Chinese

Chinese AI geniuses could be billionaires in the US. The bad thing for the US is that they prefer to return to China

by

It is normal for someone to take six years to complete a doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). A young man named Yang Zhilin got it in four, and immediately what had to happen happened: the big technology companies raffled him off. They wanted to sign him to Apple, Google or Meta, and both MIT and Stanford opened their doors to him. He could have stayed in the US and probably become a billionaire, but no. He returned to China, founded Moonshot AI, created the Kimi family of AI models and became one of the great new AI gurus of the Asian giant. His story is a good example of a big problem they are having in the US. A genius in the making. Yang graduated from the prestigious Chinese university of Tsinghua, and during his years at CMU he ended up collaborating on another of the “iconic papers” that were the seed of ChatGPT, the so-called “Transformer-XL“. That was a turning point in his career, because after that job he considered what he wanted to do with his life. Start up yes, but not in the US. His supervisor at CMU, Russ Salakhutdinov, I remembered in the Financial Times what he discussed with Yang, who made it clear to him that “if he didn’t at least try to create his own company, he would regret it for the rest of his life.” The curious thing is that he did not do it in the US, where he would surely have obtained plenty of financing and economic support, but rather he went to China, where he founded Moonshot AI. There he created the mentioned models of AI, of which the latest version, Kimi K3, has turned the market upside down: an open model that competes with the best of Anthropic and OpenAI and that has made Yang a current protagonist in the sector. Working for others, what’s up?. There is a narrative in Silicon Valley that talks about how immigration regulation in the US is designed to get young talents to join large companies, and not so much to found their own startups. That was much more complicated, so the Chinese talents who had just trained in the US realized that they had a better option: return to their country of origin and create their startups there. Source: Hoover Institution. Chinese talent returns to China. A study by the Hoover Institution at Stanford analyzed the profile of the 356 researchers who worked on DeepSeek and revealed something surprising: 53.5% never studied or worked outside of China. Of those who did have an experience of this type and had studied or worked in the US, 70% ended up returning to their country. The Asian giant is no longer an exporter of brainiacs: it now has a self-sufficient quarry that boosts the country’s AI industry. Less money, better execution. The difference between the US and China is not only financial, but operational. A Chinese entrepreneur in the sector explained in that FT report that although setting up his startup in the US would guarantee a valuation up to 10 times higher, in China he is much more likely to launch real solutions and production in less than five years. It doesn’t matter the sanctions, the risk of censorship or a much more conservative investment market: the density of engineers and the familiarity of the environment compensate. Source: Stanford University. The US does not make it easy. The phenomenon of the “return home” of Chinese engineers not only affects recent graduates, but also veteran professionals who were already installed in the country’s academic and engineering system. a survey conducted by Stanford University in 2024 among 1,304 scientists of Chinese origin who lived and worked in the United States revealed curious data. 73% did not feel safe working as a researcher in the country, and 65% pointed directly to a fear of harassment and racist violence. Political uncertainty and institutional distrust have only accelerated the exits. Silicon Valley has a problem. The trajectory of Moonshot AI, which in just three years and with a team of 300 people has launched a fantastic model, shows that there is life beyond Silicon Valley. With Chinese talent returning en masse to China, the question is whether the US Government will modify its requirements and proposals for obtaining a visa. If they don’t, the “brain drain” can be absolute. Image | Tommao Wang In Xataka | Four decades ago, China decided to invest in training millions of engineers. Today that plan gives it an advantage in the race for AI

Two years ago, Europe did everything possible to stop the Chinese car. Spain has become your best gateway

by

“Honorary registration.” That was the note that Pedro Sánchez gave to the Chinese car that he had briefly tested during his visit to the Asian country in September 2024. The statement did not go unnoticed because while Europe tried to stop China’s entry into the European automobile market by all means, Spain distanced itself from this strategy. That declaration, however, had begun to take shape much earlier. In July, Europe had already activated what are known as “compensatory duties” to Chinese cars. It was a temporary measure before it was firmly decided whether to apply it or not duty to the companies, their amount and how they would be carried out. In October, the decision was made definitively and at the end of the month tariffs began to be charged to all Chinese electric cars. The fees that each brand must pay are specific for each of them depending, in the eyes of the European Union, on how many subsidies they have received from the Chinese Government and how much they have collaborated with European investigations. At first, Spain defended the lifting of tariffs against these vehicles, but as the months passed, little by little, its position changed. In April 2024, Chery had announced that it was purchasing the Nissan plant in Barcelona to produce Omoda and Jaecoo cars there. Along the way, Ebro was reborn, At the moment they are Chinese cars although the name is Spanish. The movement could have been key to eroding the Spanish position. The second push came from the Chinese Government: tariffs on Spanish pork. The threat of putting obstacles in a market that Spain dominates paid off. During the September visit, Pedro Sánchez already pointed out that “we need to reconsider our position”in relation to tariffs. And he stressed that “we do not need another war, in this case a trade war,” in words collected by The Country. Spain went from voting in favor of tariffs in 2023 to abstaining in the 2024 vote. A movement that said more about positioning itself against them than about granting with its silence. Two years later, Spain is the preferred gateway for Chinese manufacturers to reach Europe. Spain, land of Chinese cars At the beginning of October 2024, Chery announced a delay in car production in Barcelona. If Spain was missing a message to opt in favor of lifting tariffs on Chinese cars, there it was. Agencies like Reuters They began to point out that the Chinese State was pressuring its manufacturers to withdraw their investments from where the trade barrier against the country had been supported. Europe intended attract investments with tariffs and for months we thought that it could be such a big barrier that China would not be interested in bringing its manufacturing here. But little by little, in a constant trickle, Chinese investments have arrived. And Spain has done business with it. Since 2024, Chery has invested in Spain, taking over a factory that had been almost completely stopped for years. Now the latest news is that Geely and Ford have reached an agreement to produce cars at the Almussafes plant in Valencia. The American company maintained its facilities at half throttle but starting in 2028, up to four different cars should leave through its doors. Along the way, Geely and Renault, which own Horse, decided that the development and production of their combustion engines would leave the Valladolid plant. Stellantis and CATL reached an agreement to build a battery plant in Zaragoza and feed the automobile conglomerate’s small electric cars. As a consequence, Stellantis will also produce Leapmotor cars on Spanish soil. Besides, SAIC has announced an investment in Galicia to produce MG cars there. As is the case with Barcelona, ​​this last plant will nourish the market for cars assembled at destination through kits but will serve to give some life to the industrial environment from the north of Spain. At the same time, Spanish ports have been consolidated as a perfect space to unload Chinese cars in their previous distribution step through Europe. Spain has several advantages over its competitors. We are a powerhouse in car manufacturing. This had the counterpart that with an electric car that requires fewer employees, thousands of layoffs have swept over the Spanish labor market. But we also have a qualified workforce and facilities already built to do this work. This is a value for those companies that are looking for already installed facilities to produce as soon as possible, even if it is through kits. But in addition, we are also a country with more competitive production costs than other countries north of the Pyrenees because our salaries are cheaper but the price of energy is also less expensive. This positions us as a very interesting space. to produce small cars that offer narrower profit margins. And if those were few incentives, Spain is buying many Chinese cars. With a proposal to offer more equipment and technology than rivals for the same price or even less, Chinese cars have gained many followers. So far this year, the MG ZS and the BYD Atto 2 They are already two of the 10 best-selling cars in our country. Last year was a year of consolidation for Omoda and Jaecoo and an opportunity for MG and BYD to continue gaining ground. Without tariffs on cars with combustion engines, five of the 10 best-selling plug-in hybrid cars in Spain are already Chinese. The reception has been so great that Geely is also looking for its own niche. GWM announced a few weeks ago his arrival in Spain. Changan (which is the origin of Mazda electric cars) already operates in our country. Zeekr will try to make a raid in the field of premium electric and plug-in hybrid cars. BYD’s Denza has also recently arrived. In three years, Spain has gone from supporting tariffs on Chinese electric cars to completely embracing its cars. He has done it in a complicated game of balance but the fact is … Read more

Kimi K3 forces Trump to resume his plan to stop Chinese AI

by

The Trump Administration likes to veto things. Now they seem to want to do it with the AI ​​models of Chinese companies, which are becoming increasingly competitive. The launch of Kimi K3 seems to have been the trigger for this new plan to be activated, but there is a problem: vetoing those models is a terrible idea. This comes from afar. The US Department of Commerce I had already studied last year included several Chinese AI startups, including DeepSeek, in its famous Entity List. With this they wanted to limit the access of these companies to sensitive hardware and technology developed in the US. Companies at risk for using Chinese models. Recently it has even been proposed drafting an executive order to hold US companies responsible for security breaches that appear due to using Chinese models in their systems. The objective was always the same: to discourage the use of these Chinese models as much as possible. Why US companies use Chinese models. The reason is simple: Chinese open weights like DeepSeek V4 or Kimi K3 allow companies to download and run them on their own servers, dramatically reducing inference costs and keeping all data private. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong himself has indicated that use models such as GLM-5.2 and Kimi K2.7 in local production, which has allowed them to cut their total spending on AI in half despite the fact that token consumption has skyrocketed. Duopolies without competition. David Sacks, White House AI advisor, posted a message on X on Sunday in which he warned of the risk of using these models: “We are at a critical turning point in AI policies. The leading laboratories with proprietary models, which are already a duopoly in terms of revenue from their AI models, want the government to eliminate Open Source competition.” A Axios report reveals that indeed both OpenAI and Anthropic could have part of the responsibility in promoting this ban. This could be a shot in the foot for the US.. An analysis published in The Washington Post raises an argument worth considering. Treating open models as a security threat is confusing competition with a danger that must be contained. This text recalls how the Sears chain was not allowed to ban Walmart, nor IBM to ban Compaq or Dell, nor traditional airlines to veto the operators that lowered prices. In each case the same thing happened: an established company ran into a rival that was lowering costs, so it had only two options: compete or lose. Linux and Open Source have already shown the way. As the author of the article says, open source eliminated the barriers of commercial software, which locked users into an alternative from which they had no way out. That did not make these companies disappear, but rather boosted competition. Red Hat, MongoDB, Android or Kubernetes showed that “giving away” the product was not incompatible with building profitable businesses around that product. Danger, duopoly. That analysis shows that almost all companies prefer a scenario in which open models remain available. The only ones who have a direct interest in maintaining closed models are precisely Anthropic and OpenAI, because their businesses depend precisely on there being no free (or very cheap) competitive alternatives. If they are so good, why are they afraid? What’s ironic is that if Anthropic and OpenAI really claim to be so far ahead of Chinese AI companies, they shouldn’t have to worry about the competition. Nor would they have to ask the government for help to stop their competition. The US antitrust laws themselves exist precisely to prevent a market from falling into the hands of one or two companies. This veto would precisely allow them to create that monopoly (or duopoly) to lock users and companies into it. In Xataka | A few days after the Kimi K3 “shock”, Alibaba has launched Qwen 3.8: it is the sign that the US has a problem

Even Elon Musk surrenders to the open Chinese AI model Kimi K3. It is not for less

by

It’s good, it’s pretty and it’s (quite) cheap. We met him a few days ago, but Kimi K3the new open AI model from the Chinese startup Moonshot AI, is causing a sensation. So much, so much, that they have had to pause new subscriptions because they cannot handle so much demand. Another turning point for Chinese AI. Kimi K3 is the largest open weights AI model ever published, with numbers that probably rival those of the frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI, which do not provide information on the size of their models. Those 2.8 billion parameters make a difference and are a good part of the reason why this model represents a real leap in quality according to all the benchmarks that are being published. “Awesome”. Elon Musk himself published a single “Impresionante” on his X/Twitter account as answer to the very complete analysis Artificial Analysis performance. Its agentic behavior surpasses that of Opus 4.8 and only Fable 5 surpasses it, but in a specific benchmark it goes even further and is the best of all the models evaluated by this firm, including those from OpenAI and Anthropic. Source: Artificial Analysis. More tests. In programming it is better than Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5, but inferior to Fable 5 or GPT-5.6, and all the independent tests validate these results: we are facing a model that at least on paper competes directly with the best that both Anthropic and OpenAI had until now. No Chinese model had come so close until now: GLM-5.2, although notable, competed more with GPT-5.5 and Sonnet 5 than with the US frontier models. Source: Artificial Analysis Gigantic… and not so cheap. DeepSeek showed that it was possible to access really capable models at a very affordable price, and recently GLM-5.2 proposed exactly the same: it is possible to achieve 90% capacity of frontier models such as Opus 4.8, but at 20% of the cost. The curious thing is that with Kimi K3 the trend changes: it is a more affordable model than Fable 5 or GPT-5.6, but not as much as one might expect: the cost per million input/output tokens is 3/15 dollars, while in Fable 5 it costs 10/50, Opus 4.8 costs 5/25 and GPT-5.6 Sol costs 5/30. Tokens everywhere. One of the factors that probably influences that quality/price ratio is the large number of tokens that Kimi K3 seems to use when answering. It is a model that “thinks a lot”, and that, although it undoubtedly improves the precision and capacity of the model, also causes it to generate higher bills for the user. Artificial Analysis’ own report goes further: the cost per task in its test battery is $0.95, at the level of GPT-5.6 Sol’s $1.04 and certainly cheaper than Fable 5 ($2.75), but also much more expensive than Grok 4.5 ($0.31) or GLM-5.2 ($0.47). The pelican test. Analyst Simon Willinson was able to test the model to perform a test to evaluate the behavior of all these developments: having the model generate an SVG image of a pelican on a bicycle. In their tests the image was of very good quality, but it generated almost 17,000 tokens for the response with a task cost of 25 cents. It is not that this test is too conclusive, but it does reveal that for a simple task, the result, although outstanding, is not especially efficient in token consumption. Cybersecurity, the unknown. Unlike the latest models from Anthropic or OpenAI, Moonshot AI does not seem interested at the moment in its use in the field of cybersecurity. There is no mention of those potential capabilities in the notes of launch, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deliver. Vercel’s CTO, Malte Ubl, explained Although it is not the most advanced of AI models in this area, after running several tests it seemed like a model that can be very useful when finding and correcting vulnerabilities. Demand, through the roof. The expectation generated by this model has been such that the company has announced that pause new subscriptions. This will allow them to be able to deal with all requests to use it without harming the experience for both old and new users. A striking decision that seems to make a reality clear: they cannot cope. In Xataka | The gigantic Qwen 3.8 is another worrying sign for the US: its AI advantage is evaporating

the Chinese return to their stores

by

In Shanghai, during the Lunar New Year, the lines in front of the original Louis Vuitton store that emulates the bow of a cruise ship stretched around the corner. Luxury brands have managed to once again draw the attention of Chinese customers to fashion and cosmetic products, after a sharp drop in sales which was consolidated with the tariff war between the US and China. As a result, brands such as L’Oreal, LVMH and Burberry saw a large part of their income coming from the Asian market. they collapsedand with them their quotes. As examples of this financial debacle, just say that Bernard Arnault, president and main shareholder of LVMH, was the richest man in the world in 2023, according to Forbes, and now occupies ninth position among the greatest fortunes in the world. The blow that no one expected. The year had not started badly. Reciprocal tariffs of up to 20% on European goods they threatened with making luxury bags and watches that come out of the artisan workshops of European luxury brands more expensive. They arrived just when the sector I was hoping to land in the United States after weak years in China. Brands such as Rolex or TAG Heuer, manufactured only in Switzerland, were especially exposed to price increases due to tariffs. Added to that was another unexpected front. The war in Iran suddenly stopped purchases in great luxury centers like Dubai. Middle East has a weight 6% in LVMH sales. According to collected France24LVMH’s financial director, Cécile Cabanis, acknowledged that this demand was still “very low” at the beginning of the year. The blow subtracted about one percentage point to the growth of the group in the first quarter. China activates its luxury consumers. Meanwhile, something was changing in the pockets of the wealthiest Chinese consumers. The ChiNext, the Shenzhen technology index, broke the record of the 2015 bubble in May. It rose 26% so far this year. This indicator is increasingly important for consumption because brick-and-mortar is no longer the only refuge for family savings in China, and there are more and more investors. If the stock market makes profits, the consumption of luxury products it shoots. According to McKinsey, the weight of the house The savings of Chinese households has fallen greatly since 2016. Then it was around 90%; last year it was only a third. Money migrates to stocks and funds. “For the first time in several years, there are encouraging signs in China’s consumption,” resume Daniel Zipser, partner at McKinsey in Shenzhen. The figures that confirm it. According to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, sales cosmetics grew by 5.6% between January and April. General consumption remains lukewarm, but high-end cosmetics and beauty products they already emerge on sales charts. L’Oréal reported sales growth of between 5% and 9% in China during the first quarter. On Alibaba platforms, the ten most expensive beauty brands sold 39% more in those same months. The cheaper ranges, on the other hand, fell. LVMH itself noticed this in its physical stores. In the first quarter, the region that includes China grew 7% in organic sales, according to the company’s own reports. Louis Vuitton and Burberry also rebounded in Chinese brick-and-mortar stores. Ralph Lauren grew more than 50% in the country thanks to the New Year. They are the first green shoots. The rebound in sales in China tells only part of the story, but it does not mean that luxury brands have overcome the slump. The war in the Middle East continues to weigh on the most profitable business in the sector. Cabanis warned that the environment will continue to be very volatile in the coming months. In addition, the tariff tension left its mark on the purchasing habits of Chinese customers and many of them they started using local brands versus foreign ones. It is a nationalist turn that also touches fashion. “Full consumption recovery will take time,” warns Morningstar analyst Jeff Zhang in statements to Bloomberg. The rebound is real, but no one in the sector dares to call it a victory yet. In Xataka | The millionaire heir of Hermés adopted his gardener. Your fortune has evaporated before it reaches your garden Image | Flickr (Trump White House Archived)

The new Chinese model Kimi K3 is already number one in Frontend Code Arena. And it’s unleashing madness on the Internet

by

It seems like yesterday when DeepSeek R1 called into question an idea that many took for granted: that the race for advanced artificial intelligence It still had a clear owner in Silicon Valley. The emergence of the Chinese model helped trigger a massive sale of technology and led NVIDIA to suffer a loss daily capitalization unprecedented until then. As the months passed, that image lost intensity, but the message remained: the Chinese technological ecosystem was not willing to limit itself to keeping pace with the United States. The following notice now has a different name: Kimi K3. Moonshot AI has just presented a model with 2.8 trillion total parameters that, as soon as it arrived, was placed at the top of Frontend Code Arenaahead of some of the most powerful proposals from Anthropic and OpenAI. But the story is not limited to a classification: developers and fans are already using it to create interfaces, games and recreations that anyone can see and, in some cases, try. That’s where this article really begins. It is worth dwelling on the details of that classification. At the time of writing, Kimi K3 reaches 1,679 points in Frontend Code Arena, ahead of Claude Fable 5with 1,631, and GPT-5.6 Sol xHigh, with 1,618. The improvement compared to the previous generation is also striking: Kimi K2.6 was in 18th placewhile his successor leads six of the seven domains evaluated. For now, Arena maintains the label of preliminary result, so it is convenient to read this position as a very significant photograph, but still susceptible to change. We are not facing a universal programming exam, but rather a very specific test. Frontend Code Arena compares web applications created by different models and lets users evaluate which one solves the task better, which one works more reliably, and which one presents a better experience. That approach is especially useful for measuring visible and practical capabilities, but it also has obvious limits. That Kimi K3 leads here tells us a lot about its frontend performance, although it doesn’t automatically allow us to extend that advantage to complex repositories, backend, mathematics, or general reasoning. Outside of this specific terrain, photography remains favorable, although more balanced. Vals AI places Kimi K3 second among 38 models, with 74.70%just behind Claude Fable 5, which reaches 75.14%, and above GPT-5.6 Sol, with 73.12%. Artificial Analysis also places it among the most advanced systems in its classification, with 57 points and third place overall. Where Kimi K3 seems to feel most comfortable is in tasks that combine programming, visual context and several chained steps. Arena supports its ability to build web interfaces, while Vals AI also records high performance in agent programming tests. Moonshot adds that the model can traverse large repositories, use terminal tools, and review screenshots of its own work to correct the output on the fly. That last capability, which the company calls “vision in the loop,” helps explain why it excels at transforming visual references into interactive products. There are also several cautions before interpreting Kimi K3 as a definitive victory. Moonshot presents it as an open weight model, but those files have not been published yet and the company promises to release them no later than July 27. Nor should we confuse this openness with complete open source, because details about the license and the rest of the system are still missing. Its 2.8 billion total parameters belong to a sparse architecture that activates 16 of its 896 experts. The company itself recommends configurations with 64 accelerators or more, very far from what a conventional computer can offer. The community reaction helps understand why Kimi K3 is attracting so much attention. One of the most striking examples is a recreation of macOS 27 which works within the browser and which its creator attributes to a swarm of model agents working for about three hours. They add to it Ballista, an interactive panel with a 3D balloon and several comparisons against Claude and GPT. They are not independent benchmarks, but demos shared by their own creators, but they allow you to see what kind of results the model is producing outside the tables. To create something like the macOS simulation or the ballista game, we don’t need to model every element by hand from scratch. We can describe the resultattach a reference and commission Kimi to build a functional application, for example with HTML, JavaScript and various graphics libraries. The project is then tested, modified, and finally published or recorded for sharing. Kimi K3 can be used from Kimi.comKimi Work, Kimi Code or tools connected to its API, although it is not confirmed which specific environment was used in several of the examples we have seen. It is still early to turn this launch into a definitive change of leadership. Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sun They are still ahead in several evaluations, the Kimi K3’s weights are not yet available and many of its capabilities will have to be verified with more time. Even so, what we have seen is already difficult to ignore: a Chinese company can compete for leading positions, offer competitive results and get the community to transform that capacity into real applications almost immediately. The race continues, but the margin between its main protagonists seems increasingly narrower. Images | Kimi | Screenshot In Xataka | China has a plan to win the AI ​​war against the US. And DeepSeek is its champion

turning Chinese air conditioners into a mass phenomenon in Europe

by

Brussels has been trying for months to stop the avalanche of Chinese products entering the continent. A few weeks ago we wrote about excise tax on small value items in stores like AliExpress, Temu or Shein. The EU blames China for a trade deficit that continues to grow and has threatened new restrictions. What is impossible to stop is the heat. And this summer is being especially deadly for millions of Europeans. Some have even stood in lines, visited several cities and spent the day updating websites. in order to get an air conditioning unit. Most, by the way, made in China. European trade policy has failed to curb dependence on China. The thermometer, on the other hand, has achieved it in a matter of weeks. What has happened? A historic heat wave has hit numerous countries in Europe, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland and the Czech Republic, countries where air conditioning has never been a real need. With temperatures soaring and a notable increase in heat deaths, the demand for air conditioners has been shot suddenly. The problem is that the supply has not been able to keep up, as many stores have run out of stock. How we got here. Although here in Spain we are more than used to having houses with air conditioning (at least in the farthest part of the north), In the rest of Europe it is not so common. In fact, according to dataAccording to the International Energy Agency, only about 20% of European homes have air conditioning, compared to about 90% in the United States. For decades, the continent has considered these devices noisy, unsightly for historic facades and, above all, unnecessary, because extreme summers were a one-off occurrence. This same logic has led to buildings designed to retain heat in winter. When heat waves are no longer an exception, Europe has found itself without infrastructure, without a culture of installation and without its own industry capable of covering that demand. And none of the five best-selling brands on the continent are European, according to data from Euromonitor International collected by CNBC. In detail. According to customs figures Chinese companies cited by The Wall Street Journal, exports of air conditioning units from China to France grew by 57% in May compared to the previous year, while to Spain they grew by 41%, and that before the worst days of June. The South China Morning Post, citing May estimatesplaced the year-on-year increase at 186% in France, 69.6% in Germany and 139.1% in the Netherlands. The Telegraph collected In addition, Chinese exports of air conditioners to the European Union have grown by 43% in the first half of the year, up to 3.8 billion dollars, with increases of between 20% and 97% in fan sales depending on the market. Midea, one of the largest manufacturers, assured to the Chinese state agency Xinhua that would send 100 containers of your PortaSplit model to Europe in just one month, and that its orders had already exceeded 200,000 units this year, double that of 2025, according to collected CNBC. Between the lines. All of this is happening at the worst possible time for the European trade narrative. Brussels and Beijing are holding talks to try to reduce a trade deficit that reached 360,000 million euros last year and that in the first quarter of this year it already amounted to 98,000 million, the highest level since 2022, according to Eurostat data. The European Trade Commissioner himself, Maros Sefcovic, recognized that the trend “is not sustainable.” Analysts such as Ding Chun, from the Center for European Studies at Fudan University, they counted to the SCMP that there is a growing disconnection between the political discourse of Brussels, focused on industrial protection, and the real needs of citizens, who are simply “seeking to survive the heat at the best possible price.” And now what. The European Union has set October as the deadline to achieve “tangible” progress in the trade relationship with China. But the problem of air conditioning is not going to disappear with the summer, because the European Commission itself calculated in 2024 that by 2030 up to 70 million new devices could be installed on the continent, which would cover around 35% of homes. This implies that, in addition to Chinese manufacturers, Europe will need a network of installers and regulation adapted to a reality that until recently was not contemplated. Cover image | TCL In Xataka | We have been cooling homes for decades with increasingly expensive machines. The Persian method has not consumed a single watt for 2,500 years

only Chinese memory manufacturers can bring sanity back to the hardware market

by

The price of memory has become a bad joke. DDR4 and DDR5 modules are in short supply, PC manufacturers are packaging computers without enough memory and even Apple has risen 20% the price of your MacBooks and iPads blaming this component directly. The artificial intelligence (AI) is to blame, and there is no sign of the situation improving anytime soon. Samsung, SK hynix and Micron, which control around 90% of global DRAM production, have refocused much of its manufacturing lines towards high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which powers AI accelerators from Nvidia and other companies. The result is that the consumer market, the one that supplies our computers, mobile phones and consoles, has been practically abandoned to its fate. And in that void there are only two names capable of providing some oxygen: CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies) and YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Co.). These two Chinese manufacturers have been secondary players for years and, suddenly, they have emerged as the only variable capable of stabilizing skyrocketing prices. Two manufacturers, one opportunity CXMT has made a rise that seemed unthinkable just two years ago. This company has increased its net profit more than 1,688% in a single quarter, has signed a contract with Tencent valued at about 20 billion yuan (about $2.75 billion) to supply DRAM for servers, and already holds a global share of 7.67% according to Omdiamaking it the fourth largest manufacturer on the planet and the first in China. While CXMT fights its battle in the DRAM market, YMTC does the same in the field of NAND Flash chips. This last company has gone from a share of 8% to 13% in just one year, and is preparing a new plant whose mass production will start during the second half of 2026which will place it as the third largest NAND manufacturer in the world only behind Samsung and Kioxia. In addition, YMTC has decided to dedicate 50% of the capacity of its third plant in the city, different from the previous one, to the manufacturing of DRAM, marking an unprecedented foray into the field of its compatriot CXMT. CXMT prices are already starting to look dangerously similar to those of Samsung, SK hynix or Micron However, it is in our best interest to moderate our enthusiasm. As we could see at Computex, CXMT prices They are already beginning to look dangerously similar to those of Samsung, SK hynix or Micron, and a good part of their production is still destined for the Chinese domestic market. It is important that we also moderate our expectations: the avalanche of capacity of these two manufacturers will not reach the global market until 2027, according to the industry’s own estimates. And there is another front that does not depend on the factories. CXMT is on the Pentagon’s 1260H list for its alleged ties to the People’s Liberation Army, something that has forced Apple to put pressure on the Trump Administration to be able to buy chips from him without retaliation. As can be expected, any movement in Washington can stop this escape route in its tracks just when we need it most. China is not going to solve this crisis overnight, but it is, today, the only piece on the board that is moving in the right direction. Whether it arrives on time or not will depend on both its factories and the geopolitics that surround them. In Xataka | China needs to develop a new type of chips immune to US sanctions. And your scientists have just achieved it

The Chinese GWM arrives in Spain with combustion as its flag

by

If Chinese brands definitively make a place for themselves in Europe, Spain will have been, without a doubt, their great gateway. If we take the data so far this year as a reference, we can certify that, in our country, the Chinese car is already a frequently repeated option among the best-selling vehicles in each category. To give some data, among the 10 best-selling electric cars there are three Chinese cars, according to ANFAC. Among the 10 best-selling plug-in hybrids there are five Chinese cars. And among the 10 best-selling non-plug-in hybrids there are two other Chinese cars. That is to say, combining all these categories, one in every three cars sold is Chinese. Without any doubt, The plug-in hybrid is where it has to gain the most ground the chinese car Western manufacturers have chosen to go electric in many cases and the Chinese do not pay tariffs as it does with electric ones. At the same time, the product they offer is much more equipped and much cheaper (equaling size, equipment and/or power) than the European, Japanese or American ones. It is no coincidence that the non-plug-in hybrids It is the least fertile ground for Chinese cars. Here, Toyota dominates strongly (four of the five best sellers are theirs) and the Westerners have filled their offer with microhybrids that add up in this category even though the savings are ridiculous. But he MG ZS and the Omoda 5 They have already entered the list of best sellers. Both cars are from companies that are very clear that they manufacture all kinds of technology, that they are not there to close doors. Betting on an audience that in many cases has been left orphaned of really cheap options among Westerners or those who are disenchanted with its rise in pricethey are very clear that there is a market niche to exploit. That’s exactly where GWM attacks. Great Wall Motors is the latest Chinese company to arrive in Spain. It does so, for now, with the ORA 5, a car that will be sold in purely combustion format, with hybrid and electric versions. With a groundbreaking starting price, it is very clear who it is targeting. And seeing the success of MG or Omoda/Jaecoo, it certainly seems that the pool has water. What is GWM and what does it offer? GWM, acronym for Great Wall Motors, is an automobile group created in 1990 with headquarters in Baoding, Hebei (China, of course). The company sells itself as “a global mobility technology company” and has different subbrands that, we will see later, if they arrive in Spain. During the presentation we were assured that we would see “the future of what is to come”at which time they showed us the huge SUVs with a more classic flavor (but full of technology) that they sell under the Tank brand or the luxury minivans that they sell under the Wey name. But no specific landing dates or any other details were indicated. What is certain is that the company arrives with the Pray 5. This is a kind of compact SUV with soft shapes on the outside and that seems well finished on the inside. During the presentation we could only verify that it is a car that seems well executed inside, made of humble plastics and that does not offer great luxuries but is well finished. We also couldn’t test its infotainment system, so we can hardly say that the first impression was good. Ora 5, the first GWM car in Spain Yes, we were told that the car will arrive with an intelligent voice assistant, a 14.6-inch central screen and a 10.25-inch instrument panel, connectivity with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, remote control of some functions from the mobile phone and USB-A and C type chargers. But perhaps the most interesting thing is that this car will come with all types of engines, from pure combustion versions to hybrid and electric. The combustion option has a 1.5 turbocharged engine with 160 HP that starts at 19,950 euros. On top of that, the hybrid option electrifies that same engine and takes the set up to 223 HP. In this case it will be sold for 22,350 euros. The electric will be sold for 23,850 euros and has 204 HP and a 58.3 kWh battery signed by SVolt. All prices have launch campaigns and the electric one has the corresponding aid. With these prices and this product, it is expected that the options with combustion engines will be the most interesting for the potential customer and this is where the brand seems to have the most hopes. And it was repeatedly warned that they are not a company that thinks about a single technology or a single type of product. The goal is to continue expanding the range to reach the maximum number of potential customers possible. Much more than the Ora 5 Although the Ora 5 will be GWM’s first car in Spain (it can already be purchased, in fact), the company aspires to establish itself with many other proposals. That is why you have to know more about the company. GWM is particular because, unlike the majority of Chinese brands that only bet on what they call new energy vehicles (plug-in hybrid, electric and extended range electric cars) and a very specific engine (that famous 1.5T that the vast majority of cars come from there with a combustion engine are fitted with), this company offers other things. For example, in your Tank you can find cars with V8 engine. and they have a motorcycle under the Souo brand with eight cylinders. Wei Jianjun, the owner of the company, is a lover of cars and big engines, which is why he continues to focus on offering engines that one has dreamed of all his life. And the first Tanks that we were able to see and touch, of course, are spectacular and are a direct rival to authentic off-roaders like the Jeep … Read more

The most viral player of the 2026 World Cup owes his global popularity to AI and Chinese fans

by

Erling Haaland has been one of the most talked about players for weeks in a World Cup that is giving endless topics of conversation beyond the games, which at this point are a bit of the least important thing. His imposing physical presence, his deadly style of play and his apparent affability off the field they seem almost scripted to build a cult figure. And there is a little of that. The famous video. In mid-June, a video began to circulate of the Norwegian striker having dinner in a restaurant, and being startled when he saw his own reflection in a mirror. One post on X alone racked up over 31 million views in a matter of days, and currently has more than 42. In reality it is not Haaland, but a sketch by Chinese comedy duo Jin Long and Qiu Qiumuch more exaggerated and clearly false. The comic was polished to make it more realistic and Haaland’s face was superimposed using AI. The account, specialized in shocking videos made with generative artificial intelligence, published similar videos from other points of view in successive days. All false: the internet was already immersed in an unstoppable fever. Big in China. Before the World Cup, Haaland was already a cult figure in China. The forward joined Weibo and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, on June 6, and in less than a month he added 1.6 million followers on the first platform and 5.2 million on the second. The hashtags related to him have exceeded 490 million views on Weibo alone. The two Haalands. Chinese fans have two versions of Haaland: on the field he is the “Nordic cyborg”, an almost inhuman scoring machine. Outside of him is Habao, a clumsy and charming giant. Besidesin recent months he has starred an advertisement for a Chinese herbal drink and he has tried to speak Mandarin on camera, fueling that contrast that his fans find irresistible. A song about him, titled “Haaland (Ha Ha Ha)” and set to the melody of ‘Moskau’, by the German Eurodisco group Dschinghis Khan, can be heard in Chinese AI montages, including the advertisement. Your personal Snapchat accountwith more than 5 million followers, works as the raw material of this entire ecosystem: selfies from unflattering angles, comparisons to ‘Shrek’, improvised questions and answers. Some real content, made by oneself, which is then reprocessed by others with generative tools until it is impossible to distinguish the origin. Official AI. Not all the synthetic material with Haaland was born without permission. In 2023, photographer David Yarrow He portrayed Haaland alonewaist-deep in an Oslo fjord, dressed as a Viking. Looking ahead to this World Cup, the Norwegian football federation called Yarrow again to repeat the session with the entire team. The result, titled “The Vikings are coming“, shows the 26 players armed with swords and shields in front of a longship, and it was Haaland himself who promoted the idea of ​​this sequel. From there, the iconography got out of hand. Fans flooded the networks with AI-generated variants (Haaland in full battle, with armor and ax raised) that blur the line between mythology sponsored by the federation and fiction conceived by fans. Furthermore, as could not be otherwise, far-right accounts attracted to Haaland as a symbol of a white, blond and physically imposing man, have especially actively shared this Viking content. The fanon. According to Wired in its article, AI is facilitating a new relationship between fans and their idols: fanon (as a nod to “canon”): material that the public invents to fill in the gaps left by the official canon. There has always been this approach to the lives of celebrities, but generative artificial intelligence summarizes the artisanal work of before, of photomontages and manipulated videos, in a few minutes. As a source of astonishingly realistic material (how many of the hilarious images of Haaland on the field of play that you have seen are real?), sponsors, federations and representation agencies have before them a new panorama, which does not only affect footballers. Singers, actors, influencerscelebrities of all kinds… if they don’t have an attractive enough life or personality, fans will make it up for them. The abyss that opens before them is obvious. In Xataka | The biggest mystery of the World Cup is why all the boots are pink: the answer is very simple to understand

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.