china

China already dominates the screen market. The US and Japan have decided to draw up a plan to stop their advance

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China currently accounts for almost 60% of the LCD panel market which are used in the manufacture of monitors, televisions and other display devices. The growth of Chinese companies BOE and TCL has caused South Korean panel manufacturers, such as LG Display or Samsung Display, gradually abandon LCD technology to dedicate their resources to other, more profitable innovations, like OLED technology. South Korea produces most of the organic matrices (OLED) that we can find in our televisions and mobile phones, among other devices, but China’s market share in this segment does not stop growing. In fact, It is already close to 40% in OLED panels for smartphones, and presumably little by little it will also grow in the segment of large-format OLED matrices for televisions and monitors. However, South Korea is not the only country that is suffering from China’s monumental onslaught. Japan, Taiwan and the US also fear that their display device manufacturers will end up in the hands of Chinese suppliers, something that is essentially already happening to a large extent if we stick to LCD technology. This dependency also acquires a critical nature in the field of screens used in military systems. Japan Display will be the great beneficiary of the very probable agreement between the US and Japan During the 80s, 90s and the first decade of the 2000s, Japan led the screen market with its cathode ray tube televisions, and later with its first LCD and plasma panels. However, in the early 2000s, Japanese companies made a strategic mistake: they bet everything on plasma technology because they believed that it would end up taking over LCD technology. South Korea, however, opted for the production of these latest matrices, and finally Samsung and LG won this war. The state-of-the-art plant that Japan Display plans to build in the US will cost about $13 billion Japan paid a very high price for this strategic mistake: it lost a large part of its share in the market for the production of panels for display devices. Twenty years later, the US and Japanese governments are determined to amend it to compete with the solutions coming from China. And they plan to do it by investing, according to Reutersa package of 550 billion dollars coming from Japanese funds. Some of this money will presumably be used to build a state-of-the-art display manufacturing plant in the US. It will cost about $13 billion and will be managed by Japan Display, a consortium created in 2012 as the result of the merger of the panel production divisions of Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba. This plan seeks to limit the dependence that American and Japanese manufacturers have on matrices from China, especially in the field of technology militaryrbut they are not going to have it easy. And it is that the consulting firm Counterpoint Research It predicts that China will expand its share of the display market to reach 75% in 2028. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Reuters In Xataka | LG and Samsung have a new pact that no one expected, according to Reuters. One who wants to shake up the television market In Xataka | China is devouring the television market. So much so that Panasonic is considering abandoning it

The Iran war is making the best possible advertisement for Chinese renewables. And China knows it

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Oil has skyrocketed again. Brent has crossed 90 dollars, WTI is around 87, and the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly 20% of the world’s oil transits, has reduced its traffic from 138 ships a day to just two. The most interesting thing here is not the price of crude oil but who wins when that happens. Why is it important. Each shock oil is, for China, a free advertisement on a planetary scale of its energy value proposition. Solar panels, electric cars and batteries do not rise in price when there is a war in the Persian Gulf. Natural gas and gasoline, yes. For countries that have been buying Chinese clean technology for years, this week has been the practical demonstration that they got it right. For those who have not yet done so, it is the best sales argument that China could wish for, and on top of that it has not involved a direct expense. The contrast. The US economy is structurally more vulnerable to the shocks of oil than China. The oil intensity of US GDP, that is, how much oil is needed to generate each dollar of economic activity, is notably higher than that of China, the EU or Russia. When crude oil soars, the blow is felt harder by the American consumer, who fills the tank of his car with gasoline, than by the Chinese consumer, whose fleet of vehicles is already almost 50% electric in new sales. In November 2025, electric cars They exceeded 60% of total sales in China. It is not a country in energy transition: it is a country that has already changed fuel in its largest vehicle fleet. And that is without counting the traffic of motorcycles, all electric for many years in several of its large cities, and with much greater volume than in other countries. Between the lines. China produces more than twice as many solar panels as the world is capable of absorbingand its batteries and electric cars are already reaching Western Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. When oil rises, the economic equation for those exports improves automatically, without your government having to lift a finger. An energy crisis in the Gulf acts as an indirect subsidy to its clean industries: it makes everything China sells more attractive and everything it doesn’t sell more expensive. In figures. The clean energy sector already represents 11.4% of Chinese GDP, according to The analysis published by Carbon Brief last month. Without those industries, China would have grown 3.5% in 2025 instead of the 5% recorded. Electric cars and batteries explain 44% of the economic impact of that sector. China installed 315 GW of solar and 119 GW of wind in 2025, more than the rest of the world combined in both categories. Yes, but. China also imports oil, a lot. It remains one of the world’s largest buyers of crude oil, and the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz complicates its short-term supply. In fact, in recent weeks China has increased its oil imports by almost 16% due to uncertainty. That said, In September it already began to make an unusual collection. What changes the long-term equation is not that China is immune to the shocks oil producers, but each crisis accelerates the internal conversion towards renewables and reinforces the export argument against third countries. It is a temporary pain that finances a structural advantage. Furthermore, this scenario leaves a question in the air: whether the world, by purchasing Chinese clean technology, is ultimately exchanging an energy dependency for a technological dependency. In both the United States and Europe this will end up becoming a question as uncomfortable as it is inevitable. In Xataka | On the roof of the world, China is building the largest solar park on the planet Featured image | Nuno Marques

China claims that having its own ASML is not that difficult. At the end of the day “ASML is a simple integrator”

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China is advancing at a fearsome speed, but they are their own critics. A group of scientists and industry representatives has published an analysis very critical in which they describe their semiconductor industry as “small, dispersed and weak.” For these experts, the problem is that they do not have their own ASML, so they propose creating one, and the curious thing about it is precisely that: that they do not see it as difficult to do. Not authors, authorities. Among the authors of the study are Wang Yangyuan —co-founder of SMIC— or Chen Nanxiang —director of the YMTC NAND chip manufacturer—. Both they and the rest of the participants are recognized personalities in the field of semiconductors. That makes it clear that this articlepublished in the magazine Science and Technology Review China is valuable to understand the state of this industry. The US veto works. This article indicates that the United States has managed to contain China’s advance in three areas: electronic design automation (EDA) used in chip design, the manufacture of silicon wafers, and the creation of chip manufacturing equipment, especially those with extreme ultraviolet (UVE) photolithographic technologya segment that is absolutely dominated by the Dutch ASML and that China has not yet managed to match despite its efforts. There are many companies, but they are too small. The study analyzes in depth the situation of the Chinese semiconductor market, which they describe as small, dispersed and weak. And to prove it they give a significant fact: there are 3,626 domestic chip design companies in China, but “the total value of the industry’s output was 646 billion yuan (approximately 91 billion dollars). In other words: the total sales of these 3,626 companies were less than the sales of NVIDIA alone.” Smartphone chips are doing well. Of course, these experts point out that several Chinese companies have managed to reach “the world’s leading edge” in terms of chips for smartphones. They mention HiSilicon Semiconductor and Unisoc, which occupy the first and second place among the largest smartphone chip designers in China, with market shares of 20 and 10% respectively. And the “mature” chips, too. Something similar happens with chips with much more mature technologies, such as those manufactured with 28 nm photolithography or higher. That problem is already solved in China, which does not have to depend so much on foreign manufacturers. In fact, China now represents 33% of global production in this segment, and design and manufacturing processes are not limited by internal restrictions. Too dependent. Despite its many advances, China remains the world’s largest importer of integrated circuits. It invested $385.79 billion in 2024 in these components, even exceeding its oil imports ($324.7 billion). Here China has a big problem of dependence on chips from third-party foreign manufacturers, and this is especially noticeable in automotive chips (95% of them import) and memory chips (90%): all of them depend on imports. There is a clear bottleneck in high-end integrated circuit production. In search of Chinese ASML. The document also addresses competition with ASML but not as a direct commercial rivalry, but as a strategic challenge of technological sovereignty. The Dutch company is described as “a simple integrator” that coordinates more than 5,000 suppliers to manage the 10,000 components of an EUV machine. The suggestion of the study is precisely to create a Chinese ASML that unifies the advances made by different companies. But. Although progress has been made In this ambitious objective of creating SVU machines, “integrating them with a national effort is a problem that must be resolved during the 15th five-year plan” that concludes in 2030. To do this, these experts assure, there must be financial support and human personnel is required. We already knew that China I was trying to copy ASMLbut for now it is going badly. The document talks about developments such as promising Flip-FET technology (FFET) of Peking University. This advance allows us to reach 3-2 nm nodes without depending exclusively on EUV machines, but it remains to be seen if this method ends up being successful or not. In Xataka | Holland has just declared war on China in the most important battle of the century: control of semiconductors

Mobile phones in China are suffering the biggest price increase in five years. The culprit is not a manufacturer: it is AI

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Smartphones face a year of challenges due to the price of basic components such as RAM. The predictions They are already talking about increases of between 90 and 150 dollars for basic mobile phones, and between 300 and 400 dollars in the case of high-end mobile phones. AI is about to blow up an industry that has claimed its first victim: Meizu. Go for it, leave almost everything. I still remember that MWC last year when I stopped by the Meizu stand. I liked what I saw: new batch mobiles, with balanced hardware, the design and ROM that I fell in love with almost a decade ago and a shocking promise: the manufacturer was preparing its global launch. A history of mobile manufacturing in China, about to return to Europe as an alternative to manufacturers such as Xiaomi, Honor or OPPO. what has happened. Recently, Meizu has announced its exit from the smartphone market to focus their efforts on AI. In addition to the strong competition in its local market, the sharp rise in RAM prices makes it difficult for the manufacturer to be competitive against more established brands. It is a movement similar to that of ASUS, which He has said goodbye to his Zenfone family to focus on AI solutions and other types of products. The death of the quality-price mobile phone? 2026 will be a critical year for quality-price mobile phones. For years, manufacturers have been able to play with relatively comfortable margins: RAM abundance Component recycling A supply chain at your entire disposal The RAM giants have their shelves collapsed due to requests related to AI, and cheap modules have completely stopped being a priority. The dilemma. IDC analysts make it clear that we are witnessing a major shock in the supply chain. It’s not a temporary high: AI has completely changed market priorities, and things like RAM won’t stabilize in price anytime soon. Historically, we have normalized annual cycles and launches “just because”, even though there was no hardware or news to justify the launch of clone phones year after year. Maybe and just maybe, the price crisis will make manufacturers have to rethink their strategy. Image | Meizu In Xataka | Expensive and premium mobile phones are not a fad: they are the new standard, and Motorola knows it

While the West debates what to do with AI in schools, in China there are already schools turning it into a child tutor

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Anyone who has been a child or a parent knows the scene: the flexo light on, an incomprehensible math problem on the table, tears falling from the frustration of not understanding a lesson or not being able to pronounce a foreign language, and a parent losing patience after explaining the same thing for the fifth time. In China they have found a way to turn it around, parents frustrated and exhausted by their workdays are delegating the academic supervision of their children to artificial intelligence. While in different countries there is a strong debate and fear about whether AI erodes critical thinking of students, the opposite is true in China: a 2025 survey led by KPMG revealed that more than 90% of the Chinese are optimistic about this technology. The phenomenon came to light and sparked debate on social media when a mother in Shandong province discovered her husband playing on his mobile phone while letting her Kimi AIa chatbot capable of processing two million characters, did his son’s homework. But this father is not an isolated case. Many adults are using AI not just to teach, but to do the dreaded “parenting chores.” Mr. Zhang, for example, admitted to using the chatbot Doubao to generate summaries of the Aesop’s Fables and print step-by-step images for your third grader’s craft projects. The market has responded with an avalanche of gadgets. Zheng Wenqi, a working mother, bought for about 375 dollars the “Native Language Star”, a device composed of a mask that muffles your voice in Chinese and a speaker that translates it into English to converse with your children. Others, like university professor Wu Ling, They invested $1,170 in AlphaDoga robot dog powered by the DeepSeek model that practices English, dances and keeps his only son company. There are even parents who have gone one step further by becoming creators. This is the case of Yin Xingyu, a mother from Shenzhen who does not know how to program, but who uses the technique of vibecoding with DeepSeek to create interactive English word games for her 6-year-old daughter, as well as generate personalized comics using the Nano Banana Pro imaging model. For the purist parents, devices have emerged such as the “Youdao AI Q&A Pen”, a smart pen designed from “asceticism”: it has no browser or games, it only guides the child step by step in their mathematical reasoning without giving them the direct answer. A multi-million dollar business in a gray area All this enthusiasm has fueled a runaway educational technology market valued at more than $43 billion. Outsourcing has left the homes to take to the streets and, until July 2024, The opening of about 50,000 was estimated “AI study rooms” across the country. In these establishments, children sit in cubicles in front of standardized tablets; They cannot leave until the indicators on the screen turn from red (errors) to green (correct answers). As detailed on CCTVthe “teachers” in these rooms do not teach, they are prohibited from explaining the subject and they act as mere supervisors and commissioned salespeople. To cope with the monotony of 6 to 8 hours answering questions, some children learn to play Go or Gomoku secretly on the same machines, often with the supervisors’ blind eye. However, former employees and parents report that in many of these centers, “artificial intelligence” is just a marketing façade to charge more, and children simply consume pre-recorded lessons on basic tablets. Behind these study rooms hides a business survival tactic. Many of these centers operate in a gray zone to avoid the strict “double reduction” policy. imposed by the government in 2021which banned for-profit tutoring to relieve financial and academic pressure on families. By arguing that “it is AI that teaches and not a human,” these companies dodge education regulators, registering under names of “cultural media” and avoiding words like “enrollment” or “classes.” Franchises are strategically expanding into peri-urban areas and small towns, where rents are low and parents are equally willing to pay for a place to leave their children. This mass adoption is no accident; is backed by a clear state directive. The Chinese government is promoting the integration of AI in education as part of a national strategy to accelerate its technological progress against global competitors such as the United States. The regulations are already on the table. Starting with the fall 2025 semester, Beijing will require a minimum of eight hours per year of AI education in all primary and secondary schools. The transition has been rapid and planned, with higher education leading the way: 99% of university students and teachers in China already use generative tools, and elite universities such as Zhejiang or Fudan have made AI courses mandatory and transversal subjects. Science supports this dive. An empirical study conducted with high school students in H city showed that the duration of daily use of AI tools significantly and positively influences students’ AI knowledge and algorithmic thinking. That is, constant exposure is already shaping your cognitive and technological abilities. The debate is served The families’ opinions are drastically divided. For many, AI democratizes education. Mothers like Li Linyun celebrate that the Doubao chatbot be a “24-hour, knowledgeable and extremely patient teacher,” which has saved him hundreds of dollars on human tutors and improved his relationship with his daughter. On the other hand, technological dependence terrifies educators and a faction of parents, who criticize that children are becoming lazy and losing the ability to think independently. In study halls, proctors notice that students, desperate to turn the screen green, resort to tactical memorization: repeatedly choosing incorrect answers by discard until the system approves them, without actually learning the concept. Added to this is the “AI illusion” and its hallucinations. Su Xiao, mother of a ninth grader, discovered that the general models They could invent historical data with complete confidence and fluency, or omit crucial data in mathematical problems, offering logically impeccable but erroneous results. This forced her to become a “cyber quality inspector,” … Read more

China is so clear that the future of pork lies in ‘skyscraper farms’ that it is doing something: taking them to other countries

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When you think of pig farms, what comes to mind are large farms with pig pens, breeding areas, silos with feed… All of this (of course) horizontally. Things change if we are in China. There they have been thinking vertically for years and betting on farms in buildings of various heights, including authentic skyscrapers, such as the two 26-story towers raised in Ezhou (Hubei) and that are capable of breeding 1.2 million pigs every year. Now China has started ‘international’ model. What has happened? That China has begun to export its model of macro farms pig verticals. Although a few years ago the ‘farm towers’ sounded like science fiction and there were even foreign ranchers who raised their eyebrows reading about them, the bet seems to have worked for Beijing. At least enough to consider take her to Vietnamwhere the Chinese firm Muyuan Foods has joined forces with the local BAF to build a complex in the province of Tay Ninhin the southeast of the country. Its main peculiarity: breeding at altitude. What do they want to do? The idea is to develop a high-rise complex dedicated to pig farming, an infrastructure that will be carried out with an investment of just over 450 million dollars and will integrate a farm of 64,000 pigs with a factory capable of producing close to 600,000 tons of feed every year. In September Vietnam Investment Review pointed out that the project has received approval from the authorities of the province of Tay Ninh, where the complex will be built, and from the state authorities. What does it have to do with China? That one of the promoters of the project is Muyuan Foodshe greatest breeder of pigs from China and a heavy weight of the sector at an international level. In addition to his enormous capacity of production, the firm stands out for its commitment to raising pigs in buildings of up to six floors. “We have replaced traditional single-story pig farms with multi-story ones to improve efficiency and land use, promote recycling of manure and waste and ensure biosecurity,” the company explained during its IPO in Hong Kong, a few weeks ago. What is China doing? Although in other countries macro pig farms in towers may be shocking, in China they have been implementing the model for some time. To understand it, you have to go back to 2018, when the country saw how swine fever undermined its herds. The American Society for Microbiology estimates that in total the outbreak killed or forced the sacrifice of 225 million of pigs. The country is the largest producer and pork consumer in the world and it is estimated that before the 2018 outbreak it housed half of the planet’s pig population. In 2019, the Government formally allowed the use of multi-story buildings for livestock farming and just a year later Muyuan opened its doors. a macro complex in Nanyangwith twenty blocks of various plants capable of producing more than two million pigs each year. Little by little, China has been moving from a model in which pig farming was a common practice in homes (it still is in part of the country) to one based on commercial farms in which it is easier to manage waste and diseases such as swine fever. Why farms in skyscrapers? a few years ago The New York Times I was chatting with an expert of the US pork market that acknowledged that US farmers “look at photos of Chinese farms and just scratch their heads and say, ‘We would never dare do that.’” The truth is that buildings like those of Muyuan or the 26-story towers driven by Hubei Zhongxin Kaiwei Modern Farming in Ezhou have their advantages. This is what its promoters defend, at least, who present it as another step towards industrial agriculture. The same one that has also opted for the vertical farming farms. By thinking vertically, instead of the traditional horizontal model, they basically seek greater biosecurity and more efficient management. Why’s that? In the Ezhou skyscrapers, for example, they boast of incorporating thousands of automatic feeding points and a system capable of collecting, analyzing and using livestock feces. Not to mention that by betting on high-rise models, macro farms such as those in Muyuan, Zhongxin or Guangxi Yangxiang make it possible to address one of the sector’s biggest problems: the availability of land is limited, especially in populated areas. Of course, the tall model also has significant risks. The main one: that diseases spread more quickly through ventilation systems. Now, as Beijing tries stabilize the livestock herd China to avoid surpluses and prop up prices, the country is considering taking vertical macro farms beyond its borders. Images | China-Singapore Kaiwei Modern Animal Husbandry WeChat In Xataka | The new Spanish farmer no longer lives in the town: his name is John, he studied at Wharton and manages olive trees from New York

NVIDIA has lost hope in China, which is why it has started manufacturing its own next-generation GPUs for AI

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NVIDIA faces this 2026 a crucial year. They have become one of the largest strategic investors in the AI ​​ecosystem with dozens of billion-dollar investments in other companies, models, infrastructure and robotics. But, in the end, they are a company that supplies chips and, so far, the H200 They set the tone. According to a report by Financial Timesthat’s over. NVIDIA just ordered TSMC to start mass manufacturing Vera Rubinits next-generation hardware for AI. The reason? They have lost all faith in China. In short. With the entire AI industry looking to the future, and NVIDIA that has its Vera Rubin on the starting grid, it was strange that the company continued to invest so much in keeping TSMC working on a chip as old as the H200. Although it has been around for a while, it has positioned itself as unbeatable in the industry due to its price/power ratio, so these are the chips on which it has been built. the AI ​​empire. However, time passes and NVIDIA needs to move. Data centers need more power, new models are more demanding and the spearhead of the software sector – such as OpenAI either Google– have demanded new solutions. According to two sources consulted by the financial media, and close to NVIDIA’s plans, the company has grown tired of “waiting in limbo” and has begun to accelerate the delivery and deployment of Vera Rubin. Yoncomparable. As it could not be otherwise, TSMC is going to be in charge. The Taiwanese foundry would have already been asked to begin diversifying the production line to begin manufacturing the new chips. And if you’re wondering why it’s not enough for Google or OpenAI to simply buy more H200, the answer is because the chips have nothing to do with it. H200 is a more classic GPU for a data center. It is the configuration that AI and computing companies on these servers have been working with for years. Vera Rubin, however, is a paradigm shift made up of new CPUs, new GPUs and designed so that everything works as a single rack-scale accelerator. It has not only more power, but also the latest software and hardware additions from NVIDIA and something very important: incredible bandwidth. The higher the bandwidth on such a system, the more simultaneous data it can handle. This implies greater efficiency when training, but also a lower cost in inference. It is not an update, it is a platform change designed for models with trillions of parameters. Qgoose faith in China. To put it more simply, if the H200 is like a “super powerful graphics card”, Vera Rubin is like a mini data center in itself. And if you’re wondering why they didn’t start production sooner, the reason is… China. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, has been ‘fighting’ with Washington for months to open their arms in the trade and technology war maintained by the US and China. Trump ended up agreeing and Huang commented earlier this year that they had returned to “turn on” all production lines to supply the very high Chinese demand. The problem is that that demand did not arrive. At least, It was not as high as Huang expected. In the presentation of results, NVIDIA’s financial director commented a few days ago that “although small quantities of H200 for Chinese customers were approved by the US government, we have not yet generated any income. And we do not know if imports to China will be allowed.” We already told the problem: The US was leaving for NVIDIA to sell its graphics, butThe Chinese government did not seem so convinced. Your main Big Tech They were demanding NVIDIA solutionsarguing that they need them to keep up with what their American rivals are doing, but the ball was in the court of the Government and Customs. China is promoting AI that is different from that of the US, more focused on low costs and rapid acceptance by the client, and at the same time want to build your own hardware network with companies like SMIC or a Huawei that you already have your supercomputer for AI. complicated swerve. From the Financial Times they point out that the president of China, Xi Jinping, and the president of the United States will meet at the end of March to discuss export controls. The problem is that, according to their sources, even if the barrier is lifted completely and not just for certain companies and China can buy H200s en masse, turning TSMC’s ship around so that it starts producing H200s again would be complicated. It is not as simple as pressing a button and going from producing one thing to another. If this situation occurs, “NVIDIA would take up to three months to reallocate or add capacity to the supply chain to produce H200.” One of Vera Rubin’s PCBs Rebound winner. What is clear here is that NVIDIA is not going to lose from the operation. Huang already argued that the United States could not miss the opportunity to take a slice of a multi-billion dollar market (because the US let the cards be sold… with a 25% tariff), but whether it is the Chinese or the Western industry, it is from NVIDIA that they continue to buy the H200 and, ‘shortly’, the Vera Rubin. And the rebound winner in this operation is Samsung. Of the three companies that manufacture memory (and that have catapulted the RAM and SSD crisis we are in), Samsung is the one that has completed its new generation HBM4 memory. It is the one that has passed the high standards of NVIDIA and the one that is already being mass manufactured to be able to integrate into Vera Rubin systems. Everyone attentive. As we said, NVIDIA has to the entire industry at his feet. Google, xAI and Meta are working on their own chips, but together with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, OpenAI, Mistral and Anthropic they are some of the companies that they … Read more

A single company is going to buy 20% of all the footwear manufactured in Mexico. Their goal: confront China

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These are not easy times for the footwear industry in Mexico, a sector that generates tens of thousands of jobs, moves million-dollar investments and has its headquarters in the state of Guanajuato. main bastion. In a market highly conditioned by Asian competition, the local industry has experienced setbacks and job lossstaying far below of its production capacity. With this backdrop, the sector has received curious news: a single Mexican company is willing to buy 20% of all national production. Shoe addict. Grupo Coppel is a heavyweight in the Mexican economy. He holding companywhich a year ago announced its plans to invest almost 700 million of dollars in the country throughout 2025, has a long experience in the financial services and retail sector, with hundreds of points sales distributed throughout the country. All in all (and despite its enormous size), it is surprising the advertisement what it just did: in 2026 the company plans to buy no more and no less than 42 million pairs of shoes produced in Mexico. That’s a lot of shoes, right? Yes. To be precise, this is one million more pairs than those already purchased in 2025. However, the figure is striking for another reason. With this enormous volume of purchases, Coppel will account for a fifth (about 20%) of all formal national footwear production. The operation is part of a “strategic alliance” reached with the Chamber of the Footwear Industry of the State of Guanajuato (CICEG) and, according to calculations from the firm itself, will allow “contributing to the livelihood” of the more than 100,000 families that depend directly on the footwear industry in Guanajuato. “This alliance promotes the growth of our companies and strengthens the Mexican footwear industry in an environment of legality, transparency and respect for market rules. By choosing the formal national supplier, you contribute to the construction of a more solid and competitive sector,” celebrated a few days ago Juan Carlos Cashat, president of CICEG. For shoe manufacturers in Guanajuato, the news is a valuable breath of fresh air. Footwear ‘made in Mexico’. His output It is far from that of countries like China, India or Vietnam, but Mexico is a prominent footwear manufacturer. In fact there are rankings that place it as the tenth worldwide and second in Latin America, only behind Brazil. In 2024, the country’s companies produced around 214 million of pairs of shoes, which explains why the sector contributes million dollars to the Mexican GDP (especially in Guanajuato, the heart of the sector) and also maintain thousands of jobs. Despite this footprint, the sector has not had easy years. “The impact of the pandemic was severe. Before 2020 we had 64,000 jobs registered with the IMSS. During the pandemic that figure fell to 49,000,” recognized two years ago the CICEG. Since then the situation has changed, but the sector stay away to be at 100%. Beyond market fluctuations, the industry has had to deal with competition from low-cost merchandise from Asia. Click on the image to go to the tweet. The Government, to the rescue. The data quoted by the local press are eloquent. In 2022, Mexico imported 136.4 million pairs of footwear valued at 1,843 million dollars. Two years later, the Import Trade Balance showed that this flow had already reached 185.5 million pairs with a value of 2,163 million dollars. On average each pair cost $11.6. The problem was not so much the arrival of products manufactured in Asia as the competition it exerts on national firms, especially due to suspicions of price manipulation. To clear up doubts, the authorities responded with an investigation antidumping and in September 2025 they decided to impose a system of compensatory duties on imports from China. It was not the only support from the Government to the industry. In November the Executive advertisement a Textile and Footwear Promotion Plan to finance small and medium-sized businesses. The objective: inject around 6.5 billion dollars to improve the competitiveness of the industry and reactivate 50,000 jobs, recovering part of the lost production muscle. How does the future look? Optimistic. At least that is what the CIEG recognized in December. “Despite a challenging economic and commercial environment, the industry in Guanajuato is beginning to show signs of recovery, especially in terms of employment and productive capacity,” indicates the sectorwhich recalls that between the month of September and October it registered a small rebound in employment. The increase was modest (256), but it is the first recovery “in many years.” The employers’ association also detected a change in the international market. “Total imports remain high, with more than 141 million pairs imported from January to September 2025, although relevant progress in the fight against unfair practices stands out,” celebrates CIEG“Imports from China, corresponding to tariff items with quota, decreased by 81%.” Images | Irfan Simsar (Unsplash) and Phil Desforges (Unsplash) In Xataka | Mexico City is already noticing the economic effect of the World Cup: it is losing homes and gaining Airbnb apartments

China wants to lay a cable from Chile to Hong Kong. And in the process, it has put Chile in a storm against the US

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Next March 11, Chile will have a new president. Gabriel Boric will no longer be in charge of the country and José Antonio Kast will land in the presidential chair. And he arrives just to take care of a morrocotudo mess: the submarine cable that China is deploying from Valparaíso to Hong Kong. And, evidently, the United States does not like this situation one bit. To the point that he considers it dangerous for his safety. In short. On February 20, the United States revoked the visas of three Chilean officials. The reason? Concern about an underwater cable that will connect Chile and Hong Kong. It’s not so much the cable, but who is ‘pulling’ it: China. As they point out in Mercopressit was the outgoing president who managed the agreement to deploy this cable through a concession decree signed on January 27, which allowed the company China Mobile to install, operate and exploit the cable. 48 hours later, that act was annulled citing “technical errors” and the Boric Administration commented that the project was in the evaluation process. The United States, however, wasted no time and banned the visas of the Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications, the Undersecretary of Telecommunications, and the Chief of Staff of Subtel (Chile’s Undersecretary of Telecommunications). The storm it had just started. political war. Marco Rubio is the Secretary of State of the United States and accused Chilean officials for having “knowingly directed, authorized, financed and supported activities that compromise critical telecommunications infrastructure.” You may be wondering what the United States cares about what Chile does, but Rubio continued by pointing out that this decision “undermines regional security in our hemisphere.” “Which hemisphere” is not the question, but what is happening now. Because Chile has responded that the accusation is “absolutely false” and describes the United States measure as “unilateral,” also pointing out that it is something that goes against Chile’s sovereignty. China has not stood by and, through its embassy in Santiago de Chile, accused the United States of acting in a hegemonic manner, ignoring Chile’s sovereignty to carry out these projects in its territory. If you look closely, the cables from the American continent pass through the US except for Google’s Halaihai, at least directly Cross-fire. Brandon Judd is the US ambassador to Chile and has sided with his government… going a little further in the accusations. Affirms which had already warned the Chilean authorities of what would happen, describing the agreement with China as an intrusion into Chilean telecommunications systems carried out by “malicious foreign actors.” And, as we said, it will be next March 11 when the new president will take office with a pending task: solving a monumental ballot. From the Foreign Relations Department of the incoming president, it has already been saying that “everything possible will be done to ensure that foreign policy allows for the best possible relations with all countries.” A 0º, neither cold nor hot. Influence. Leaving domestic and foreign politics aside, the cable is known as Chile-China Express and is estimated to measure almost 20,000 kilometers. It will link the Chilean city of Concón and reach Hong Kong. The budget is about 500 million dollars and its importance seems key because it would represent the first transpacific data route that would completely avoid routing through North America. From China Mobile it is pointed out that this cable will allow establish Chile as “the central node of the computing power network between China and Latin America.” Now we begin to understand what it is that “undermines regional security in our hemisphere” to which Marco Rubio referred. If completed, it will be a cable deployed by China and in which the United States will have no say, but which reaches the American continent. And we say that it is an important ballot for the new president because the United States injects a lot of money into Chile, being its main foreign investor, but China is the main trading partner of the country. A cable is going to put Kast between a rock and a hard place. Not only in telecommunications. In the background, we have a United States that is looking at the wolf’s ears. In recent months, and at an accelerated pace, China has been moving its chips. It has done this in developing countries on the African continent through energy deals, infrastructure construction, agreements to mine strategic elements and expand its automobile market. But he is also doing it in America. When the United States turned its back on Mexico with tariffs, China was there to offer to open factories. He is carrying out energy projects on American soil, he has interest in some of the strategic ports of the continent and is rolling out infrastructure, such as a railway line that, if completed, will link South America from east to west. The cable between Hong Kong and Chile is just one more piece of a puzzle that Beijing is weaving, which has already torn off with the works. And Washington only sees one thing: the wolf at the doors. In Xataka | The first great Atlantic submarine cable that connected us to the internet says goodbye for a simple reason: it was too expensive to repair it

While everyone looks at Iran, China is building a nuclear “Great Wall”

by

Under the surface of the oceans one of the technological competitions is taking place quieter and more decisive of the planet. The nuclear submarines They can remain submerged for months, travel halfway around the world undetected and launch missiles from thousands of kilometers away. Therefore, each new advance under the sea usually anticipates much bigger changes in the global strategic balance. Washington’s alarm. While much of international attention is focused on the immediate conflicts in the Middle Eastanother much deeper strategic concern is beginning to take shape in Washington. Apparently, the US Navy commanders have warned before Congress that the military balance under the sea is changing rapidly and that China is accelerating a transformation process that could alter the global nuclear deterrent in the coming decades. The underwater race. we have been counting in recent months. China already owns one of the largest submarine fleets in the world and is expanding it at high speed thanks to massive investments in its military shipyards. Production has gone from less than one nuclear submarine a year to significantly higher rateswith forecasts that the fleet will reach around 70 units by the end of this decade and close to 80 by 2035. Although the United States still maintains a technological and operational advantage in submarine warfare, the rapid growth of Chinese industrial capacity is reducing that distance and forcing Washington to rethink the strategic balance in the Pacific. The transition to a nuclear fleet. One of the most important changes is structural. For decades, the Chinese submarine fleet has been based on diesel-electric vessels, which are cheaper, but have less autonomy and must surface frequently. Now Beijing is promoting a strategic shift towards more and more construction focused on nuclear submarinescapable of remaining submerged for long periods and operating at great distances from their bases. This change will allow the Chinese navy to project a presence beyond its immediate environment and complicate US naval operations. in the Pacific and other oceans. The new submarines. The technological leap will come with new generations of submarines that will begin to enter service between the end of this decade and the 1930s. Among them stand out the Type 095 models and, above all, the Type 096designed to transport nuclear ballistic missiles long range. We are talking about equipped boats with JL-4 missilessubmarines that will be able to attack large areas of US territory even operating from waters near China, much more protected by its naval and air defenses. Such a capability would significantly bolster the credibility of China’s nuclear deterrent and reduce the need to patrol more exposed areas of the Pacific. A network to protect the nuclear deterrent. Plus: the Chinese project is not limited to building more submarines. American commanders said that Beijing is developing an extensive sensor network on the seabed, surveillance cables, satellite-connected buoys and unmanned underwater vehicles capable of detecting movements in nearby oceans. This system, described by many analysts as an “underwater Great Wall,” would allow China monitor strategic routestrack foreign submarines, and protect its own nuclear fleet while patrolling in relatively safe waters. The strategic horizon of 2025 and 2040. The result of this transformation should be seen clearly in the next decade. As the number of nuclear submarines grows and this undersea sensor network is deployed, China could greatly expand its underwater presence. beyond the first chain of western Pacific islands. US forecasts suggest that, around 2040Chinese submarines could operate more frequently in the Indian Ocean, the Arctic and even the Atlantic. If this evolution is confirmed, the global naval balance could enter a new phase marked by a fearsome underwater competition between the two greatest powers on the planet. Image | Google Earth, SteKrueBe In Xataka | The US has always been the largest nuclear power on the planet. China has already surpassed it in something: submarines In Xataka | The new fear of Western fleets is not nuclear. They are conventional submarines armed with surprise and a flag: China

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