Chinese

A Chinese station has trained its employees to save 2 seconds on their task. Now they have 30,000 more passengers

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Think of an activity that you repeat daily. Think about how much time it takes you and what it would mean to spend two seconds less. What would you do with that time? That is what the workers and technicians at the Guangzhou South Train Station (China) have asked themselves. And the result has been spectacular: 48 more trains in motion and 30,000 more passengers on the tracks. 2 seconds. It is the time that the Chinese workers and technicians employed at the Guangzhou South Train Station (China) had in mind. It was the great objective. For more than a month, they have all been working with one goal in mind: reducing the time it takes to clean and prepare trains passing through the station by two seconds. Zhong Miao, comprehensive control service officer of Guangzhou South Railway Station, explains to the Chinese media that after a month and a half they managed to reduce the time of this task from 58 to 56 seconds. The final intention, of course, was for the train to be stopped for less time. The result. With the changes introduced, station operators were able to make way for 48 more trains in a single day. The two seconds that may seem insignificant allowed the number of passengers to increase by more than 30,000 people. To achieve this, they point out in the local mediathe operators worked with an enormous amount of data collected through numerous cameras. This station alone has a control room with 208 screens. With them they analyzed how much time passengers spent at the station and it has been possible to reduce the travel time of travelers by 17% compared to the figure collected three years ago. Guangzhou South Railway Station. For a train, two seconds was nothing short of marginal. For a station where more than half a million people pass through every day, it’s a whole world. And the new way of acting has been launched taking advantage of the Spring Festival, days in which the routes multiply taking advantage of the Chinese New Year. If the forecasts are met, on average, 530,000 passengers on Chinese high-speed trains will pass through this station every day. It is estimated that a new record was broken in October of last year when the million passengers passed through the station. It is not even the busiest station in China, its 28 platforms do not represent any record either. But to give us an idea of ​​the hustle and bustle that goes on inside, On February 13, 1,200 trains were operated in a single day as a result of the movements of the aforementioned Spring Festival. To give us an idea, during travel peaks such as Easter, 270 trains pass through Atochain which high speed is added but also long and medium distance. The longest high-speed line in the world. The station is located at a key point, near Shenzhen and Hong Kong and serves as a transit station for all travelers arriving from Southeast China to large cities such as Chongqing, Beijing or Shanghai, with which the station is connected. In fact, the Guangzhou-Beijing line is one of the crown jewels of Chinese railway service. And it is that since 2012 it is the longest high-speed line in the worldwith 2,298 kilometers. During its inauguration, it was hoped that the train would take less than eight hours to cross a distance comparable to traveling from Algeciras to Amsterdam. Today, This journey can be completed in 7 hours and 17 minutes. if you take the fastest bullet train. Photo | Tauno Tohk and Yang In Xataka | China has not only created the most extensive high-speed network in the world: it wants to operate it at 1,000 km/h and has taken a new step

A Chinese driver rigged his car to drive alone while he was drunk. It wasn’t the best idea

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The Supreme People’s Court of China has had to come out to clarify what may have already seemed obvious: a driver cannot delegate all of his actions to a car with level 2 autonomy. Much less if that driver is traveling drunk and in the passenger seat, leaving the driver’s seat completely empty. As? Yes, you read that right. To Justice. History brings it CarNewsChinawhere they cover the case of a driver who was arrested for drunk driving… more or less. Because, really, he wasn’t the one driving. He was traveling in the passenger seat, with the small detail that no one sat in the driver’s seat. Wang Mouqun, a resident of Linping (a suburb of Hangzhou, a city with almost 12 million inhabitants), has been tried by the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China, the most important court in the country, in the first case dealing with behavior related to road safety. The detainee has been punished with 45 days in jail for testing positive in the alcohol test. The decision comes after the driver had also received another sanction for the same reason in less than two years, which has aggravated the punishment. Nobody at the wheel. The truly curious thing about the case is that Mouqun had rigged the car so that the driving assistance system worked even if there was no one at the wheel. Thus, the owner of the car was able to sit in the passenger seat and sleep peacefully while the vehicle was driving without anyone at the wheel. In the Chinese media They talk about “an accessory installed to fool the system” but it is not clear exactly how it did it. What is clear is that the vehicle, a Aito M9drove with adaptive cruise control down the road without ever detecting that there was no human at the wheel. It is not the first case that has occurred in China either. of a driver who activates the driving assistance assistants to avoid driving under the influence of alcohol. What is new is that the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China is in charge of handling the case. Level 2 autonomy. Cars like this Aito M9, with a autonomy level 2can circulate without human intervention but require a person to remain attentive to what is happening around them to take the reins at any time. In addition, they require keeping your hands on the wheel. Level 3 autonomy cars can drive without human intervention but, in Europe, only Mercedes is allowed to do so and in very specific circumstances. In fact, the system is so useless at the moment that the company has stopped offering it in the new Mercedes S Class. Between both levels there is an intermediate step known as autonomy level 2+, which does allow for some license. These systems are those that equip cars that, in addition to maintaining the adaptive cruise control system, can overtake cars on their own, just by activating the turn signal or even looking to the sides like BMW. Ford is the only company in Europe with which You can drive without hands on the wheel although the system monitors that the driver keeps his eyes forward. Responsible. What the Chinese Justice has decreed is that in any case, the driver is responsible, even if he was traveling in the co-pilot system and with the driving assistance systems activated. And although no risk situations derived from this way of acting were detected. In fact, the vehicle was kept in operation between 1:15 in the morning and 1:37 when the vehicle detected the trick and stopped the car by itself on the shoulder of the road. It was then that other drivers detected that something was happening and called emergency services. They tested the driver, who tested 114.5 mg/100 ml of alcohol in his blood. in Chinaexceeding 0.80 mg/100 ml of blood alcohol is punishable by a fine and exceeding 150 mg/100 ml is an aggravating circumstance. Above 180 mg/100 ml of blood alcohol is punishable by a prison sentence without parole, with exceptions. The Chinese court considers that Mouqun was ultimately responsible for what happened behind the wheel and that, therefore, he is guilty of both hacking the car and “driving” under the influence of alcohol. Added to a previous withdrawal of his driving license in 2024, the driver has received the aforementioned penalty of 45 days in jail and a fine of 4,000 yuan (about 490 euros at direct exchange rate). Photo | XHBY.NET In Xataka | Fine of up to 1,000 euros for a beer: the DGT prepares the definitive attack against alcohol and it is called rate 0.2

SMIC is the Chinese TSMC and sums up all investment in AI

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The semiconductor industry has pressed the panic button. Unlike the chip crisis of 2020the new one has not been caused by a ‘perfect storm’ and has a first and last name: artificial intelligence. The push for this technology and the rampant construction of data centers has caused a stock out of all computer components. And if the world’s leading companies have been caught on the wrong foot, the Chinese ones are no exception. To the point that SMIC has confirmed the lean times. The Chinese industry has activated “crisis mode.” Crisis (don’t bother…). At this point, introductions are unnecessary. The RAM market is broken because the main players (Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix) have focused on creating memory for data centers. The reports point to an NVIDIA that would ‘pass’ on launching consumer GPUs this year because you need all possible wafers to create GPUs focused on AI. And after the SSD price risethe following can be the processors. A few days ago, a report from Reuters noted that Intel and AMD were beginning to notify Chinese customers to sit tight for new shipments of server CPUs. Because we always talk about NVIDIA as if it were the only one that creates components for data centers, but the chips Threadripper from AMD and Xeon from Intel are key parts of servers. According to Reuters sources, AMD has warned of an increase in delivery times from eight to ten weeks. And if we look at an Intel whose sales in China represent 20% of its general income, they point out that the price of the fourth and fifth generation Xeons are being rationed and, in addition, increasing the price by 10%. As with other components, they are not enough. From hope to victim. From Reuters they point out that AMD hopes that its relationship with TSMC will allow it to maintain the supply chain. The problem is that TSMC has to be working hard to supply all its customers. NVIDIA is putting pressureQualcomm also needs its premium range mobile processors this year and they are the ones that make Apple’s processors. SMIC -Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp- is the main Chinese semiconductor company. It is the one that in recent years has gained prominence defy US restrictions and provide high-performance chips to Huawei. It is also the great hope, together with Huawei itself, to develop a GPU that can cope with NVIDIA. Zhao Haijun is the co-CEO of SMIC and has come forward to be anything but reassuring. Double reservation. SMIC is winning more money thanks to demand, but production capacity is limited, to the point that he considers that the industry has entered “crisis mode.” “Customers are hesitant to place orders because no one knows how many memory chips will be available and, therefore, how many orders for phones, cars or other products they will be able to build,” stated to investors. In fact, analysis from Counterpoint reflect this crisis with a figure: 2.5%. This is what would have lowered the shipping forecast for Honor, OPPO and Vivo phones for the coming months. That leads manufacturers to book with multiple suppliers, something Zhao has compared with the “double booking” behavior that can be seen on an airline. “If one airline is fully booked, passengers will immediately book another, making total bookings appear inflated even though actual demand has not increased proportionately.” In essence, if the production capacity is limited, but the companies that need chips reserve several suppliers that draw from the same source, it seems that the demand is beastly, although, in reality, this is not so much the case. The result is the same: the system collapses. Car-free highways. The note of the double reservation is not the only pearl that Zhao has left. It is evident that, whether they can handle the demand or not, it is good for SMIC because Chinese companies eager for chips to develop their AI (of which They don’t stop releasing new models) are purchasing components for their data centersand the executive commented that “no one has really thought about what exactly those data centers will do, but companies would love to build the total capacity of the next 10 years in just one or two years.” “It’s like building train stations and high-speed highways even if there aren’t that many cars that need them yet” – Zhao Haijun Three billion dollars. But it’s about being there, having a place at the table where the conversation that, they hope, will shape the future is being defined. American Big Tech plans burn more than 650 billion dollars this 2026 alone, a brutal increase if we take into account that the investment was 400,000 million in 2025. But if we look at the global estimate, with Alibaba, Bytedance or Tencent in the equation, the estimate is three trillion dollars for the next five years. Crisistunity. In the face of crisis, opportunity. We have already commented that AMD, Intel or NVIDIA they are saturated. Also Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron on the memory boat, and in that scenario is where there are certain companies that can begin to carve out a space for themselves at an accelerated pace. SMIC is one of them, satisfying the demand of local customers, but memory manufacturers such as CXMT or YMTC that They had never painted anything in the conversationyou have a chance. We already know that PC manufacturers such as Asus, Dell or HP are considering buying CXMT memories and that Lenovo has already started to do so. And it is not only a window for Chinese companies: Intel has an adventure with the Japanese SoftBank to stand up to Samsung and its HBM4 memories. And even ByteDance would be working on your own AI chip. The problem is the same one we have been talking about for a long time: no matter how much they increase production and no matter how much new players appear, they are all playing in the same game, that of allocating most … Read more

I was about to buy the best-selling Chinese motorcycle in Spain. Until I read the fine print

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Chinese motorcycles They are driving the Spanish crazy. So much so that they are achieving the unthinkable: snatch the throne to the historic Japanese Honda and Yamaha. It is no wonder, since both in terms of performance and price, what the Chinese proposals offer is simply unbeatable. Servidor was recently at the Zontes dealership to test what is currently the best-selling A2 license scooter in Spain: the 368G. I went down from trying it convinced of the purchase, until I read the fine print. One that has a lot to do with China’s strategy to conquer Europe. The aforementioned. If you don’t understand much about motorcycles, the summary is easy: this motorcycle is “the SUV” with the best quality-price on the market. It costs less than 5,000 euros, has a 368cc engine and almost 40hp of power, and comes with extras such as rear and front cameras with Sony sensors, heated grips as standard, keyless boot and hood, screen with mirroring for the mobile… The equivalent in any traditional brand costs about 1,500 euros more. The rolling smoothness of the motorcycle is excellent, and although the general qualities are somewhat tight (something completely logical, given the price), it is an absolutely winning purchase. Everything good, except for one little problem. We are guinea pigs. China is achieving something unthinkable a few years ago in the world of motorcycles (and cars). They have not come to compete against smaller brands or carve out a niche for themselves. They have landed in Europe to take the top positions in the ranking and end the leadership of traditional brands. Decades of reign that they have managed to end in a very short time. To do this, at least in the territory of motorcycles, something key is needed in a vehicle for daily use and enjoyment: reliability. And to ensure that the bike passes through the workshop frequently, the inspection intervals are especially abnormal. Yes, but. In the case of this Zontes, the maintenance interval is 4,000km. Yes, every 4,000km you have to go to the workshop. To give you some context, its rivals like the Honda 350 ADV They go through the workshop every 12,000km, and the Yamaha Xmax 300 every 5,000km for oil changes and every 10,000 for the rest of the consumables. The brand is completely aware of the problem this poses, and the 2026 model will arrive in summer with maintenance intervals of 6,000km. It is a substantial change, since every 12,000km a 368g will have passed through the workshop three times. One 2026, two. Little by little. Zontes is not alone in this problem. Voge, the Chinese manufacturer that has managed to become the top 1 in the best-selling trail motorcycles in Spain, has several models with service intervals every 6,000km. But in its star versions, such as 900 DSXthis goes up to 10,000km. If they still sell, imagine in a year. There are many bikers who do not put too many kilometers on their motorcycle, or those who are willing to visit the workshop twice a year in exchange for taking a much more equipped, complete and powerful product. China is managing to place its motorcycles in the top 3 in sales even with this enormous handicap on the table. When your maintenance intervals match the rest of your competitors, the rest will be history. Image | Zontes In Xataka | Spain loves one thing: cheap motorcycles. Europe doesn’t like something else: cheap motorcycles.

if there are Chinese investors behind

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For years, SpaceX has ceased to be simply a rocket company to become one of the most decisive players in the technological and strategic ecosystem of the United States. Its launch capacity, its role in satellite communications and its links with the defense field place it in a position of enormous relevance, especially striking in a company that is still privately owned. In this context, questions about who may be investing in your structure take on a different, much more sensitive meaning. What is at stake is no longer just business, but influence on infrastructures considered critical. The question. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and Democratic Senator Andy Kim sent a letter to the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, in which they ask for an immediate review of SpaceX in the face of information that points to possible hidden Chinese investments in its capital, according to Reuters. In the United States, this type of communication does not imply that there is an open investigation or a prior conclusion, but it does activate political supervision mechanisms and sets specific response deadlines. Private equity and side doors. To understand why this political request is so sensitive, it is worth stopping at the very nature of SpaceX. The company is not listed on the stock exchange nor does it have a public stock symbol, as it operates as a privately held company, which limits the financial information available and restricts the purchase of shares to the general public. Its financing comes mainly through private investment rounds and secondary sales between existing investors. This model, perfectly legal, also makes it more complex to track precisely who participates in the capital at any given time. The money trail. In their letter, the senators cite journalistic information and court testimony that point to a possible indirect route of entry of capital linked to China into SpaceX. These funds would have been channeled through entities registered in jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands to mask the purchase of shares. The debate does not revolve so much around the legality of these financial vehicles, common in international markets, but rather the difficulty of determining who is really behind the money. The aforementioned news agency adds a precedent in Delaware: A judge backed the decision to remove a Chinese investor from a vehicle created to buy SpaceX shares and return $50 million. Additional concern. In their letter, Warren and Kim warn that Chinese involvement in SpaceX could constitute “a threat to national security, potentially putting key military, intelligence and civilian infrastructure at risk.” That scenario would activate the rules known as FOCIfocused on foreign ownership, control or influence in companies with sensitive contracts, and could open the door to a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. For now, everything is in the field of the preventive evaluation requested from the Pentagon. Who’s in charge when you don’t contribute? The perception that SpaceX belongs entirely to Elon Musk simplifies a more nuanced reality. According to The Guardian, Their participation is estimated at around 42%, which leaves room for external shareholders who also assume risks and expectations about the direction of the company. Some of those institutional investors have made SpaceX one of their top holdings. In a private company, where public control mechanisms are fewer, this balance between personal leadership and distributed capital takes on special relevance. A more integrated empire. The discussion on foreign investment also comes at a time when SpaceX’s technological perimeter is expanding. SpaceX has announced the purchase of xAI, bringing together artificial intelligence, communications and space access capabilities under the same umbrella. That movement, as our colleague Javier Lacort describescombines critical infrastructure and media speakers, a combination that makes the idea of ​​regulating such a conglomerate complex. Date on the calendar. The senators have asked the Department of Defense for a response before February 20, a deadline that should provide a first clarification on the scope of the matter and the steps contemplated by the Pentagon. Until then it is not possible to draw conclusions. But the episode leaves a broader signal: when a private company concentrates so much capacity, any doubt about its financing transcends the corporate sphere and enters fully into the strategic sphere. Images | SpaceX In Xataka | Elon Musk’s plan: turn his companies into a 21st century “India Company” that exceeds the power of the State

There is a Chinese startup creating the most amazing robots of the moment. It’s called X Square

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The only embodied AI (bodied artificial intelligence) company backed by the three Chinese technology giants: ByteDance, Meituan and Alibaba. Just over two years of life and financing rounds in which they have managed to overcome the 400 million dollars. These are some of the cover letters of X Square Robot, one of the most promising companies in the field of robotics. where does it come from. XSquare It is a Chinese startup which was born in 2023 at the hands of Wang Qian, an engineer and doctor from the University of Southern California who, in recent years, has maintained a discreet profile in the industry. The company was born not only as a company aimed at creating humanoid robots: they are also behind the development of the language models necessary to lead in robotics. The roadmap. The startup, despite its youth, has made the most of its two years of life. December 2023, full financing and start of operations. March 2024, efforts begin to develop a general large-scale model for embodied AIthe brain that would move its robots. May 2025, commercialization of Quanta X1, a bimanual wheeled robot equipped with its WALL-A model. Specially designed for logistics and commercial tasks. July 2025, first to show purposeful AI model general capable of directly controlling a highly dexterous robotic hand. Unlike traditional approaches—based on rules, fixed trajectories or action-specific training—the system uses a single model that integrates perception, planning and control, allowing grip and movement to be adapted in real time to changes in the environment. August 2025, Quanta X2 arrives, its first humanoid robot, also with a wheel base. The product. Quanta X2 is the latest solution from X Quare, a wheeled humanoid robot that integrates the company’s own AI model. This model allows the robot to have a vision system, autonomous motion control, real-time task planning, etc. We highly recommend watching the demo video in which X Square shows it in operation, because it is spectacular. Why is it important. X Square does not sell ordinary humanoid robots, it sells cognitive capacity. The norm in robotics companies is to design the hardware and adapt it to existing software. X Square designs its own models focused on physical AI. This is something fundamental for his native country, China. The country wants to accelerate the automobile industry in 2030 with 100% automated factories. The aid policy is especially favorable for local companies developing robotics solutions. China has created centers responsible for training robots to imitate human behavior. X Square software is key The backup. X Square is backed by giants like Alibaba and Bytedancethe first group having announced an internal team dedicated to robotics using Qwen, its AI models division, as a base. Despite Alibaba’s muscle when it comes to creating its own language models, the investment of more than $140 million in X Square Robot makes it clear that it is much more than a typical startup. Image | XSquare In Xataka | Robotics has just broken another scale barrier: there are already autonomous robots smaller than a grain of salt

Canada has opened the door to Chinese electric cars. The US warns: “they are going to regret it”

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Canada has reopened the doors of electric vehicles from China, giving a radical turn to its trade policy. Last Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney reduced tariffs by 100% to 6.1%, which could take the Canadian automobile market to a new horizon. Below these lines we tell you what this may imply. Change. The move comes a year after Canada impose massive tariffs to Chinese electric vehicles, following in the footsteps of the United States under the Biden administration. The argument, as describe from the BBC, was that they considered China to be carrying out ‘a policy of deliberate overproduction’. Now, with relations between Canada and the United States on somewhat delicate ground under the Trump administration, the Canadian government has chosen to diversify its trade alliances. “We take the world as it is, not as we would like it to be,” counted Carney. Quantities. The initial agreement allows the entry of up to 49,000 electric vehicles annually from China with the reduced tariff of 6.1%. This figure represents approximately 3% of the total Canadian market, which is around two million vehicles per year, according to account the Driving medium. According to the prime minister, the quota could increase to 70,000 vehicles within five years. Furthermore, the agreement stipulates that, in that period, more than 50% of these vehicles must be affordable models with an import price of less than 35,000 Canadian dollars (about 21,569 euros at the exchange rate). Date. Although there is no exact confirmed date, several media predict its arrival in the coming weeks. Addisu Lashitew, associate professor at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, counted to the CBC that Chinese manufacturers have the capacity to accelerate production and ship quickly. BYD, the largest Chinese manufacturer of electric vehicles, even operates its own cargo ships, which could shorten shipping times even further. Brands that will arrive first. Curiously, the first brands to benefit from this opening will not necessarily be the purely Chinese ones. Tesla is in a prime position to take advantage of the deal immediately, according to they count from Reuters. Elon Musk’s company had already equipped its Shanghai plant in 2023 to manufacture a specific version of the Model Y destined for Canada, exporting more than 44,000 vehicles that year before the 100% tariffs came into effect. Other brands with a previous presence include Volvo and Polestar, both owned by the Chinese group Geely. For purely Chinese brands like BYD or Nio, the process will be somewhat slower, as they will have to establish dealer networks, service chains and spare parts markets from scratch. Disparate political reaction. The Premier of Saskatchewan (province of Canada), Scott Moe, celebrated the agreement as “very good news,” especially since China has committed to reducing tariffs on Canadian agricultural products such as rapeseed. However, Ontario Premier Doug Ford critical harshly criticized the move, calling Chinese electric vehicles “subsidized spy cars” and warning that the deal would “damage our economy and lead to job losses.” To put it in context, Ontario is the province where the Canadian automobile industry is concentrated. The US response. United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer qualified the agreement “problematic” and warned that Canada might regret it. However, President Trump declared that it was “a good thing” and that “if you can get a deal with China, you should do it.” The reflection of Japan. In 1981, Canada reached a similar agreement with Japan, allocating unit quotas instead of prices. The result was that Japanese manufacturers simply moved up the range: Civics became Accords, Corollas became Camrys. In two or three years, the average price of an imported Japanese car went from $8,000 to $14,000, as remember Greig Mordue, director of the Master of Engineering and Public Policy program at McMaster University, told Driving. However, that agreement also led to Honda and Toyota establishing production plants in Canada, today becoming the two largest vehicle manufacturers in the country. In fact, according to revealed A senior Canadian official told the CBC, the government wants to explore the idea of ​​​​creating joint ventures and investments with Chinese companies in the next three years to build a Canadian electric vehicle with Chinese know-how. More competition. Lashitew emphasize that the entry of cheaper Chinese vehicles will force other manufacturers to lower their prices, which would make electric vehicles more accessible to consumers and help Canada move toward its emissions reduction goals. “With electric vehicles still 30% to 50% more expensive than comparable gasoline cars, reducing trade barriers would significantly ease the affordability constraint,” he noted. Cover image | aboodi vesakaran and Xataka In Xataka | Cars are so absurdly expensive that FIAT already has a plan to solve it: limit them to 117km/h

Chinese startups have been relying on NVIDIA chips to train their models for years. That is already changing

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The name of the Chinese startup Zhipu AI (Z.ai) may not sound familiar to you, but perhaps GLM, its AI model, does a little more than its latest version, GLM-4.7already competes with Claude Sonnet 4.5 or GPT-5.1. The real surprise of this “Chinese AI tiger” is the launch of GLM-Image…and not so much for what he does, but for how he has managed to do it. what has happened. GLM-Image is a multimodal generative AI model that focuses on image generation. The idea, of course, is to compete with options like Nano Bananafrom Google. That’s interesting, but even more striking is the fact that the model has not been trained with conventional chips. Trained with Chinese chips. According to those responsible for Z.ai, this model is the first developed in China that has been fully trained with “local” chips. Specifically, it has been trained with Huawei’s Ascend chips thanks to the use of servers Huawei Ascend Atlas 800T A2 and a framework called MindSpore. Thus, traditional NVIDIA AI chips, which are usually the usual choice for AI model developers in Chinese startups, have not been used. Turning point? This milestone demonstrates the real feasibility of training high-performance generative AI models on a platform developed entirely in China. We are not dealing with something minor: it is validation that it is possible to continue innovating in this area despite the restrictions imposed by the US. In fact, Zhipu AI — included last year on the US blacklist — has intensified its collaboration with other local manufacturers, such as the promising firm Cambricon that has risen from the ashes thanks to tariffs. Threat to NVIDIA. The news comes at a unique time, because NVIDIA has not stopped pressuring the US government to once again allow it to sell its advanced AI chips to Chinese companies. He has obtained that permission—which It won’t be free—, but now the one that might not be interested is China, which he hasn’t said anything at all. That chips from companies like Huawei are a valid alternative for training quality AI models can change many things in this area. Zhipu goes like a shot. The Chinese startup has also just gone public, and since it has done so its shares they have shot up more than 80%. Investors see the company no longer as a rival to Google or OpenAI, but as a banner. One that shows that it is possible to compete without depending on the US and its companies. Huawei, great beneficiary. If the trend continues, Huawei can become the Chinese NVIDIA, and the company prepares an increase in production of its AI chips. It is not the only one: Cambricon plans triple your production by 2026, which seems to make it clear that the Chinese industrial machinery is moving quickly to neutralize the impact of US vetoes. Challenges…Despite everything, Zhipu already has warned that the price war in the AI ​​sector will become international. If Chinese companies end up controlling the entire chain (or rather, their chain), they could offer AI services at much lower costs than their Western competitors, who must pay NVIDIA’s margins and Big Tech’s cloud infrastructure. …and unknowns. This technological achievement raises other questions. One of the most important is how powerful and capable Huawei chips are compared to NVIDIA’s in these processes: is training much slower? Is it more expensive in time and resources? The efficiency of the MindSpore framework compared to Pytorch or TensorFlow is another of the key components of these developments. In Xataka | Faced with the US strategy, China has a plan to revive its technology industry: that AI belongs to everyone

Chinese oil tankers are arriving in Venezuela and coming up empty. Exactly what the US was looking for

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The map of world power has been redrawn in just one week. What began as a military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro has transformed into an energy earthquake that has left an image for history: the gigantic Chinese supertankers, which for years were the financial lifeline of Caracas, turning around in the middle of the Atlantic. A U-turn in international waters. The ships Xingye and Thousand Sunny —two supertankers (VLCC) with the Chinese flag—have definitively abandoned their course towards Venezuela. As confirmed by the South China Morning Post (SCMP)After weeks of inactivity and uncertainty anchored in the ocean, these colossi return to Asia empty. These ships are not just any oil tankers. According to Reutersare part of a group of three ships dedicated exclusively to the Venezuela-China route to transport the crude oil destined to pay the gigantic Venezuelan external debt. Its withdrawal is the clearest sign that the South American country, now under US control, will not export crude oil directly to its main buyer in the short term. The embargo that Trump does not lift. Although the US president stated last week that China “would not be deprived” of Venezuelan oil, the reality in the ports is different. According to SCMPChina has not received shipments from the state-owned PDVSA since last month, while Washington insists that the oil embargo remains in force. Where does the oil go then? While the Chinese ships return empty, the giants of the trading Global companies such as Vitol and Trafigura are already preparing the first shipments of a $2 billion deal to move 50 million barrels accumulated in inventory. the destiny, as reported by Reutersit will be the United States and other markets like India. China could receive part of this oil, but only if it negotiates with these intermediaries, thus losing its direct and preferential access to the benefit of the discounts it obtained. through its independent refineries or “teapots”. The bill that no one wants to pay. After the euphoria of the military takeover, a financial dilemma of billion-dollar proportions looms. Venezuelan oil has been takenbut it is mortgaged. China financed railways and power plants for decades through more than 600 bilateral agreements. Regarding the debt, the figures estimate around 10,000 million dollars, although other calculations of think tanks they increase the historical debt to more than 60,000 million, much of it structured under the “oil for loans” model. However, the great fear in Beijing is that the new government led by Trump will invoke the doctrine of “hateful debt”. As pointed out expert Cui Shoujunthis legal recourse would allow the new executive to repudiate the loans alleging that the Chinese money did not benefit the people, but rather served to keep the Maduro regime in power. Outrage in Beijing. The response from the Asian giant is firm and has not been long in coming. The official China Daily media has qualified Maduro’s capture and the January 3 military intervention as a “flagrant hegemonic invasion” and an act of “neocolonialism.” In editorials signed by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the US is accused of using “hard force” to trample international norms and send a message of fear to the rest of the Latin American countries that seek an independent path. A treasure in ruins. The capture of Maduro has put the largest crude oil deposit in the world in the hands of Washington, but the trophy comes with a fine print that could break global financial balances. The infrastructure that the US now inherits It is literally in ruins: Loading an oil tanker today takes five days compared to the only day that was enough seven years ago, and the crude oil arrives “dirty” (with excess salt and water). Reconstruction will require $10 billion annually for a decade. The battle in Venezuela is no longer fought with soldiers, but in the offices where it will be decided who pays the Chinese debt and who repairs PDVSA’s rusty pipes. Meanwhile, the ships Xingye and Thousand Sunny They move away from the Caribbean, symbolizing the end of an era. Image | Unsplash Xataka | The “B side” of the United States landing in Venezuela: a subsoil full of hypothetical rare earths

There is someone who is clear that China has a very difficult time overtaking the US in the AI ​​race: the Chinese themselves.

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China or the US, who will win? the AI ​​race? The US seemed unattainable, but after the launch of DeepSeek a year ago, China became almost at par. Since then, the possibility of China winning the race became very real. Great figures of American AI Several Chinese AI companies have already warned about this situation they are doing very well on the stock market. Despite everything, there are those in China who do not see it at all clearly. Low chances. They count in Bloomberg that Chinese companies have less than 20% probability of being able to advance the OpenAI or Anthropic models in the next 3 or 5 years. Justin Lin, technology manager of the Qwen modelsduring Justin Lin, technology manager of the Qwen models from Alibaba. To the limit. The event was also attended by Tang Jie, founder of Ziphu AI, one of China’s ‘AI tigers’ that last week it had a spectacular IPOincreasing the value of its shares by 36%. Its founder pointed out a somewhat uncomfortable fact for the Chinese AI ecosystem: while companies like OpenAI dedicate “a large part of their computational capacity to next-generation research, we are at the limit of our possibilities. Just meeting delivery demand consumes most of our resources.” In other words: the restrictions on the latest technology are working. The gap is widening. As we said, the launch of DeepSeek R1 a year ago unleashed a wave of optimism among Chinese companies. Since then, a few have launched new LLMs such as Alibaba with Qwen, Ziphu AI or Minimax. However, Tang notes that “some may feel excited, thinking that Chinese models have overtaken American ones, but the real answer is that the gap may be widening.” Restrictions. Speakers blamed the situation on a lack of resources caused by US blockades, especially AI chips and lithography machines. Their chips are not that powerful, so, as Tang says, all their computing power goes into serving their customers. This greatly limits them when it comes to continuing to scale their models. Shunyu Yao, former OpenAI and current chief scientist at Tencentis committed to focusing on solving bottlenecks such as long-term memory and promoting self-learning of future models. Independence. From the government is promoting technological self-sufficiencyprioritizing the use of national chips over American alternatives. The reality is that without access to the most advanced lithography machines, China is lagging far behind. One fact: Huawei and SMIC are ‘tuning’ old ASML machines and making authentic viguerías that have allowed them to obtain chips of 7 and up to 5nm. It’s a technical feat, but its chips are still several years behind the competition. The aces of China. It is clear that China is lagging behind in chips, but there are other areas in which it has an advantage that can be decisive, one of them being electricity. While The Chinese government subsidizes and bets heavily on renewablesin the US electricity has become a bottleneck for its increasingly numerous data centers. Another critical point is that The US has cut funding for academic researchwhile China has done so national priority. And that’s not to mention that they might lose the AI ​​race, but China is winning almost everything else: batteries, robotics, electric cars and especially renewables. Image | Gemini In Xataka | The US believed it had dealt a mortal blow to China when it deprived it of NVIDIA. He only accelerated one plan: ‘Delete America’

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