door

Peru gave the keys to a giant door to China that the US now wants to blow up

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For years, Chancay was a secondary port on the central coast of Peru, one linked to regional exports and with a limited weight in international trade. Everything changed when, at the beginning of the 2010s, the project began to transform into a megaconstruction designed to receive the largest ships in the world, a leap that culminated with the entry of Chinese capital and the inauguration of a work called to redefine the country’s role in Pacific trade. A giant door to the Pacific. Peru has now become the central stage of the rivalry between China and the United States for a very specific reason: the Chancay megaport, a deep-water infrastructure north of Lima that acts as a direct gateway between South America and Asia and that has elevated the Andean country from a trading partner to a strategic piece. As we said, with the capacity to receive the largest cargo ships in the world and accelerate the flow of raw materials to China, the port symbolizes how a logistics project can alter regional balances and place a country in the middle of a dispute between powers. The direct notice. From the Washington Department of State, the Donald Trump administration rated case as an example of how “cheap Chinese money” can erode national control over critical infrastructure, an unusually harsh warning in pointing out that Peru could be losing sovereignty over one of its critical infrastructures, after a court ruling which limits the ability of the national regulator to supervise Chancay. For the United States, the message is clear: Chinese money, presented as cheap and fast, has a long-term political cost. A case that has become an example of the US strategy to stop the expansion of Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere and regain ground in a region that it considers vital for its security and global leadership. China and the Silk Road in Latin America. It we count some time ago. For Beijing, Chancay is a key piece of its Belt and Road Initiativethe great project with which it has financed ports, roads and airports around the world through credits and state guarantees. China has been for more than a decade the main partner Peru’s commercial sector and has invested massively in strategic sectors such as mining, electricity and transportation, consolidating a deep economic relationship that goes far beyond a single port and that reinforces its presence in the Latin American Pacific. The court ruling. The spark of the conflict has been court ruling Peruvian law that orders the authorities to refrain from regulating, supervising or sanctioning the activity of the port of Chancay, considering it a private facility. The regulator Ositran, which controls the rest of the country’s large ports, has denounced that this exception leaves users unprotected and creates a dangerous precedent, by making the operating company the only one that provides a public service without direct supervision of the State. The organization has already announced that it will appeal the decision. Cosco, sovereignty and red lines. The Chinese company Cosco Shipping, majority shareholder and operator of the port, has rejected any insinuation of loss of sovereignty and maintains that Chancay remains fully under Peruvian jurisdiction and subject to its laws, with the presence of police, customs and environmental authorities. For China, the US accusations are a political maneuver and a discredit campaign, while for Washington the problem is not only legal, but strategic: who controls, de facto, South America’s great gateway to transpacific trade. Peru trapped between two powers. The country is thus in an uncomfortable positionwith China as its main trading partner and the United States as a strategic ally and military partner, even designated as a main non-NATO ally. While Washington negotiates the construction of a naval base a few kilometers from Chancay, Beijing consolidates its influence economy around the same enclave. The result is a nation located in the middle of a major geopolitical battle, one where a port infrastructure has become the symbol of a difficult choice: take advantage of an economic opportunity without this giant door to the Pacific ending up conditioning its sovereignty and its international room for maneuver. Image | cosco In Xataka | China has been building a megaport in Peru for eight years. It has just been released to revolutionize South America In Xataka | €10 order, €30 tariffs: the EU has just approved the mother of tariffs for Aliexpress, Shein and Temu

if it closes the entrance door to the 10 million inhabitants

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Since post-war Europe, immigration has been a silent constant in the economic reconstruction of the continent, first to supply labor in industry and later to sustain growth and the welfare state in increasingly aging societies. Over the decades, this phenomenon went from being an assumed necessity to becoming a central political debate, especially after EU enlargements and economic crises. Today, Europe once again faces a question that it thought had been resolved: how far it is willing to go to remain an open space. The nerve figure. The idea we tell it a few months ago. Switzerland heads to a vote which condenses many of the tensions accumulated in Europe during the last decade: demographic growth, immigration, housing and the economic model. The proposal to set an absolute limit of 10 million inhabitantsdriven by the Swiss People’s Partyreaches the polls after gathering the necessary signatures in a country where direct democracy turns social unrest into state decisions. The situation: with a current population of 9.1 million and growth much higher than that of its neighbors, the debate no longer revolves around whether Switzerland can continue to grow, but rather whether if you want to do it. From attractive to “saturated” country. For decades, Swiss prosperity rested on high wages, political stability and an open economy capable of attracting both low-skilled labor and international talent. This success has had an increasingly visible reverse: a 27% foreign residentsa stressed real estate market and increasing pressure on infrastructure and public services. For defenders of the population cap, this growth has become uncontrollable and threatens the quality of life, but for its detractors, it is precisely the engine that has sustained the country’s wealth. The limit and its consequences. The initiative, a priori, does not propose a gradual system or flexible quotas, but rather a rigid, hard limit, which would force action once it exceeds 9.5 million and which, upon reaching 10 million, would literally imply close almost completely the entry of new residents, including asylum seekers and family reunifications. This absolute nature is possibly what most worries economists and companies, which warn of an abrupt stop to the arrival of workers just when the aging of the population is beginning to be noticed and the demand for labor remains high. Europe as a red line. The most delicate point of the plan is precisely its direct impact on the relationship with the European Union. The reason is very simple: if the limit is not respected, the Government would be obliged to abandon the agreement of free movement of people, the cornerstone of the treaties that guarantee Switzerland access to the single market. In a country where nearly half of exports go to the EU, breaking that link is not only a migration issue, but a structural change of the economic model built over decades. The economy versus the emotional vote. Other factors appear here, since multinationals and employers have reacted harshlywarning of relocations, loss of innovation and additional tensions on the pension system, largely fueled by foreign workers. For its part, the business lobby Economiesuisse has described the proposal of chaoticwhile academics emphasize that the recent stagnation of real wages and the increase in the cost of living have created a perfect breeding ground for looking for culprits in immigration, although the problems have more complex roots. Beyond the census. Polls show a country divided almost in half, with a support close to 48% which makes the result unpredictable. So it doesn’t seem like it’s just about deciding how many people can live in Switzerland. The fundamental crux points elsewhere: defining what kind of country do you want to be in an increasingly tense European environment. Either one that preserves its openness at the cost of better managing its internal imbalances, or another that raises a symbolic limit and assumes the risk of redefining its relationship with Europe and with its own idea of ​​prosperity. And, meanwhile, Europe hold your breath for what may arise from the decision. Image | Pexels In Xataka | Switzerland is about to exceed 10 million inhabitants. And he will do everything possible to avoid it. In Xataka | The countries with the largest immigrant population in the world, displayed on this map

Tesla popularized “invisible” car door handles. China has just handed down its death sentence

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In China they have been wanting for a long time ban retractable handles of the vehicles, a design commonly popularized by Tesla. It is no wonder, since over the last few years we have witnessed serious fatal and safety incidents involving this type of handles. The regulations will force many of the best-selling models on the market to be redesigned. what has happened. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China has approved a new safety regulation that will come into force on January 1, 2027. The regulation prohibits door handles recessed in the body and requires that all vehicles have visible handles and a mechanical opening system on each door, according to they count from Financial Times. Why is it important. The hidden handle design has become popular in recent years in electric cars. In China they had been following Tesla’s example for a long time, looking for a more minimalist aesthetic and small aerodynamic improvements. Virtually all of the major electric car manufacturers in China have models with retractable handles. However, these designs have proven to be dangerous in emergency situations. The trigger. A fatal accident in 2024 with Aito’s M7 SUV was one of the main triggers. Three people, including a two-year-old child, died after a crash. Videos shared on social media showed rescue teams breaking windows to try to save victims. As Aito explained in a statement, “the power and signal cables were immediately cut, preventing the handle controller from receiving the ejection signal.” The concern continued after two accidents with the Xiaomi SU7whose videos showed people struggling to open the vehicle doors to rescue those inside, without luck. What the regulations require. Just like they explain from CarNewsChina, the ‘GB 48001-2026’ standard states that each door must have a mechanical exterior handle located in specific areas of the door surface, with sufficient space for manual operation in emergencies such as deployment of restraint systems or battery problems. Electric handles must include independent mechanical mechanisms capable of withstanding forces of at least 500 N. On the other hand, inside, each side door must have at least one mechanical opening handle with graphic symbols of at least 100 mm × 70 mm and clearly visible instructions or pictographic symbols. Impact on the industry. The regulations will affect numerous models from manufacturers such as Xiaomi, BYD and others that have adopted designs similar to Tesla. Bill Russo, founder of Automobility, counted to FT that the standard will require changes to some models but not a complete redesign. “Many manufacturers already design alternative handle solutions for export markets with different regulations,” he explains. “With the new regulation, we will be ready to change any handle as the government wants,” Stella Li, executive vice president of BYD, told Bloomberg TV. Outside China. Perhaps the most notorious case is in the United States, where the issue of hidden handles is also being investigated. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened investigations on Tesla Model Y and Model 3 over concerns about the accessibility of their vehicles in emergencies. A particularly serious accident in California that caused the death of three teenagers in a Cybertruckwhere neither the occupants nor anyone close to the incident could open the doors through the hidden handles and reinforced glass, prompted Congress to take action and Tesla to announce a redesign of its handles. Cover image | Eyosias G In Xataka | Putting solar panels on an electric car sounds like a total win-win: the reality of extra autonomy is a bucket of cold water

Amazon is negotiating to invest 50 billion in OpenAI. The money would go in through the door and out through the window.

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is in talks with Sam Altman to close an investment of up to $50 billion in OpenAI. He has revealed it The Wall Street Journal and has confirmed it CNBC referring to his own sources. The deal could close in a matter of weeks as part of a record $100 billion funding round that would skyrocket OpenAI’s valuation to $830 billion. Today there are only fourteen listed companies in the world with a higher valuation. And none among the unlisted ones. Why is it important. Amazon would become the largest investor in the round, surpassing the 30 billion negotiated by another old acquaintance of technological mega-investments, SoftBank. And it does so just two months after OpenAI reached a valuation of half a billion dollars. Between the lines. Amazon has an important alliance with Anthropic from 2023that is, with the direct rival of OpenAI. AWS is its primary cloud provider, and in October inaugurated an 11 billion data center campus exclusively for Anthropic in Indiana. Betting at the same time on two companies that are so competitive with each other sounds like a paradox, but it is not so much if we think of Amazon as one of the sellers of picks and shovels in the AI ​​gold rush. They don’t care who finds the nuggets because they charge for the tools. The money trail. In addition to Amazon’s 50 billion, NVIDIA is negotiating to invest 20 billion and Microsoft “several billion more.” The three companies sell OpenAI just what it needs to exist: chips and computing capacity in data centers. Yes, but. This circular scheme is not going unnoticed and has raised more than one eyebrow: Amazon basically ensures itself many years of guaranteed income (at least as long as OpenAI does not go bankrupt, something no one can afford) while diversifying risks by also betting on Anthropic. Just in case. In detail. Although nothing has been leaked that could take it for granted, this investment could perfectly include clauses for OpenAI to adopt the AWS own chips. Or that Amazon sells ChatGPT Enterprise subscriptions to its enterprise customers. It will be through parallel business channels. OpenAI has insane costs with the dark clouds caused by the arrival of Gemini 3 and its great reception. So they are considering ways to sustain capital-devouring growth, such as the much-rumored IPO. The context. a few days ago, Amazon announced the layoff of 16,000 employees “office”, not warehouse or logistics. It is their second round of layoffs for them after 14,000 in October. In total, 30,000 casualties. Meanwhile, it has projected investments that already total 125 billion by 2026 in data centers alone. There is no other large technology company with such a high spending projection. It is a contradiction that has an overwhelming logic: if with AI you are going to be able to do more with fewer jobs, you choose to cut salaries to allocate them to investment. Go deeper. This movement is another nail in the… pattern: big technology companies no longer compete so much to develop the best AI but to control the infrastructure that supports it. Whoever has control of data centers and chips will have control of the business. Regardless of which chatbot succeeds. Featured image | Dima Solomin In Xataka | There was a time not too long ago when the future of supermarkets seemed like Amazon Go. Now Amazon Go is dead

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

Apple has found a way to win in the AI ​​era without having the best AI: be the door

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Apple has just done something that was unthinkable until recently: publicly admit that you don’t have the best AI. That after fifteen years of trying to make Siri work, with the advantage of hitting first, he gives up. That the brains of Apple Intelligence, including the new Siri, Google will put it. And yet, it has just gained momentum to preserve its dominant position for the next decade. A technological paradox. This isn’t a move Apple should be very proud of, but it has a nicer side: in the age of AI, being the best may not be so important. What matters is being the door. For half a century, the value in technology has been in innovation. IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook… they were all winning by creating something that no one else had. The reading with this step by Apple is that that era may be over: if AI models are updated every quarter and the difference between the best and the second is indistinguishable for 95% of users, what sense does it make to spend 50,000 kilos on research to go behind? It sounds sexier, especially to investors, to be the one who charges a toll for each interaction. And for that you don’t need the best model, you need the device that people have in their pockets. That’s the bet: Siri will continue to work, being owned by Apple and running on Apple hardware, but the piece that changes is the intelligence, the LLM. The most expensive piece to develop and the one that possibly provides the least differentiation when you have a billion iPhones. Apple does not give up something that matters to it at all, but rather outsources the part in which it cannot compete. Bittersweet for the company, bitter for its devotees, reasonable for its investors. The real deal is not in what Apple pays, but in what it gets. Google pays 20 billion a year for being the default search engine in Safari, and now sells (or delivers, the terms of the agreement have not been made public) the Apple Intelligence feed. But Apple not only charges, it also receive data on how 1 billion users interact with AI in mobile context: You know what they’re asking. When. How they formulate queries. What do they reject? What do they repeat? Google gets better distribution, and Apple gets tremendously valuable training. If having the best AI is no longer a competitive advantage, what is? OpenAI has the best product. Anthropic has the best technology. Google has the best infrastructure. But Apple has the iPhone. And in a world where AI is gone commoditizingin which one model is valid until the next one arrives three months later, the only moat What holds is the device. There is not so much need to innovate if you control access. You just need what comes through your door to be good enough. AND Gemini is fantastic. Therein lies the problem. In the age of AI, whoever controls the device can live off income by letting others innovate. What incentive does Apple have to really improve AI? As long as Gemini works well on iPhones, Apple won’t care if there are models that are 12% better. Their business is collecting the toll, not pushing the border. Innovation still exists and Google / OpenAI / Anthropic / xAI will continue to compete, but Now it is made by companies that do not capture all of its value while it is exploited by those who do not create it.. Welcome to digital rentism. Where the one who controls the door decides how much those who pass through it should improve. AND “Sufficient” always beats “exceptional” when the decider does not pay for the difference. Apple did the rationally right thing. And that, precisely, should scare us. In Xataka | Alphabet has just overtaken Apple in the ranking of the most valuable companies in the world. The reason is in AI Featured image | Rubaitul Azad, Dennis Brendel

LEGO was one of the last refuges of analog play. You have just opened the door to sensors, lights and sound in your bricks

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LEGO has flirted with electronics before, but its most stable promise was always something else: that the classic brick needed nothing to become anything. For decades, this principle maintained an almost intact refuge from the digitalization of children’s play, without screens or sensors, with imagination as the only driving force. That is why the step that the company has just taken is not minor. Introducing motion, light and sound detection into the brick itself strikes at the heart of the system. The announcement occurred at CES 2026, in Las Vegas, where LEGO officially presented its new SMART Play System. The company explained that it is a platform that introduces new electronic components into its construction system so that the creations react with lights and sounds in response to movement and interaction. It was not presented as a prototype, but as a product with a launch date and with a platform vocation. The system, by pieces. The SMART Play System is based on three elements that work together. The core is the so-called SMART Brick, a 2×4 brick that acts as a response center. Around it, the SMART Tags come into play, pieces that indicate to the brick what type of object or scenario it represents, and the SMART Minifigures, figures capable of activating different behaviors. LEGO insists that they are not independent accessories, but parts of the same system designed to fit with the rest of the traditional pieces. Sensors, lights and sound. Unlike previous approaches based on recognizable modules, here the electronics live within the brick itself. The SMART Brick integrates motion detection using an accelerometer, lights capable of reacting to the environment and a sound system that is activated according to physical interaction. There are no external screens or controls – it’s all down to how you turn, pan or tap the build. In its official description, LEGO also talks about a color recognition scanner and a game engine that generates reactions with lights and sounds. The CES demos show a birthday cake capable of recognizing when its candles go out and reacting with an audible celebration, as well as a helicopter that responds to movement with flight effects and changes behavior when turning or falling. In these cases, the interaction does not start from a button or a screen, but from a physical gesture. Release date. The commercial deployment of the system already has a first date set. The premiere will arrive in the United States in March, with a set based on Star Wars as the spearhead. The choice does not seem accidental: starting with such a recognizable license allows you to immediately show the possibilities of the system and see how it fits into real use before taking new steps. It’s not the first time. Although the SMART Play System introduces electronics to a place hitherto untouchable, LEGO has been exploring hybrid formulas for years. From robotics kits with sensors, like LEGO Mindstormsuntil augmented reality experiencesthe company has been testing how to combine physical construction and digital responses. The difference now is one of focus: the technology stops being a recognizable addition and becomes integrated into the language of the parts system itself. What some experts say. The announcement has not been received with unanimous enthusiasm. Josh Golin, CEO of Fairplay Group, warned the BBC that Smart Bricks “undermine what was once great about Legos” by shifting initiative from the child to the sensors. Along the same lines, Professor Andrew Manches, from the University of Edinburgh, recalled that the historical value of the brand has been in “the freedom to create, recreate and adapt simple blocks to create infinite stories.”, and warned that technology can condition how it is played if it is not designed carefully. Faced with these criticisms, LEGO defends that technology does not replace physical play, but rather expands it. Julia Goldin, head of product and marketing, explained to the British media that they do not see the digital world as a threat, but as an opportunity to “expand physical play and physical construction.” An important nuance. The SMART Play System does not mean that all LEGO sets will incorporate electronics from now on. For now, the company has presented a concrete proposal, with a first launch without announcing an immediate expansion to the rest of its catalog. What path this technology will have and in what lines it will end up appearing is something that is not yet defined. For now, this is a limited deployment that will serve to test how far this approach fits within the traditional game system. Images | LEGO In Xataka | What happened to Technicolor: evolution and death of the company that changed cinema and was overwhelmed by its ambition

Japan had dominated total car sales for more than 20 years, until China knocked on the door

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Projections for 2025 anticipate a historic change in the global automobile industry. And as they point out data According to Nikkei China, Chinese manufacturers expect to reach approximately 27 million vehicles sold globally, surpassing the almost 25 million expected from Japanese brands. It is the first time in more than two decades that Japan has lost absolute leadership in total automobile sales. Why is it important. For more than 20 years, Japanese manufacturers have dominated global vehicle sales figures. Toyota, Honda, Nissan and company have become a global reference in sales volume and efficiency over all these years. That China is going to overtake them reflects the mammoth change that is happening in the automobile industry, with the Asian giant conquering every possible corner at a speed that is difficult for the rest of the competitors to digest. In detail. According to data from Nikkei China based on information from manufacturers and figures from S&P Global Mobility until November 2025, China’s growth in this sector will be 17% year-on-year. The figures include both passenger and commercial vehicles, and include both domestic sales and exports. The Chinese domestic market represents around 70% of these total sales, where new energy vehicles (pure electric and plug-in hybrids) already account for almost 60% of passenger cars sold. Brands such as BYD and Geely have entered the global top 10 manufacturers by sales this year, while Chery has consolidated as one of the largest exporters in the country. Exports support growth. The domestic market in China is a jungle. Overcapacity and increasingly fierce price competition They are making a dent in the country, which is why Chinese manufacturers have intensified their international expansion. In Southeast Asia, traditionally dominated by Japanese brands, Chinese sales will grow by 49% to reach around 500,000 units, according to data from the report. In Europe, despite the tariffs imposed Regarding electric vehicles, it is expected that there will be sales of about 2.3 million vehicles, benefiting from the fact that many plug-in hybrids are exempt from additional taxes. Emerging markets also joinand the figures indicate that Africa will register 230,000 vehicles sold (32% more) and Latin America will reach 540,000 units (33% more). A turning point. Japan reached its peak sales in 2018 with almost 30 million units. In just three years, the eight million vehicle lead it had over China in 2022 has completely evaporated. Japanese brands have lost market share in key Asian markets and are struggling to adapt to the electric transition, where they have arrived late. Toyota maintains its strength in segments such as pickups and is committed to carbon-neutral combustion engines (via renewable fuels) and hybrid technology, but in China, the largest market in the world and capital of the electric car, that approach is costing them dearly. Not even Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi, which now they collaborate on software and electrical infrastructure, can withstand the storm coming from China, a country that has specialized above all in batteries, software and production speed. And now what. Japan has a great challenge ahead if it wants to recover ground in electrification and stop the erosion in markets where until recently they dominated strongly. China does not have a bed of roses either, since its challenge will be to maintain the pace in a context of growing protectionism, with the United States and Canada Tariffs of more than 100% already apply to Chinese electric companies, and those of the European Union of up to 45.3%. Things are going to be interesting. Cover image | BYD and Xiaomi In Xataka | Ferdinand Porsche devised the first car with an electric motor in each wheel. Today a Chinese manufacturer is going to make it possible

It is the back door through which China avoids US tariffs

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The Bac Luan 2 Bridge is the border that connects China to Vietnam. According to one Nikkei Asia researchit is also the back door through which China is sneaking its goods to continue selling in the US without being affected by tariffs. what’s happening. Chinese trucks form huge queues at the border town of Mong Cai every morning; They bring merchandise that will end up arriving in the United States, but first all traces of ‘Made in China’ are erased and the certificates of origin are changed so that it continues its journey as Vietnamese merchandise. The trick allows them to continue selling products while avoiding the high tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, always according to Nikkei. Why is it important. It highlights that the trade war is full of cracks. We have seen other similar “tricks” such as dropshipping of chips and also Chinese companies that have gained access to banned NVIDIA chips via Indonesia. What on paper seem like insurmountable walls are not so insurmountable in practice; Chinese companies respond by redesigning new supply chains to keep prices low and continue selling in the US. Re-export. It is the strategy that many Chinese companies are adopting, some even offer it as a service to their clients. Nikkei has had access to a document from a Chinese company in which they literally say “re-exporting through a third country is effective in avoiding high tariffs.” Another company urges its customers not to include Chinese characters on the packaging nor of course any reference to ‘Made in China’. Volume. Of course the process of changing the country of origin is done clandestinely and China evidently does not recognize this practice, but the volume of containers that have passed through the border in Mong Cai continues to increase. As of July 2025, this volume was 840,000 tons, 43% more than the same period last year. At the same time, exports between Vietnam and the US are also increasing. In addition, Nikkei has analyzed satellite images and found that the Mong Cai border has changed a lot recently; It is filling up with logistics centers and urbanizations with a strong presence of Chinese businesses. White and in bottle. Washington raises his eyebrow. Trump reached an agreement with Vietnam, but warned that would raise tariffs to 40% if it is proven that they are acting as a platform to divert exports. Vietnam is trying to calm the waters by pursuing these fraudulent export practices and in July of this year alone they uncovered 900 cases. The question is how many more are still sneaking in and not just in Vietnam, routes are also being diverted through Malaysia, Indonesia and others. Image | Daniel Fikri in Unsplash In Xataka | China already has an army of 5.8 million engineers. His new plan involves accelerating doctorates

Huawei is not the only one seeking to challenge Nvidia. There are four other “little dragons” knocking on the door

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“AI” may be one of the words of the year, but “funding round” is a concept that wouldn’t be far behind in the competition. The unicorn is a OpenAI that, if in 2024 it prepared for exceed 100 billion dollarstoday It is bigger than Coca-Cola or Samsung. He has achieved it thanks to money injected by third partiesand Chinese companies want to follow the same strategy as American companies with only one goal in mind: erase the United States from the equation. It’s the ‘Delete A’ plan. Biren. Talking about Chinese artificial intelligence is talking about deepseek and a few other models, but above all hardware companies like Huawei. Their GPUs are the ones that are helping for the Chinese AI field to flourish, and within those GPU companies is Shanghai Biren Technology. As we read in SCMPhas begun a financing round that seeks to raise more than 620 million dollars. Founded by Nvidia and Alibaba veterans, Biren has to his credit BR100one of China’s promises of raw performance to power the demanding data centers needed to train the artificial intelligence. And, unlike others that have opted for Chinese markets, Biren has chosen Hong Kong to attract international capital more easily. They are not the only ones in this race. Moore Threads. If Biren has Nvidia veterans on his team, Moore Threads is directly led by Zhang Jianzhongwho headed Nvidia in China. Perhaps, it is China’s most accurate response to Nvidia itself, and the reason is that it seeks replicate Jensen Huang’s business model combining 3D graphics, for a growing Chinese ecosystem of gamers, and GPUs for AI. To their credit they have the recent architecture Huaganga series that promises 50% more computing density compared to the company’s previous generation of chips, while being ten times more energy efficient. That efficiency is key to keeping AI operating costs at bay, something of vital importance for a China focusing on cheaper artificial intelligencebut functional as soon as possible. And saying that it is Nvidia’s great Chinese rival is not shooting with blank bullets. On the one hand, they are Huashan chips focused on massive clusters of up to 10,000 cards to train LLMs. On the other hand, the chips Lushan that feature hardware ray tracing for the video game market. New Moore Threads GPUs support major gaming APIs little dragons. When Moore Threads debuted on the Shanghai stock market earlier this month, Its shares skyrocketed 500% on the first day, demonstrating that the Chinese market wants to have “its Nvidia”. Biren and Moore Threads are two of the legs of the table. The other two are MetaX (formed by former members of AMD and focused on computing power) and Enflame (a company backed by Tencent and who develop AI systems in the Cloud for Tencent itself). Are known as the “four little dragons of AI” (although other startups are known the same), four of the most promising GPU startups in China that, together with Huawei that has taken giant steps with its AScend 910Dthey have only one objective. “Delete A“Delete the United States. In 2022, when it was still recent the veto of Huawei by the United States in it escalation of the trade war between the US and China, China’s State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission launched Document 79. It was an initiative to encourage the creation of technology that would turn its hardware companies into heavyweights in the global industry. However, there was something else. According to Wall Street Journalthis document has an unusual level of secrecy and an underlying idea: delete United States. Hence the ‘Delete A’ or ‘Delete America’. As? Making all state-owned companies operating in strategic sectors (such as finance, telecommunications, defense or energy) replace foreign software and hardware with domestic alternatives. When? Before of 2027. To do this, national options must be given, and hence the boost to Huawei and startups like these “little dragons.” Although it has also given headaches to companies that have not been able to access Nvidia chips such as Nvidia H20 because they must opt ​​for native solutions, less powerful or optimized in some aspects. Chinese sovereignty. And this development is not just a whim of China, but a necessity. Huawei, Enflame, Moore Threads and Biren, among many others, are on the Entity List of the US Department of Commerce. This prohibits trading with Western companies and access that foreign technology, although more recently the United States has loosened the rope, allowing Nvidia can sell its H200 chips to China… under certain conditions. It is a clear movement resulting from “if China is going to have the technology anyway, let’s take advantage while we can.” And it is because Huawei is working on a open alternative to Nvidia’s CUDA technologythe real ace up the company’s sleeve. Because it is no longer about technical muscle, but about the “language” that the AI ​​speaks. And when China manages to develop this “interpreter”, that is when they will have taken the real leap forward in the development of their tools and in the search for that sovereignty. Images | BirenMoore In Xataka | Big tech is starting to pawn grandma’s jewels for AI: it’s a worrying symptom

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