43.8% compared to the previous year, while in China this growth was even higher, 57%, driven by the manufacturing of the C919 commercial aircraft, humanoid robots and low-altitude vehicles. Cover image | CGTN In Xataka | “It’s not cheating, it’s engineering”: this is how China avoids 2,000 ASML patents with a laser trick

China wants the world to pay for lithium at its price. And it’s not that easy

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China has taken a definitive step towards the internationalization of its raw materials markets: this month has opened foreign investors its lithium futures contract on the Guangzhou Futures Exchange (GFEX). This measure comes after similar openings in iron ore and oil, and is part of the Chinese Government’s ambition to strengthen your influence on global prices of raw materials and expand the international use of the renminbi (RMB). Futures are contracts that set today the price at which a commodity will be bought or sold at a future date, regardless of what its market price is at that moment. This contract is not an anecdotal movement. In the last year, the GFEX has traded 120 million lots of lithium carbonate, an essential material in lithium-iron-phosphate batteries (LFP) that equip a good part of current electric vehicles. China processes around 60% of the world’s lithium and it is by far the largest battery market on the planet. In this context, its physical weight in the supply chain is undeniable. However, converting that industrial weight into real financial power is much more complicated. Chinese capital controls mean that the vast majority of futures trading, despite its enormous liquidity, is domestic in nature. It is primarily domestic speculators and not global commercial participants who set these prices. A recurring speculative fever Volatility is the first obstacle. Last year the closure of a CATL mine was enough to unleash a real speculative fever in the GFEX contract. In fact, on July 6, 2025, the daily volume fell to 174,787 lots, just 35% of the annual average, an example of how quickly interest deflates once the initial frenzy passes. This stock exchange has had to intervene on several occasions to stop similar episodes. In July 2025 he imposed a daily limit of 3,000 lots in new positions for those who were not members of a futures society. In November he went further: he tightened commissions and position limits, and prices plummeted immediately. The clearest precedent dates back to 2016, when Chinese retail money poured so heavily into steel rod futures that the volume traded in a single day exceeded the negotiated total on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. China opened its crude oil contract on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange using this same rhetoric in 2018 Another important note: adding to this regulatory volatility is the problem of financial plumbing. Foreign operators can now deposit margins in dollars, but with a 5% discountso only $95 out of every $100 counts as collateral. All trading and settlement is still done in RMB, and repatriating those profits is not easy. China opened its crude oil contract in the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE, for its acronym in English) using this same rhetoric in 2018. And although achieved considerable foreign participationcompanies still have to simultaneously manage price risk, RMB/USD exchange rate risk and capital repatriation risk; three exposures that on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) or the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) would be reduced to one. The result is that as long as these futures remain subject to political intervention and capital controls, they will predictably continue to function as an essential reference for the market, but not as the authentic benchmark against which the rest of the world can manage its risk. Image | freepik More information | Volt Insight In Xataka | ASML has had an exclusive monopoly on the very complex photolithography machines for years. China is close to breaking it

China has a weak point under the sea. Your new anti-submarine plane points right there

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Above the surface, a fleet of ships can be counted, photographed and tracked in almost real time. Under water, however, the rules change: the target disappears from sight, the sound is deformed and each contact can be a valid clue or a false alarm. For this reason, anti-submarine warfare remains one of the most demanding tasks of any Navy. China knows this well and is expanding its response to monitor a space where the size of its forces alone is not enough. A plane enters the scene. The response that China has begun to show from the air is an improved variant of its Y-9 anti-submarine aircraft, now seen for the first time in maneuvers. The aircraft had appeared publicly at the parade on September 3, 2025, but the new official images allow external modifications to be seen in its detection systems. According to military analyst Zhang Junshe, quoted by Global Timesits incorporation into these exercises indicates the beginning of operational training and the acquisition of initial search and attack capabilities. The difficult part is below. An official evaluation by the US Department of Defense allows us to place the progress of the Y-9 within a gap that China would still be trying to close. Its 2024 report stated that the Chinese Navy was improving its anti-submarine means, but still lacked a robust deep-water capability. In March 2026, scholar Andrew Erickson described an unequal situation, although he made it clear that his conclusions were personal. According to the expert, China is developing a layered detection architecture within the first island chain, but its capabilities remain more limited beyond it. There, the smallest number of deployed sensors, limited maritime patrol aviation and logistical restrictions weigh in. That does not make these evaluations neutral diagnoses: they come from the United States, the power that tries to preserve its submarine advantage against China. The next obstacle. Zhang points out that the South China Sea reaches depths of more than 1,000 meters in some areas and has more complex conditions than the East China and Yellow Seas, which makes it difficult to locate submarines. In addition, temperature, salinity, currents and underwater relief modify the propagation of sound. This requires knowing the environment precisely to correctly interpret the information collected by the acoustic systems. A network, not a single plane. Beijing is not entrusting this entire task to Y-9. A Reuters investigation published earlier this year documented an extensive operation supported by oceanographic vessels, hundreds of sensors, buoys and arrays installed underwater. Separately, Erickson describes a Chinese architecture that integrates space, air, coastal, surface and underwater assets, as well as unmanned vehicles. The new plane represents the aerial and mobile component of that broader effort to understand and monitor what happens under the sea. The most visible change appears under the nose. According to Zhang, the images show what appears to be a new active phased array radar, with broader coverage, a longer sweep and a greater detection distance than the version presented in 2025. That does not mean directly finding a submerged submarine from the air, but it does mean expanding maritime surveillance and delimiting areas of interest. The more the search area is reduced, the easier it is to then target systems specifically designed to locate underwater targets. Listen and confirm. Once the area is delimited, the Y-9 can deploy up to a hundred sonobuoys of different types, housed on both sides of the fuselage. These form a listening network capable of covering tens of kilometers and collecting signals from submerged targets. In the tail, what appears to be a new magnetic anomaly detector looks for small alterations associated with a large metallic mass. Its smaller size would reduce the magnetic interference of the structure itself, facilitate maintenance and extend the detection distance. Beyond what it detects. The Y-9 aims to improve compared to the Y-8 in range, combat radius, takeoff weight and autonomy. In the maneuvers, in addition, the crews operated without a script or fixed tactics, with electromagnetic interference, simulated breakdowns and coordination with other units, within training aimed at improving their search and attack capacity day and night. None of this makes the ocean transparent, but it does show where Beijing is concentrating its efforts. Images | PLA In Xataka | In 1989, the Soviet submarine Komsomolets sank with one reactor and two nuclear warheads. To this day it continues to radiate

China is going to do everything it can to win the AI ​​race. Even if that means penalizing Huawei and Alibaba

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The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has begun to consult its main technology companies on a package of export restrictions that, paradoxically, points inward: towards the ecosystem of artificial intelligence (AI) that Beijing has been trying for years shield in front of Washington. As advanced Financial Timesthe proposal contemplates prohibiting Chinese chip designers from using foreign semiconductor companies, such as TSMC or Samsung, to manufacture their integrated circuits. This is not an isolated measure. And this same regulatory package would also include limits on the export of advanced AI models, restrictions on the training data that companies can take out of the country and stricter controls on foreign acquisitions of technology companies considered strategic. The Chinese Government ultimately aspires to retain both the hardware and software of the AI ​​race within its borders; as well as the chips, models and data with which they are trained. A blow to their own companies The most impressive part of this proposal is the one that affects the semiconductor manufacturing. Huawei, Alibaba or ByteDance design chips that today depend, to varying degrees, on semiconductor factories such as TSMC (Taiwan) or Samsung (South Korea) for their final production. Prohibiting that access would leave these companies tied to domestic manufacturing capacity, still behind in leading nodes, or would force SMIC and other Chinese IC factories to take on demand for which they are not yet prepared. The regulatory package would also include tightening rules on foreign acquisitions of strategic Chinese technology. The Ministry of Commerce has also conveyed to Alibaba, ByteDance and Zhipu its intention to limit the output of training data outside the country, as well as to restrict the downloading of their model weights by foreign users. This measure would mark a turn regarding the strategy followed until now by companies like DeepSeek, which have opted to openly publish the weights of their models as part of their low-cost offensive against Western AI. Another note: the regulatory package would also include a tightening of the rules on foreign acquisitions of strategic Chinese technology, especially in the field of agentic AI. This review seeks to close what the Chinese government interprets as a legal loophole, the same one that allowed Meta to acquire the emerging company Manus for $2 billion before the Chinese authorities ordered to undo the operation. The restrictions, if confirmed, would foreseeably be incorporated into the next review of the Chinese catalog of prohibited or restricted technologies for export, the same instrument that already regulates rare earths and lithium. For now all the proposals are in the consultation phase and none of the companies mentioned, nor the Ministry of Commerce itself, has confirmed its final scope. The result would be a regulatory paradox: China restricting its own companies’ access to the most advanced chip manufacturing in the name of technological sovereignty that, along the way, could slow them down. Image | TSMC More information | Tom’s Hardware In Xataka | TSMC raises its bet in the US: there are already 265,000 million dollars for 2 nm

In China, taking a taxi is already cheaper than using your own vehicle for one reason: electric cars

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China is experiencing a peculiar situation: on its streets, it is now cheaper to get around by taxi than by private car. According to the latest data from the Ministry of Transport collected by the Reuters agency, lTaxi trips grew by 6% since the outbreak of the Hormuz crisisa phenomenon that coincides with the increase in fuel prices and the enormous electrification of urban fleets. This percentage translates into more than 3,050 million taxi trips in the month of May alone, demonstrating that the international geopolitical situation has a great impact on people’s daily lives. The context. The war in Iran and the situation in the Strait of Hormuz have caused Chinese crude oil purchases to reach historic lows. Last June, oil imports had a collapse of 41.3% year-on-yearwhich placed them at their lowest level in a decade since October 2016, with only 29.27 million tons (about 7.12 million barrels per day). Added to this is also the low production that the national refineries are having due to a fairly low internal demand. All of this has created the perfect cocktail to generate a shortage situation that has skyrocketed prices, among other things, of gasoline. The secret is in the electrical. This is where the taxi comes into play. Although fuel prices rise every day, the rates for this type of transport in China are becoming cheaper. This is because, as Reuters indicates, almost half of the country’s taxi fleet is electric (a condition that in cities covers almost 100% of the car supply) and, therefore, is not as dependent on volatile oil prices, making it an effective shield from China. in front of shock of Hormuz. But not only that. In recent times, the increasingly easier access to an electric vehicle and the slowdown of the Asian country’s economy has pushed many Chinese citizens to take the leap to be independent professionals and look for work in the mobility sector as drivers with their own car. According to Reuters, companies like DiDi, the main Chinese MaaS application, have grown thanks to this phenomenon. In this case, the company has incorporated more than 2 millions of hybrid or electric vehicles in the last year, which represents a total of more than 8 million fossil fuel-free models in its fleet. Thus, there is more supply and more competition and the rates, consequently, are much cheaper. The user wins. This new trend has already flooded the Asian country’s social networks and, in addition to the lower rates and savings on gasoline, many Chinese citizens point out the comfort of the trip and the ease of not having to look for parking as other benefits of opting for a taxi, as expressed by Yang, owner of a gasoline car, to Reuters. However, not everything is risk-free, since these economics professions in demand -such as those of a professional driver, riders and couriers – are in high demand and could end up saturating the market. A change forever? Since the crisis, it is no secret that the world is getting used to living with a 9% less oil which previously passed through Hormuz. Like many other countries, China is now seeking to be less vulnerable to international volatility and rely less on fossil fuels.. It does so in a very clear commitment to leading decarbonization by dominating the global production of solar panels, batteries and, of course, electric vehicles. The big question is whether this change responds solely to the rise in oil prices or whether it will end up consolidating a change in habits in the mentality of Chinese citizens even when the energy market stabilizes again. Cover image | Teresa Wang In Xataka | China has so many electric cars running on its streets that it is going to use them to generate energy for homes

30 years ago we laughed at China and Japan for their obsession with sun protection. Now we’re following your path

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If you travel to Qingdao or any other beach in China, you may come across bathers who, in addition to bikinis, sandals and glasses, look colorful ‘facekinis’. That’s how it was at least a few years ago (even in 2025), when this peculiar garment that covers the entire face to protect it from ultraviolet rays gained popularity in the middle of a heat wave. In Europe, the image of Chinese women with their heads in XL swim caps that only leave their eyes and mouth visible was interpreted as an eccentricityone more proof of the aversion of Asians to tan. On the beaches of Spain it may not be common see ‘facekinis’but an idea is beginning to sink in: cultural issues aside, Chinese, Japanese and Koreans may not have been wrong when they did everything possible to protect themselves from the sun. “It is very frowned upon”. The facekini It is its most obvious (and graphic) demonstration, but it connects with a much larger phenomenon: not everyone values ​​tanning in the same way. Vincent Coëffé, from the University of Angers, explained it a few years ago in an article published in The Conversation: The prospect of sporting a tan skin tone may sound great in California, but things are quite different if you talk to an Asian. “Light skin continues to be viewed favorably in Asian cultures (China, India, Japan, Korea…), to the point that exposing the body to the sun is perceived as a subversive act,” comment coffee, geographer and tourism expert. “In China, tanning is very frowned upon, especially if it alters the female body, particularly influenced by the ideal of ‘milky’ skin.” Tanning is becoming globalized and it is increasingly easier to find Asians sunbathing both abroad and on the beaches of their countries, but there is still an important cultural gap with respect to the West. Why the hell do they do it? These differences in sun exposure explain why for decades, in countries like Spain, we have seen with a mixture of fascination and incomprehension Asian tourists walking down the street in the middle of summer, fleeing the ultraviolet rays like the plague. It caught our attention that, in addition to caps and sunglasses, they wore gloveslong-sleeved t-shirts, arm warmers, sun-protective clothing and umbrellas. “Why does everyone use umbrellas on the streets of Japan? Is it very hot? Do they protect themselves from the sun or is it extremely hot?” I asked intrigued a traveler in August 2025 in the ‘Backpackers in Japan’ Facebook community. The person writing this had the opportunity to travel to Cairo a couple of years ago and one of the details that most caught his attention, in addition to the monuments of Ancient Egypt, was seeing Korean tourists with very white skin walking around with umbrellas and long dresses that covered their arms and legs. Nothing to do with us Spaniards who walked under the sun in shorts and t-shirts. Lesson in humility. In Benidorm, Malaga, Barcelona or any other beach destination in Spain it is still very difficult to meet someone with their face covered by a ‘facekini’, but it is just as undeniable that something is changing. It is less difficult to find people who opt for long sleeves and sun protection pants (even muffs) in the hottest moments and, above all, no one is surprised anymore when they come across people who cover themselves with umbrellas. We told you recently: it is increasingly common to see Spaniards walking at five or six in the afternoon in July umbrella in hand. Also parents who, before going to the beach or the river, dress their young children in sun protection shirts. Umbrellas, t-shirts and more. Umbrellas may be the clearest demonstration that we are changing our way of relating to the sun, but it is certainly not the only nor the most important one. A quick search in the newspaper library arrives to find interviews with experts determined to debunk hoaxes and who warn of the risks of sunbathing without protection, the threat of melanomas, burns… They speak because there is an underlying problem, but the fact that they do so also demonstrates a growing sensitivity. It’s not about changing our cultural perception of tanned bodies, but that the message of experts is getting through who warn that, when 20, 30 or 40 years ago we looked strangely at Asians who protected themselves from the sun at all costs, we were the eccentrics. What is ‘strange’ is not walking around with an umbrella and protective clothing on a July day at five in the afternoon. The ‘strange’ thing is deliberately punishing our body, with all the risks that entails. “The Sun is an electromagnetic radiation that, when it reaches our skin, will produce mutations in our nucleic acid, and these mutations can initially be canceled by our body,” already warned in 2016 Dr. Julián Conejo Mir, Honorary President of the Spanish Academy of Dermatology and Venereology. “Any person who goes to the beach every day develops skin cancer, but our defensive system, if it works, cancels it out.” Great, right? Half. We may no longer be surprised to see someone using an umbrella on a sunny August afternoon, but that does not mean that we have internalized what it means to sunbathe irresponsibly. What’s more, we even run the risk of trusting us and think that protective clothing or umbrellas are infallible tools to keep us safe from melanoma. It is clearly demonstrated by a recent study from Nivea Sun that leaves two percentages that invite reflection: 85% of Spaniards admit to being worried about the effects of the sun on their skin, but nevertheless a large majority (67%) also admit that they do not regularly use sunscreen. Another clear example is in the networks. Thanks to them, doctors can warn of the risks of lying for hours and hours in the sun without protection, but X, Instagram or TikTok also serve as a loudspeaker for people who … Read more

China is researching how to have babies in space. And he has bad news

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China has been putting its batteries into the new space race. Apart from test your rockets back and forth as a key element to reduce the cost of missions and to fill the low orbit of satellites of all types (both military as data centers), are taking advantage of the Tiangong. In one of the last shipments sent to its space station via Tianzhou-10, there was a very special package: a cell with embryos of zebrafish, mice and artificial humans. The idea is to experiment with them to try answer the question of whether it is possible to have babies in spacealthough it is by no means the first time that China has experimented with something like this. The problem is that the results of some previous tests have begun to arrive and the outlook does not seem very positive for spatial reproduction. China has been exploring this line of research for a long time. At the beginning of the year we already said that the Asian giant had sent a mouse to have babies on the space station with the aim of analyzing whether radiation and microgravity caused any problems or alterations in the babies. Of the nine that were born, six survived, so the study was considered a success and the decision was made to continue researching, but now with artificial humans. Having babies in space is complicated Don’t think about science fiction yet, those artificial humans are something much easier to understand. As they pointed According to Chinese authorities, these were not complete organisms that could become babies, but rather structures made from stem cells that mimic the very early phases of human development. What was sent to Tiangong corresponded to embryos approximately 14 to 21 days after fertilization. Although early, this phase is crucial because it is where all the organs begin to form and where anomalies could be observed due to the aforementioned space radiation. These samples must be studied, but within the same line of research there are previous works whose results have just been published. And the prospects are not very good despite leaving room for optimism. As they point From the South China Morning Post, researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University in Beijing note that cells sent on the Tianzhou-6 mission and that were at an early stage did not grow and develop as well as they would have on Earth. In the experiment, the success rate of generating germ cells dropped by about half, while sperm precursor cells multiplied more than 25% more slowly. Guilty? Microgravity and cosmic radiationexactly the main suspects if something went wrong in these tests. That is, it is not only that the cells already formed did not develop at the normal rate, but if you try to conceive in space, the sperm does not work either. As we say, it is not the first time that China has investigated this and, in 2023, a set of automated cell cultures was already studied in the experiment module of the station. When they returned to Earth, they discovered that the success rate of growth of those special stem cells (primordial germ cells derived from pluripotent stem cells induced by humans) was reduced by half. That is, a success of 2% to 6% in the tests compared to the 6% to 15% measured in the terrestrial group. The bottom line is that the more hostile environment in outer space made it much more difficult for primordial cells to become eggs or sperm. However, there is a glimmer of hope, as human-induced ovarian follicle count and activity did not show a notable decrease, so it appears that space radiation has a limited short-term impact on germ cells. Researchers have already indicated that, despite the “slump” in the latest results, they will continue experimenting, since with potential long-duration missions in space, the prospect of pregnancies in space is something worth exploring further and it remains to be seen what happens with the Tianzhou-10 artificial humans. In Xataka | Putting solar panels in space and generating unlimited energy seemed like a pipe dream. China is already chasing her

China has a plan to win the AI ​​war against the US. And DeepSeek is its champion

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Liang Wenfeng is the most elusive person in the Chinese manufacturing industry. artificial intelligence (AI). The founder of DeepSeekwho also runs the hedge fund High-Flyer, recently held a four-hour video call with potential investors from Hangzhou, China, an unusual format in every sense: only two representatives per institution, and for most of the attendees it was the first time they had seen the founder. “We are a very normal group of people,” Wenfeng told them. And this apparent simplicity hides the company that, in just over a year, has rewritten the economic rules of generative AI. However, what began as a start-up reluctant to any outside investment has come full circle. DeepSeek recently closed a financing round of around $7 billion, with a valuation of $52 billion. The most revealing data, however, is provided by SCMP: This company is already negotiating a second round that is expected to raise that figure to $71 billion just weeks after closing the first. The power map of Chinese AI Reuters has confirmed that DeepSeek develops its own ASIC chip aimed at inference and not training. With it, it aims to reduce its dependence on Nvidia and Huawei, its two current suppliers. If the project succeeds, it would mark a huge strategic shift for a company that until now has built its entire reputation on software efficiency rather than hardware control. Be that as it may, this move would add additional pressure to Huawei, which competes for the same space within China. Huawei now integrates DeepSeek into its cloud services in sub-Saharan Africa In this scenario we are interested in focusing on the real magnitude of this phenomenon. According to FortuneChinese open source models (led by Qwen, MiniMax and DeepSeek) already represent a third of global use of large language models, compared to an almost non-existent presence at the end of 2024. Emerging companies in Silicon Valley and Southeast Asia adopt them due to their openness, transparency and a much lower operating cost than American alternatives. Huawei, in fact, already integrates DeepSeek into its cloud services in sub-Saharan Africa. As expected after such an escalation in valuation, several sources suggest that DeepSeek could present its IPO this year, following in the wake of other low-cost Chinese startups such as Zhipu AI and MiniMax, which are already listed on public markets. A successful placement would give DeepSeek the institutional capital necessary to scale its computing infrastructure and sustain its long-term price war against large American players. DeepSeek is no longer just the startup that sparked Nvidia’s biggest stock scare in a single day: it is the battering ram with which China tries impose its open and cheap AI model as a global standard. Image | Generated by Xataka with ChatGPT More information | Bloomberg In Xataka | While most oppose AI data centers, there is one group enthusiastic about them: merchandise thieves

OnePlus closes in Europe and Realme closes in China. This is the logic that explains why it is not the other way around

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Oppo has confirmed the movements that had been circulating for weeks about the future of OnePlus and Realmein an official announcement that sheds light on the future of each brand. The result is almost a mirror image between China and Europe: where one brand disappears, the other stays. And vice versa. What Oppo has confirmed. The distribution is like this: in ChinaRealme closes. OnePlus and Oppo remain. In Europe and SpainOnePlus closes. Realme and Oppo remain. Realme UIRealme’s customization layer, disappears and merges with ColorOSthe one from Oppo. Realme users will be able to voluntarily update to ColorOS, although there is still no confirmation of which model range this update will reach. The commitment to support and updates for devices already sold is maintained in both cases. The important nuance. It doesn’t matter how it was told in China: Realme does not disappear in Europe. It is an easy distinction to lose if international coverage simplifies the headline as “Oppo closes Realme” without further context, because the announcement is born in a Chinese key. In Spain and the rest of Europe, Realme continues to sell normally. The brand that is leaving our market is OnePlus, something that has already been talked about for months and that we counted a few days ago as something imminent. Between the lines. That Oppo closes different brands in each region depending on the strength they have there says a lot about its strategy. Realme has been the most aggressive brand in terms of price for years in markets such as Spain, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, with a commercial pull especially among the young public. In China, on the other hand, it is Oppo that dominates the terrain and Realme weighs less: It is the third after Huawei and Apple. Closing where it does not pay off and maintaining where it does work is a purely pragmatic and accounting balance decision. There is a second reading that the announcement has not yet clarified: it would not be strange for Oppo to distribute its brands by range in addition to geography, leaving Realme the entry and mid-range and reserving the high range for Oppo. The CEO suggests something like this, whose statement sent by the brand includes the phrase “OPPO’s European business remains stable, with strong momentum in the premium flagship segment.” On the other hand, the Realme that arrive in Spain in the coming months could be the successors of the low and mid-range OnePlus that the brand continues to manufacture in China with another logo. And now what. The announcement closes, on paper, the months-long mystery about the future of OnePlus in Europe. What remains to be seen is the fine print: what happens with Realme outside of Spain, up to what range the migration to ColorOS reaches and if the price distribution between Realme and Oppo confirms the hypothesis of the low range disguised as Chinese OnePlus. In Xataka | OnePlus 15, analysis: if the question is how long the battery of a high-end device should last, this mobile is the answer we wanted Featured image | Xataka

China has just gathered 100,000 national accelerators into a supercluster. The challenge now is for them to work together efficiently.

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China has launched in Zhengzhou the Dawning 8000, an artificial intelligence supercluster that, according to Sugon, can integrate 100,000 calculation cards developed in the country. The company presents it as the first Chinese system of this size built around a national infrastructure, from chips and network to storage and cooling. Sugon assures that the project is already connected to the national supercomputing network, although it has not yet published its complete technical specifications. The scale is not enough. The size of the installation does not in itself imply an equivalent leap in computing capacity. In loads that intend to take advantage of thousands of processors, the work must be dividedsynchronize and recompose without communication between nodes ending up consuming a disproportionate part of the time. As the stack grows, so do the points of failure, software complexity, and demands on network and storage. The real challenge begins when those cards have to behave as a single machine. The pending jump. Sugon maintains that the central node has already been optimized for more than 300 applications in about twenty fields, including large models, robotics, automotive, pharmaceutical industry and weather forecasting. The company adds that more than 70 applications have completed deployments at scale of 10,000 cards. These are relevant data to evaluate the maturity of the platform, although the information released does not detail a public load executed with the 100,000 units simultaneously. Autonomy under pressure. Zhengzhou’s bet cannot be separated from the pressure facing the Chinese technology industry. The United States included Sugon in its Entity List in 2019 and has since expanded restrictions on advanced semiconductors and equipment related to high-performance computing. In this scenario, building an infrastructure based on national technology has a value that goes beyond the power achieved. The project fits into China’s effort to expand its own capacity and reduce supply chain dependencies. The figure is not enough. One hundred thousand Chinese accelerators do not automatically equal one hundred thousand comparable Nvidia GPUs. The deployment also does not allow us to affirm that China has left behind its dependence on Western hardware to sustain its artificial intelligence infrastructure. It does demonstrate, according to Sugon, that the country can now build its own systems on an increasingly larger scale. It is not complete autonomy, but it is another step on the path to depending less on foreign suppliers. Images | Sugon In Xataka | Claude has a space in which he manipulates concepts before his final response. And it has surprised Anthropic itself

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