From Paris to Hangzhou: The $9m Quest to Return China’s Lost Encyclopedia
For 140 years, part of the Yongle Encyclopedia sat unread in a Paris attic — a researcher’s keen eye and an entrepreneur’s deep pockets brought it back to China.
china
My Descent Into Mah-Jongg
The game seems to be everywhere, all at once.
China massively overbuilt high-speed rail, says leading economic geographer
Lu Dadao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences warns that oversized, underused HSR infrastructure has ignored basic economic logic, weakened public finances, and derailed regional planning.
China's AI Chip Landscape: A Complete Map of Who's Building What
From Huawei's Ascend to a wave of GPU startups — thirteen companies racing to replace Nvidia
App Life in China
“It’s really tough doing anything in China right now,” my friend told me. He’s a serial entrepreneur in Shanghai with a locked-in grin. We were waiting for our food in a Taiwanese restaurant in a lovingly-renovated toy factory in Shanghai. China was my home for 20 years, before…
The floodgates are open after another Chinese company lands a reusable rocket - Ars Technica
We will put the booster back into service for another flight as soon as possible."
China’s new AI bottleneck isn’t chips. It’s running out of Chinese-language training data.
Chinese accounts for just 1.3% of global web content. Beijing is now treating data as strategic infrastructure, with a 2028 plan to build national AI datasets.
America’s Oldest Private Detective Agency Takes on China’s Fake Products
Nearly all the world’s counterfeits come from China. Pinkerton is on the case.
Exclusive: Death of girl in Chinese gene-editing trial was never made public
Parents want accountability after study went disastrously wrong, Science and Retraction Watch investigation reveals
China built one eVTOL that transforms into an air-taxi, a firefighter, and a 5-ton hauler - Yanko Design
Car companies figured this out decades ago. You build one solid platform, then you stretch it, armor it, or strip it down depending on who is buying. A pickup and an SUV can share more bones than you would think. AutoFlight just applied the same logic to flying machines, and…
Red Rocks: Our destiny and China
Seventeen Chinese elements control the world.
The Great Chinese Oil Mystery
America’s greatest rival is single-handedly averting a global energy crisis. No one knows how the country is doing it—or why.
Who’s Afraid of Chinese Models?
Everyone is worried about Chinese models, but the frontier labs will be fine; we need to enable open U.S. alternatives.
A Chinese scientist built a sodium battery that charges in 4 minutes. It could break China’s 75% lithium dependence.
Lu Yaxiang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Physics, has spent a decade making sodium-ion batteries commercially viable. In April, he received China’s Youth May Fourth Medal, the country’s top honour for outstanding achievers under 35, for developing…
Up to 100 gigawatts: China unveils its high-power microwave weapon arsenal
Defence scientists say the technology could threaten low Earth orbit satellite networks such as Starlink at an extremely low cost.
A Deep Dive On China’s “LineShine” All-CPU, Exaflops-Class Supercomputer
It has been nine years since a Chinese HPC supercomputer was at the top of the High Performance Linp ...
This Is Why America Can’t Have Robots And Other Nice Things
Every robot and drone runs on actuators — and China makes 90% of them. Inside the American startups racing to win back the motors the U.S. forgot how to build.
Inside China’s Machine: DeepSeek V4
Two Open-Weight Models. Eight Chip Families. One Frontier Co-Engineered for Non-Nvidia Silicon. The Stack Was the Moat. Now It Has a Fork.
7,000 years of China stilted houses celebrate human ingenuity, offer insights
Elevated homes have been part of Chinese culture since earliest days, showcasing how intercultural interaction fuelled technology development.
The Secret History of Silk in Ancient China | TheCollector
Widely referred to as the queen of textiles in the ancient world, silk helped to transform ancient China in myriad ways.
Table for One: Why McDonald’s Solo Seats Are Viral in China
The design taps into a growing demand for low-pressure public spaces, as digital life reshapes how people interact.
China’s unfair labor model is going global
China's low rights model is no longer a domestic labor issue but a systemic challenge to global labor standards, supply chain governance and fair market competition.
China Has Added Forest the Size of Texas Since 1990 - Yale E360
China’s most infamous ghost town is now training ground for driverless trucks
Built for millions but left mostly empty, Ordos in Inner Mongolia is now a testbed where companies run fleets of robotrucks on its wide, quiet roads.
Why Frozen Food Gets an Icy Reception in China
Chinese diets are dictated by a culture of eating ingredients just hours after slaughtering or harvesting.
America Against China Against America
notes on shenzhen, shanghai, and more
Note: involution - that's a new one.
Zombie fabs plague China's chipmaking ambitions, failures burning tens of billions of dollars
28 fabs later
BYD Semiconductor Deep Dive
Unpacking the bear thesis on power semis and TSMC’s footnote in the story
How Chinese Characters Work: The Evolution of a Three-Millennia-Old Writing System
Contrary to somewhat popular belief, Chinese characters aren't just little pictures. In fact, most of them aren't pictures at all.
The Chinese Communist Party’s Ultimate Taboo
Fang Fang’s newly translated novel uncovers the brutal, buried history of land reform in China.
How a Chinese battery factory sparked a political meltdown in a small Michigan town
Gotion wanted to expand its battery production in Michigan, but local backlash, political tensions, and fears over its Chinese ties have stalled its U.S. expansion plans.
China’s EVs Are Smart, Green, and Cheap — Until They Aren’t
For millions of Chinese EV owners, early promises of affordability, convenience, and cutting-edge tech are now tested by aging batteries, replacement costs, and warranties.
Will the China Cycle Come for Airbus and Boeing?
Noah Smith, author of the economics Substack Noahpinion, often refers to a common trajectory in Chinese manufacturing as the “China Cycle”:
The U.S. has sanctioned 18 Chinese fabs, dozens remain in in white zone
China has big plans for semiconductor industry and they include self reliance.
China’s super-rich are eyeing the exit
But capital controls mean getting money out of the country is no easy task
Why China’s Small Merchants Are Checking Out of Mega Shopping Fests
Frustrated by high return rates and dwindling profits, small merchants are questioning the long-term viability of discount-driven shopping festivals. Some are even opting out and returning to more traditional business models.
Cotton traced to Xinjiang, China, present in over 800 products: report
More than 800 items, including apparel and footwear, had fibers from the contested region, despite U.S. bans over forced labor concerns.
The Rise and Fall of China’s Economic ‘Miracle’
China’s economy has reached a dead end. Getting out will mean more trade friction with the United States.
I Went To China And Drove A Dozen EVs. Western Automakers Are Cooked
A trip to the Beijing Auto Show reveals just how advanced China's EVs are. So what are the so-called "foreign" automakers doing about it?
Biden has brought the ban hammer down on US export of AI chips to China
Datacenter GPUs and some consumer cards now exceed performance limits
Intel preps export-friendly lower-power Gaudi 3 AI chips made for China
Beijing will be thrilled by this nerfed silicon
How Chinese Students Experience America
COVID, guns, anti-Asian violence, and diplomatic relations have complicated the ambitions of the some three hundred thousand college students who come to the U.S. each year.
‘Priority target’: The businessman at the top of Australia’s intelligence h
The suspect’s identification by intelligence agencies raises big questions for one of Australia’s neighbours and about China’s attempts to wield influence in the Pacific.
A Spark Extinguished
At the height of the Great Famine in 1960, a group of students exiled to the countryside launched a magazine that dared to tell the truth. Their convictions, and the love they bore for one another, were put to the test.
Want to stop livestreaming? That’ll be $42,000
Chinese livestream agencies promise influencers fame and money, but end up trapping them in multi-year contracts.
Scents of Self: Why Young Chinese are Obsessed with Fragrances
The fragrance industry in China is on the upswing as younger consumers embrace scents for self-expression and comfort.
‘Shawshank’ in China, as You’ve Never Seen It Before
A stage adaptation of the film featured an all-Western cast, was performed in Chinese and raised questions about translation, both linguistic and cultural.
China’s Investors Are Losing Faith in Its Markets and Economy
As their losses pile up, Chinese investors are losing confidence not only in the stock market but in the government’s ability to turn the economy around.
The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning
One man’s thought has become pivotal in China’s new political and cultural crackdowns. That man is not Xi Jinping.
FBI confirms it issued remote kill command to blow out Volt Typhoon's botne
Disinfects Cisco and Netgear routers to thwart Chinese critters