China weathered Trump's tariffs - but the Iran war is taking a toll
"It's a sombre gathering in the backstreets of one of China's biggest manufacturing hubs, where workers are smoking under a tree in front of storefronts advertising temporary factory jobs.
[...] They seem desperate, struggling to earn enough to send money home, as they cope with the massive shifts in Chinese manufacturing, from cheap, mass-produced goods to automated advanced tech.
[...] In Foshan, in the southern industrial province of Guangdong, the workers' best opportunity is plastered in bright red lettering in front of them: a few weeks of moulding plastic, or screwing together parts of a mobile phone, for 18 to 20 yuan an hour, which amounts to just a few dollars or pounds."
--- That's what reality looks like for most Chinese.
"While the war will strengthen Beijing's ongoing push towards self-reliance, China is not really winning in this scenario"
--- Winning, losing, I don't know. The war is definitely not good for China, but you will see lot of articles claiming that China is winning or China is losing. Most of it is bullshit.
US imposes sanctions on a China-based oil refinery and 40 shippers over Iranian oil
"President Donald Trump’s administration is placing economic sanctions on a major China-based oil refinery and roughly 40 shipping companies and tankers involved in transporting Iranian oil.
[...] Included in Friday’s sanctions is Hengli Petrochemical’s facility in the port city of Dalian, which has a processing capacity of roughly 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day, making it one of the biggest independent refineries in China.
[...] The advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran said in February 2025 that Hengli is one of dozens of Chinese purchasers of Iranian oil."
--- One of dozens. So the sanctions won't have much of an effect, anyway.
White House memo claims mass AI theft by Chinese firms
"the administration had new information indicating "foreign entities, principally based in China" were exploiting American firms.
Through a process called "distilling", such firms are essentially copying AI technology developed by US companies
A representative of China's US embassy in Washington DC said its development was "the result of its own dedication and effort as well as international cooperation"
[...] Distillation campaigns are carried out by firms that usually operate many thousands of individual accounts for a given AI chatbot or tool, allowing them to appear as normal users.
Those accounts then undertake more coordinated attempts to "jailbreak" or otherwise expose information about AI models that is not supposed to be made public, which is saved and applied to their own AI model building and training."
--- Not really news.
"A representative of China's US embassy in Washington DC said its development was "the result of its own dedication and effort as well as international cooperation""
"The memo did not detail any specific plans for action against foreign entities found to be undertaking distillation of US AI technology."
--- Stupid. Because:
"Earlier this year, Anthropic described distillation "attacks" by three AI laboratories, DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax, saying it had found them all to be working to copy Anthropic models through distillation campaigns.OpenAI has also accused DeepSeek of copying its technology."
--- We know who should be sanctioned.
s.a.: US State Dept orders global warning about alleged China AI thefts by DeepSeek, others
UK Biobank health data listed for sale in China, government confirms
"UK Biobank said it was investigating the incident and thanked the UK and Chinese government, as well as Alibaba, for support and cooperation."
--- Morons. As if the Chinese government would care. And Alibaba only does it to not endanger its business.
""Can the minister confirm that our generosity actually will not be abused by those Chinese researchers and that UK Biobank should preclude and exclude them for the future, in order to ensure that this state of theft comes with sanctions?"
Murray criticised the "tenor" of Tice's question, saying it did not fit "with the seriousness of this particular issue"."
--- Moron. The most serious problem is that so many people in UK's government and academia still trust Chinese researchers.
""There are thousands of Chinese researchers working every day on data from the UK Biobank and other datasets from across the world. They have been doing that since 2012 safely and securely.""
The Staged Death of China’s Military-Civil Fusion
"Unfortunately, as with other contentious policies in the past, the case of MCF shows that China has responded to criticism with concealment, not change."
--- The usual MO in China.
"The U.S. reaction to MCF was loud and persistent, and it threatened to impose real costs on Chinese companies, research organizations, and individuals. By the end of the first Trump term, however, the concept had stopped appearing in authoritative party-state documents. Xi Jinping no longer cited MCF in his public speeches, including in settings where he used the term before, such as CCP Party Congress work reports. The year 2019 seems to have been the last time he mentioned MCF in public.
MCF disappeared from other state documents. The annual government work report delivered at the parliamentary sessions in March each year, which had consistently contained MCF content going back to 2014, now said nothing. The 2019 work report was the last one in which the term appeared.
China’s 2019 national defense white paper – the most recent iteration of this once-biannual document – makes only passing reference to the “strategic requirements” of MCF in a section on the PLA Strategic Support Force, and the official English version of the paper mistranslates the term to “aligning civil and military endeavors.”
And now, with the March release of the 15th Five Year Plan outline, without a single reference to MCF, it might be reasonably concluded that China has abandoned its MCF strategy."
--- Just because the CCP doesn't talk about something, doesn't mean it is not using it or thinking about it or applying it.
"In sum, instead of abandoning MCF, as suggested by the country’s most authoritative documents, the Chinese party-state merely brought the whole initiative into the shadows. The cost of transparency had simply grown too high.To some, the tale of MCF is hardly worth telling. Of course, the Chinese party-state lies and conceals!"
--- It is worth telling, because there are still so many people out there in the West who trust official Chinese announcements and numbers.
"While potentially useful, “authoritative” documents have limited utility in understanding China’s intentions. As the case of MCF shows, the party-state has no scruples about excising sensitive content that risks harming China’s image or provoking a negative policy response from foreign states. That MCF – a “national strategy” personally championed by Xi Jinping – could be removed wholesale from public documents suggests that nothing is too sacred. This fact should cast doubt on the empirical value of almost every authoritative party-state document, especially in the sensitive realm of national defense/security, because one simply cannot know what content has been omitted."
--- Yep.
China to curb US investment in tech companies
"Chinese regulators, including the National Development and Reform Commission, have recently instructed several private technology firms to reject U.S. investment in funding rounds unless explicitly approved
[...] AI startups Moonshot AI and StepFun were among the companies that received the guidance, the report said. Regulators have also decided on similar restrictions for TikTok owner ByteDance and do not want the company to approve secondary share sales to U.S. investors without government approval, it added.
The measures are aimed at preventing U.S. investors from gaining stakes in sensitive technologies linked to China's national security"
--- Good. Anyway, the US should prohibit US companies from investing in Chinese companies, like Moonshot, that actually steal US IP.
Missing scientists mystery goes global: 20 researchers dead or missing in US and China as FBI probes suspicious deaths
"The cases span Massachusetts Institute of Technology labs, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Caltech, and the Kansas City National Security Campus, dating to 2022.
Monica Reza, a 60-year-old JPL engineer who patented a nickel super-alloy for reusable rockets, vanished while hiking in June 2025. Retired Air Force Major General William Neil McCasland, 68, walked out of his Albuquerque home on 27 February 2026 and has not been seen since.
[...] Newsweek has separately documented at least nine Chinese scientists who have died in unexplained circumstances over the past three years, with ages from 26 to 68."
--- Meh. Most likely all of these were just coincidence. But a few of the Chinese scientists dying were a bit suspicious. Doesn't mean, though, that the US Secret Services had a hand in there.
China bans dual-use item exports to seven European entities over Taiwan arms sales
China removes countermeasures against two EU banks
--- China Uncensored featured the usual weekend news variety again:
--- China Uncensored: "I Don’t Think China Will Surpass the US…"
--- DW News: Why China is surging its nuclear forces
--- Military Aviation History: China’s Air Force: Almost Ready For The Taiwan Scenario?
Einseitige Entkopplung: So macht China die Welt von sich abhängig
"Zwei Drittel der globalen Maisreserven sollen in China lagern, außerdem rund die Hälfte aller Weizenvorräte und ein Drittel aller Sojabestände. Sie dürften ausreichen, um die Bevölkerung mehr als ein Jahr zu versorgen"
--- Zweifelhaft.
"China setzt auf eine asymmetrische Verflechtung. Das ist seit Langem kein Geheimnis mehr, sondern ein hochpolitischer Plan. Schon 2020 formulierte Xi Jinping diese Strategie als „duale Zirkulation“. In der Theoriezeitschrift der Kommunistischen Partei, „Qiushi“, forderte der Staats- und Parteichef offen, China müsse „die internationale Führungsposition unserer Vorzeigebranchen festigen und ausbauen“, gleichzeitig „die Abhängigkeit der internationalen Industriekette von China erhöhen und so eine starke Gegenkraft und Abschreckungsfähigkeit gegen künstliche Lieferunterbrechungen durch ausländische Partner aufbauen“."
--- Das ist schon lange bekannt, aber scheint europäischen Firmen und vielen europäischen Politikern immer noch ziemlich egal zu sein.
"Schätzungen zufolge sind ein Viertel bis ein Drittel chinesischer Firmen nicht profitabel oder machen Verluste. Westliche Firmen konkurrieren damit nicht nur mit einzelnen Unternehmen, sagen manche, sondern mit der chinesischen Staatskasse."
--- So sieht's aus.
"Die Kommunistische Partei sieht sich in einem offenen Kampf gegen westliche Werte und Ordnungsvorstellungen. Unter Xi Jinping wurde 2012 das wegweisende interne „Dokument neun“ verbreitet, in dem der Machtapparat vor der „Gefahr“ westlicher Werte wie Demokratie, Pressefreiheit, Unabhängigkeit der Justiz und „universellen Werten“ wie Menschenrechten warnt. In diesen Fragen befinde man sich in einem „akuten Kampf im ideologischen Bereich“"
--- Das sollte eigentlich auch schon lange bekannt sein. Und dennoch gibt es in der westlichen Politik immer noch sehr viele, vor allen Dingen linke Politiker, die China doch eher freundlich gegenüberstehen.
USA werfen China „KI-Diebstahl“ im großen Stil vor
"Als Destillation wird im Bereich des maschinellen Lernens eine Technik bezeichnet, bei der das Gelernte von einem größeren auf ein kleineres Modell übertragen wird. Oft setzen Unternehmen selbst Destillation ein, um kleinere und günstigere Versionen ihrer eigenen Modelle zu erstellen.
Im Februar hatte das US-KI-Unternehmen Anthropic den drei chinesischen Unternehmen Deepseek, Moonshot AI und Minimax vorgeworfen, unrechtmäßig Wissen aus seinem Chatbot Claude destilliert zu haben. Anthropic bezeichnete dies als Diebstahl geistigen Eigentums.
Ebenfalls im Februar beschuldigte OpenAI, Entwickler des KI-Chatbots ChatGPT, in einem Brief an US-Abgeordnete Deepseek, Destillationstechniken auf Kosten von OpenAI und anderer US-Firmen einzusetzen."
--- Auch hier gilt, das Verhalten Chinas ist schon lange bekannt, wird aber in vielen westlichen Staaten geflissentlich ignoriert.
An der Seite Irans - aber nicht zu offensichtlich
China verhängt Exportbeschränkungen gegen sieben europäische Firmen
China blockiert Zufahrt im Südchinesischen Meer
