In 2019, a Chinese developer created a GitHub repository, the most important social network for programmers worldwide, called “996.ICU”. The codename denounced the exploitative labor conditions of Chinese tech companies: if you work 996, from 9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days a week, you’ll end up in the ICU. The repository went viral, with more and more Chinese programmers supporting it and creating blacklists of companies that applied the 996, such as Alibaba, Huawei, or Tencent. Chinese tech companies and the government were alerted, but the wave was difficult to stop: GitHub, a large open-source library, is the only major Western social network that is not censored in China. The 996 became a major national debate. Two years later, this spontaneous labor movement managed to get the Chinese government and courts to declare these working conditions illegal.In recent years, there has been much talk about open Chinese AI models. The most famous was Deepseek, but Qwen, Manus, or Kimi are also well-known in the programming community. Unlike the closed and private AI of American tech companies, Chinese companies have opted for open, free, and highly modifiable models. This has made them popular among startups or developing countries. Right now, open Chinese AI models are the only ones that can rival American ones. They have become one of China's most cutting-edge technological sectors, and a great source of national pride.China's technological success is often explained through state subsidies or long-term plans of the Communist Party. But, as analyst Kevin Xu explains, the Chinese AI models that are now so successful have not emerged from government initiatives, but from a spontaneous movement from below: the social mass of Chinese open-source programmers who launched the campaign against 996 is the same one that has created the AI models that fascinate the world.

In 1950, Mao Zedong sent Chinese troops to fight alongside their North Korean "brothers" against the United States for control of the Korean Peninsula. Mao had just established the People's Republic, and the ideological alliance between Asian socialist movements was strong. The Chinese communist troops, worn down by the war against the Japanese and the civil war, were willing to come to the aid of their North Korean ally, despite the People's Republic's precarious and weak situation.

A few weeks ago, China's quintessential polemicist, Ai Weiwei, returned to Beijing after years in exile. Speaking to Western newspapers about his visit, he said he felt more welcome in authoritarian China than in democratic Germany. On the streets of the Chinese capital, locals struck up friendly, informal conversations with him. In Germany, by contrast, hardly anyone invited him home for dinner during the ten years he lived there.

In another twist that seems to take us back to international Darwinism From the 19th century, Trump is increasingly pushing to annex Greenland. The president's arguments have been unsubtle: he wants to force Denmark to sell him the territory, and his first threat is to raise tariffs. But beyond Trump, there is a constellation of pro-Trump voices that have been presenting the annexation of Greenland as a battle in defense of an oppressed minority (the Inuit) against their colonial oppressor (Denmark). Historically true facts, such as the forced contraception campaign against Inuit women or the Danish assimilation policies of decades past, are used to create an image of Denmark as a brutal colonizer. The United States and President Trump, under this rhetoric, would be the saviors the Inuit people need.

A few days ago, strolling through the streets of Istanbul, I was surprised by how familiar Turkey felt. The Ottoman mosques had shapes and details that would have fit perfectly in Italy; the flavors evoked a Mediterranean world; the old men in berets drinking on street corners could have been transplanted to Athens or Lisbon. The OttomansMarc David Baer argues that the Ottomans were clearly a European empire, participating in both milestones like the Renaissance and maritime exploration, and horrors like colonization and ethnic cleansing. The Ottoman Empire gave birth to the cafés that Steiner would later say represent Europe; it also created a model of religious tolerance—though not equality—at a time when Jews were being expelled and massacres between Catholics and Protestants were taking place in Europe. The narrative of a civilized Christian West and a barbaric Muslim East concealed far more commonalities than differences.

At twenty-one, just after finishing my journalism degree, I boarded a flight to Beijing. It was the winter of 2015. I knew almost nothing about China and could only speak a few words of Mandarin. I was going to work for a news agency. Both my future and China were big unknowns.

In 2019, Washington discovered that a bureaucrat was more effective than a missile in bringing down an empire. That year, the Trump administration unearthed an Entity List that had been created in 1997 to combat the production of weapons of mass destruction, and began adding Chinese technology companies like Huawei. Almost no one had heard of this Entity List. Its impact was brutal. Getting on this blacklist meant... de facto, that American companies were prohibited from selling their products and technologies to you. Not only that: non-American companies were also prohibited from selling you products with even a minimal amount of American components, under threat of sanctions. For most Chinese technology companies, which relied heavily on American components, being added to the Entity List was the equivalent of an economic nuclear bomb.

The official documents published by the Chinese government They tend to be repetitive and bureaucratic. But reading them in detail, taking notes, can lead us to discover gems that help us better understand China's worldview. A few days ago, I was reading the document. Made in China 2025, the most important technology strategy that China has released in recent decades. Published in 2015, the document identified the cutting-edge technological sectors in which China should invest to catch up with the West. But what caught my attention was a sentence at the beginning of the strategy that explained the "foundation" by which modern powers have become "global powers." Curiously, that foundation was not technology or militaries, nor alliances or ideology. For the Party, the basis for becoming a superpower is "manufacturing."

In 2016, when I was working as a correspondent in China, several of us journalists were invited to visit the facilities of DJI, the world's largest drone company, expanding its business to create drones for delivery, agriculture, and film productions.

Every day, teenager Ma Yun would go to the tourist hotel district of Hangzhou to see if he could find any foreigners who spoke English. It was the 1980s, and China was opening up to the world. Ma Yun offered to work as a guide in exchange for practicing the language. Despite his drive, his studies were not going well; he failed the university entrance exam several times. He was rejected for multiple jobs. The market was booming in China, and competition was fierce. During the 1990s, he worked as an English teacher. These were the early years of the internet in China. He saw an opportunity and, with several friends, founded an online business in his apartment. Years later, the young Chinese man would become known as Jack Ma, and his company, Alibaba, would attract worldwide attention because it was the first Chinese platform at the level of the big tech from Silicon Valley.

Last week, Donald Trump traveled to the Middle East and made headlines. The American president met with the new Syrian president Ahmed al Sharaa, after years of sanctions in Damascus. In a turn against Washington hawks, Trump also said he was open to negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. will have an equally important impact on future geopolitics.

In 1601, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci was invited to the Forbidden City in Beijing. He was difficult to distinguish from the Chinese: he dressed in Confucian style, had a thorough command of the Chinese language, and had learned the rituals and customs of the imperial court. His goal of camouflaging himself among the learned elites was to convert China to Catholicism. But he failed. The Chinese were frightened by the figure of Christ crucified and tortured, which they saw as a kind of black magic; the Virgin Mary, similar to the Buddhist goddess Guan Yin, appealed to them much more. Nor did the Vatican approve of the syncretic and adaptive path advocated by Ricci.

Deep in the oceans, critical infrastructure silently sustains modern digital life. Undersea cables are the backbone through which we can send messages and information between continents: 95% of the world's data passes through them. When they fail, the consequences can be catastrophic: in March 2024, several African countries will be affected by the tsunami. they stayed Without internet due to a problem with a submarine cable. In recent months, damaged cables have appeared in geopolitical hot spots like the Baltic Sea and the Taiwan Strait. China recently unveiled a device for cutting cables at shallow depths, which can be used for both repairs and sabotage.

More than 35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the winds of change are blowing again in Eastern Europe. The bloc of post-communist countries has historically been Europe's staunchest defender of an ironclad alliance between the continent and the United States. However, in recent weeks we have witnessed unprecedented scenes. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has publicly clashed with Elon Musk over the war in Ukraine. Estonian High Representative Kaja Kallas of the EU said, after the fight between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, that "the free world needs a new leader" to replace Washington. Until a few weeks ago, no one would have imagined an Eastern European leader so openly criticizing the United States.

When the global financial crisis broke out, a young German economist was preparing her doctoral thesis while living in China. She worked at the Bank of China and had become fluent in Mandarin. A few years later, upon returning to Germany, she joined the AfD. Now Alice Weidel is the candidate of the extreme party right in the upcoming German elections.