Chinese

In 2021, BBC released a video about China causing an earthquake. Now it’s a meme that glorifies Chinese cities

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Trends on social networks are, in many cases, inexplicable. Overnight something goes viral and it’s easy for us to not even know where it came from. In the summer of 2025, chinese networks began what from the West we could see as a simple memeeven nonsense: many videos that show panoramic views of Chinese cities to the rhythm of the mythical BBC intro. This meme spread and is useful for observing some of the most impressive cities in the world from a drone view. There are even users commenting on how some cities, like Chongqing, had undergone a radical transformation in just 20 years. The videos, without a doubt, are impressive and there is a example after other…and after other. But behind the meme there is something much more interesting: an outbreak of international conflict because of… the BBC. BBC News countdown intro style meme continues in China. Below in order is for Guiyang, Nanjing, Jinhua and Jieyang. https://t.co/EKZopt48Pc pic.twitter.com/LhjHVATMKW — JR Urbane Network (@JRUrbaneNetwork) September 1, 2025 The BBC video that angered 1 billion people In February 2021, the world was still reeling from the aftermath of COVID-19. Wuhan, the Chinese city identified as the focus of the global pandemic, was a monitoring point for world news due to the government’s policies to fight the virus. And the BBC published its controversial ‘How everyday life has changed in Wuhan’. It’s this video: Up to this point, we might think that it is just another report, but they published it in duplicate. The one above is the international version, in English. The one I leave you below is the version for China: Have you noticed any difference? Let’s go with some screenshots: International version Chinese version International version Chinese version International version Chinese version International version Chinese version Already we saw it in Xataka back in the day: The international version has a gray filter, while the Chinese version shows more vivid colors. That, without us realizing it, creates a narrative. And those who did notice were some Chinese Internet users and the state media Global Times. Chinese social networks named the filter used in the international version as “underworld filter” or “gloom filter”but the one who gave it the most importance was the aforementioned state tabloid. He accused the BBC of adding greyish filters to its reporting on China to make the country appear dystopian and polluted. It did not stop there: the matter spread like wildfire on networks and the tension escalated to the point that the international broadcast of BBC World News was banned in China that same month. In fact, international spokespersons have on occasion used the hashtag #GloomFilter to criticize Western coverage of China. The BBC defended its editorial independence, rejecting accusations of bias, but both the BBC and Chinese media have since starred cross attacks. A lot has rained since 2021 and, as I pointed out at the beginning of the article, it is now meme stuff. The BBC intro accompanies luminous images of Chinese cities without the “underworld filter.” And it is an example of how something that, at first glance, may be a story without much history, hides much more. And, well, the story of Global Times throwing darts at the BBC did not end in 2021, but has lasted until recently, mentioning that “BBC has become one of the most destructive negative examples in the global media landscape.” But beyond all this, the truth is that the videos are impressive, showing dystopian cities in some cases. Images | BBC In Xataka | China loves Europe so much that it has built its own: these are the replica cities that populate the country

Almost all phones with optical zoom have the same problem. This Chinese brand believes it has solved it in a curious way

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The greatest illusion trick in mobile photography is continuity between cameras. When we zoom from 1x to 5x on a telephoto smartphone, we are not moving lenses like on a camera; the mobile jumps between fixed sensors and fills the gaps with digital cropping and AI. The result is those sudden jumps in color and image in the viewfinder and a loss of quality in the “intermediate zooms” that we make when pinching the screen. Tecno, the star brand of the giant Transsion—the fifth largest manufacturer in the world hot on Xiaomi’s heels in some markets—has taken advantage of its annual event to present two technologies that attack precisely this problem: a zoom that does not “jump” and a periscope that shrinks. Optical continuous zoom. And from an increase, up to nine. The most ambitious proposal is the “Freeform Continuum Telephoto”. On paper, it promises to maintain optical sharpness throughout. It represents an important leap, although it is not the first: Sony tried it with the Xperia 1 IValthough its range was more limited. LG also showed similar concepts a few years ago, but no one had promised to cover the main angle lens to the long telephoto lens in a single module. To achieve this milestone without turning the mobile phone into a brick, the Chinese firm moves away from the traditional design of lenses that move longitudinally. Instead, they turn to physical principle of the “Alvarez Lenses”: a system that employs two lenses with free-form surfaces that move perpendicular to the optical axis. By sliding one over the other from the side, they change the optical power of the set and achieve that zoom effect. This technology is related to recent reports that Samsung was developing cameras with continuous zoom for Chinese manufacturers. A periscope that folds on itself. The second innovation presented by Tecno attacks the volume. We are obsessed with increasingly larger sensorsbut the space inside the mobile is finite. Periscopic telephoto cameras require a lot of space, but Tecno and its “Dual-Mirror Reflect Telephoto” promise to reduce the size of the module by 50% and its height by 10%. Instead of a simple prism that bends light 90 degrees, the system uses coaxial optics that bounce light multiple times inside the lens using reflective mirrors. It is what allows long focal lengths in a shorter physical distance. However, this design has a physical trace– When using a central obstruction, the bokeh is not circular, but rather takes on a donut shape. Tecno sells it as an artistic feature, the truth is that it is a consequence of mirror optics. Battle against the accused. The new thing from Tecno comes at a time when mobile photography It depends a lot on the processing what are you looking for the photo instagrammable above realism. Going for better optics instead of digital cropping and AI rescaling seems to be the right direction to achieve naturalness. However, we must maintain some caution. The challenge of this zoom is not only that it works, but that it is bright. Maintaining a decent aperture throughout that range is no easy task. If the system is too dark, the ISO will shoot up, generating noise that the software will have to remedy: back to processing. For the moment, we must wait to see if these concepts end up in a commercial mobile phone. Images | Techno In Xataka | I am an amateur photographer, and I will tell you which are the best phones to take almost professional photos without leaving you a fortune.

A Chinese startup claims to have created its own TPU to compete with NVIDIA. The only problem is that it is three years late

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A Chinese startup called Zhonghao Xinying (known internationally as CL Tech) has come to the fore with a bold promise. The company claims to have developed an AI chip that not only circumvents Western intellectual property restrictions, but also outperforms NVIDIA’s A100 chip. Which is very good, but also a little bad. Chana arrives. The chip in question has been named “Chana”, and according to SCMP we are dealing with a GPTPU (General Purpose Tensor Processing Unit). Unlike NVIDIA GPUs, aimed at accelerating AI workloads, this is an ASIC, that is, an application-specific integrated circuit designed from the ground up for neural network workloads. promise. According to Zhonghao Xinying Chana, it offers up to 1.5 times the performance of the NVIDIA A100 based on the Ampere architecture. Not only that: it achieves that performance with 30% lower consumption. The startup highlights that the computational cost per unit would therefore be less than half of that offered by the A100 chips. A little history of the company. Behind Zhonghao Xinying is Yanggong Yifan, an engineer formed at Stanford and the University of Michigan. He worked on the development of several generations of Google TPUs and also on the development of Oracle chips, and in 2018 founded this startup in Hangzhou together with Hanxun Zhengan engineer who worked at Samsung for several years. They were joined by other engineers from Microsoft, Oracle, NVIDIA, Amazon and Facebook, they indicate. on Baidu. We are therefore faced with several of those cases of “boomerang talent” with Chinese engineers who are forged in the US and then return to China to create solutions for their own industry. Solutions that do not depend on the West. Yanggong affirms that its chip features “fully self-controlled IP cores, a custom instruction set, and a fully in-house computing platform. Our chips do not rely on foreign technology licenses, ensuring long-term security and sustainability from an architectural perspective.” But. Although the achievement is striking, it is necessary to put it in perspective. The NVIDIA A100 is a 2020 AI GPU, and even with the improvements that this Chinese startup promises, its performance is, for example, far from H100 chips with Hopper architecture that appeared in 2022. Not to mention of the latest Blackwell Ultra chipswhich are currently NVIDIA’s greatest exponent in terms of AI chips. There are also no details about who makes the chip, and one of the candidates it would be SMICwhich has 7nm technology. They are very far away, and they have another problem. The technical achievement of these engineers is certainly notable, but everything indicates that they are still far from what NVIDIA and its competitors are achieving. like AMD or Google with its recent TPU Ironwood. There is another element that works against them: Chinese manufacturers continue without having direct access to the most advanced photolithography on the market, and although it also there is progress from Chinese manufacturers in that sense, competing is certainly complicated without access to the most advanced technologies. Pressure. In 2024 the company achievement revenues of 598 million yuan (73 million euros) with a net profit of 85.9 million yuan, but in the first half of the year the income was only 102 million yuan and had losses of 144 million yuan. The firm has reached an agreement with its investors by which it will have to go public at the end of 2026, or else it will be forced to buy back shares. The financial pressure is therefore notable for the company, which must demonstrate in the coming months that its roadmap is truly competitive. In Xataka | China was no longer supposed to be able to get its hands on NVIDIA’s most advanced chips. Until he found a shortcut in Indonesia

Chinese researchers wanted to know if it was possible to block Starlink in Taiwan: now they have an awkward answer

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Communications have become the invisible thread that sustains any modern military operation. Troops, vehicles or missiles are no longer enough: without a stable and resilient network, the situation can become complicated. During the Ukrainian war, Starlink demonstrated be able to keep Ukrainian forces connected even under pressure, and has since been placed at the center of the debate over its role in military scenarios. According to South China Morning Posta group of Chinese researchers linked to defense institutions has examined to what extent that network could resist a large-scale interference attempt on a territory like Taiwan. Starlink is not a typical satellite network. Instead of relying on a few high-altitude satellites in fixed positions above the equator, it is made up of thousands of small satellites that orbit the Earth at low altitudes and on changing routes. This architecture allows a terminal on the ground to not always connect to the same satellite, but to jump between several in a matter of seconds, forming a flexible mesh that is difficult to interrupt. That dynamic behavior largely explains why it has become a key element in debates about electronic warfare. A laboratory experiment. The study that has put numbers to this scenario is titled “Simulation research of distributed jammers against mega-constellation downlink communication transmissions” and appeared on November 5 in the Chinese magazine Systems Engineering and Electronics. It is signed by a team from Zhejiang University and the Beijing Institute of Technology, an institution with a prominent presence in the country’s military research. It should be noted that it is not an operational document or an official proposal from the Chinese Army, but rather an academic simulation that explores, from a technical point of view, what it would take to interfere with a network like Starlink on a regional scale. {“videoId”:”x9ri2iu”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”How China, the biggest polluter on the planet, has also become the complete opposite”, “tag”:”webedia-prod”, “duration”:”740″} A constellation designed to avoid interference. The study does not limit itself to describing that the terminals change satellites, but analyzes how this change thwarts any attempt at sustained interference. When a hostile signal affects a link, the terminal automatically redirects traffic to another visible satellite, and the network adapts the channel and frequency in real time. That reaction, combined with highly directional antennas capable of concentrating the signal toward specific points, reduces the impact of interfering emitters. The researchers highlight that even if a connection is momentarily blocked, the network can restore communication from another angle or frequency almost immediately. A thousand drones in action? The simulation was based on real data from Starlink’s orbital positioning and modeled how the signal would behave for twelve hours over eastern China. The researchers placed a virtual network of jammers 20 kilometers high, spaced between five and nine kilometers apart, as if they formed a checkerboard in the sky. The study considers that these nodes could be installed on drones, balloons or similar aerial platforms, capable of supporting coordinated interference systems. Using 26 dBW power and narrow beam antennas, each node managed to block an average of 38.5 square kilometers. With that efficiency, at least 935 units would be needed to cover a territory the size of Taiwan, not counting redundancies, failures or geographical barriers such as mountains. In Xataka China is sending drones to an island 100 km from Taiwan. The problem is that Japan and the US are filling it with missiles The authors themselves acknowledge that their results are only an approximation. They explain that they do not have real data on the radiation patterns of the terminals or measured signal suppression coefficients, which limits the precision of the simulation. They also do not know Starlink’s internal adaptation mechanisms against coordinated interference. Even so, they consider that the model serves to estimate the scale of the necessary effort and opens a line of study that allows quantifying, although imperfectly, how a blocking strategy would work in a real scenario. Images | starlink In Xataka | Starlink satellites have transformed war: China and Russia work on “Starlink Killers” to deactivate them (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news Chinese researchers wanted to know if it was possible to block Starlink in Taiwan: now they have an awkward answer was originally published in Xataka by Javier Marquez .

Chinese manufacturers are launching electric cars at a hellish pace. Toyota’s response: Kaizen philosophy

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Two years ago, Tesla was advancing at a dizzying pace. Their sales were growing and they were putting all their machinery in motion to maintain an advantage over competitors. Its production process allowed it to manage such high profit margins that later they could push hard on the price end. Part of his secret was machine called Giga Press. The we could see in their Berlin factory with our own eyes. Huge, imposing. With it, the company produces larger chassis parts more quickly. That allows you manufacture much faster than the competition because for rivals that same piece consists of many other smaller pieces that must be assembled. The revolution is such that large companies They seemed determined to get theirs own to be able to stand up. Tesla also announced that I was ready to create larger pieces and, therefore, further reduce times manufacturing with a larger Giga Press. Time has told us thatElon Musk’s are having problems to carry out this evolution of the Giga Press. And that the machine, no matter how much it can make copies at a great rate, also has its counterpart as very long machine breaks when you want to modify the part in question. But speed up development times seems to be the focus of large companies. Chery assured a long time ago that chinese rule It was kind of inevitable. For them, Europe has lost the battle because the development of their vehicles is much fasterresponding to public demands at a frenetic pace. And although we are talking about a Chinese brand defending its business formula, the industry does seems to be moving in that direction. Honda and Nissan explored a merger to save this second one from bankruptcy. One of the objectives to be exploited with this possible merger was to be more agile in the development of automobiles. Renault boasted just a few days ago that your Twingo has been developed in record time. In China, of course. But faced with the infernal pace and a frenetic launch number, Toyota seems to be opting for the complete opposite. Pause and perfectionism. In short: philosophy kaizen. Why does an electric car have less autonomy than advertised? Kaizen philosophy or how to perfect a product A good example of how the Chinese industry pushes to launch models on the market at a frenetic pace is that of BYD. The Chinese company is experiencing first-hand the dangers of following the devilish pace of less powerful startups when you aspire to manufacture more than five million cars a year. And 2025 has been marked by the announcement that they would incorporate their most advanced driving systems into all their cars in China. To all, without exception, including the BYD Seagull (BYD Dolphin Surf in Europe). A car that sells for less than 10,000 euros in the Asian market. This has become obsolete of their own cars and has had an immediate consequence, with customers waiting for the new and more advanced models, the units that do not incorporate this technology have accumulated in their dealerships waiting for a possible buyer. That strategy, that of launching a product on the market in the shortest possible time and fixing its possible defects on the fly, relying on a adaptive capacity Extraordinarily fast, it plays against what the Japanese philosophy has always been. In Japan they have made philosophy kaizen its greatest exponent. Guillermo García Alfonsín explains in this documentary on YouTube how Japan has built a car empire from nothing. One of the great secrets has always been to study to the point of exhaustion how to improve an existing product, paying obsessive attention to the smallest detail. The result is that Japanese companies are always at the top of the reliability tables. Chinese manufacturers are choosing to reduce development times to a minimum. Toyota bets on the opposite The culture shock is evident. Faced with companies that develop their products at a dizzying pace and apply all kinds of improvements in the shortest possible time, Japanese perfectionism prefers to play it safe, with lead feet but with the guarantee that what they put on the market is the best result they can achieve. a few months ago From Toyota itself it was implied that the rush had reached the heart of the company, that they felt they were missing the train of the technology of the future. To this narrative, it is now assured Nikkei, The conservative vision has prevailed: a generation of cars that will last up to nine years to safely face the leap to electric cars. Until now, each generation of Toyota lasted between five and seven years, moving at the same times as the rest of the industry. The Japanese newspaper assures, however, that Toyota is betting on renewals of the models that will approach the decade and that it will be the remote updates that keep the car up to date. Of course, in Nikkei They point out that the models for China will follow their own rhythm, with more constant launches. The decision also seems a response to a complicated regulatory market. Toyota is one of the few companies that has renounced the electric car As the only solution, he has been defending for some time that each market requires different cars and that it is necessary to adapt to them. And in that context, it is the automotive group that more cars sold by far. The Japanese are treading carefully before making the leap to electrification. He Toyota bZ4X It was a sales failure and aspires with its latest update to boost the units it has put on the market. High consumption, equally high price and an improvable production process They put an end to the company’s first electric model. The jump to the electric car is also a challenge for the company, according to the consultants employed by the same company. The reverse engineering company Caresoft Global It already alerted Toyota that its production process … Read more

We thought Stanford, MIT, and Harvard were leading in AI. There is a Chinese university that surpasses them all

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To the northwest of Beijing there is a university campus that is not only the most prestigious in the country, it is also one of the most influential universities in the world in science and technology, even surpassing institutions of the stature of MIT or Stanford. It is called Tsinghua and some of the most important technological projects of the moment are being developed there. Change of focus. Tsinghua has been in operation since 1911, although it was not until 1952 when it became a polytechnic university. Among its former students there are figures of the stature of Nobel Prize in Physics Chen-Ning Yang and President Xi Jinping himself. From its inception, Tsinghua’s focus was the training of Chinese students who were going to continue their studies in the United States. Today that approach has completely changed. In the midst of an AI career, there is a nationalistic spirit and students tend to stay and develop projects in their native country. Leaders. They count in Bloomberg that Tsinghua University stands toe-to-toe with the best universities in the world. According to the US News rankingis the best university in the world in engineering, chemical engineering and electronic engineering; has second place in civil engineering and nanotechnology; It is third in materials science and fourth in computer science. There it is nothing. Intellectual property. Tsinghua is also the university with the most papers on AI among the 100 most cited and leads in patent registration, outnumbering MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard combined. According to LexisNexis data analyzed by Bloomberghave registered 4,986 patents on AI and machine learning in the last 20 years. In 2024 alone they registered 900 patents. However, according to the Stanford AI Indexthe most influential patents remain in American hands. Startups. The university not only focuses on training, it also has a startup incubator called X-Lab from which at least 900 startups have already emerged since it was created in 2013. They are currently very focused on projects related to artificial intelligence. The founders of startups such as Moonshot AIthe creators of the model Kimi K2either Sapient Inca startup that develops “hierarchical reasoning models” based on how the human brain works. They affirm that it is the way to achieve AGI, a different approach to that pursued by companies like OpenAI with LLM or WLM (world models). that LeCun recently defended. Chip war. Efforts are also being made in Tsinghua to give China a boost in the technological war with the United States. The clearest example is the chip created by a group of university scientists and it is 3.7 faster than NVIDIA’s A100. Not only that, the chip, called ACCEL, is also much more efficient. At the moment its mass production has not been achieved, but the innovation is there. Image | Tsinghua University 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

Chinese electric car manufacturers opted to develop their own chips. He already plans to sell them to others.

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In 2024, Nio advertisement the world’s first 5nm chip for autonomous driving, being an important step towards technological independence from a Chinese manufacturer of such caliber. A year and a half after its announcement, the company is now beginning the external marketing of that chip, according to they count from Latepost. In this way, Nio is on the eve of transforming one of its most expensive investments into a potential source of income. Just like point The electric vehicle maker has already begun providing technology licenses to an automotive chip company. A multimillion-dollar project that seeks profitability. The development of Shenji NX9031 It has involved an investment of billions of yuan. William Li (Li Bin), CEO of Nio, revealed that the R&D expenditure on this chip was equivalent to the cost of building 1,000 battery exchange stations, which would place the investment above 140 million dollars. The project, started in 2021, has involved more than 600 professionals covering front and back design, verification and testing. What makes this chip special. Made with automotive-grade 5-nanometer technology, the Shenji NX9031 promises approximately four times the computing power of Nvidia’s Orin-X. Zhang Danyu, head of Nio’s chip division, pointed out in May that in some of their specifications they even surpass industry-standard chips and that their mass production began several months before Nvidia’s latest smart driving chip, the Thor-U. It is currently integrated into models such as the ET9, ES6 2025 and EC6. How much does a technology license cost?. According to share From Latepost, the value of these license agreements varies significantly depending on the type of authorization. An individual intellectual property license could be worth several million dollars, while a technical authorization at the system-on-chip (SoC) level could reach hundreds of millions of dollars. A new source of income. That the Nio chip begins to be marketed externally comes at a great time for the company, especially now that the manufacturer faces pressure significant from investors and has promised to become profitable in the fourth quarter. The company has intensified its efforts this year to reduce expenses and explore new sources of income. In March, Li Bin already advertisement publicly at the China EV 100 Forum that Nio chips and operating systems would be open to the industry. “If they want to buy the best chips, they can contact Nio,” he said then. What it means for the future of Nio. According to Li Bin, the chip provides a cost optimization of approximately 10,000 yuan ($1,400) per vehicle in the brand’s own models. Now, with the external license, Nio not only recovers part of its investment, but also positions itself as a technology provider for other manufacturers in the automotive sector. In Xataka | The longest straight road in the world is a mental challenge: 240 km without curves, in the middle of the desert and with truck traffic

The opening of Shein in Paris should have been a triumph. It has ended up causing the biggest slowdown for the Chinese giant in Europe

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Days after Shein’s controversial arrival at the historic BHV Marais in Paris —an opening as massive as it is controversial—, the story takes a turn that no one in the Chinese company expected. France has decided to postpone the opening of the rest of the Shein stores scheduled for November and December, a slowdown that reveals the extent to which the physical commitment of the ultra-fast fashion giant is shaking the sector and French politics. In a nutshell. The SGM group, owner of BHV, announced that the planned openings in Dijon, Reims, Grenoble, Angers and Limoges are postponed indefinitely. The inaugurations were to start on November 18 and extend until the beginning of December, but according to BFMTVSGM prefers to postpone them “a few days or a few weeks.” Today, the only operational Shein store in the country is the one in Paris, open November 5. A postponement that accumulates reasons. The delay does not respond to a single factor: it is a cocktail of commercial problems, reputational crisis, political pressure and regulatory turbulence. First, the Paris store disappointed its own customers. As reported days later by Le Mondedespite the more than 50,000 visitors on the first day, the result was frustrating: no men’s clothing, no children’s fashion, no large sizes, nor the ultra-low prices usual on the web. Added to this was insufficient space to manage the influx. But the hardest blow, according to the French media, did not come from the clients, but from the brands that have decided to leave BHV after the arrival of Shein and due to accumulated non-payments. Dior, Chanel, Guerlain and Lancôme – four pillars of French perfumery – leave the department store, along with more than 20 fashion and home brands. The departure comes at the worst possible time: the Christmas campaign, the month in which BHV rebalances its accounts. Furthermore, the image crisis is amplified by the breakup between SGM and Galeries Lafayette. According to Fashion Networkthe French chain has ended its agreement with SGM to avoid any link with Shein, which implies that all these centers will be called BHV, not Galeries Lafayette. Expansion meets politics. Shein’s arrival has unleashed unprecedented municipal rejection. From Liberation have pointed out that several mayors – Dijon, Reims, Grenoble, Angers and Limoges – are explicitly opposed to the implementation. Specifically, in Grenoble, Mayor Éric Piolle even asked to suspend opening until all products were legally verified. And the straw that broke the camel’s back. As different media have describedthe French Government discovered child-like sex dolls, prohibited weapons and other illicit products on the platform. This activated a process of temporary suspension of the marketplace, exhaustive customs controls and a judicial procedure that is still open. “The postponement is temporary.” Frédéric Merlin, president of SGM, insisted: in an interview for BFMTV. In it, he explained that the group needs to adapt the offer, adjust the pricing policy, gain space in regional stores and work on “more personalized orders.” But, as Le Monde recallsits management simultaneously faces non-payments to suppliers and the largest brand flight that BHV has experienced in decades. For its part, Shein maintains a different discourse. According to Reutersthe company says the Paris store has been “a great success.” He accepts that he must adjust prices and improve the experience, but he assures that for now his priority is to optimize that first physical point before opening the following ones. However, it does not offer new dates. Meanwhile, the company will have to face a key event: a mandatory appearance at the National Assembly and a court hearing on November 26, the same day on which the Paris court must examine the request to suspend the platform. In parallel, as the French media highlightsthe European Union has agreed to advance the application of taxes on small imported packages to 2026 – an essential pillar of Shein’s logistics model –, further increasing the pressure. Downshifting. France has become the first European country to put a real brake on Shein’s physical expansion. The openings have been postponed “a few days or weeks,” but the context—investigations, protests, brand leaks and regulatory pressures—suggests that the pause could last longer than SGM and Shein would like to admit. The question now is whether Shein will manage to adapt to a market that demands transparency, legality and social commitments or if the Paris store will be remembered as the beginning of the biggest clash between ultra-fast fashion and a country that, for the first time, has decided to put a stop to its advance. Image | FreePik and DMCGN Xataka | Shein has opened its first store in Europe in Paris. Paris has reacted as always: staging a revolt

Having China manufacture its cars in Europe seemed like a perfect plan. Until they were filled with Chinese workers

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Manufacture their electric cars in Europe so that they can sell them without tariffs. That was the promise of the European Union to Chinese manufacturers. The objective was to consolidate the electric car industry for Europe in Europe, closing the door to proposals from China at a much more attractive price. And the result is not what was expected. Manufacture in Europe. In October 2024, the European Union confirmed the tariffs to all the companies that bring their electric cars from China. Including European ones. With this measure that applies individually to each company (ensuring that not all have received the same benefits from the Chinese State) it was intended to attract factories to Europe. Why does an electric car have less autonomy than advertised? The strategy has gone well. First, because the Chinese State ordered to stop all investments in Europe that were in the negotiation phase, initially turning off the tap. Secondly, because it is not clear that the installed factories are giving great results in terms of employment. From China for Chinese. “There are currently manufacturers in Europe that assemble Chinese cars with Chinese components and Chinese personnel: this happens in Spain and Hungary. This is not right.” The words are from Stéphane Séjourné Vice President of Prosperity and Industrial Strategy of the European Commission, in an interview for the Italian newspaper La Stampa. In it he pointed out Spain and Hungary as the two hot spots. In this second country, BYD is building its first plant in Europe to produce electric cars. In Spain we have the Chery plant in Barcelona and, under construction, the CATL battery plant in Aragon. In all previous cases, criticism has multiplied because they are not impacting the area as expected. The Hungarian case. Séjourné refers to the plant that BYD has planned in Hungary. There, the Chinese company is building a factory that should produce 150,000 cars a year (with potential for 300,000 units) and employ 10,000 workers. However, the European Union is studying if the Chinese giant is receiving covert subsidies to carry it out, paralyzing its construction. In the early phases of the project, BYD has employed about 1,000 workers Chinese which has raised the suspicions of the European Commission as to whether there is really an intention to produce wealth on European soil. some of them They staged protests last summer by claiming that they had been fired just six months after joining despite receiving promises of large salaries upon arrival in Europe. BYD is at the center of controversy because the European Commission suspects that in the future Chinese workers may be the majority at the plant, since they would aspire to lower salaries. The company, yes, He already promised that he would employ local workers to advance vehicle production. The question is whether this first hiring of Chinese personnel responds to the start-up of the factory or the advancement of a way of acting that extends over time. The Spanish case. In Spain, two factories have concentrated China’s interest. The first to arrive was the one from Chery to Barcelona. There, the Chinese company has found that it already had the necessary machinery to remove cars from it since it responds to the occupation of the old Nissan plant. However, the plans are not meeting the expected deadlines. Chery is assembling kits of cars in Barcelona. That is, the car arrives in large pieces to Spain and is finished being assembled here, so the local impact is reduced. In this case we are not talking about employment but we are talking about the fact that the network of suppliers generated is minimal. The European Commission did not like this and, in fact, the electric Omoda 5 has been delayed in Barcelona because the regulators threaten to impose tariffs on them when they understand that the added value is zero. The other point of friction is that of CATL in Aragón. The Chinese battery producer announced an agreement with Stellantis to produce there the components that the automotive giant will use in its small cars. For now, we know that 2,000 Chinese employees will arrive and, again, the shadow of what impact the new factory will have on the local labor market is looming. According to T&Eit is not guaranteed that the CATL plant will guarantee long-term knowledge transfer. More pressures. In addition to the statements by European regulators, other voices have also raised their voices. France is one of the countries that is most under pressure to create a new category of cars to make electric vehicles cheaper. Their proposal is that they meet certain size requirements… but also that production be entirely European. These days, Josep María Recasens, president of Renault Spain, returned to the charge ensuring that “we cannot allow China to come to Europe to make four plates with wheels without added value.” In his statements he asked that Europe force Chinese companies to associate with European ones so that there is a transfer of knowledge as China itself demanded from Europe when its manufacturers began to produce on Asian soil. Photo | Official Lula on Wikimedia and BYD In Xataka | China is manufacturing many more cars than the world wants to buy. And that is a foretaste of serious problems.

Instagram has become a Chinese bazaar. My last purchase is the best proof of this

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Instagram is becoming a Chinese bazaar. And this is not a criticism, it is the truest definition of how companies are taking advantage of the platform to make gold by selling products that come from Chinese suppliers like Alibaba. The showcase cool and aspirational Instagram is transforming into a bazaar where dropshipping reigns with low-cost products made up of exclusive rarities. The fever for analog lenses that They simulate the look of old cameras disposables are the best example. With a faithful ally and a little patience you can discover, one by one, where those striking and apparently exclusive products that they try to sell us come from. 21 INSTAGRAM TRICKS – Tutorial with all the secrets! It all starts with an advertisement (well, with many). Three stories, one ad. We have long normalized that Instagram is full of advertisingsomething that companies know very well. In my particular case, my feed is quite full of content related to photography. And, for months, they were bombarding me with some very specific advertisements. 65,000 followers on one of the accounts and 30,000 on the other. Collaborations with influencers and a product that, to be honest, attracted a lot of attention. A lens shaped like an Oreo cookie that promises to emulate the look of the “disposable cameras“, the disposable cameras that you may have played with if you have a few years under your belt. a good business. One of the companies sells this product for 34.95 euros, the other for 44.95 euros. Taking into account that a good goal It costs more than 1,000 euros and since even the most mediocre kit lenses exceed 100 euros, it seems like a bargain. An economical, fun and different product, outside the catalog of the big camera brands. As a good Spaniard, my first reaction was to wonder if it could be even cheaper. Google Lens, my best ally. I have been obsessed with passing him for some time Google LenIt is any product from which I deduce Chinese origin. From electric motorcycles that sell in Spain for thousands of euros and cost just $600 on Alibaba to… targets shaped like an Oreo cookie and features clonal to those of the brands that advertise them. It didn’t take me even five seconds to find the target on AliExpress. 14 euros. This is how much it costs to buy an Oreo lens on AliExpress. One with a 32mm fixed focal length and f/10 aperture. The lens sold by its rival Instagrammers is also a 32mm, in this case with f/11 as described. It is something impossible to verify, since this lens does not have electronic pins, it does not communicate with the camera (it is literally putting a piece of plastic in front of the sensor) and it does not offer data on focal length or aperture. “Brand” objective | AliExpress target. Everyone draws their own conclusions. I’m not saying they are the same, but they are the same.. E-commerce through platforms like Shopify is a good thing for the user. You buy a product with fast shipping, seller guarantees and packaging that is probably more attractive than the plastic in which AliExpress delivers its products. The important issue is paying double or triple for the same product. The objective delivers what it promises, by the way. On Instagram you don’t sell a product, you sell a narrative. Instagram is, by far, one of the best showcases for selling cheap products with high margins. Profiles dressed in aspirations desired by users, collaborations with influencers. The algorithm is also your best accomplice by surgically adjusting the ads. Photography, motor, cooking, technology. Each and every potential storefront has a huge marketplace of easy-to-wrap products on Alibaba. Instagram is no longer a social network. It is a marketplace with a social network aesthetic. A perfect platform for high-margin dropshipping, disguised as a brand with values ​​aligned with your target. Image | Xataka In Xataka | If you buy on a website, it’s most likely Shopify: how three friends devoured the ecommerce industry

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