🎧China's solar imports aren't welcome everywhere, but that's not the case in Africa. Listen to the latest episode of The Wire China Podcast: pod.link/1873741567

"From the second half of 2000, the flights had grown more and more frequent and closer to China’s territorial waters..."- The Foreign Minister, Tang Jiaxuan. The Wire China revisits the 2001 Hainan spy plane crisis through the eyes of eyewitnesses: buff.ly/uj31O8S

🦞<-Why is this lobster one of the hottest symbols in China right now? OpenClaw, an AI agent represented by a red lobster, is all the rage in China's tech world and beyond. But the backlash has already begun.

"The blood wasn’t going to go thin on my watch. If I did get home, I would have to face everybody the rest of my life, and I’m not going to come home a coward." - The U.S. Pilot, Shane Osborn. The Wire China revisits the 2001 Hainan spy plane crisis through the eyes of eyewitnesses: buff.ly/uj31O8S

"I think it’s possible to hold a paradoxical view that China will continue to challenge the U.S. on the technological frontier, while also experiencing a sustained slowdown in productivity growth." Read this week's Q&A with Neil Shearing: buff.ly/yQbAHqS

"It was April 1, April Fool’s Day … When I first heard the radio announcement [about the incident], I thought it was a joke. Unfortunately, the incident was real." - The Academic, Shen Dingli The Wire China revisits the 2001 Hainan spy plane crisis through the eyes of eyewitnesses: buff.ly/uj31O8S

Meet XPeng, the EV company with a futuristic bent. Aside from flying cars and robotaxis, it is betting an expansion into physical AI will drive profits. Get the big picture:

Are you a writer looking for a new opportunity covering the rise of China's economy? Look no further. The Wire China is hiring for a staff writer:

"A couple of months previously, we began to see this pattern, particularly from this naval air squadron down on Hainan....they were coming dangerously close." - The Admiral, Dennis Blair. The Wire China revisits the 2001 Hainan spy plane crisis through the eyes of eyewitnesses: buff.ly/uj31O8S

This week’s cover story: On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Hainan spy plane crisis, The Wire China talks with participants and reviews first-person accounts of the incident that tested the U.S.-China relationship at the dawn of a new century. www.thewirechina.com/2026/03/29/e...

Supermarkets across Toronto sell products from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a paramilitary group that is sanctioned by the U.S., UK, European Union and Canada. @eliotchen.bsky.social examines Canadian commitments to banning forced labor imports:

🎧 25 years ago, a Chinese and a U.S. plane collided off of China's southern coast, leaving one Chinese pilot missing and 24 Americans stranded on the island of Hainan. In this special episode, we kick off our two-part oral history series on the Hainan spy plane crisis: buff.ly/9WY1Lfp

Subscribe to The Wire China wherever you get your news: buff.ly/pXIAgcC

Op-Ed: China's accusations are projection. Japan is rearming in response to a demonstrable and escalating threat. Dennis Kwok, Sam Goodman, and Andrew Yeh write for this week’s issue of The Wire China:

"There were vastly more Communists, as a proportion of the overall population, in almost any country in Europe than there were in China throughout the 1930s." Frank Dikötter discusses his new book, Red Dawn Over China, with @jmchatwin.bsky.social for The Wire China:

🎧 Is the U.S. or China leading the AI industry? The answer is not so simple. In this week's podcast, we discuss our U.S.-China AI scorecard and rank AI dominance across five categories: pod.link/1873741567

"Without diplomacy, rapid deterioration is much more likely." Read our Q&A with longtime diplomat Sarah Beran: buff.ly/1Xs8Vri

Energy. Chips. The AI industry involves much more than simply looking at the best chatbot or LLM. In this week's cover story, @rachelcheung.bsky.social lays out the state of the race in our U.S.-China AI scorecard:

Do you want to write for @thewirechina.bsky.social? We're hiring for a new staff writer. Learn more: www.thewirechina.com/open-positio...

🗞️ Free to read: European democracies, threatened by Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland, are trying to break China's grip on rare earth elements essential to rebuild their defenses.

A lot has happened since 'Liberation Day' last year. On the surface, the Trump tariffs on China have achieved one of their apparent goals, but failed to achieve other long-lasting changes. Get the big picture:

The United States has now unwound the supply chains that were easy to unwind, and the ones that are left are the ones that are really, really hard to break away from. by Savannah Billman

Chinese EV makers are open to entering North America. But will they be able to build as quickly and cheaply as they can in China? @eliotchen.bsky.social breaks down China's EV expansion plans for this week’s issue of The Wire China:

🎧 Is the U.S. or China leading the AI industry? The answer is not so simple. In this week's podcast, we discuss our U.S.-China AI scorecard and rank AI dominance across five categories: pod.link/1873741567

Where are the American rare earth experts? "You can check out the cemeteries [and] assisted care homes," one veteran metallurgist says. The Wire China investigates U.S. efforts to break China's rare earths dominance:

China and Iran look close on paper: In 2021, the two signed a partnership agreement with China pledging an estimated $400 billion in investments. But previous ventures haven't always gone well for Chinese companies. Get the big picture:

The U.S. has apparently eased its efforts to block imports of goods made using the forced labor of China’s Uyghur population. Noah Berman analyzes current enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act:

In this week's Q&A, a senior Biden-era science and technology official talks to The Wire China about what’s at stake for U.S. tech leadership. buff.ly/zx1Tmiy

Two Chinese cousins with mirror-image lives now faced an identical choice: leave their science studies in the U.S. and return to China, or remain in America as the world descended into WWII. They each chose differently. Read this week's op-ed by Zilan Qian:

This week’s cover story: can a start-up in North Carolina break China’s grip on rare earth magnets? Noah Berman reports on Vulcan Elements' race to onshore a crucial supply chain:

In small-town North Carolina, a new factory wants to make magnets without sourcing any materials from China. In our latest podcast episode, Noah Berman and Tom Mitchell discuss how the company, Vulcan Elements, is trying to get the U.S. back in the rare earths race. pod.link/1873741567

Six of the current top eleven video-generating models globally were developed by Chinese companies, including ByteDance's viral Seedance 2.0:

Free to read: "The 15th Five Year Plan may trumpet China’s progress in science and technology. But that isn’t the yardstick against which either China’s ability to cope with such a challenging external environment, or its capacity for change, should be judged."

This week’s cover story: How does the "Donroe Doctrine" stand up against China's more patient and better-funded approach in Latin America? Brent Crane examines two different approaches to relations with the region in this week's issue:

"Trade and financial flows are fragmenting along geopolitical lines." @andypeaps.bsky.social interviews Eswar Prasad on why he is so concerned about current trends in global economics and politics: buff.ly/BWbq9u7

Op-Ed: "The era when climate cooperation was siloed away from economic competition in relations with China is ending." @neilthomas123.bsky.social writes for this week's issue of The Wire China:

China wants to be seen a peaceful world power...but one with a powerful military armed with nuclear weapons. Step back and look at the big picture driving China's nuclear arms buildup this week:

Your weekend listen: What's behind the curtain of ByteDance's viral AI video generator, Seedance 2.0? @rachelcheung.bsky.social, @eliotchen.bsky.social, and Savannah Billman examine new developments in China's AI space in episode six of our podcast: pod.link/1873741567

Read this week's Q&A with Jake Sullivan on what he was trying to achieve in dealing with Beijing, where he thinks Trump 2.0 has taken a wrong turn on China and why the president concedes too much to Xi and Putin. buff.ly/xTnc5G6

Iran sends 100 percent of its oil to China, bringing in more than $40 billion annually. Get the big picture on China's ties to Iran, and how the sanctioned oil trade has shaped their relationship:

Last spring, U.S. agents discovered pallets of advanced chips sitting in a New Jersey warehouse. They were labeled with a fake company name, but were actually Nvidia chips — disguised and ready to be sent to China. @eliotchen.bsky.social reports on a global chip-smuggling ring:

Op-Ed: Some Chinese companies manage to survive — and even thrive — despite the brutal price competition...But this is only a small share of Chinese corporates. @aligarciaherrero.bsky.social writes on why so many Chinese companies aren't making money:

Cambricon, often called "China's Nvidia," reported its first full-year profit since going public in 2020. Learn more about the company:

This week's cover story: China aims to be a major space power by 2030, with ambitious plans for a lunar base, space exploration and space resource utilization. Paddy Stephens writes on China's fragmented commercial rocket industry this week:

"Germany — as the most affected country in the Sino-European relationship — needs to go further, by offering a separate and totally new win-win offensive strategy." Read Jörg Wuttke's op-ed in this week's issue of The Wire China: buff.ly/FUG7slI

Smugglers in Texas, New Jersey, and New York. A mysterious Hong Kong client. And a plot to illegally sell Nvidia AI chips to China. Episode five maps out a chip smuggling network with @eliotchen.bsky.social and @andypeaps.bsky.social : pod.link/1873741567/

🎧️ Don't miss our latest podcast drop every Friday morning EST! Subscribe on Substack to get the episode (plus transcript) delivered right to your inbox:

From the Archives: "Since the 1970s, the U.S. and China had nurtured close agricultural collaboration to mutual gain. Those ties are all but threadbare now."

Even though China is highly online, with over 90 percent of the population internet users, the country’s top AI models have fewer regular users compared to U.S. models. Get the big picture on China's AI adoption lag:

Who is behind the popular chatbot Kimi? Unlike some of its Chinese start-up peers that have developed LLMs for specific industries or tasks, Moonshot AI has maintained a generalist approach: