china

China makes tokens cheaper than anyone else

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Last month, Chinese AI models surpassed American ones in use on OpenRouter, an AI platform that allows you to detect interesting trends. And this in fact was just confirmed this month and has accelerated, because what we are seeing is that despite the obstacles that the US has tried to put in place to prevent China from competing in this market, the Asian giant has found a key tactic to do it: the so-called “token export”. Useless tariffs. The US government the era of globalization burst with the trade war with China and more recently with its aggressive tariff policy. That has had a clear effect on Chinese exportsbut the Asian country has found a way to avoid tariffs: with AI. Its artificial intelligence models can be used around the world without being affected by tariffs. Although they are inferior in performance and quality, they are much cheaper to use, so China is managing to convince the world with its old recipe: if the product or service is good enough and is also cheap, it wins. On the OpenRouter platform we have been seeing for two months how Chinese models are used more than those from the US for a simple reason: they are much cheaper and perform reasonably well. Token export. When we use energy we consume kilowatts. When we use AI we consume tokens from AI models. And that is where China is winning with the phenomenon called “token export”because the tokens of their AI models are extremely competitive and for many tasks those models are good enough. Minimax M2.5, Step 3.5 Flash or DeepSeek V3.2 clearly outperformed Gemini 3 Flash Preview, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Claude Opus 4.6 in use in the last two months on the OpenRouter platform, for example. Developers from all over the world take advantage of these models and do so without being affected by tariffs: tokens do not pay those fees that, for example, apply to mobile phones, cars and many other products. Devastating price difference. While an American premium model like Claude Opus 4.6 costs 5 dollars per million entry tokens (Sonnet 4.6 costs 3), Chinese models like the MiniMax M2.5 cost as little as $0.25, 20 times less, and the Step 3.5 Flash, also very popular, costs just $0.10, 50 times less. AI agents ask for cheap models. That price gap is especially relevant now that AI agents —and especially, OpenClaw— begin to demonstrate their ability. These types of systems are capable of completing tasks for us and even controlling the machines to which we give them access, but to achieve this they use a huge amount of tokens. Using the best models guarantees better results, but it is also very expensive, but in many “simple” tasks, very cheap models like the Chinese ones They can perfectly solve the problem. The subscription trap. In recent weeks, the rise of OpenClaw and similar platforms has provoked a curious response from companies like Anthropic or Google. To these companies they don’t like it that subscription plans for your AI models be used for these types of AI agents because they argue that those plans are abused, and there are certain restrictions to that type of uses. This has caused many users to opt for AI models from Chinese companies, which are precisely positioning themselves as the cheap and trouble-free alternative to be able to take advantage of these agents. Why Chinese tokens are so cheap. There are several factors that favor the low cost of AI models in China. The first of them, cheap energy: the costs of industrial energy They are 40% smaller than in the United States. The second, its efficient architecture: as DeepSeek demonstrated, it is possible to achieve great results with techniques like Mixture of Experts (MoE). With it, the model is divided into multiple “experts” and only activates those that are necessary according to the request. The irony of tariffs. Curiously, the US restrictions on the export of advanced chips may have ended up being the great catalyst for this situation. By not having access to the most advanced NVIDIA chips, Chinese companies were forced to perfect the efficiency of their models to the maximum, and that has now caused be more competitive in the AI ​​inference market (that of the use of models in practice), which is where this new economic battle is being fought. Challenges. Although the “token export” is currently profitable for China, it faces significant challenges. The data sovereignty is one of them: for a company or a government, sending sensitive data to data centers in China is a red line. There is also the problem of latency: the response of China’s AI models is affected by the enormous distances that these data packets have to travel. It remains to be seen if Washington ends up applying some kind of measure to also restrict the use of AI models from Chinese companies, although that seems more complicated. In Xataka | NVIDIA already has a monopoly on AI hardware: now it wants to conquer software through agents

China has broken records by expanding its wind and solar capacity. Now going all out with pumped hydroelectric storage

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In December 2020, Xi Jinping, the president of China, announced that the country he leads would reach 1,200 GW of installed wind and solar capacity by 2030. He was wrong. China reached this figure in July 2024and, therefore, no less than six years before the deadline set by the Government. At the end of 2025, the accumulated capacity of these two energy sources exceeded 1,840 GW, making them those responsible for 47.3% of China’s electrical capacity. That was the first time wind and solar energy They surpassed coal and gas in the Chinese electricity mix. However, the rapid expansion of these renewable energy sources has placed China in a scenario in which it is crucial to find a way to integrate them efficiently into the country’s energy system. Wind and solar energy have an intermittent nature, so it is essential to develop large-scale storage infrastructure and a network that is capable of managing the peaks and valleys of supply in an automated way. Pumping is the most efficient way to store energy on a large scale To solve this challenge, China has launched a strategy that proposes transforming energy storage into a national priority. One of the solutions it is deploying is installing large battery systems at a record pace. In 2025 its battery storage capacity grew by 75% compared to 2024. However, in this area its biggest bet is pumped hydroelectric storage. At the moment China has more pumping projects underway than all the other countries in the world combined. Their plan is to use excess solar and wind energy to pump water into elevated reservoirs and release it when electricity is needed. Pumped hydroelectric plants fit very well in mountainous countries because they allow you to take advantage of uneven terrain to move large masses of water between two reservoirs or deposits at different heights. China currently has more pumping projects underway than all other countries in the world combined. The excess energy can be used to pump water from the lower reservoir to the upper one using a hydraulic pump, and to recover that energy it is only necessary to let it fall back into the lower reservoir from the upper one so that it drives a hydraulic turbine. Pumped hydroelectricity has been used for more than a century, but it remains a very attractive technology. In fact, it is currently one of the energy storage systems more efficient large scale. The largest facility of its kind in Europe it is the pumped hydroelectric plant of the Cortes–La Muela complex (La Muela I + La Muela II), on the Júcar river (Valencia). If we stick to pumped hydro storage, China aims to add about 100 GW in five years compared to the current 59 GW. If it achieves its purpose, this technology will become the basis of its long-term storage system in this country. Still, the Government has also committed to more rapidly expanding battery storage. At the end of 2025 the accumulated capacity reached 136 GWwhich multiplies by 40 the level proposed by the previous five-year plan. Lithium-ion batteries clearly dominate this market, but China is investigating alternative technologiessuch as sodium-ion batteries, compressed air batteries, flywheels or gravitational storage. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Volt Insight Xataka | China dominates the world of renewable energy, but it has an Achilles heel: it depends on the West more than it admits

China has surrounded it with 26 planes and 7 warships

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In 1950, in the midst of Korean Warthe United States discovered a problem that continues to haunt the great powers: when you concentrate your military resources on one front, other places on the map begin to move. That war coincided with crises in Europe and growing tensions in the Taiwan Strait, recalling a constant of geopolitics: conflicts never occur in a vacuum. A strategic déjà vu in Asia. The war between the United States and Iran has opened an unexpected front thousands of kilometers from the Persian Gulf. While Washington concentrates military resources in the Middle East (missiles, air defenses and expeditionary units) the Indo-Pacific watches with concern how this displacement alters the regional balance. The contrast became evident in an almost symbolic image: a few hours apart, the United States sent marines to reinforce its operation against Iran, and Taiwan once again detected a great chinese military activity around him. We talk about 26 planes and seven ships of war that appeared near the island after a strange silence of several days. For many in Asia it was a geopolitical déjà vu: Every time Washington is caught in another conflict, the pressure on Taiwan intensifies again. A strange pause. For more than a week, something unusual occurred in the Taiwan Strait: Chinese military planes they practically disappeared. In recent years, raids had become a daily routinewith dozens of aircraft entering the Taiwanese air identification zone as part of Beijing’s pressure strategy. Suddenly, for twelve out of thirteen days, it did not register practically no flights. Taiwanese authorities sought explanations, from adjustments in Chinese military training to Beijing’s desire to reduce tensions before a summit between Xi Jinping and Trump. They told in the New York Times that silence never meant withdrawal. The Chinese Navy continued operating near the island and experts warned that the absence of aircraft should not be interpreted as a real reduction in the threat. The sudden return. The hiatus finally ended over the weekend. Taiwan announced the detection of those 26 Chinese military aircraft along with seven warships around the island, with various devices crossing the midline of the strait or entering its air defense zone. A type of maneuvers that are part of the called “gray zone”a strategy that does not amount to open war but seeks to wear down the Taiwanese defense and normalize the Chinese military presence in the area. The truth is that with the passage of time, these movements have ceased to be exceptional episodes and have become in a routine which erodes the informal border of the strait and reinforces political pressure on Taipei. The domino effect. The temporal coincidence with the war in the Middle East has not passed unnoticed in Asia. Before the conflict with Iran began, the United States had already diverted an aircraft carrier battle group from the South China Sea to the Gulf. As we count a few days ago, with the war underway at the Pentagon has transferred also advanced air defenses from Asia (including Patriot interceptors and THAAD systems deployed in South Korea) to reinforce protection against Iranian drones and missiles. There is no doubt that this move sends an uncomfortable signal to Asian allies: even in the region that Washington defines as its strategic priority, resources can be withdrawn if a crisis arises elsewhere. THAAD A strategic window. In Asia many interpret this redistribution as a opportunity for China. With part of the American military machine occupied in the Middle East and with accelerated consumption of interceptor missiles and ammunition, several countries fear that the United States’ response capacity in the Indo-Pacific will be temporarily weaken. Beijing can take advantage of that situation to, for example, reinforce its narrative that the United States is a distracted and overextended powerunable to guarantee security simultaneously in several regions. At the same time, the rising oil prices and the economic uncertainty generated by the war also hit Asian economies especially hard, many of them highly dependent on the energy supply that passes through the Strait of Hormuz. The marines and the equation. Meanwhile, in the Middle East there is another key move. We reported this morning that the United States has deployed a Marine Expeditionary Unit of some 2,500 troops to reinforce the operation against Iran. These amphibious units are rapid response forces designed to carry out raids, occupy strategic positions and project power from the sea to land. In the context of the Persian Gulf, its mission could include attacks against islands or bases from which Iran launches drones, missiles or mines against maritime traffic. The deployment marks a possible transition to a more aggressive phase of the war, one in which ground or amphibious operations gain weight. A void in the Pacific. The problem is that this unit comes from the Indo-Pacificwhere it normally acts as a reaction force in regional crises. Its transfer temporarily leaves a scenario that includes such sensitive points without that resource. like South Korea or his own Taiwan Strait. At the same time, other US units are already involved in operations in different locations, from Venezuela to the Middle East. That redistribution fuels the perception that the US military apparatus is being stretched to the limits of its operational capabilities. Lesson for Asia. For many Asian governments, the war with Iran is offering an uncomfortable lesson on regional security architecture. If the United States should move air defenses from South Korea or delay arms deliveries to allies like Taiwan to sustain a campaign in the Middle East, means that its arsenal and industrial capacity are not as deep as previously thought. From that perspective, some countries are already reacting by reinforcing its own military industry or developing national defense systems to reduce dependence on Washington, for example, Japan. The board moves at the same time. The result is an increasingly clear picture of the new strategic order. The war in Iran is not only redefining the balance in the Middle East, it is also reconfiguring the … Read more

India has been wanting to be the new China for years. The Iran war is putting it on a plate

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The iran war is demonstrating, once again, the fragility of globalization. Just look at this graph: Graphic: Xataka The price of a barrel of crude oil has rampaged because Iran is attacking refineries, the Strait of Hormuz through which 20% of the world’s crude oil passes It is abuzz and there is instability in the ‘oil well of the world’. Refineries are targetedbut also the new mine of the world economy: data centers. Iran has attacked data centers of Amazon in Saudi Arabia and Big Tech are setting their eyes on nearby countries where they can move. And what is very attentive is an India that has been pursuing an ambitious goal for years: to become the new China. They have been tempting big technology companies for years and with the narrative of being a safe and reliable country in which to manufacture. The war in Iran is now giving it another argument: kamikaze drones do not fall in its data centers. In short. Data centers have become critical infrastructure. They are from the moment you are investing in them. more than we invested to go to the Moonthe economy of some companies and countries is being linked to their success and, above all, they have been since the AI ​​fever has put the world of hardware in an alley. In war and love, anything goes (or so some apply), and this time we are seeing how they bomb schools, hotels and data centers. On March 1 and 2, Iran attacked with its drones two of the Amazon Web Services, or AWS, facilities in the United Arab Emirates and another center in Bahrain. This has forced the technology company to pause activity in those facilities, asking that companies that had services running on their servers migrate to those in other countries. Solutions. Latency plays a fundamental role in certain operations, so they must be servers that are relatively close to those that have been attacked. And that’s where they come into play both that Amazon has in India, specifically the one in Munbai and the one in Hyderabad. These are data centers from Amazon, yes, but the country has big plans to create an industrial fabric based on this type of infrastructure. At the beginning of last year we echoed a mega data center hard to believe. When most of the world’s large facilities remain below 1 GW of energy capacity, an Indian company wants to create a single data center with a capacity of 3 GW. If we return to the Amazon centers in northern Virginia, in the United States, we see that about 300 installations add up to a total of 2.5 GW. And now India wants one to only have 3 GW. And it wants to have it by 2027, a date as ambitious as its own dimensions. Rain of millions. It is estimated that such a facility would cost between 20,000 and 30,000 million dollars, but it is something that today’s India cares little about: they are burning money to attract industry and steal what they can from China. The country has been offering hundreds of millions of dollars to each technology company that wants to settle in its territory. It’s not just money. India is developingits market is growing and something important: young Chinese are increasingly more qualified and labor is getting more expensive. A cheaper workforce in India, added to government incentives, are two powerful arguments for some giants in the technology sector to move to the country. And, little by little, they are achieving it. Xiaomi, Motorola and even Huawei manufacture complete models of some of their lines in India. Asus, HTC, Samsung, Microsoft and LG have plants for some parts and Apple has taken the production of parts to India. old iPhone models. Another one is Micron, one of the main players in the memory segment. tempting everyone. The country wants more and it is gone sitting with representatives of heavyweights such as the aforementioned Apple… and Samsung. They want the South Koreans don’t just make a few piecesbut rather that they invest in artificial intelligence, hardware and in something that India is eagerly seeking: semiconductor research and development. Samsung is one of the world’s leading foundries and is investing millions outside of South Korea. India seeks to be part of that equation. To do this, they have something called PLI. This is a government initiative that encourages the production of a complete portfolio of products. That is to say: the more complete products a same brand manufactures in the country, the more incentives and economic advantages it receives. They also promise less economic friction with the West, although looking at the issue of tariffs and their ups and downs, it is something that can change from one day to the next. And it’s not all about pure and simple money: India is the most populous country on the planet and it is estimated that the average level of income will continue to rise over the next five years, which also “promise” a good national market for those products that companies manufacture on their soil. The Bangladesh Hi-Tech Park project And the result, with Hyundai being the only one with a significant presence and many open fields, buildings under construction… broken dreams. According to estimates, electronics manufacturing in India was a market of 115,000 million dollars and it is expected triple it by 2027. My colleague Laura already detailed that they were executing the technique of being a steamroller based on releasing billsalthough two things must be said. The first is that one of those objectives, the become the foundry of the worldit’s going to be complicated. TSMC is leading the conversation and is moving both on home soil -Taiwan- and in Europe and, above all, the United States. And what is truly worrying for the country is that, in this search for talent at all costs, it has invested a lot of money in the construction of technological cities that … Read more

China has a nuclear reactor 100 times more efficient than traditional ones. The trick is to shoot atoms with an accelerator

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China has had one goal in mind for some years: to have a voice in the nuclear race. In the weaponsyes, but also in energy. As Europe argues and the United States attempts to rejuvenate its critical infrastructure to meet AI needs, China has been on the accelerator for months. Recently they have not only approved 10 new reactorsbut they are one step away from turning on a new generation nuclear power plant to provide ‘green’ energy for 1,000 years. This is the CiADS system, or Throttle Actuated System. It is a type of reactor that China has been developing for more than 15 years and that promises to convert waste into energy. Their trick is to convert “garbage” into fuel, and it is a very interesting twist for nuclear energy. And even more so in a China that wants to dominate the atom and renewables as a basis for the development of another of the great ambitions of the country. Artificial intelligence. A twist to nuclear energy In a releasethe Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences gave some details of how this accelerator-driven nuclear reactor works. Uranium is still the fuel, but “reactor driven by an accelerator” is literal. Using a particle accelerator, protons are “shot” at a heavy metal target at a speed of 0.8 times that of light. This generates neutrons that drive a reactor that operates somewhat below the critical threshold to be self-sustaining. The reactor generates energy and this violent reaction causes the long-lived radioactive isotopes that are normally generated in a conventional nuclear power plant to transmute and become materials with a shorter life. As its managers explain in SCMPthe CiADS is a hybrid between a nuclear reactor and a particle accelerator. The main advantage is that greatly reduces the risk of uncontrolled reactionsbut it has another: you can reuse the radioisotopes that normally would be treated as nuclear waste to continue producing energy. Firing beams of protons through these accelerators to bombard the heavy metal makes the uranium-238 give way to a new nuclear fuel: plutonium-239. According to the state media Science and Technology Daily, it is basically turning waste into treasures. According to those responsible, this method is 100 times more efficient than conventional fission and would allow nuclear energy to be converted into “a source of green, safe and stable energy for 1,000 years”, ensuring part of the necessary energy supply for the future. Furthermore, since what would previously be long-lasting waste is reused, the resulting CiADS has a useful life of less than one thousandth compared to conventional waste. The CiADS under construction They are two birds with one stone: China is wildly expanding its nuclear capacity, but it is estimated that it does not have as much uranium of its own and would continue to depend on imports… or to fish it in the sea. With “100 times more efficient” plants, you can get more juice out of what you have. And then there’s the fact that nuclear waste is less dangerous. If everything goes as planned, China will have its first MW-scale CiADS in 2027. It will be then when we check if those theoretical promises achieved by scale prototypes are fulfilled. The CiADS comes at a time when China has emerged as a contradiction in energy matters. They carry years fighting pollution and emissions, but they burn coal. They are a powerhouse in renewables with megastructures and deserts covered by panels. But in the age of AI, it is precisely that coal and gas that is the fuel that allows us to satisfy the demand of data centers at the peak of training. With nuclear weapons, China seeks further reduce your CO2 footprintbut ensuring a future in which it must feed the population, artificial intelligence and a network of technology companies that are doing the most difficult: fighting Western companies without the technological resources of the West. Because right now China doesn’t have the chips or the AI, but yes the energy. And that investment in new generation nuclear plants and, above all, in nuclear fusionrepresents the foundation of what is to come. Everything, that is, if the CiADS works as expected. Images | Sahaza Delis, Tighef In Xataka | There is a global race to be the first to reach nuclear fusion. And Germany just gave it an optimistic date

For the first time, BYD has sold more cars outside of China than inside. It’s very bad news for them.

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Pursue your dreams… outside of China. Beyond Your Dreams are the words hidden behind the acronym BYD. The acronym of the company that sold the most electric cars in the world in 2025. A company that seemed to have meteoric progress but that has stagnated with a local market that is slowing down at a dizzying pace. So much so that it has already sold more cars outside of China than inside. A well-thought-out strategy that arrives ahead of time. A milestone?. The month of February was the first in which BYD has sold more vehicles outside China than in its own market. It is a conditional milestone, since sales in China of the entire market have plummeted and, of course, have hit the country’s largest car manufacturer hard. A general trend. Although in 2025 car sales in China once again set a record with 34.4 million cars sold (a growth of 9.4%, according to the Chinese Association of Automobile Manufacturers) in figures collected by the media 36krthe market has been experiencing a slowdown for months. In February, car sales in the country fell 15% compared to the same month in 2025, they point out in Reuters. But the problem is worse among individuals, where sales have fallen by 34% as a result of the Chinese New Year festivities and the withdrawal of some purchasing aid. The latter has had a direct impact on sales of “new energy” cars (plug-in hybrids and electric). According to data collected by CNEVPostIn January, 596,000 cars of this type were purchased, compared to 744,052 units in the same month of 2025. A drop of 22.1% that worsened in February, with 464,000 units sold compared to 686,000 units the previous year. It is a year-on-year drop of 32%. The BYD case. This general decline in sales, with more worrying figures among new energy vehicles, has had a direct impact on BYD. Last January, BYD sold 210,051 new energy cars when in the same period of 2025 it placed 300,538 units on the market. In February, the figures were worse with 190,190 units sold compared to last year’s 322,846 units, reported in CNEVPost. That is, so far this year, its sales have fallen by 30% in January and 41% in February, extending a trend of low sales that has been going on since September of last year. BYD sales have not grown in China since June 2025. In July and August they achieved a technical tie in the year-on-year comparison but, since then, they have lost in all one-year comparisons. These falls have caused Geely to surpass BYD in sales in the first two months of the year. Between January and February, Geely has sold 476,327 units, just 1% more than in the same period of the previous year. There are just over 76,000 units than BYD (400,241 vehicles between January and February) thanks to a larger product portfolio and less dependence on “new energy” vehicles. This has avoided a fall due to the withdrawal of state aid, they state in SCMP. More outside than inside. As we said, BYD’s sales have plummeted in China but its exports have skyrocketed abroad. This has meant that the company has sold, for the first time, more cars outside its borders than within its borders, they point out in Electrive. Two factors explain it 41% decrease in sales in China compared to February 2025 Increase in exports of 50.1% compared to February 2025 The company has managed to consolidate sustained growth in its exports. They point out in CarNewsChina which with February now adds up to four consecutive months exporting more than 100,000 units. This has caused them to place outside their borders this month 100,600 units of the 190,190 units which have sold all over the world. That is, more than 50% of its sales have been delivered outside of China. a mirror. BYD has become the best example of what the Chinese market is all about. The country lives in a whirlwind of launches and a suffocating price war. BYD itself, with its new launches at ultra-competitive prices, has caused their own cars become obsolete with months on the market, gathering dust in dealerships. The rest of the companies have also played to lower prices to keep up the pace and release news at a frenetic pace, but that produces some anxiety in the client that sees how what is new today can be left behind very soon. Bad news in a country like China that has been trying for years to promote domestic consumption to put its economy into higher gear. But, in addition, the State has withdrawn some aid to the purchase of electric cars, the most important column in the industry. This has its consequences in the drop in sales among individuals. Before time. That BYD intended to expand outside China was no secret. In fact, his plans happened because half of global sales will be consolidated outside of China in 2030. The expansion plan with the factory Hungarythat of Türkiye and, it is rumored, another in Europe is part of it, without forgetting the Thailand and Brazil. The question is to know if this surprise of sales abroad has arrived too soon and the only thing it confirms is the slowdown that the brand will have to deal with in China. If you want to consolidate yourself as one of the largest global manufacturers (there was talk of reaching 5.5 million units in 2025 but finally they stayed below the 5 million border) it is essential that they expand borders and not depend solely on the internal market. European manufacturers can give BYD some examples of what happens if you base the bulk of your strategy on selling in China. Photo | BYD In Xataka | The year of Chinese consolidation in Spain: MG, Omoda and BYD close a spectacular 2025 and are among the best sellers

Germany wants to do what Japan did with rare earths in 2010: join forces against China

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BMW, Rheinmetall and the main German industries are working on the creation of a joint agency to purchase critical mineralsa move that would reduce dependence on China, according to they count from Financial Times. The idea is to pursue the model that Japan proposed a few years ago, and the story behind it explains why it makes sense. The starting point. In 2010, China imposed an embargo on rare earth exports to Japan in the midst of a territorial dispute. Tokyo depended on these materials to manufacture everything from cars to electronics. To alleviate the mess they had gotten themselves into, they decided to build an alternative architecture. They created JOGMEC (Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security), a state agency that collaborates with the country’s main conglomerates to ensure the supply of minerals, oil and gas. With this, Japan significantly reduced its dependence on China for rare earths. What Germany is building now. According to counted In the middle, BMW works together with the VDA automobile lobby and representatives of the German defense industry in order to develop a structure similar to what Japan did at the time. Rheinmetall is also in the talks. The specific idea is to create a kind of large private company that bulk buys critical raw materials (lithium, gallium, germanium, rare earths) on behalf of German industry. Just like share In the middle, the federal government could participate with a minority stake. The figures are not yet finalized, but the total cost of the project could amount to several hundred million euros. Why now. Last year, China imposed export controls on essential materials for batteries, permanent magnets and weapons systems. In November it temporarily suspended some of these restrictions until November 2026, but the scare was already in place. Europe was exposedwithout real alternatives, without negotiating power, nothing to do. And German industry (car manufacturers, defense companies, industrial machinery) realized how fragile its supply chain was. The Japanese model. JOGMEC works because it combines public capital with the agility that its large private companies allow, as they are structures with centuries of history in Japan specialized in industrial supply. Germany already has a raw materials agency, DERA, but sources close to the media recognize that needs a profound reform to fulfill that role. The agency being proposed now would have more muscle, with active financing, investment capacity in mining and recycling projects, and direct presence in the market. The state development bank KfW has already prepared a fund of 1 billion euros to finance mining, processing and recycling projects of critical materials, which would serve as a complement. Diplomacy. Just like account The media, Chancellor Friedrich Merz contacted Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi this week, and critical minerals were on the table. And Japan has shown interest in exporting its model abroad. In parallel, this same week the media informed also that the Australian Lynas Rare Earths, the largest producer of rare earths outside China, has closed a supply agreement with Japan with a guaranteed minimum price of $110 per kilogram for neodymium-praseodymium for 12 years. The same price that Washington guaranteed to the American producer MP Materials. The tension with Brussels. The European Commission also works in a centralized body to coordinate strategic purchases and reserves of critical minerals. But from Germany there is skepticism. According to share FT, Germany’s position is that “the industry must make its own decisions” and that governments should limit themselves to managing strategic reserves. In other words, Berlin prefers a model of private initiative with specific state support rather than leaving the strategy in the hands of Brussels. What is at stake. Steel, lithium and rare earths are the backbone of the energy transition and European rearmament. Without neodymium there are no magnets for electric motors or guided missiles. Without gallium and germanium there are no advanced semiconductors. China controls between 60% and 90% of the production chain for most of these materials. Hence many countries are restless. Cover image | Prometheus and Wikimedia Commons In Xataka | The United States knows it has a problem with rare earths from China. And he believes he has an alternative: Mexico

China has turned OpenClaw into a viral phenomenon. And then it has prohibited its officials from using it

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The appearance of the AI ​​agent OpenClaw has meant that we are living in a kind of second “DeepSeek moment“They know it well in China, where its use has exploded in such a way that the Government has had to act. And it has probably done well. An absolutely viral AI. The OpenClaw project has caused a real earthquake in China. In cities like Shenzhen there are queues to physically install it and people paying for others to install it remotely or in person. The AI ​​agent is breaking all popularity records for programming projects, and for example has already surpassed two legends such as React or Linux in terms of stars awarded on GitHub, a measure of the popularity of open source projects. In just three months, OpenClaw has managed to surpass the legendary leaders of this ranking in GitHub stars: react and linux. Source: Star-History.com Solution to Chinese fragmentation. The secret of this success in the Asian giant is not based only on the curiosity of users, but also on the fact that OpenClaw provides a striking solution to an endemic problem in the country: the fragmentation of business software. With an average of 150 independent IT systems per company and 60% of them without APIs or documentation, AI integration seemed to be an insurmountable wall. OpenClaw solves the problem because you can take control of the machine, “see” buttons and text boxes, click and type in browsers, and operate as if you were a human. Tokens everywhere. That ability has turned this project into an absolute “token hole.” Unlike a conventional chatbot like ChatGPT, OpenClaw works continuously and autonomously, and it is not uncommon to see an advanced user consume 50 million tokens daily. The impact has been massive: at the end of February, Chinese models such as Kimi 2.5 or DeepSeek were already devouring 61% of the global OpenRouter tokens, a platform that allows you to easily use APIs from dozens of AI models. The fever has been such that Kimi has generated in 20 days more income than all expected by its creator, Moonshot IA, by 2025. Alarm. The problem is precisely that: when software has the ability to “see” everything that happens on a screen and execute commands by itself, the security risks are enormous. This has made the Beijing government go from enthusiasm—cities like Shenzhen offer million-dollar subsidies for their development—to a policy that is now totally restrictive. Government agencies, state-owned companies and large national banks have received urgent notices prohibiting the installation of OpenClaw in office devices and even in mobile phones that are used in this type of segments. Be careful with your data. Practically since it went viral, many have warned of the cybersecurity risks involved in using OpenClaw. An initial audit of the skills available on ClawdHub detected hundreds of them as malicious. That was the germ of the OpenClaw alliance with the Spanish cybersecurity firm VirusTotalpart of Google. The risk with this project is threefold: You have access to private data Can communicate with the outside You are exposed to untrustworthy content and attacks from prompt injection One of lime and one of sand. For large Chinese technology companies, the government’s measures are bittersweet. On the one hand, they have rushed to offer one-click OpenClaw deployments in their clouds for interested users. On the other hand, state restriction has meant that some of the AI ​​startups such as Zhipu (Knowledge Atlas Technology JSC Ltd.) or MiniMax Group have quickly fallen on the stock market for the news. China and control. There is another key element in that political movement: the loss of control. The Beijing government has already fought a battle in the past to curb the power of giants like Alibaba, and that caused the “Asian Jeff Bezos”, Jack Ma, came out very badly. An autonomous AI agent that operates outside of that government control represents a challenge to the mechanisms that China has been perfecting, especially with its Great Firewall. An uncertain future. These new restrictions pose a complex future for the project in China. The Asian giant has embraced AI more than anyone else, but the security risks in this case are so clear that limits had to be set before things got out of control. Even so, the project is Open Source, which will make it difficult for its deployment to be halted by end users and enthusiasts, no matter how much the Chinese Government wants it. Image | OpenClaw | Paul Kagame In Xataka | Every time Facebook had a competitor, it bought it: it is exactly the same thing that OpenAI is doing

is dismantling ‘made in China’ faster than we expected

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One in four iPhones is already assembled in India. Apple has delivered in 2025 exactly what JPMorgan forecast in 2022but it has done so at a speed that has surprised the sector. Why is it important. This is perhaps the clearest sign to date that China has lost its status as an irreplaceable player in high-end consumer electronics manufacturing. If Apple can make this move, others can too. In figures: 55 million of iPhones made in India in 2025, up from 36 million in 2024 (a 53% increase in a single year). 25% of world production, for a total of between 220 and 230 million units. 9 billion dollars in iPhone sales in India last year, a record. 14 million of units sold in the country, with a growth of 9% year-on-year. The backdrop. Apple has been around for years trying to reduce its dependence on Chinabut the Chinese supply chain was so efficient and so dense that the movement moved slowly. Then came Trump’s tariffs, and what was a long-term strategy became an emergency. In May 2025, Trump himself called Tim Cook to ask him to stop expanding production in Indiawhich gives an idea of ​​the scale and speed of the transfer. Between the lines. Tariffs have been the perfect excuse to do what Apple has wanted to do for a long time. The company has not only transferred volume: it has also transferred its most profitable models. India now assembles the entire iPhone 17 lineincluding the Pro and Pro Max. That is not outsourcing cheap, it is entrusting India with the jewel in the crown. Yes, but. Manufacturing in India is still more expensive than in China or Vietnam. The Modi government’s incentives (the export-linked production program) have been the glue of this strategy, and they expire imminently, on March 31. Apple, like Samsung, is negotiating with the government for a new round of subsidies. If these do not arrive and the incentive agreement expires without anything to relieve it, India’s attractiveness becomes more complicated. In Xataka | Apple has only found one option to make a cheap laptop: make it a mobile Featured image | TejjXataka with Mockuuups Studio

If the question is how much OpenClaw is taking over, the answer is… in China they are lining up to install it

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One of the AI ​​phenomena of 2026 is OpenClawone of the most powerful tools (and at the same time dangerous) never released. In China, just a few days ago, nearly a thousand people queued in front of the headquarters of the Chinese technology company Tencent Holdings in Shenzhen. Reason: they wanted to install OpenClaw on their computers. OpenClaw fever. In less than 100 days, OpenClaw has conquered Asia. Of the more than 140,000 AI agents based on its technology, half come from China. Tencent issued an open invitation to its headquarters in Shenzen so that company engineers could install OpenClaw completely free of charge on the computers of those who came. Nearly 1,000 people physically turned out to install the software formerly known as Clawdbot and Moltbot. Because. The enthusiasm for OpenClaw comes from the combination of several key points. China’s early adoption of new technology Push by big technology companies to implement it (Tencent, Alibaba, Bytedance) Real agentic functions, far above what any chatbot offers. It’s not just OpenClaw. ArkClarw, MaxClaw, AutoClaw… The OpenClaw fever has triggered variants of the original, with derivative projects that seek to further specialize their work. It is a perfect storm that fits with the Chinese need to meet the massive demand for AI use while consuming few tokens. This matches perfectly with what China is looking for: cheap, Open Source models prepared for large volumes of use. Yes, but. Although Chinese consumers are demanding use of OpenClaw, the country’s authorities are moving in the opposite direction. As Bloomberg reports, state-owned companies and government agencies have received notices in recent days warning them not to install OpenClaw for security reasons. In the most extreme cases, and according to anonymous Bloomberg sources, the installation of this software has been banned in critical sectors such as banking and some government agencies. Lobster farming. There is a new buzzword creating a trend in China: “locust farming”. One that has to do with the OpenClaw logo and the tendency to install its variants. The project has already surpassed Linux on GitHub in terms of ratings, and despite doubts about its security, it has made something clear: agentic AI is not so far away from what we thought. In Xataka | Agentic AI was the new race for Big Tech and Meta was far behind. It has bought the company most capable of recovering

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