Xi Jinping arrives in Washington with the perception of being an equal. Or at least, with the perspective that every day he is a little closer to being one. After hosting in May, this time the Chinese leader is the guest of the American president, Donald Trump. Only four months have passed since the last time the two leaders met in Beijing, and although China is also struggling with a weakened economy, Xi has more room to maneuver: he is not beholden to his voters.

China agrees with the United States in expressing concern about the security risks that artificial intelligence (AI) can cause. The two world powers leading in AI development are aware of the danger that this powerful technology could escape human control. But the similarities end with the diagnosis; the response to the problem is divergent. China sees the risks as manageable and opts for state oversight, in contrast to the somewhat apocalyptic discourse issued by heads of major American companies who warn of a future with an out-of-control AI that could even endanger humanity.

Until a few years ago, it seemed that the most powerful and wealthy states were destined to dominate the battlefield. The great technological military advances of recent decades—"stealth" combat aircraft or satellite-guided cruise missiles—required vast resources and deployment capability. The United States, the main designer and manufacturer of these technologies, was in the lead. In recent years, however, we have seen how the two great technologies that have revolutionized the world of war, drones and artificial intelligence (AI), are within everyone's reach and often benefit the weaker party, whether in the fields of Ukraine or flying over the Strait of Hormuz.Both drones and AI are technologies that "democratize” war: they can be accessed by both rich and poor states, by both governments and non-state actors, from armed guerrilla groups to drug trafficking gangs. They are technologies that favor asymmetric power: a $35,000 Iranian drone can intercept a $4 million American missile in Hormuz; a criminal group can devise a cyberattack with a cheap subscription to an artificial intelligence, without having to hire a team of IT experts.In this context, China has positioned itself as one of the main suppliers of these "democratizing" technologies. The Chinese market produces between 70% and 90% of civilian drones worldwide: many, for example, end up dismantled and rebuilt as military drones in Ukraine, where 90% of the drones on the battlefield contain Chinese components. Furthermore, China is currently the main supplier of military drones, which it exports to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Morocco, or Ethiopia.On the other hand, China has positioned itself as the main market for open artificial intelligence models, with companies such as Deepseek, MiniMax, or Alibaba leading this market. Chinese open-weight models are free-licensed and can be freely modified, which makes them attractive both for an emerging company and for countries with few resources. It may also prove attractive to non-state military or criminal actors who wish to integrate AI into their military or cyberattack operations.Although it has become one of the major suppliers, the proliferation of these technologies is an issue that worries China, especially in the case of AI. Although Washington and Beijing are rivals and are trying to delay each other's technological development, neither has an interest in criminal groups beginning to strengthen thanks to these technologies. In fact, in a context where an agreement between the United States and China on how to govern AI is very difficult, stopping its proliferation in the criminal world could be one of the few points where they could find common interests.

"We are the first to open this path, we trust that this will serve the rest of the system." With these words, the rector of the University of Barcelona (UB), Joan Guàrdia, has announced one of the institution's major bets: taking the leap to China. The UB will be the first Catalan university to open a campus in China, and it will do so hand-in-hand with the Harbin Institute of Technology, a leading center in technology and engineering, considered one of the nine best universities in the country, according to the Chinese government.

All activities in life are subject to norms or rules. It is one of the characteristics of civilized societies. It is evident that advances, as happened back in the day with the internet, begin by breaking some ways of doing or working, but over time they become normalized, although there are always those who find a way to go down the path of illegality or know how to take advantage of the lack of rules. We must be careful to reduce this aspect as much as possible.

The alarm call surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) that the co-founder of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, launched on Saturday, calling for a slowdown in its development, has shaken the public debate on this issue. Until now, the European Union has been an exception in the world when it comes to regulating AI. While Europe, which currently does not have a strong industry in the sector, is placing limits on certain functions to prevent them from colliding with basic rights, the two world powers, the United States and China, have long been competing head-to-head to lead the development of this technology. And in the midst of this battle and after the warning from the big tech companies, China has redoubled its commitment in recent hours to control its development, calling for the creation of a "security barrier".

Xia Quan was a highly valued Chinese doctor. And for this reason, in 1411, when he died during the Ming dynasty, he was buried with some of the instruments he had used. It was a common practice in China, both to honor his skill and so that he could practice his craft in the afterlife.

During the summer, on the pool grass, while the morning coffee is steaming, during the evening of beer and fresh breeze, it is time to pick up those old and important books that demand a slow and deep reading. In my case, the chosen work has been the Daodejing and fragments of the Taoist Zhuangzi. They are writings that should be read like a poem: pausing at each word, while letting yourself be carried away by the spirit of the whole. Taoist mysticism is, at once, seductively distant and surprisingly applicable to the current world. It speaks to us of a China from thousands of years ago, where a materialistic, accelerated, utilitarian, hypocritical, and warlike world prevailed. And of how to get out of this harmful and absurd cycle. Authors like Tolstoy, Heidegger, Borges, or Le Guin have been profound readers of Taoist literature.

A Hong Kong court on Friday convicted activists Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung of inciting subversion. Both were part of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Movements of China, and had organized commemoration events for the Tiananmen Square massacre, during the repression of the pro-democracy protests in Beijing in 1989.

The founder and former president of the Chinese real estate giant Evergrande, Xu Jiayin, was sentenced this Thursday to life in prison by a Shenzhen court for financial fraud. The sentence, issued in the first instance, also orders the confiscation of all his assets and the deprivation of political rights for life. The conviction culminates the downfall of one of China's most powerful businessmen. Xu became the richest man in the country in 2017, when Forbes estimated his fortune at 42.5 billion dollars.

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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