china

China has a spaceship of which there are barely any photos. Another unidentified object has just been released into orbit

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Shenlong, China’s secret ship has done it again. After several months in low Earth orbit, doing who knows what, it has released a mysterious payload that no one knows anything about. With this, there are now 9 unknown objects released by the Chinese divine dragon. Without further information, as always. Shenlong is a reusable ship. Since 2020, it has carried out four flights. First it was a test one, which lasted just two days, but then it made three more stays of several months in low Earth orbit. The last one is still underway and, as usual, no one knows anything about it. It is only known that it was launched on February 7 and that a few days ago, on June 22, it launched an unknown object. It was first detected by the private surveillance company LeoLabs. After seeing a mysterious object very close to Shenlong’s location, they raised the alarm. Then asteroid tracking expert Jonathan McDowell used your X account to confirm that according to their calculations, it must be a payload from China’s secret ship. Almost no one has photographed it. There are no official photographs of Shenlong. Since it was first released, there are only a few amateur-taken images, most of them very blurry. It is not easily seen. The only photo that gave any information It was taken in 2024 by the Austrian amateur astronomer Felix Schöfbänker. In its photograph you could see a pair of appendages that possibly correspond to solar panels, which would indicate that it has a great capacity for autonomous flight. Just hypothesis. It is not known why China regularly sends this ship into space, although there are some hypotheses, as explained from Live Science. Shenlong could be conducting proximity flight tests or launching surveillance satellites or anti-satellite weapons. At the moment, there is no evidence that it has made any suspicious approach to other ships, so the first hypothesis does not seem the most appropriate. As for the objects, if he has done anything with them, nothing is known about it. It is not the only secret ship. USA He also has his own secret ship: X-37B. This one has much more experience. While Shenlong has spent about 700 days in total in low Earth orbit since its first launch in 2020, the secret American spacecraft began flying in 2010 and has already accumulated more than 4,200 flight days. However, the United States has been more transparent with the missions carried out by its ship. It usually gives information about the launches, the duration of the mission and some of the experiments. For example, on X-37B’s last mission, a year ago, It is known that it was launched to study laser communication and quantum navigation tools. Of course, there are still some of his movements that are kept secret. Hence its name. The reality is that China has always been much more cryptic with its space missions, whatever their type. Even when satellites are launched regularly, the exact payload they are carrying is often not reported until the mission is completed. Therefore, it is not strange that they maintain so much zeal regarding their divine dragon. What just happened is not an exception and it probably won’t be the last time it happens either. Image | Long March rockets (no non-blur photos of Shenlong). Credit: Shujianyang In Xataka | The “space war” is already a reality and is being waged by the US, Russia and China with a particular weapon: their satellites

The Ferrari Luce has sold all its units in China. And that is the best sign for Chinese manufacturers

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Ferrari Luce in China. With the Luce, of course. The Maranello electric car has posted the “all sold” message on the door of its dealerships. 88 units at almost $600,000. A very high figure for a Chinese market that has also lowered the prices of luxury vehicles. Despite everything, Ferrari is Ferrari. whatever they want. They can sell whatever they want. It is the conclusion defended by multiple analysts and pickup in Xataka during the presentation of Ferrari Lucethe company’s first electric car that created enormous controversy for its design that even surpassed that of having launched an electric car without a trace of gasoline smell. Just a few days later we learned that Ferrari had sold each and every one of the units that I had planned in a first print run. Many or few? It really is not entirely clear because Ferrari’s production capacity is limited and only with the passage of years will we be able to know if the car has been a success or not. What is certain is that Ferrari, by the simple fact of being Ferrari, shows that it can sell whatever it wants. 88 units for China. With a waiting list that already extends until 2027, the Ferrari Luce has had the reception that could be expected. Even though the company has assured that does not force its more traditional clients to buy the car as a preliminary step to get the most special units. Of that waiting list that has already been completed, 88 of those units will go directly to the Chinese market. These Ferrari Luce, ensure in Car News Chinahave been sold with a starting price of $586,600 (almost four million Chinese yuan at the exchange rate). The figure is, they explain, 7% lower than the price sold in Europe. Very important. That sales are advancing at a good pace is huge news for the brand since China has been very quickly turning to its local manufacturers and turning its back on foreign ones. In fact, Ferrari only sold 584 units in 2025 in the Asian country. The fall was serious because in 2024 it signed 814 units and in 2023 it placed 1,221 supercars. That is to say, placing 88 units at once in China has already allowed it to sell 15% of the same amount that it signed last year. Without a doubt, a cushion that allows you to cushion the fall in a market that is clearly moving towards electrical products and, above all, to local ones. Big money. When analyzing car sales in China, in CarNewsChina They talk about “extra luxury” to refer to cars that cost more than a million yuan (just over 120,000 euros at direct exchange rate). It is a market where, curiously, only European cars dominate. The twentieth place last year was the Mercedes-AMG GLS with 83 units. In one fell swoop, Ferrari would have already surpassed it. But this list is not dominated by European cars because they do things better, it is because Chinese manufacturers have entered into a price war that has managed to place the price ceiling of their luxury cars below that million yuan. That is why it is surprising that Ferrari is capable of placing 88 units of a car that multiplies that cost by four. It must be taken into account that only BYD with the Yangwang U8 and its long variant U8L managed to sneak into this list. The rest of the supercars do not appear because, among other things, they cost less money than that million yuan border. Much more for less money. To show what we are talking about, the Huawei Maextro S800a luxury sedan that is half-manufactured by Huawei and the automobile conglomerate JAC, started last year at just over 700,000 Chinese yuan (about $100,000 at the exchange rate) and its top range barely exceeded that million yuan. Only in the last month of December 2025, This car outsold the BMW 7 Series, the Porsche Panamera and the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class. which were consolidated as the next three best-selling cars. While the Chinese car sold 4,376 units, the European options totaled 4,140 units. Chinese manufacturers are offering cars that are more technologically advanced inside than any other European company. The Huawei Maextro S800 has triple screen inside between 15 and 16 inchesendings in wood inside with space to store champagne bottles, individual seats in bucket format in the rear seats, the most advanced ADAS systems and, of course, full integration with the Huawei ecosystem. The path to choose. They assure Ferrari that the Luce is a car that is not aimed at its most classic clients. “It is designed for a different customer profile, not for historical customers to buy, who, obviously, can do so if they wish,” assured Enrico Galliera who has just left his position as the company’s head of marketing. As we said in Xataka It is clear that Ferrari is looking to carve out a niche for itself among a new type of customer. Although it aims at a global market, this was essential in China where the preferred car among the rich also seems to be electric and Chinese but, above all, it aims to be something different from what we traditionally know as a car. That Ferrari has sold all the units there allows it to position itself as a modern company, capable of doing different things. For example, this opinion from a Chinese buyer of a Porsche Taycan in statements to Bloomberg: “It was just an electrified Porsche. That’s all.” In the article, he described the purchase as “terrible” because, simply, it did not provide any differential value. For now, the numbers seem to say that Ferrari is moving on the right path in China. Photo | Ferrari and Sou Jest In Xataka | “It shouldn’t be in a car”: Legendary Apple designer thinks we have a problem with touch screens

China is preparing to be the only power with its own space station, but NASA does not want to make it easy for it

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The International Space Station (ISS) He is not in his best days. The increasingly frequent leaks in the Russian module and the failures of systems that increasingly require more maintenance have led NASA to set a date for its deorbitation. It will possibly be in 2030 or 2031. When that happens, the largest space station in Earth orbit will be the Chinese Tiangong. Even if it remained as it is today, it would be a step forward in the space race between the Asian country and Western agencies. However, by that time Tiangong will be even larger, as China has recently announced its plan to double the size of its facilities. Three modules and a large observatory. Currently, the Chinese space station It has three moduleswhich were assembled in orbit between 2021 and 2022. However, they are falling short for all the missions and experiments that are beginning to be carried out. For this reason, the installation of three others has been planned: a 20-ton multifunctional module coupled to the main module and two experimental modules. In total, Tiangong would go from 90 tons to 180 tons. But that’s not all. Even before the installation of the first of these modules, the Xuntian observatory will be launched, which will also be closely linked to the space station. More sky than Hubble. Xuntian will have a 2-meter main mirror, slightly smaller than Hubble’s. However, it also includes a 2,500-megapixel camera with sensors that cover a much larger area of ​​the sky. Specifically, the Chinese observatory has a field of view 300 times biggerwhich will allow it to map 40% of the sky in the 10 years that it is expected to remain active. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily better than Hubble. Hubble is more precise in the details, but it will carry out very interesting work in much larger spaces of sky. The relationship with Tiangong. Although Xuntian will not be directly in Tiangong, they are closely related, since it will be placed in a very close orbit, so that it can dock with the Chinese space station when it needs to be repaired, upgraded or refueled. More ports. Docking the observatory will be possible because the new Tiangong modules will also include new spaceports. Thus, more ships can be docked simultaneously, improving the volume of work at the space station and making its arrivals and departures more flexible. Besides, in case of emergencyit will be easier to have a ship ready to protect itself or leave the facilities. Xuntian’s field of view is 300 times larger than Hubble’s The International Space Station comes to an end. All this occurs while the International Space Station prepares for his retirement. It is expected to be in 2030 or 2031 when it will join the deorbitation vehicle developed by SpaceX that will be responsible for removing it from its orbit in a controlled manner. NASA right now has its vision much more focused on the lunar bases. However, they must also think about how this station will be replaced when its days end. Initially, NASA had planned for private companies to take charge this time. However, this same year the strategy changed and proposed the construction of a main government module in which various private companies could be attached. Axiom or Blue Origin are the ones that, at the moment, best fit the requirements of this project. The reason for this plot twist has been, in fact, China’s progress in its particular space race. The United States does not want to lose its leadership due to the retirement of the ISS, but to do so it needs to maneuver quickly. The problem is that sometimes hasty decisions can lead to wrong moves. We will have to wait to see what happens with all this in the end. Images | Shujianyang | 中国科学院长春光学精密机械与物理研究所 In Xataka | Western scientists have been debating the origin of Kamo’oalewa for years. China went looking for him

Every time a rocket ship fails, an industry grows. And China has just decided that it wants to be the owner and mistress

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In 2016, a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 exploded at Cape Canaveral destroying Israel’s Amos-6 communications satellite. Luckily, like when you get hit by a car while parking, there was insurance behind it that paid for the mess because the incident cost almost 300 million dollars. Because imagine that your latest and most ambitious project explodes and that as a consequence you end up bankrupt. Insurance is that industry that when everything goes well seems like a superfluous expense and that saves you when there is an accident. Applied to space, they move more than 4 billion dollars a year. Well, space insurance is undergoing a historic transformation: China has decided who no longer wants to be a mere customer, she wants to be the owner of the business. China goes from client to insurer. China had been insuring its satellites for years through the state insurer PICC, but part of the real risk was absorbed by the international market via reinsurance. So when ChinaSat-18 failed in 2019, it was foreign insurers that absorbed part of the hit, according to SpaceNews. China paid the premiums and London and Paris, where space reinsurance business is concentratedthey stayed with the business. Everything changed in March 2025: a consortium from Beijing covered 25 private launches for $1.47 billion in its first year, bringing together domestic insurers so that everything, money and control, stays at home, according to Caixin Global. It is the first consortium dedicated exclusively to the Chinese commercial aerospace sector. Why is it important. Because if there is no insurance, there is no investment and without that financing there are no rockets either. A fact: a geostationary satellite costs between 150 and 400 million dollars to manufacture and launch, according to the Satellite Industry Association. If there is a failure, the economic impact is tremendous and could lead to the bankruptcy of the operator, so having an insurance policy is a condition for any investor to dare to put money into a space project. Controlling space insurance is controlling who can take certain risks and how. The Chinese government is clear: according to the IISSShanghai allocated 300 million yuan in subsidies to the commercial aerospace sector in April 2025, and Beijing has announced targeted insurance premium subsidies for space companies. China replicates the move it has already used in semiconductors or batteries: state push to achieve strategic independence. Context. The space insurance market is growing simply because the commercial space sector is also growing, and because insurance is an essential condition for operating in it: Space Liability Convention of 1972 establishes that states are responsible for damages caused by their space objects. Lloyd’s of London has been insuring satellites since 1965 and for decades, this was a closed market dominated in Europe by companies such as Munich Re, Swiss Re or AXA XL. According to Orbital Radarthis market generates between 500 and 600 million in annual premiums and remains concentrated in London, Paris and Bermuda. SpaceX changed everything: more launches, lower unit cost, new risk profiles… and now new Chinese private launchers such as LandSpace, CAS Space, Space Pioneer bring a new transformation: everything stays at home, China cooks it and China eats it. In detail. As with cars, insurance premiums depend on the history of the rocket and here China has a potential gap to slip through: for new rockets with no history, the premiums are very high. Orbital Radar Explained that launch premiums range between 5% and 15% of the insured value depending on the vehicle and orbit. Therein lies the great advantage of the Chinese consortium: it can take risks where other insurers put their “buts.” A revealing fact: of 10,000 active satellites in orbit, only 300 have insurance, according to Space Insider. In fact, SpaceX does not even externally secure its own Starlink. Yes, but. The market that China wants to enter with everything is in trouble: in 2024 it paid more in claims than it earned in premiums, according to Insurance Business Magazineamong other things due to the loss of Intelsat 33e. And it’s going to get worse: space debris is growing faster than the ability to calculate it and here China is largely to blame. Furthermore, in accordance with the regulations OFAC of the US Department of the Treasury.when a Chinese rocket fails, American and European insurers can’t always pay: Western sanctions legally prohibit them from dealing with certain Chinese assets, so the market is fragmented. In Xataka | SpaceX has always been 10 years ahead of the competition. The problem is that in China that law no longer applies. In Xataka | The race to become “China’s SpaceX”: who’s who in its private space launch sector Cover | Ivan Diaz and zhang kaiyv

China is diverting its largest rivers thousands of kilometers away. The price to pay is a huge environmental mystery

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Water in China has a basic geographical problem, since the south of the country floods very frequently while the north is in a drought situation. To solve it, the Asian giant has spent decades running which is probably the most ambitious hydraulic engineering project in the history of humanity, since they are literally moving nature. Making history. If there is a country capable of altering the face of the Earth to guarantee its economic and demographic survival, it is China. The premise is as simple to understand as it is pharaonic to execute, since what they are doing is transferring water from the rich Yangtze River basin in the south to the arid plains in the north, where a large part of the country’s population, agriculture and industry is concentrated, but barely 20% of its water resources. The result of this It is the ‘South-North Water Transfer Project’ that has a colossal network of canals, pipelines and pumping stations that are defying geography. The figures of a titanic work. To estimate the size of this project, it is enough to go to official sources, since, according to the latest updates from China’s Ministry of Water Resources, the infrastructure is unparalleled in the world. Specifically, to date, the system has managed to transfer more than 70,000 million cubic meters of water through its central and eastern route. From a hydrological perspective, as detailed in CEDEX technical schemes on platforms such as Hispagua, this is equivalent to moving entire rivers artificially. The beneficiaries There have been 150 million people who have seen how this water injection It has even allowed an “ecological replenishment”, recovering the water table in northern areas that had been depleted for decades. But massive intervention on the ground always has a “B side.” The rivers. As China redraws its water map, an alarming fact emerged, as official censuses revealed that tens of thousands of rivers appeared to have disappeared in the country in just a few decades. Here the specialist media have raised great global concern about this phenomenon, since it is not known if this transfer was drying out the country at an unprecedented rate. The answer. It was given to us by an article published in 2019 that pointed out that the massive “disappearance” of the channels was not due to the fact that they had evaporated overnight due to dams or climate change, but rather to a problem of cartographic methodology. That is, historically, censuses included what scientists call ‘pseudo-rivers’ and used counting criteria that were not supported. Now that they have applied a much better and more consolidated hydraulic classification, the number of these “lost” rivers has been drastically reduced. The ecological cost. The fact that rivers are not disappearing en masse from the maps does not mean that the megaproject is free, since modifying the flow of some of the most important basins on the planet entails risks that scientific literature has been monitoring for years. Already in 2009, a classic review published in Wiley by researcher Zhang Quanfa warned of the profound Yoenvironmental implications of the transfer. Here he proposes that extracting such massive volumes from the south irreparably alters the Yangtze basin, causing an alteration of the southern aquatic ecosystem, or it has even been seen that as less fresh water reaches the mouth of the Yangtze, sea water penetrates inland, threatening the local supply and agriculture of the delta. The demographic cost. Added to these environmental warnings is the institutional analysis of experts such as Mark Wang and Chen Li who point out the governance challenges and the enormous political and social friction generated. Here different critical organizations point out that the authorities have forced the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people and have required multimillion-dollar investments in treatment plants to prevent contaminated water from the south from ruining the reserves in the north. Images | ダモリ In Xataka | A small river lost between Russia and North Korea is testing something much bigger: China’s patience with both.

Foie gras was one of the last armored culinary symbols of France. They did not have a rival that measures it in tons: China

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In 1778, French Marshal Jean-Pierre de Clermont-Tonnerre gave foie gras to King Louis XVI and the monarch was so impressed that he rewarded the cook with lands and a pension. Since then, the product was sealed as one of the great gastronomic symbols from France. More than two centuries later, that culinary crown is beginning to find competition far from Europe. The gastronomic bastion that seemed untouchable. For decades, the Foie gras It was one of those symbols that France considered almost part of its national DNA. It was not just a luxury product or a profitable export, it was a centerpiece of your food sovereigntya cultural emblem protected by designations of origin, rural tradition and a political machinery willing to protect it. When the sector celebrated a trade surplus in 2025 of 35.6 million eurosthe message was clear: after years of bird flu and mass slaughter, French foie gras was still standing. The wound of bird flu. The blow of bird flu It was deep. In 2022, French production fell to historic lows, barely touching the 8,000 tonsan unthinkable figure for a country used to dominating this market. The mandatory vaccination of ducks starting in 2023 managed to stabilize the sector and return it to levels close to 17,000 tons in 2025. That recovery seemed to confirm that France had closed the crisis. What no one expected is that, while he was healing his wounds, another actor was growing at full speed. China enters the scene. that actor it was china. In just a decade, it went from producing about 2,000 tons to touch 14,000placing itself dangerously close to the French leadership. The quote by Fabien Chevalierpresident of CIFOG, summarizes the surprise of the sector: “We didn’t see them coming like this.” And that is perhaps the key to everything. France thought that foie gras remained one of its last armored culinary totems. What he did not have was a rival who does not measure his ambition in tradition, but in tons. Scale changes everything. The comparison is brutal. While an average French producer produces around 10 tons per year, Chinese farms like Li Fengshan’s They produce 300 and aim for 500. The contrast is almost industrial versus artisanal. Li, who grew up in poverty and today drives a Maserati Thanks to foie gras, it symbolizes the Chinese transformation: turning a Western luxury into a mass product. On their farms, each worker handles more than 400 geese and the livers can exceed a kilo, easily doubling the usual size in France. Where the French see terroir, the Chinese see scalability. From luxury to popular consumption. The great revolution is not only in producing more, but in changing the meaning of the product. In China, foie gras is no longer just an elite delicacy: mixed with fried riceserved in a hotpot or transformed into cherry or rose-shaped desserts bathed in red wine. This democratization has triggered internal demand and has allowed prices to be drastically lowered. A dish can cost between 4 and 10 dollarscompared to 15 or 40 euros in many French restaurants. That changes the global market: when luxury becomes cheaper, the symbolic monopoly begins to break down. The next step: export. Until now, most of Chinese production stayed at home. That barrier is beginning to break down. As? Reuters counted that Chinese producers are already preparing exports to South Korea, Japan, Russia and Southeast Asia, and some have already sent batches to the United Arab Emirates. For France, the threat is not so much in Europe, where denominations continue to carry a lot of weight, but in those emerging markets where the “foie gras” label is worth more than its origin. The battle between story and volume. France continues to rely on its main advantage: the prestige. Labels such as “foie gras du Sud-Ouest” continue to be a cultural and gastronomic guarantee that is difficult to replicate. The problem is that economic history is full of examples where scale ends up eroding the story. China has subsidies, intensive labor, low costs and a immense industrial capacity. In fact, even now start talking about robots to automate force feeding. French foie gras still retains its aura, no doubt, but for the first time in a long time its dominance no longer seems like a natural inheritance. It seems like a position that will have to be defended. Image | Annie Tu, Charles Haynes In Xataka | 3D printed meat was a utopia years ago. You can now buy it in the supermarket, for 3.5 euros and made in Navarra In Xataka | France has found a way to stand up to China: the first pilot line to recycle rare earth magnets

The most powerful supercomputer in the world is in China. The other part of the story is even more interesting

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The biannual TOP500 list with the most powerful supercomputers on the planet has given a striking surprise in its June 2026 edition. The Chinese LineShine system, installed at the Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center, has debuted directly at number one. It thus displaces the American supercomputer El Capitan, which had dominated the ranking for years. China has not managed to lead this classification since 2017, thus breaking a decade of North American hegemony. Unprecedented raw power. The performance tests used to configure this list leave no doubt: LimeShine has achieved 2,198 exaflops of performance in the benchmark HPLcompared to 1,809 exaflops for its American rival. The Chinese machine is therefore 20% more powerful than the flagship of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. It is a whole new milestone in global supercomputing. Surprise: zero GPUs. The performance is extraordinary, but even more so is the way this supercomputer has been created. Most modern supercomputers rely heavily on GPUs, specialized graphics chips from Nvidia or AMD, for massive data processing. However, LineShine uses CPUs instead of focusing everything on GPUs, something that differentiates this supercomputer from its rivals and makes the feat even more striking. Heart ARM. The fundamental pillar of LineShine It is the LX2 CPU. The data they point because it has been designed by Huawei, and in each of those CPUs we have two dies HBM computing and memory. Each die It has 152 ARMv9 cores that have EVS and EMS supportwhich allows the system to process vectors and matrices in an exceptional way even without GPUs. In total LineShine has 304 of these processors with a total of 13,789,440 cores. Avoiding vetoes. One of the reasons that have undoubtedly contributed to this design decision is the US trade war with China. Tariffs and export bans on hardware and software have made things very complicated, especially when it comes to getting Nvidia GPUs for AI processing. Despite all this, China has once again demonstrated an astonishing ability to advance technologically. Another curiosity: the system has been built without public funds from the Chinese government. Source: TOP500.org AI clusters don’t compete here (but they would “win”). This prestigious list had always offered us that vision of the most powerful computing systems in the world, but today the panorama has changed. It has done so because the AI ​​clusters created by big technology are probably more powerful than any of these systems. As explains Jimmy Goodrich of the University of California, “if hyperscalers competed with their systems, ‘fastest’ in the world wouldn’t even be in the top five.” That phrase, yes, has crumbs. But it’s comparing pears with apples. However, the supercomputers on the TOP500 list and the AI ​​clusters that hyperscalers are building to meet global demand are very different. The root problem is in floating point precision. Classic supercomputers like El Capitan are designed for high-fidelity scientific simulations, where the slightest rounding error can be fatal. That is why they operate under the FP64 standard with which tens of decimals are calculated: it is a slow and expensive process in energy, but extraordinarily precise. AI rounds with joy. In contrast, AI models are very resistant to numerical “noise.” They don’t need perfect precision to recognize patterns or generate text. That allows AI chips to use reduced precision formats like FP16, FP8, or even FP4. By processing much shorter numbers, they multiply their speed and efficiency significantly. So when an AI cluster achieves tens of exaflops, it does so rounding up quite happily. These machines are exceptional for AI tasks, but they do not threaten the future of traditional supercomputers. Europe (and Italy) and supercomputing. If we look in detail at the list, we see great news for European supercomputing. The HPC7 system created by Eni has entered directly at number 6 on the list, while Jupiter Booster (Germany) is at number 5. Europe has four systems in the top 10 of the TOP500 list (two of them, from Italy), and eight in the top 20. Spain is still present on the list thanks to MareNostrum 5which yes, drops from 14th to 16th place. In Xataka | The EU wants to close the gap in the race for AI with 750 million euros. And it is good news for Barcelona

China just reminded you who moves the most pieces

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The United States has been trying for months to open an exit door in one of the territories where China retains the most industrial power: rare earths. We’re not just talking about mines, but about processing, magnets, permits, entity lists and a supply chain that connects defense, automotive, semiconductors and advanced technology. What we have seen now is a fairly direct reminder of that reality: Beijing has targeted American companies that are part of that attempt to build an alternative. The measurements. China’s latest move materializes on two levels. On the one hand, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce added ten American companies to its list of entities, which in practice means restricting operations with them. Those affected include MP Materials, owner of the Mountain Pass mine in California, as well as USA Rare Earth and Aveox. On the other hand, the Chinese Ministry of Finance announced purchasing restrictions on another 46 American companies in the defense sector. Beijing presented the measure as a response to the “unjustified” inclusion of Chinese entities on the US list of “Chinese military companies” and as a way to protect its “national security and interests.” The immediate context. The move comes less than two weeks after the Pentagon will reinstate Alibaba, Baidu and BYD to a list of Chinese companies considered a risk to US national security due to their alleged links with the People’s Liberation Army. Chinese companies denied such military connections. Therein lies one of the keys to the movement: Beijing presents its response as a response to Washington’s decisions. Washington’s plan. The United States has begun to move with unusual intensity, according to CSIS diagnosis. The think tank outlines an industrial policy strategy that combines more than $7.3 billion in capital, direct investments, public financing and procurement commitments to accelerate magnet mining, processing and manufacturing. The Department of Defense, for example, agreed to take a $400 million stake in MP Materials and set a floor of 110 dollars per kilo for ten years for its production of neodymium-praseodymium. It’s a lot of money, but also a race against industrial deadlines. The difficulty. CSIS noted that the April 2025 restrictions on heavy rare earths and permanent magnets caused rapid disruptions in allied defense and industrial chains, and exposed the fragility of a system that then remained highly dependent on Beijing. Nevertheless, Financial Times collects a cautious reading of China’s recent move. An American executive in the Asian giant, cited anonymously, described it as “measured and symbolic,” because companies in sensitive sectors, such as defense technology, already have very restricted access to contracts from the Chinese Government and Army. Are rare earths important? The key is that rare earths are neither a laboratory oddity nor a footnote in the trade war. They are much closer to our daily lives than it seems. These 17 elements appear into components such as magnets, batteries, phosphors and catalysts, which are then used in sectors such as healthcare, transportation, electricity generation, oil refining and consumer electronics. That is, we are not just talking about minerals: we are talking about tiny pieces that can end up in a wide range of devices, including military components. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | In China, a university student can now study a degree in one of its best businesses: rare earths

China has found an unexpected shortcut to bring AI to millions of homes: the robot vacuum cleaner

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You may already be using Chinese AI at home without giving it much thought. Not necessarily in the form of a chatbot, nor as a hidden function on the mobile, nor as another promise within the television. Maybe it’s in something much less solemn: a robot vacuum cleaner that runs across the floor of your living room while you do something else. The history of the robot vacuum cleaner did not begin with devices running around pointlessly. He Electrolux Trilobitemarketed in Europe in the early 2000s, and the Roomba Intelligent FloorVacpresented by iRobot in 2002, already incorporated sensors and navigation routines to move around a home with a certain autonomy, although their capabilities were far from current ones. What has changed since then is the perception layer: advanced models no longer just detect walls or stairs, but build richer maps, recognize objects and make decisions with more context. Electrolux Trilobite The scale data helps to understand why this story is not just about technological curiosity. According to IDCthe global home cleaning devices market reached 32.72 million units in 2025, up 20.1% from the previous year. Within that universe, smart robot vacuum cleaners remained the main category, with 24.12 million units and a growth of 17.1%. IDC measures shipments, not installed homes, but the scale helps to understand the dimension of the phenomenon: we are talking about tens of millions of home cleaning robots moving through the global market in a single year. AI also enters the house through the floor The most striking thing is who occupies the center of that category today. In the first three quarters of 2025, the global Top 5 of smart robot vacuum cleaners consisted of five Chinese brands: Roborock, Ecovacs, Dreame, Xiaomi and Narwal. The consulting firm speaks of a reorganization of the market, with 17.42 million units shipped in that period and a year-on-year growth of 18.7%. The reading is quite clear: China is not entering this sector as an aspirant, but as the block that sets the commercial pace of an increasingly technological category. And here the interesting thing begins: we are not just talking about a cleaning product. An advanced robot vacuum cleaner is probably one of the most complex home devices we can have moving around the house, because it must clean, orient itself, avoid problems and make decisions in an environment that changes every day. When he avoids a wire to avoid getting trapped, surround a sockdistinguishes a carpet or adapts its route room by room, there is more than just aspiration: there are sensors and artificial intelligence. Xiaomi H50 Pro At Xataka, for example, we have tested the Roborock Saros Z70, a robot vacuum cleaner with a robotic arm capable of lifting objects weighing up to 300 grams. In our experience, it reached for a sneaker, and Roborock claims it can also pick up socks, small towels, or tissues, although it doesn’t always recognize everything it finds. When we talk about the artificial intelligence race, we usually look towards the great models: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek or Alibaba Qwen, systems designed to summarize, schedule or respond from one screen. That terrain is still the most visible, but it is not the only one. China is also pushing a much more physical and everyday path: products capable of bringing perception, navigation and decision capabilities to household tasks. The iRobot case summarizes the change of era very well. Roomba made the idea of ​​the robot vacuum cleaner famous, but the company no longer occupies the central place it had for years: it was left out of the Top 5 global smart robotic vacuum cleaners indicated by IDC and declared bankruptcy before pass into the hands of the Chinese firm Picea Robotics. This, added to the most recent market data, suggests that the old Western benchmark lost ground while a new generation of Chinese brands conquered the market. Images | Roborock | Electrolux | Xiaomi In Xataka | A man tried to control his robot vacuum cleaner with a remote control: he ended up having access to 6,700 devices around the world In Xataka | The problem is not that there is AI on TikTok. It’s already more than half of what you see as soon as you enter.

China has just published a manual to hunt them from 3,000 km

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Japan designed the battle of midway convinced that the distance and dispersion of his fleet gave him an advantage. The problem is that the United States had deciphered the plan and converted that distance in a trap in 1942: four Japanese aircraft carriers ended up at the bottom of the Pacific in just a few hours. In naval warfare, staying away has never been a guarantee of safety. Retreat is no longer a refuge. For years, the United States’ response to China’s military buildup in the Pacific was clear: move away its aircraft carriers and large naval assets from the Asian coast. The reasoning seemed sound. The further away they were from Chinese ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, the harder it would be to destroy them. Bases like Guam They thus became a kind of strategic sanctuary… until Beijing just made something uncomfortable clear: distance no longer guarantees security. The Chinese manual. A group of Chinese military scientists, led by Gao Tianyun from the National University of Defense Technology in Nanjing, has published a study which describes how to destroy an aircraft carrier battle group at 3,000 kilometers. The figure is by no means coincidental. It is practically the exact distance between Shanghai and Guam. What is striking is not only the ambition of the plan, but the implicit message: the refuge that Washington chose to protect its most valuable ships is already within the threat map that China says it is studying. The great chain of death. The study does not present a “miracle weapon,” but rather something more dangerous: a complete system. First locate, then follow, and then saturate. The proposal combines satellites, drones, radar aircraft, submarines, ships and signals intelligence to build a chain of constant monitoring of an enemy naval group. Once the objective was set, the real key would arrive: a massive attack with coordinated missilessharing data in flight, differentiating decoys from real targets and assigning targets from multiple angles of attack. The war of exhausting defenses. The Chinese logic is not so much to pierce the armor of an aircraft carrier as to break the defensive architecture that protects it. An American battle group depends on Aegis destroyersinterceptor missiles, electronic warfare, decoys and CIWS systems last line. The problem is that all these systems have limits. The goal of a coordinated swarm is not to be unstoppable, but to make the defense run out of timewithout radar capacity or without sufficient interceptors. In other words, it is a war of exhaustion in seconds. Hiding is no longer enough. Here is possibly the central idea that worries Washington. The United States dispersed its ships and moved its aircraft carriers away to avoid having “all their eggs in one basket,” making it difficult for China to locate and attack them. But he chinese study issues a very specific warning: hiding and dispersing does not necessarily mean being safe. If the detection and tracking chain works, distance ceases to be a barrier and simply becomes a logistical variable. The most difficult point. Of course, work does not mean that China can do it tomorrow. The analysis itself makes it clear that the problem is not the range of the missiles, but maintain targeting data precise information about a naval group that moves, maneuvers, camouflages itself, emits interference and deploys decoys. Why hit a moving target? 3,000 kilometers It remains one of the most complex tasks of modern warfare, and although the theory now exists, the practice is a very different matter. More message than capacity. Because perhaps that is precisely the point. Post this study It doesn’t seem like a technical demonstration so much as a strategic statement. If you like, Beijing is also saying something very concrete to Washington: move your aircraft carriers Any further does not solve the problem, it only changes its form. In other words, the new Pacific war is no longer about getting close enough to strike, but about proving that even thousands of miles away no one is really out of reach. Image | US Navy In Xataka | While the world looked at Iran, China has seized an island in the Pacific without a single shot. And now he is militarizing it In Xataka | Japan has crossed a red line in the Pacific with the US: China has just responded with warships closer than ever

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