A zero-emission sustainable city, with large green spaces, advanced internet connections, and an industrial fabric dedicated to innovation, is the future dream of Chinese President Xi Jinping. And the dream is becoming a reality about a hundred kilometers southwest of Beijing, and the name of the new city is Xiong'an. The project began in 2017, but after some difficulties and delays, this year Xi Jinping has given it a new impetus. The objective, according to the propaganda of the Chinese administration, is that by 2035 the metropolis will be fully completed and become the model of a “socialist modern city”.

It doesn't matter which corner of Africa you are in. Whether you are in a small village on the outskirts of Bobo-Dioulasso, in Burkina Faso, in a provincial capital in Guinea, or in a large city like Lagos, Nigeria, you will always find a recurring figure: a product, a project, or a major infrastructure made in China. The Asian giant presents itself to Africans with a very effective narrative: during the 19th century, they too suffered the effects of foreign domination, and now they have become a world power by following their own path, ignoring the criticism of the countries that had previously dominated them. If Africans unite with China, they will be able to follow the same path towards a new global order, breaking the monopoly of Western power. On the ground, this translates into the construction of roads, hospitals, schools, and airports, structural investments to guarantee the mobility and future of the continent.Not everything is idyllic. Across the continent, African workers from Chinese companies denounce cases of labor exploitation, and in the most serious cases they have been accused of acting as new colonizers. Resource extraction has generated pollution of rivers and forests, scarcity of fish and an increase in food prices, while part of the available supply is packaged and sold in China. Trade relations with China continue to have the same contradictions that globalization generates everywhere.While the trade war between the United States and China occupies most of the headlines, another reality has remained hidden: 2025 was the year in which Africa's trade deficit with China broke its historical record. 100 billion dollars, 61% more than the previous year. For now, Africa mainly sells unprocessed raw materials, and China sells manufactured products and machinery. It is a trade pattern that does not solve the structural problems of the African continent, and both African capitals and Beijing are aware of this.The revolution of value chains

“Nowadays, countries like Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Ghana, and Guinea are dismantling this system: prohibiting the export of raw materials and enforcing local processing standards,” wrote Kenyan journalist Jevans Nyabiage this week in the South China Morning Post. The importance of so-called critical minerals has generated a small negotiation margin for Africans. Aware of the scarcity of these resources, African countries attract Chinese investments to process their minerals. Jumping from selling unprocessed lithium to the first phase of refining means that, per kilogram, Zimbabwe can earn between 3 and 5 times more. Chinese investors respond positively to these requests: it is a way to reduce costs in their own value chain.The purchase of Chinese technology linked to renewable energies has also skyrocketed in the last four years. Energy is the essential condition for achieving industrialization. The joint package of energy and technological transfer is, for Africans, a loophole through which to access industrialization. The last year and a half has confirmed the differences, from the African perspective, between the hegemonic blocs of the global economy. The United States is increasing tariffs and reducing development aid; Europe is also reducing this aid – with fewer alarmist headlines – and prioritizing migration control. China has been facilitating the entry of African students into its universities for years, and has wide-open doors for its products: since May of this year, 53 African countries can sell tariff-free to China. Despite the contradictions, in many parts of Africa they see China as a reliable partner that will allow them to change their living conditions, and some countries are willing to try.

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"We are proud of you"; "don't try so hard", are affectionate messages that many young people want to hear and find as a substitute in the mouths of virtual parents in internet videos. It is quite a contrast to the cold demands of real Chinese families. 

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A few weeks ago, while having tea in a Berlin café, a German sinologist was telling me with concern about the decline of her country's economy. Germany's industry, which years ago it was one of the most powerful in the world, now it's in deep water to resist Chinese competition. The strongest shock is in the automotive sector, the main economic engine of Germany – and also of Europe. China has risen as the world leader in electric vehicles, while the German combustion engine is increasingly a museum piece. Volkswagen has announced it will cut 100,000 jobs worldwide. Each month are lost 10,000 industrial jobs in Germany, a good part of them in the Mittelstand, the country's network of medium and small exporting companies. In part, this industrial decline in Germany is caused by China. Chinese industrial companies now manufacture the complex, expensive, and advanced products that were previously only manufactured by Western industry. The Chinese government has provided subsidies, devalued the yuan, and extracted technological transfers from European companies investing in China. But it has also been strongly innovative and foresighted at a technological level. Faced with this, the German government wants the European Union to impose more restrictions and conditions on Chinese products and companies arriving in the EU, in order to protect its industrial fabric.Stopping China, however, will not make the German economy flourish again. The main problem with Berlin's economic model is internal. Germany does not have a Google, an Nvidia, or a Huawei: the vast majority of its current large companies were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For decades, there has been a complacent attitude among the German political class and population, believing that these large companies would eternally drive the economy and innovation. But the result has been the opposite: more focused on paying dividends to shareholders than on investing in R&D, large German companies have lost key races like the electric car. The German economy is poorly digitized and highly bureaucratized, an environment where new technology companies have difficulty finding their place. Berlin demands restrictions

Germany should have reacted sooner. Until recently, German companies lobbied to keep the Chinese market open for their exports; now, a good part of them are calling for restrictions on Beijing. Berlin is now calling for measures to be taken against Chinese industrial power, but when this affected the economies of Southern Europe in the 2000s, the German response was that they had to adapt to globalization.The German position may seem opportunistic to us. But the consequences of the European Union's leading economy entering a crisis would be very real and detrimental to all of Europe. The German-dominated automotive sector continues to be the continent's main industrial engine. 10% of Spanish exports go to the German market. An economic downturn would have political consequences. Germany's far-right has grown in the country's most depressed areas, and a process of deindustrialization would give it even more strength. If the AfD were to gain power, this would generate a wave that would radiate to the rest of the European Union states. Like it or not, our future is closely tied to Germany's.

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The largest Chinese chip manufacturer, Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), debuted this Monday on the Shanghai stock exchange, marking the second-largest IPO in the Asian giant's history. At the close of the session, the company's shares had appreciated by 466%, almost multiplying its initial quotation by six. Early on Monday, the technology company's shares had a unit price of 8.66 yuan (1.12 euros), while at the end of the day their value rose to 49.5 yuan (6.41 euros).

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The race for gene therapy and the desperation of some parents have ended up costing the life of a six-year-old girl in China. The minor, named Mei – a pseudonym to protect the family's privacy – died at Xinhua Hospital in Shanghai in March 2025 due to thrombotic microangiopathy – that is, the formation of deadly microscopic clots – seven days after receiving an injection of a virus at the base of her spine. The parents had opted for this therapy after learning that their daughter had an alteration in the CHD3 gene, which caused her a syndrome compatible with autism and a consequent delay in physical and cognitive development.

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The European Commission has announced a fine of 550 million euros to the Chinese e-commerce platform AliExpress for the sale of illegal products online to European customers. The Community executive has concluded in an investigation that the Asian company does not comply with the Community directive on digital rights, because it does not "diligently" assess or mitigate the risks related to the products offered and purchasable on its website. And for this reason, Brussels urges it to adopt measures and threatens it with new additional economic sanctions if it disobeys the demands of the Community authorities.

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A white car approached me, under the summer rain of Shanghai. While holding the umbrella with one hand, with the other I took out my phone. "Unlock the taxi door," a notification told me. I pressed accept and entered the vehicle. In front of me, I had a screen where a cartoon character told me the steps to follow: confirm your identity, put on your seatbelt. The taxi started smoothly. Under the heavy rain, the vehicle took turns, calmly overtaking other cars. I looked at the front. The driver's seat was empty. But the steering wheel turned as if guided by the most graceful of drivers. I had gotten into one of the autonomous taxis that the company Pony.ai had deployed in Shanghai.

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A large fire in a shoe factory in the city of Jinjiang, in southeastern China, has left at least 28 dead, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua. The country's emergency teams have been deployed around the building to try to extinguish the flames and rescue several people who were trapped inside and on the roof of the building.

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China's decision to restrict the export of rare earths, permanent magnets, and other critical minerals to Japan has turned an industrial dependency known for years into a top-tier problem for the Japanese economy. These materials are indispensable for manufacturing semiconductors, electronic components, batteries, electric motors, or defense systems, so any interruption in their supply threatens some of the most competitive sectors of Japanese industry.

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In 1964, China discovered three weapons with which to shake the world. In the Lop Nor desert, in Xinjiang, the Chinese government successfully detonated an atomic bomb for the first time. In the printing houses of Beijing, the Party published the first edition of Mao's Little Red Book. A nuclear weapon and an ideological weapon. That year, however, Chinese geologists also discovered the most potent economic weapon that China currently possesses. Beneath the arid rocks of the Inner Mongolia desert lay the world's largest deposit of rare earths.

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Pedro Sánchez is increasingly alone in the European Union with the migratory challenge. A few days after the entry into force of the migration reform and the agreement to create centers outside the Community territory for deporting immigrants, several European leaders have reproached the Spanish Prime Minister for his stance on migration and the massive regularization of newcomers at the European Council meeting this Friday in Brussels, according to various diplomatic sources.

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Kim Jong-un offered a warm and massive welcome to Xi Jinping upon his arrival in Pyongyang this Monday. The Chinese president is on a two-day state visit to North Korea, in an attempt to revitalize relations between the two countries and strengthen his influence over the North Korean leader, after years of distancing and Kim Jong-un’s rapprochement with Vladimir Putin.

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The European pharmaceutical sector is losing competitiveness compared to the US and China. This was warned by the president of AstraZeneca in Spain, Laura Colón, during a round table within the framework of the Annual Meeting of the Cercle d'Economia, in Barcelona. This situation, influenced by issues such as excessive regulation and bureaucracy, is combined with the lengthening of life expectancy which, in large part, is due to new drugs. "We must ensure that governments realize the value of drugs and that they are not just a cost," she warned.

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At least 90 people died this Friday in a gas explosion that occurred this Friday at the Liushenyu mine, in Shanxi province, in central China. The accident occurred at 7:29 p.m. local time this Friday (12:29 p.m. in Catalonia) at this mining operation, where 247 people were working at the time of the incident and where rescue efforts continue, according to the official Chinese agency Xinhua.

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The meeting between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Beijing shows the strength of their alliance and how the two leaders share the vision of a new world order. Putin's official trip to the Chinese capital results in a string of mutual compliments, some agreements, and declarations of friendship.

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China boasts of being the center of world diplomacy and accumulates visits from top leaders. After bidding farewell to Donald Trump four days ago, tonight it will welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin. Xi Jinping has had practically no time to put away the red carpet reserved for distinguished visitors as he is already receiving his main ally, who will be in Beijing for two days.

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Kind words, promises of economic agreements and warnings about the risk of a conflict over Taiwan summarize the first face-to-face meeting between the leaders of the two world powers. Xi Jinping and Donald Trump have striven to show détente and cordiality in their first meeting in Beijing after almost a decade. From gestures they moved to words, and while Trump assured that Xi Jinping is a great leader, the Chinese president defended that both countries should be partners and not rivals.

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Donald Trump has landed in Beijing accompanied by a large business entourage and with the message that he wants China to open its large market to American companies. He was received at the foot of the runway by Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, and a small welcome ceremony with 300 children waving flags and a military band. Trump arrived in Beijing at 8 p.m. local time on Wednesday. The official agenda begins on Thursday and includes a reception ceremony, a bilateral meeting with Xi Jinping, a state banquet, and a visit to the Temple of Heaven, one of the emblematic monuments of the capital. On Friday, the two leaders will meet again for a working breakfast before concluding the visit.

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Xi Jinping rolls out the red carpet to receive Donald Trump this week on a state visit marked by the Iran crisis and overshadowed by trade tensions and rivalry between the two countries. The leaders of the world's two largest powers will hold talks in Beijing with low expectations of reaching significant agreements, but with the need to stabilize relations. In addition to the energy crisis caused by the war against Iran, the two leaders have other fronts open, such as technological competition, trade barriers, or the sale of arms to Taiwan.

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