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From Pastureland to China’s AI Powerhouse: How Ulanqab Is Turning Green Electricity into Computing Power

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From Pastureland to China’s AI Powerhouse: How Ulanqab Is Turning Green Electricity into Computing Power

As artificial intelligence enters the era of large-scale models, computing power is emerging as a new form of industrial infrastructure, alongside land, capital and energy. The geography of computing is changing with it. The most important question is no longer simply where data centers can be built, but where abundant electricity, computing capacity, networks, data and industrial demand can converge.

In this transformation, Ulanqab, a city in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, offers an increasingly important case study.

Once better known for agriculture and animal husbandry, Ulanqab has spent more than a decade building a digital economy from the ground up. By 2026, more than 100 data-center projects had been established across the city, with operational computing capacity reaching 172,000 PetaFLOPS, up 112 percent year on year. More than 95 percent of that capacity is intelligent computing. In the first half of 2026, fixed-asset investment in the computing industry rose 38.1 percent, while electricity consumption surged 89.52 percent.

These numbers point to something larger than a boom in data centers. Ulanqab is attempting to turn its natural resources into a new industrial production system: wind and sunlight into electricity, electricity into computing power, and computing power into the digital products of the AI economy.

The foundation of that transformation is energy. The rise of generative AI has fundamentally changed the economics of data centers. Traditional facilities require reliable electricity, but large AI training and inference clusters demand far greater power density. They also place new requirements on cooling, grid stability, storage and power management. As AI computing expands, electricity is no longer merely an operating cost. It is becoming a strategic advantage.

Ulanqab happens to have an unusual combination of conditions. Its renewable-energy capacity has surpassed 20 million kilowatts, while green electricity accounts for roughly 67 percent of the city’s power supply. Its cool climate reduces cooling requirements, and its proximity to Beijing and the wider Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region gives it a relatively strong network position for serving eastern China.

More importantly, Ulanqab is experimenting with a deeper integration of electricity and computing. Projects combining renewable generation, grids, energy storage and computing loads are designed to allow power consumption to respond more intelligently to fluctuations in wind and solar generation. The goal is not simply to supply data centers with green electricity, but to make computing infrastructure part of the energy system itself.

The significance of this shift is easy to underestimate. In the traditional data-center model, electricity is an input purchased by the operator. In the emerging AI infrastructure model, the ability to generate, transmit, store and intelligently manage electricity may become part of the computing platform itself.

Ulanqab is therefore trying to build an economic chain that extends well beyond the server rack. Companies including Huawei, Alibaba, ByteDance, Baidu, China Mobile-linked operators and major data-center companies such as GDS and VNET have established a presence in the region. The resulting ecosystem increasingly covers data centers, intelligent computing, cloud services, data processing, AI applications, equipment manufacturing and operations.

Data annotation provides an example of how seemingly peripheral activities can become part of this ecosystem. Raw information must be cleaned, classified and labeled before it can be used effectively to train AI models. Companies such as Wisdom Reach have built data-processing operations in Ulanqab, turning large volumes of unstructured information into machine-readable training material while creating new employment opportunities locally.

The more consequential question, however, is what happens after computing power has been built.

For years, the value of a data center was measured largely in racks, servers, power capacity and computing performance. The rise of large language models introduces another unit of economic activity: the token.

Tokens are the basic units through which many AI models process language and other forms of information. Training and running increasingly powerful models can therefore generate enormous volumes of token-based computation. Ulanqab’s proposed “Token Capital” strategy is an attempt to move beyond the traditional business of renting computing capacity and toward capturing more of the value created by that computing power.

Its development strategy can be summarized as a progression from “Grassland Cloud Valley” to “Intelligent Computing City” and ultimately to “Token Capital.” The first stage established the data-center infrastructure; the second built large-scale intelligent computing capacity; the third seeks to connect that capacity with AI models, applications and digital value creation. In this sense, the idea of a “Token Capital” is less about creating a new physical commodity than about repositioning the city within the AI value chain.

The August 2026 launch of Envision Galaxy Base illustrates how ambitious that transition has become. The facility covers roughly 120,000 square meters and is designed for parallel deployment of up to one million AI accelerators, with computing capacity measured at the million-PetaFLOPS scale. Its broader campus is planned to exceed 2 gigawatts.

The project represents a shift from conventional data-center construction toward what could be described as an AI computing factory: a highly concentrated combination of chips, power, cooling, networking and renewable energy designed specifically for large-scale model training and inference.

Yet the most important story is not the record-setting scale of any individual project. It is the emergence of an integrated regional model. At the top of the chain are wind and solar resources. In the middle are power systems, data centers and intelligent-computing clusters. Further downstream are data processing, cloud services, AI applications, equipment manufacturing, maintenance and recycling. Universities and vocational institutions are also expanding programs in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and data-center operations to supply the workforce required by the new industry.

The result is an ecosystem in which computing is no longer an isolated infrastructure business. It is becoming an industrial platform. But scale alone will not determine whether Ulanqab succeeds.

The city still faces significant challenges: grid capacity, network connectivity, domestic chip supply, cooling technology, investment returns, utilization rates and the availability of highly skilled AI talent. Announced capacity and planned investment are not the same as operational capacity, and the conversion of computing infrastructure into sustainable economic value will depend ultimately on real demand from AI companies and applications.

This distinction will become increasingly important as AI infrastructure investment accelerates. Building more computing capacity is relatively straightforward when capital and land are available. Making every unit of electricity, every accelerator and every unit of computing time generate sufficient economic value is much harder.

For Ulanqab, the next stage is therefore not simply about building larger data centers or accumulating more PetaFLOPS. It is about increasing the value density of every kilowatt-hour, every chip and every token produced. That is what makes Ulanqab significant beyond Inner Mongolia.

For much of the industrial era, factories followed markets, ports and population centers. Digital infrastructure is beginning to reverse that logic. As AI systems become increasingly energy-intensive, some parts of the digital economy may increasingly follow electricity, land, climate and network infrastructure instead.

On the grasslands of northern China, wind turns turbines into electricity. Electricity powers chips. Chips train models. Models generate tokens. Those models are then applied to autonomous driving, computer vision, industrial design, scientific research and thousands of other applications.

A new industrial chain is taking shape. Whether Ulanqab ultimately becomes a genuine “Token Capital” will depend not on how many data centers it builds, but on whether it can convert its natural-resource advantage into technological capability, industrial depth and sustained value creation.

That is the larger question now unfolding on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, and one that may offer an early glimpse of how the geography of the global AI economy is beginning to change.

Source: stdaily, nmgwx, wulanchabu gov, xinhuanet, tencent

China’s Imports and Exports Matter to the Future of World Trade

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China’s Imports and Exports Matter to the Future of World Trade

The scale of world trade is changing, and China is increasingly important not only as a supplier to global markets, but also as one of the world’s most consequential sources of demand. 

At a time when global growth remains under pressure, trade barriers are rising and supply chains are being reconfigured, China’s foreign trade offers a revealing measure of how the global economy is evolving. The key question is no longer simply how much China sells to the world, but also how much China is buying from it.

In the first half of 2026, China’s total goods trade surpassed $ 3.73 trillion for the first time, increasing 16.9 percent year on year. Imports reached $ 1.6 trillion, up 22.1 percent, significantly faster than exports. The scale of imports exceeded $ 1.49 trillion in the first half of a year for the first time in China’s history. 

Behind that figure lies a development with implications well beyond China itself: while many economies continue to struggle with weak demand, the Chinese market is absorbing an enormous volume of goods, raw materials, machinery, equipment and consumer products from around the world.

For many years, discussions of China’s role in global trade focused primarily on its exports. China became synonymous with manufacturing goods for international markets, from household appliances and furniture to electronics and industrial equipment. 

But that picture is increasingly incomplete. China has remained the world’s second-largest import market for 17 consecutive years, and “selling to China” has become an increasingly important internationalization strategy for companies of very different sizes and origins.

The attraction begins with scale. China’s enormous consumer base and comprehensive industrial system generate demand across a broad range of sectors, from agricultural products and energy to industrial components, advanced equipment and consumer goods. Yet market size alone does not explain the growing interest. More significant is the transformation of Chinese demand itself.

As Chinese manufacturing moves toward greater technological sophistication, digitalization and lower-carbon production, demand is expanding for high-precision machine tools, industrial robots, sensors, industrial software, automated systems and energy-saving technologies. German companies offer a useful illustration. 

For some manufacturers, exporting a machine to China is no longer a one-off transaction. A machine may be accompanied by software, technical adaptation, maintenance, training, energy-efficiency solutions and long-term services. A single piece of equipment can therefore become the starting point for a much broader commercial relationship.

A similar transformation is taking place in consumer markets. British folding-bicycle maker Brompton has found China to be its largest market, accounting for about 30 percent of global sales in its 2025-26 financial year. Thai conglomerate CP Group has expanded its offerings in China from fresh durian to frozen durian, durian ice cream and other processed products. Ethiopian coffee exporters are increasing production and processing capacity as demand from China grows.

These cases point to a broader phenomenon. The significance of the Chinese market is not simply that particular foreign products sell well there. Rather, the scale and diversity of Chinese demand are encouraging overseas companies to adapt products, develop new channels and upgrade their production capabilities.

Imports are therefore not merely a matter of consumption. They are also part of China’s industrial transformation. Machinery, industrial components and advanced technologies can support domestic upgrading, while agricultural products, consumer goods and services respond to changing household demand. In the first seven months of 2026, China’s imports of mechanical and electrical products reached $791.6 billion, an increase of 29.7 percent. Such growth links China’s import demand directly to technological upgrading and industrial investment.

The export side of China’s trade is changing just as rapidly. The country’s traditional export strengths in clothing, furniture and household appliances have increasingly been joined by electric vehicles, lithium batteries, solar products, industrial robots, artificial-intelligence equipment and other high-value-added products. 

In the first half of 2026, China’s industrial robot exports rose 18.6 percent year on year, reaching markets in 141 countries and regions. This shift matters because it reflects a change in the basis of China’s competitiveness. Scale and cost remain important, but they are increasingly complemented by technological capability, dense industrial supply chains and the ability to respond quickly to changing global demand. 

China’s export model is becoming less about simply producing more goods and more about producing increasingly sophisticated goods within an integrated manufacturing ecosystem.

Behind both imports and exports lies another critical asset: infrastructure. Around 95 percent of China’s international trade in goods is transported by sea, making major ports such as Ningbo-Zhoushan, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Qingdao essential nodes in global supply chains. At the same time, the China-Europe Railway Express has opened an increasingly important land corridor across Eurasia. More than 130,000 train services have been operated cumulatively, carrying goods across 53 major categories to hundreds of cities in Europe.

The diversification of China’s trading partners is equally significant. ASEAN has become China’s largest trading partner, while trade with countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative accounts for more than half of China’s total foreign trade. Trade with Europe, Latin America and Africa has also continued to expand. On the import side, China recorded growth in imports from more than 150 countries and regions during the first half of 2026.

For developing economies, the significance of this expanding market can be particularly substantial. China’s decision to eliminate tariffs on imports from 53 African countries with which it maintains diplomatic relations is one example of how trade policy can influence market access. For Ethiopian coffee producers, for instance, growing demand from China is encouraging investment not only in exports but also in processing, packaging and supply networks. The result is potentially more than higher export volumes: it can create incentives for producers to move further up the value chain.

This is why China’s trade figures should not be viewed simply as an indicator of the country’s own economic performance. Exports represent China’s supply to the world, while imports represent China’s demand for the world. The same country can therefore function simultaneously as a major global supplier and a major global customer.

That dual role has become increasingly important at a time when the world economy is struggling with weak demand and greater uncertainty. Global trade ultimately depends on both sides of the equation: production and consumption, supply and demand, exporters and importers. 

A large and increasingly open Chinese market can provide demand for products from Germany, Britain, Thailand, Ethiopia and many other economies, while Chinese manufacturers continue to supply goods to consumers and businesses around the world.

The deeper story behind China’s more than 25 trillion yuan of trade is therefore not simply that China is exporting more. 

It is that the country is becoming more deeply embedded in both sides of global commerce. The question for the coming years will not only be how much China can sell abroad, but how much of the world’s products, technologies and services the Chinese market can absorb, and how effectively China’s manufacturing capabilities can continue to supply global demand.

In that sense, China’s trade is moving beyond the old distinction between an export powerhouse and an import market. It is becoming part of a more interconnected system in which markets, supply chains, technology and consumption increasingly reinforce one another. 

The significance of China’s trade scale lies precisely in this two-way relationship: China is not simply a place from which the world buys. It is also a market to which the world increasingly sells, and through which global businesses are finding new ways to grow.

Source: yidaiyilu, bjd, cgtn, pangea logistics network

India’s IT Export Advantage Is Being Disrupted by AI

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India’s IT Export Advantage Is Being Disrupted by AI

Since the beginning of 2025, India’s vaunted IT industry has suffered two shocks. The first came from DeepSeek, the Chinese open-source AI model whose rapid rise forced Indian policymakers and technology executives to confront an uncomfortable question: why has a country celebrated for decades as the world’s software and IT-services hub failed to produce a comparable frontier AI model? 

The second came from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT-services company, which announced plans to cut roughly 12,000 jobs, or about 2 percent of its workforce. The two developments point to a deeper structural problem. Artificial intelligence is not merely disrupting India’s IT industry; it is beginning to undermine the comparative advantage on which much of that industry was built.

Since the 1990s, India has pursued a distinctive path of economic development by moving directly into services rather than following the traditional sequence from agriculture to manufacturing and then to advanced services. Its IT industry became the flagship of this strategy. 

India combined a large pool of English-speaking engineers with relatively low labor costs and established itself as a major provider of software development, testing, maintenance, business-process outsourcing and consulting services to Western corporations. Companies such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro grew into global giants, while IT and related services became a crucial source of export earnings and foreign exchange.

This success was real, but it contained a fundamental weakness: India became exceptionally good at delivering technology without becoming equally good at creating the technologies themselves.

For three decades, much of the Indian IT industry operated on a model of labor arbitrage. Western companies supplied the capital, intellectual property and technological platforms; Indian firms supplied large numbers of engineers at lower cost. The business model rewarded scale, efficiency and reliability more than technological risk-taking. India therefore accumulated a huge software workforce without developing an equally powerful ecosystem of globally dominant software products, operating systems, platforms or foundational technologies.

This helps explain the paradox at the heart of India’s IT success. The country has produced millions of programmers and a remarkable number of senior executives in Silicon Valley, yet very few Indian companies have created globally dominant consumer or enterprise technology platforms. 

The problem is not simply a shortage of talent. India has plenty of talented engineers. The deeper problem lies in how talent, capital and corporate incentives have been organized. The most ambitious researchers and engineers often migrate to the United States or Europe, while domestic firms have generally found it more profitable to scale service delivery than to finance long, uncertain and expensive R&D programs.

Artificial intelligence changes this equation. For years, India’s principal advantage was the availability of relatively inexpensive human intelligence. Generative AI is now turning many forms of cognitive labor into software. Basic coding, testing, documentation, customer support, data processing and routine consulting can increasingly be performed by AI systems at a fraction of the previous cost. The issue, therefore, is not simply whether AI will eliminate IT jobs. It is whether AI will reduce the economic value of the very labor arbitrage that made Indian IT services globally competitive.

This is why the significance of TCS’s layoffs goes beyond the number of jobs involved. The important question is whether the traditional relationship between headcount and revenue is beginning to break down. In the old model, expanding a contract often meant hiring more programmers. In the emerging model, the same work may be performed by a smaller number of highly skilled employees working with increasingly capable AI systems. 

The competitive advantage shifts from the ability to mobilize large quantities of relatively inexpensive labor to the ability to combine advanced technology with scarce high-end talent.

DeepSeek exposed a second vulnerability. India is deeply integrated into the global technology economy, but integration is not the same as technological sovereignty. 

Frontier AI requires much more than programmers. It requires computing power, advanced chips, data, research institutions, venture capital, foundational software and companies capable of turning scientific breakthroughs into scalable products. India has important pieces of this ecosystem, but they have not yet been integrated into a globally competitive AI industry.

There is, however, no reason to conclude that India is destined to lose. Its enormous engineering workforce remains a major asset. The rapid expansion of global capability centers in India also shows that multinational corporations increasingly trust the country with higher-value functions such as R&D, engineering, finance and advanced business services. 

The Indian government’s push to expand domestic computing capacity and develop indigenous AI models suggests that policymakers understand the scale of the challenge.

The decisive question is whether India can convert its traditional advantage in human capital into technological capabilities of its own. 

If it can, AI could become a productivity multiplier and help India move from being a supplier of digital labor to a creator of digital products. If it cannot, the same workforce that once powered India’s rise could become vulnerable to technological substitution.

The risks extend beyond the technology sector. India’s IT and business-services exports are important sources of foreign exchange and high-skilled employment, while the industry supports a large urban middle class. A simultaneous decline in demand for labor-intensive outsourcing and a tightening of access to major Western markets could therefore put pressure on employment, external balances and urban incomes.

India is not being “shorted” by a particular country or a particular AI company. It is being challenged by a change in the economics of technology itself. For thirty years, India prospered by providing the people needed to operate the global digital economy. The next phase of the digital economy may reward those who build the machines that replace part of that labor.

The central question for India is therefore no longer how many programmers it can supply to the world, but how many technologies, platforms and companies it can build for the world. That transition will determine whether AI becomes the next engine of India’s rise, or the force that exposes the limits of its previous development model.

Source: jjdkzz, ifeng, cnyes, xpert

From “Made in China” to “Made by China Around the World”

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From “Made in China” to “Made by China Around the World”

For much of the past decade, Southeast Asia has been the obvious destination whenever Chinese manufacturers talk about going global. Vietnam has absorbed electronics production, Thailand has attracted automotive supply chains, Malaysia has moved further into semiconductors, and Indonesia has leveraged its nickel resources to build a position in electric vehicles and batteries.

But if the horizon is extended from the next two or three years to the next decade, a more important question is emerging: once Southeast Asia becomes the consensus destination, where does Chinese manufacturing go next?

The answer may not be another country offering cheaper labor. The global manufacturing map is being reshaped by forces far more complicated than production costs. Companies are increasingly deciding where to manufacture based on proximity to customers, tariffs, supply-chain resilience, energy, critical minerals, industrial policy and geopolitical risk.

Globalization is not disappearing. Its logic is changing. UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2026 shows that global foreign direct investment rose 6% in 2025 to around $1.6 trillion, but investment became increasingly concentrated in strategic sectors and destinations. Artificial-intelligence infrastructure, semiconductors, critical minerals and energy-transition industries accounted for a growing share of new investment. The share of global greenfield investment value going into strategic sectors rose from 16% in 2020 to 44% in 2025.

The implication for Chinese manufacturers is profound. The old model was relatively simple: produce in China, export to the world. The emerging model is more distributed: keep R&D, core technologies, critical components and much of the supply chain in China, while establishing production, sales, logistics, service and eventually selected R&D capabilities closer to customers overseas.

China already has the scale to build such a network. Chinese outbound direct investment reached about $192 billion in 2024, while Chinese investors had established more than 52,000 overseas enterprises across 190 countries and regions by the end of that year. In 2025, China’s non-financial outbound direct investment reached roughly $146 billion, with investment in Africa rising 41% and investment in Europe increasing 20.9%.

This means Chinese manufacturing’s next chapter cannot be reduced to a “Southeast Asia story”. It is becoming a global network story. India is perhaps the clearest example of why.

Its importance lies not simply in its population, but in the combination of a huge consumer market, relatively rapid economic growth and increasing manufacturing localization. The World Bank expects India’s economy to grow by around 6.6% in 2026 and 7.2% in 2027. For automakers, electronics companies, appliance manufacturers and industrial-equipment producers, the question is increasingly not whether Indian consumers will buy their products, but whether a market of this scale can be served indefinitely from factories elsewhere.

That makes India different from a conventional “China plus one” destination. Companies are not necessarily going there to reproduce Chinese manufacturing at lower cost. They are going there to build manufacturing capacity for one of the world’s largest future markets.

The opportunity, however, comes with complexity. Infrastructure, supplier depth, land, regulation and differences among Indian states can all affect the economics of an investment. India’s value is therefore enormous, but it is not synonymous with simplicity. Mexico represents a completely different logic.

Its economic growth may be modest, but foreign investment continues to flow in because geography itself has become an industrial asset. Mexico attracted a record $40.87 billion in foreign direct investment in 2025. Its proximity to the United States and integration with North American supply chains make it particularly attractive to automotive, appliance and industrial-equipment companies.

The value of manufacturing in Mexico is therefore not simply lower labor costs. It is shorter supply chains and closer access to customers. But Mexico also demonstrates why geopolitics is becoming part of the manufacturing cost structure. Tariffs, rules of origin and changing trade policies toward Chinese imports can affect the economics of a factory as much as wages or logistics. Building in Mexico no longer automatically guarantees easier access to the US market.

Europe presents another model. Hungary, with fewer than 10 million people, would not normally appear on a list of major consumer markets. Yet it has become an important destination for Chinese investment in Europe, particularly in electric vehicles and batteries. Chinese companies are attracted not by Hungary’s domestic market alone, but by its position inside Europe’s industrial system.

The lesson is important: a country’s value is not necessarily determined by how many consumers it has. It can also depend on how many consumers, suppliers and industrial clusters it connects.

Brazil offers yet another model. Unlike Mexico, whose strategic value is closely tied to North America, Brazil is valuable primarily because of its own market. With more than 200 million people, substantial agricultural and mineral resources and a significant industrial base, Brazil can support long-term localization in sectors ranging from electric vehicles and agricultural machinery to power equipment and consumer goods.

For Chinese companies, Brazil is therefore less a production bridge to another market than a market that must be served locally. That comes with familiar challenges: taxation, bureaucracy, logistics and currency volatility. But companies willing to build for the long term may find a very different proposition from the low-cost manufacturing model of Southeast Asia.

The Middle East adds another dimension. Saudi Arabia is not attractive because of cheap labor. Its proposition is capital, energy, industrial policy and strategic geography. Under Vision 2030, the kingdom is attempting to convert its energy and financial resources into new manufacturing and logistics capabilities. For Chinese companies, opportunities increasingly extend beyond construction and exports into electric vehicles, batteries, power equipment, logistics, data infrastructure and industrial machinery.

Egypt, meanwhile, occupies a different strategic position. Its large population, Suez Canal and location between Europe, Africa and the Middle East give it the potential to become a regional manufacturing hub. Chinese companies are already investing in industrial zones around the canal, suggesting that production in Egypt may increasingly serve not just Egyptian consumers but markets across three regions. Then there is Africa, whose importance is difficult to capture through today’s GDP figures alone.

The continent’s greatest strategic asset may be its future population and consumption growth. Chinese investment in Africa is already accelerating, with non-financial direct investment rising 41% in 2025. The next stage may extend beyond infrastructure projects into industrial parks, local processing, manufacturing and eventually consumer markets.

Africa, however, is not one market. Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Ethiopia represent very different combinations of infrastructure, labor, resources, institutions and market access. The opportunity is long term, but so are the risks.

Taken together, these markets reveal a fundamental shift. Chinese manufacturers are not searching for the “next Vietnam”. They are building different kinds of nodes for a global production network.

India offers market scale. Mexico offers proximity to North America. Hungary offers access to European industrial supply chains. Brazil offers a large domestic market. Saudi Arabia offers capital, energy and state-led industrial development. Egypt offers geographic connectivity. Africa offers long-term demographic potential.

The most difficult part of this transformation, however, is not choosing locations. It is becoming genuinely local. A factory can be built in a few years. A local management team, supplier ecosystem, labor culture and regulatory capability take much longer. Chinese companies operating in the United States, India, Europe, Mexico or Africa face different labor systems, regulations, consumer expectations and social environments. Simply copying a Chinese factory abroad is therefore unlikely to be enough.

The next stage of Chinese globalization will not be about abandoning China. It will be about reorganizing what China has built. Core R&D, engineering capabilities, key components and sophisticated supply chains can remain deeply connected to China, while production and customer-facing functions become increasingly distributed across regional markets.

That is why Southeast Asia is only the first stop. The real destination is not another “world factory”, but a global manufacturing network in which different countries perform different functions.

For Chinese manufacturing, the next decade may therefore be less about moving factories and more about redesigning the architecture of globalization itself. The companies that succeed will not necessarily be those that build the most overseas factories, but those that learn how to connect Chinese technological and manufacturing capabilities with local markets, local institutions and local organizations around the world.

The map of Chinese manufacturing is no longer being redrawn around one country. It is being redrawn around a network.

Source: people cn, scio gov cn, xinhua, weforum, scmp

From China to Europe: JD.com’s Audacious Plan to Build a Global Retail Empire

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From China to Europe: JD.com’s Audacious Plan to Build a Global Retail Empire

JD.com has spent a decade trying to figure out what its international business should look like. Now, as its European e-commerce platform Joybuy opens its doors to third-party merchants, the Chinese technology and retail group appears to have settled on a model that is less about exporting Chinese goods and more about rebuilding its supply-chain-driven retail system overseas.

In 2026, Joybuy began recruiting merchants for its European PoP, or platform-operated marketplace. The move marks a significant shift for a business that initially relied heavily on direct retail. Rather than sourcing and holding inventory itself for every product, Joybuy is beginning to bring selected third-party sellers onto the platform.

The strategy is deliberately selective. Merchants are expected to have substantial sales in Europe, operate through overseas corporate entities and hold the relevant VAT registrations. The requirements suggest that JD.com is not trying to recreate the low-barrier, mass-market marketplace model associated with many cross-border platforms. Instead, it is attempting to build a curated marketplace around established brands and sellers that can meet European fulfillment and compliance standards.

That transition is important because it reveals how much JD.com’s European strategy has changed from its earliest international ambitions.

When JD.com began exploring overseas markets around 2014, the ambition was much broader. The company initially focused on Southeast Asia, launching JD.ID in Indonesia in 2015 and later expanding into Thailand and other markets through investments and joint ventures. JD.ID followed a model broadly familiar to Chinese consumers: direct retail supported by third-party merchants, backed by warehouses and its own delivery infrastructure.

For a time, the strategy looked promising. JD.com invested heavily in local logistics and retail infrastructure, while JD.ID expanded its delivery network across Indonesia. But the competitive environment proved difficult. Shopee, Lazada and local platforms such as Tokopedia had already built strong consumer relationships, while JD.com faced the additional challenge of adapting its operating model to local markets.

The company eventually pulled back. In 2023, JD.com shut down its consumer e-commerce operations in Indonesia and Thailand, while emphasizing that it would continue investing in logistics and supply-chain infrastructure across Southeast Asia and other international markets.

That retreat became an important lesson. JD.com could not simply reproduce the Chinese e-commerce market overseas by putting the same retail model in a different country. Traffic, consumer habits, local competition and regulatory environments were fundamentally different.

What JD.com did have was something more portable: its supply chain. Over the following years, the company increasingly invested in overseas warehouses, international transportation, fulfillment and logistics services. The logic was relatively straightforward. Rather than beginning with a shopping app and trying to build the infrastructure around it, JD.com would first establish the infrastructure and then build retail businesses on top of it.

Europe has become the clearest test of that strategy. The company began laying the groundwork several years ago. In 2022, JD.com launched Ochama in the Netherlands, an omnichannel retail concept that gradually expanded across Europe. It also continued building logistics capabilities and overseas warehouses. By 2024, JD Logistics said it had more than 100 overseas warehouses, bonded warehouses and direct-mail facilities worldwide.

Then came Joybuy. In March 2026, Joybuy officially launched in six European markets: the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Unlike the earlier cross-border businesses associated with the JD.com name, Joybuy was designed from the outset as a local retail platform. Products were stocked in European warehouses, orders were fulfilled locally, and JD.com’s JoyExpress network provided last-mile delivery.

Speed became the centerpiece of the proposition. In parts of the UK, Joybuy introduced a delivery service that closely resembles JD.com’s famous “211” promise in China. Orders placed before 11 a.m. can qualify for same-day delivery, while orders placed before 11 p.m. can arrive the following day. The company has expanded same-day delivery across locations including Greater London, Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham, Oxford and Cambridge, while next-day delivery covers much of the UK.

Joybuy has also introduced JoyPlus, a paid membership program offering unlimited free delivery for around £3.99 a month in the UK, directly entering a market in which Amazon Prime has already accustomed consumers to paying for premium delivery and services.

The numbers released so far suggest that the strategy is gaining initial traction. JD.com said during its second-quarter 2026 earnings presentation that Joybuy’s revenue had doubled over two quarters. The company has also said its same-day delivery service now reaches more than 40 million people across the UK and Europe, up from an initial coverage of roughly 15 million households.

Those figures, however, need to be viewed in context. JD.com has not disclosed Joybuy’s absolute revenue, order volume, user base or unit fulfillment costs. Doubling revenue from a relatively small initial base does not by itself demonstrate that the business has reached meaningful scale. The harder question is whether JD.com can generate enough order density to justify a logistics model that requires warehouses, inventory and local delivery infrastructure.

That is precisely where the opening of Joybuy’s marketplace becomes significant. A fully self-operated retail model gives JD.com control over product quality, inventory and customer service, but it is expensive and inherently difficult to scale across a fragmented market such as Europe. Every additional product category requires procurement, working capital, inventory management and demand forecasting. A marketplace can solve part of that problem by bringing in merchants and brands that JD.com does not need to source itself.

But Joybuy is not opening the floodgates. The initial recruitment drive targets established businesses with significant European sales and local compliance capabilities. The objective appears to be less about maximizing seller numbers than about increasing assortment without sacrificing the service standards that differentiate the platform.

This could eventually produce a hybrid model: JD.com’s own retail business providing control and quality, third-party sellers providing assortment, and JD Logistics providing the infrastructure underneath both.

That combination is closer to the model that made JD.com successful in China. It is also fundamentally different from the way many Chinese cross-border platforms first entered Europe.

Temu, Shein and AliExpress initially benefited from China’s manufacturing base and cross-border shipping networks, using low prices and enormous product selection to acquire consumers. Their European strategies are now evolving, with greater investment in local warehouses, compliance and brands. JD.com, by contrast, is starting from the opposite direction: local inventory, fast fulfillment and established brands first, with marketplace scale coming later.

That makes Joybuy more expensive to build, but potentially more aligned with JD.com’s traditional strengths. The company is also trying to build something larger than an online marketplace.

Its proposed acquisition of CECONOMY, the German parent of MediaMarkt and Saturn, is potentially the most consequential part of the European strategy. The deal, valued at roughly €2.2 billion, would give JD.com access to a large network of European stores, customers, brand relationships and after-sales capabilities. CECONOMY operates around 1,070 stores across Europe and has tens of millions of members.

The transaction remains subject to regulatory review. In May 2026, the European Commission launched an in-depth investigation under the EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation. JD.com subsequently submitted remedies, but the details of those commitments have not been fully disclosed.

If completed, the acquisition could give Joybuy something that pure online platforms struggle to build: a physical retail and service network. Stores could potentially support click-and-collect, returns, product demonstrations, installation and repair, while JoyExpress and JD.com’s warehouse network could provide the logistics layer.

The combination would effectively connect three businesses: online retail, physical retail and logistics. That is also why the European strategy is so different from JD.com’s earlier overseas experiments. The company is no longer simply asking how to sell Chinese products abroad. It is asking whether the infrastructure that made JD.com successful in China can be reconstructed in another major consumer market.

The challenge is formidable. Amazon already has a deeply established Prime membership ecosystem, a vast third-party seller network and an extensive fulfillment infrastructure. Local platforms such as Allegro, Bol and Otto have strong positions in their respective markets. Meanwhile, Chinese competitors are moving closer to JD.com’s model, investing in local warehouses, faster delivery, brand partnerships and compliance.

Europe is also not a single market. Consumer preferences, tax systems, regulations, languages and purchasing habits differ substantially from one country to another. A logistics network that works in London does not automatically create a successful retail business in Paris, Berlin or Warsaw.

For JD.com, the biggest question is therefore not whether Joybuy can deliver a package quickly. It is whether fast delivery can become a reason for consumers to return regularly, whether the marketplace can attract enough high-quality merchants, and whether the resulting order volume can eventually support the cost of JD.com’s European infrastructure.

That is where the company’s decade of international experimentation becomes relevant. JD.com has tried local e-commerce, cross-border retail, overseas marketplaces, SaaS tools and international logistics. Many of those initiatives were eventually scaled back or disappeared. What remained was the company’s investment in supply-chain infrastructure.

The lesson appears to have been that JD.com cannot simply export its domestic e-commerce platform. It has to export the capabilities underneath it. That is why Joybuy represents more than another Chinese shopping app entering Europe. It is the latest attempt to turn JD.com’s defining competitive advantage, inventory, warehouses, logistics, fulfillment and after-sales service, into a local European retail system.

The company itself has acknowledged that this approach is slower and more capital-intensive. But that may be precisely the point. JD.com’s international strategy is no longer built around winning a short-term cross-border price war. It is built around spending years establishing infrastructure and then using that infrastructure to support retail growth.

Joybuy’s early growth suggests that consumers are beginning to respond. Its marketplace expansion suggests that JD.com now wants to move beyond being a retailer. The potential CECONOMY acquisition suggests that it wants to connect online commerce with physical stores and services.

Whether those pieces can eventually form a profitable European business remains an open question. For now, the significance of Joybuy lies elsewhere. After ten years of experimentation, JD.com appears to have stopped trying to build a second version of its Chinese e-commerce business overseas. Instead, it is attempting something more difficult: to transplant the supply-chain architecture behind that business into Europe, and then build a local retail ecosystem on top of it.

That is a much longer bet. It may also be the clearest expression yet of what JD.com means when it says it wants to go global.

Source: letschuhai, guandian, ebrun, stcn, sina, republik-retail, macg

Cainiao’s Three-Day Delivery: The Global Logistics Race Behind 72 Hours

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Cainiao’s Three-Day Delivery: The Global Logistics Race Behind 72 Hours

On August 5, Cainiao officially launched its “Global Three-Day Delivery” service, offering door-to-door delivery within three calendar days on 15 major cross-border routes connecting China with Europe, as well as routes within Europe and the Middle East.

The significance of the service is not simply that Cainiao has made cross-border shipping faster. More importantly, it is attempting to break a long-standing trade-off in international logistics: fast delivery has traditionally meant high prices, while affordable shipping has required consumers to wait.

Cainiao says its three-day service can cut the cost of a 0.5-kilogram parcel to Europe by roughly half compared with standard international express services, with savings reaching 58% under some pricing comparisons. If that combination of speed and cost can be replicated at scale, it could change not only how parcels move across borders, but also how cross-border businesses manage inventory, cash flow and customer experience.

The foundation was built long before the three-day service appeared. Cross-border logistics is difficult not because an aircraft cannot fly from China to Europe in a matter of hours, but because a parcel has to pass through a chain of highly fragmented processes: domestic collection, sorting, export procedures, air transportation, customs clearance, overseas distribution and last-mile delivery. Delays at any one of these interfaces can consume the entire time advantage of faster transportation.

Cainiao has spent years building infrastructure around these interfaces. Its network now combines domestic collection and sorting capabilities with hubs such as Hong Kong eHub, overseas distribution centers and local delivery networks. Rather than simply coordinating third-party logistics providers, Cainiao has increasingly sought direct control over critical nodes and resources.

Air capacity is particularly important. A three-day promise leaves little room for waiting at airports. During peak seasons, carriers without secured capacity can face higher freight rates, limited cargo space or rolled shipments. Cainiao says it currently operates around 170 chartered or block-booked flights per week and more than 2,300 truck routes, while maintaining long-term cooperation with airlines including Cathay Pacific.

The value of these resources is not merely capacity. It is predictability. The same principle applies after a parcel lands. Cainiao has integrated customs clearance with warehouse operations at overseas hubs, using advance declarations and other digital processes to reduce waiting between customs, sorting and distribution. At the last mile, AI-based routing and tracking systems are used to allocate parcels and identify potential disruptions before they turn into missed delivery targets.

This is an important distinction. The challenge of three-day delivery is not to make one part of the network exceptionally fast. It is to eliminate as much idle time as possible between every part of the network. That is also where AI becomes strategically important.

Cross-border logistics is full of variables that can disrupt a fixed schedule: weather, flight delays, port congestion, customs inspections and capacity constraints at local delivery networks. A system based entirely on manual decisions becomes increasingly difficult to manage as the network expands.

Cainiao is using AI across sorting, transportation planning, customs processing and last-mile routing to respond to these variables in real time. The objective is not simply automation, but dynamic resource allocation, detecting a potential disruption and rerouting parcels or adjusting priorities before the disruption affects the final delivery. This combination of physical infrastructure and digital coordination is what makes the model difficult to replicate.

Competitors can lease warehouses, purchase aircraft capacity or deploy logistics software relatively quickly. What is much harder to reproduce is a global network that combines sufficient parcel volume, secured transportation capacity, overseas hubs, customs capabilities, local delivery resources and years of accumulated operational data.

That helps explain the progression from Cainiao’s 10-day service to its five-day service and now three-day delivery. The 72-hour target is not a sudden technological breakthrough. It is the result of gradually compressing uncertainty across the network. The implications extend beyond logistics.

For years, cross-border e-commerce was largely built around a simple model: manufacture in China, ship overseas and compete primarily on price. Logistics was an essential cost center, but often remained invisible to consumers. That is changing as Chinese sellers move from low-cost product exports toward brands and long-term customer relationships. Consumers are also becoming less willing to tolerate the long delivery times traditionally associated with cross-border purchases.

Delivery speed is therefore moving from the back office to the front end of e-commerce.

For merchants, the biggest value of three-day delivery may not be the seven days saved in transit. It is the change in inventory strategy. Historically, sellers seeking fast overseas fulfillment often had to stock large quantities in foreign warehouses. That reduced delivery times but required them to make inventory bets months or weeks ahead of actual demand. Unsold inventory tied up capital; inaccurate forecasts increased the risk of overstocking.

Reliable three-day delivery from domestic inventory creates another option.

A merchant can test a new product with a small quantity, observe actual demand and replenish quickly if sales accelerate. Fast-moving products can be restocked based on real-time demand rather than large upfront inventory commitments. In effect, faster logistics can make the supply chain itself more flexible.

That is where logistics efficiency starts translating into business efficiency. Cainiao is also expanding beyond the traditional China-to-world model. Its Global-to-Global, or G2G, strategy is designed to connect markets within regions such as Europe and the Middle East, rather than simply moving Chinese goods overseas. The three-day network already includes selected routes between European countries and within the Middle East.

Strategically, this is a much bigger ambition. A China-to-Europe network primarily serves Chinese exporters. A global-to-global network can serve local European merchants, multinational brands and regional e-commerce flows as well. A merchant in France, for example, does not necessarily need to source from China to become a customer of such a network; it could use the same infrastructure to ship goods to Germany, Italy or other European markets.

That shifts Cainiao’s role from a China-focused cross-border logistics provider toward something closer to global e-commerce infrastructure. This is also where its long-term competition with DHL, FedEx and UPS becomes more interesting. Cainiao has not simply displaced the global express giants. Those companies have decades of experience, extensive aviation networks, corporate customer bases and deeply established local operations. Their strengths remain significant.

Cainiao’s competitive advantage lies elsewhere: the enormous scale of e-commerce parcels, close integration with China’s manufacturing and retail ecosystem, and a highly digitalized operating model designed around high-volume standardized shipments.

The strategic question is whether that combination can create a different cost curve.

If larger parcel volumes improve aircraft and hub utilization, if long-term capacity contracts reduce transportation volatility, and if AI improves network efficiency, lower unit costs can attract more merchants. More merchants generate more volume, which in turn improves network economics.

That creates a potential feedback loop between scale, utilization and price. This is why “half-price three-day delivery” is more significant than a conventional discount. It represents an attempt to restructure the economics of cross-border fulfillment rather than simply cut prices.

If 72-hour delivery eventually becomes an affordable standard rather than a premium service, the competitive benchmark for cross-border e-commerce will change as well.

Merchants will no longer ask only, “How much does this shipping channel cost?” They will increasingly ask, “How quickly can you deliver, and how reliably can you do it at that cost?”

For consumers, the change is even more straightforward. Cross-border shopping has historically carried an implicit cost: waiting. As delivery times approach those of domestic e-commerce, that psychological barrier begins to disappear.

For Chinese brands, the implications go further. A product can attract a customer through price or advertising, but a brand is built through repeated experiences. Reliable delivery becomes part of that experience, reinforcing trust and increasing the likelihood of repeat purchases.

In that sense, Cainiao’s three-day delivery is not simply compressing transportation time. It is compressing the distance between Chinese supply chains and global consumers.

The larger story, however, is the infrastructure underneath the three-day promise.

From 10 days to five days and now three, Cainiao has steadily reduced the time and uncertainty embedded in cross-border commerce. Its next challenge is to extend that capability from China-to-world routes into a genuinely global network.

If it succeeds, the defining competition in international logistics will not simply be about who has the fastest individual route. It will be about who can operate the largest global network with the best combination of speed, cost and reliability.

The three-day service is therefore less a destination than a milestone. The real contest is over who builds the infrastructure through which global e-commerce moves next.

Source: xinhuanet, caacnews, gdnews, chnmc, sohu

Why Did Mao Found New China Before the War Was Over?

Tom Fowdy
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Why Did Mao Found New China Before the War Was Over?

On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong stood atop Tiananmen Gate in Beijing and proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and the Central People’s Government. The moment was soon written into the historical memory of an entire nation. Yet from the perspective of that day itself, China’s war was far from completely over. Fighting continued across large parts of the country, and the new government had not yet established effective control over every region.

Guangzhou was not liberated until October 14, Guilin on November 22, Nanning on December 4, and Guangxi as a whole was declared liberated on December 11. Chengdu followed on December 27. Hainan Island was not liberated until May 1, 1950, while the agreement on measures for the peaceful liberation of Tibet was signed on May 23, 1951. In other words, when the founding ceremony was held in Beijing, military operations were still under way in southwest and south China, along the coast and on the islands, while the political and administrative integration of the border regions remained unfinished. Remnants of the Kuomintang armed forces were still resisting, and the process of national reunification had not yet reached its final stage.

This naturally raises a question: if the country had not yet been completely unified, why did the Communist leadership not simply wait until the last major battlefield had been settled before formally establishing the new republic?

The answer lies in one of the most important strategic judgments of the Chinese revolution in 1949. The founding of the People’s Republic was not merely a ceremony celebrating the end of a civil war. It was a decision about timing, political legitimacy, state authority and China’s position in the international order. In that sense, the establishment of the new government was not the reward that came after the revolution had completely finished. It was itself an essential part of completing the revolution.

By the time the three major campaigns of Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin had ended, the main military strength of the Kuomintang had been decisively weakened. The People’s Liberation Army crossed the Yangtze River in April 1949, Nanjing was liberated that month, and Shanghai followed in May. From a purely military perspective, the Communist forces could have continued fighting and waited until the remaining Kuomintang forces had been defeated before establishing a national government.

But the question facing the Communist leadership was no longer purely military. Once the overall outcome of the civil war had become clear, the central problem was how quickly military victory could be transformed into effective national authority.

A victorious revolutionary army and an established sovereign government were not the same thing. One represented a political and military force that was winning a civil war; the other represented a state claiming responsibility for the country as a whole. The distinction was crucial.

China in 1949 was not changing governments in a political vacuum. The international environment was already being shaped by the emerging Cold War, and foreign powers were closely watching the collapse of the Kuomintang government and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party. If the old government was losing its control over the mainland while a new central government remained unestablished for an extended period, uncertainty over China’s political and diplomatic status could create opportunities for outside intervention.

Such intervention did not necessarily have to take the form of direct military action. Foreign powers could invoke the protection of their citizens, commercial interests or strategic positions, or claim a need to preserve order during a period of political instability. The longer the transition lasted, the more room there could be for competing interpretations of who legitimately represented China.

This was particularly significant because the Kuomintang government had not simply disappeared. Even after losing most of mainland China, it continued to claim that it was the legitimate government of the country and retained international relationships of considerable importance. Its remaining military forces were still fighting, while foreign governments had yet to fully adjust to the rapidly changing political reality in China.

For the Communist leadership, therefore, delaying the establishment of a central government until every battlefield had been cleared could create unnecessary political risks. The country needed not only an army capable of continuing the advance, but also a government capable of speaking in the name of China.

The importance of this calculation can also be seen in the diplomatic preparations undertaken before the founding of the People’s Republic. From June to August 1949, Liu Shaoqi led a delegation of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on a secret visit to the Soviet Union, where the Chinese side briefed Soviet leaders on the progress of the revolution and preparations for the establishment of the new government. The visit was an important diplomatic step on the eve of the founding of the People’s Republic.

Historical accounts have also frequently referred to Soviet advice that China should not delay the establishment of its new government. Whatever differences there may be in the details of individual historical accounts, the strategic logic behind the idea was clear: once the military balance had decisively shifted, the earlier a new central government was publicly established, the sooner political uncertainty could be reduced and the space for outside interference narrowed.

Mao Zedong and the Communist leadership understood that a revolutionary army advancing toward victory and a sovereign government exercising state authority carried very different political meanings internationally. The former could still be treated as one side in an internal conflict. The latter represented a new national government with the authority to organize administration at home and establish diplomatic relations abroad.

That was why the establishment of the People’s Republic could not simply be regarded as a ceremonial announcement made after the war was over. It was a political act that transformed the nature of the victory itself.

The preparations for the new state had already begun before October 1. In September 1949, the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference was held in Beiping. Representatives of the Communist Party, democratic parties, people’s organizations and other political groups gathered to establish the political and institutional foundations of the new country.

The conference adopted the Common Program of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which served as the basic political framework for the new state during its early years. It also decided that Beiping would become the capital and be renamed Beijing. The conference adopted the Five-Starred Red Flag as the national flag and designated “March of the Volunteers” as the provisional national anthem. These decisions rapidly gave the new country a complete set of political and national symbols.

The speed of the transition was striking. The conference opened on September 21 and closed on September 30. The following day, October 1, the founding ceremony was held in Tiananmen Square. This sequence was not evidence of haste or improvisation. Rather, it demonstrated that the Communist leadership had concluded that the time had come to convert the political and military victory into a functioning national government.

The military victory had created the necessary foundation. The Political Consultative Conference had provided political integration and an institutional framework. The establishment of the Central People’s Government transformed that foundation into a new state order.

Even the details of the founding ceremony reflected the circumstances of the time. The ceremony was held in the afternoon, when concerns about possible air attacks by remaining Kuomintang aircraft were still real. Security and practical considerations therefore played a role in the timing. What may appear today to be merely ceremonial arrangements were, in the context of 1949, closely connected with military security, political authority and the management of a country still at war.

The significance of October 1 became even clearer in the months that followed. The establishment of the People’s Republic did not bring military operations to an immediate halt. The People’s Liberation Army continued its advance into southwest and south China and toward the remaining coastal islands. Guangzhou, Guangxi and Chengdu were subsequently brought under the control of the new government, and Hainan Island was liberated in 1950. The question of Tibet was addressed within the framework of the new Chinese government, culminating in the signing of the Seventeen Point Agreement in May 1951.

Yet after October 1, these campaigns were taking place under a fundamentally different political framework. They were no longer simply the advance of a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow an existing government. They were increasingly presented as actions undertaken by the newly established central government to complete national reunification and establish its authority throughout the country.

That distinction mattered enormously. Once a central government had been established, military operations, local administration and the transfer of political authority could be coordinated under a single national structure. The new government could issue orders, organize institutions, conduct diplomacy and negotiate with foreign governments while its armies continued to advance.

The diplomatic consequences were equally important. On October 2, the Soviet government responded to Beijing and expressed its willingness to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic. Formal diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China were established on October 3, making the Soviet Union the first country to establish diplomatic relations with the new government. Other socialist states, including Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and North Korea, subsequently established relations with Beijing.

Diplomatic recognition did not by itself determine the outcome of the Chinese civil war, but it had major political significance. The People’s Republic was no longer merely a domestic political force controlling large areas of China. It was becoming an identifiable participant in the international system, with a government capable of conducting foreign relations.

This development also placed increasing pressure on the Kuomintang’s claim to represent China. Its remaining military forces could continue to resist, but the establishment of a new government on the mainland meant that the political balance had changed. Domestic forces could increasingly see which side possessed the momentum of history, while foreign governments had to confront the reality that a new Chinese state had come into existence.

Seen from this perspective, the decision to establish the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949, was not premature. It was based on the judgment that the strategic outcome of the revolution had already been determined even though the military process was not yet complete.

Waiting until the last battlefield had been settled might have appeared more orderly. It might even have seemed symbolically cleaner to declare the founding of the country only after every remaining Kuomintang position had fallen. But politics rarely follows such a neat sequence. States are not established only after every problem has disappeared. In moments of major political transition, a central authority may have to be established precisely in order to deal with the problems that remain.

This was the logic behind the decision in 1949. The Communist leadership did not believe that every military, political or territorial question had to be resolved before the state could be established. Instead, it judged that the overall balance of power had already shifted decisively and that establishing the state would provide the authority and organizational structure needed to complete the remaining tasks.

In that sense, October 1 was more than the declaration of victory in a civil war. It was the moment when the Chinese revolution crossed a critical boundary: from the struggle to seize political power to the exercise of power through a national government.

The founding of the People’s Republic therefore had two dimensions. Domestically, it established a central authority capable of organizing the country and directing the continuing process of reunification. Internationally, it announced that a new Chinese government had assumed responsibility for the country and was ready to conduct relations with the outside world.

The decision to establish the new state before the fighting had completely ended was consequently not a sign of impatience. It was a strategic calculation about the relationship between military victory, political legitimacy and international recognition. The Communist leadership understood that military control alone could not settle the question of who governed China. A government had to be established, institutions had to be created and the new political reality had to be made unmistakable both at home and abroad.

The deeper significance of October 1, 1949, therefore lies not simply in the fact that a new country was proclaimed in Tiananmen Square. Its importance lies in the timing. The leadership chose to establish the state when the broad outcome of the revolution had become clear, rather than waiting for every remaining conflict to disappear. By doing so, it sought to consolidate the gains already achieved, establish a clear central authority, strengthen its diplomatic position and provide a political framework for completing national reunification.

The founding of the People’s Republic was thus not the final act of a war that had already ended. It was the beginning of a new phase in which the political and military victory of the revolution was converted into the authority of a state.

October 1, 1949, was therefore not merely the birthday of the People’s Republic of China. It was the dividing line between two historical processes: the struggle to take power and the far more complicated task of exercising it. The guns had not yet fallen silent everywhere, but the political direction of China had already been decided. The new state was established not because every problem had been solved, but because the leadership believed that only a functioning central government could provide the authority and organization needed to solve the problems that remained.

Source: sohu, cctv, china news, 12371 cn

China’s Synthetic Diamond Edge: The Rise of a New Strategic Material

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China’s Synthetic Diamond Edge: The Rise of a New Strategic Material

China’s synthetic diamond exports are accelerating, and the significance goes far beyond jewelry. In the first half of 2026, products related to synthetic diamonds worth $194 million were declared for general-trade exports through the Shanghai Diamond Exchange, up 65.3 percent from a year earlier, according to Shanghai customs data. The Shanghai Diamond Exchange, established in 2000, is mainland China’s only designated platform for diamond imports and exports.

The numbers point to a broader transformation. China is no longer simply a major producer of lab-grown diamonds for the jewelry market. It has become the world’s dominant manufacturing base for synthetic diamonds, with Chinese production accounting for more than half of global output by most industry estimates.

That matters because diamonds are no longer merely luxury goods. Their exceptional hardness, thermal conductivity, chemical stability and resistance to extreme environments make them useful in precision cutting, high-power electronics, lasers, advanced thermal management and emerging quantum technologies.

The strategic question is therefore changing. It is no longer simply whether lab-grown diamonds will replace some natural diamonds in jewelry. The more consequential question is whether China’s ability to manufacture diamond materials at industrial scale will give it an advantage in a growing range of advanced technologies.

China’s position did not emerge overnight. The country’s synthetic-diamond industry dates back to the early 1960s, when Chinese scientists developed the country’s first artificial diamond using high-pressure, high-temperature technology. The original motivation was industrial rather than commercial. China needed domestic supplies of ultra-hard materials for cutting, grinding, drilling and other applications at a time when advanced industrial materials were heavily dependent on imports.

That early investment created a technological foundation that would become strategically valuable decades later. Synthetic diamond production requires more than a laboratory breakthrough. It requires high-pressure equipment, specialized reactors, carbon feedstocks, catalysts, power supplies, precision processing, testing capabilities and a large pool of engineers and technicians. Over decades, China built these capabilities through its industrial diamond sector.

Henan became one of the most important centers of this industry. Companies in Zhengzhou, Zhecheng and other parts of the province developed extensive production networks covering equipment, raw materials, diamond powder, industrial diamond, cutting tools and processing.

Lab-grown diamonds emerged from this existing industrial ecosystem. There are two principal production technologies. High-pressure, high-temperature, or HPHT, uses extreme pressure and temperatures to reproduce conditions under which diamond can form. Chemical vapor deposition, or CVD, grows diamond layer by layer from carbon-containing gases in a controlled chamber.

The technologies differ, but they share a critical feature: they turn a material once defined by geological scarcity into something that can be manufactured. That distinction is at the heart of China’s advantage.

Natural diamonds are constrained by geological deposits. Synthetic diamonds are constrained primarily by production capacity, technology, energy and capital. Once a country develops the necessary industrial infrastructure, output can be expanded by adding machines, factories and power.

China has been particularly well positioned to do this because its synthetic-diamond industry is connected to a much larger manufacturing system. The result is a form of industrial concentration that is difficult to reproduce quickly elsewhere. China has not simply developed individual companies capable of producing diamonds. It has developed an ecosystem in which equipment manufacturers, material suppliers, producers, processors, testing institutions and exporters operate in close proximity.

That ecosystem gives Chinese producers two advantages: scale and cost. Scale lowers the cost of equipment utilization and production. Cost competitiveness, in turn, allows Chinese companies to push synthetic diamonds into markets that would have been too expensive when production was small. This dynamic has already transformed the jewelry market.

For consumers, the attraction is straightforward. Lab-grown diamonds have essentially the same chemical composition and crystal structure as natural diamonds, while their production can be completed in weeks rather than geological time. The dramatic expansion of supply has pushed prices down and made diamond jewelry accessible to a much broader group of consumers.

But jewelry may ultimately be the less important part of the story. The more strategically significant opportunity lies in industrial applications. Diamond is an extraordinary material for thermal management. Its thermal conductivity is substantially higher than that of conventional materials such as copper. As semiconductor devices become more powerful and densely packed, managing the heat generated by chips becomes increasingly difficult.

This is particularly important in artificial intelligence. AI accelerators are consuming increasing amounts of power, while the physical space available for cooling systems is limited. As computing density rises, thermal management can become a bottleneck. Diamond-based heat spreaders and other thermal-management technologies are therefore attracting attention as potential solutions for high-performance computing.

The same logic applies to power electronics, high-frequency devices, high-power lasers and advanced radar systems. In these applications, diamonds are not valuable because they look attractive. It is valuable because it performs. That distinction could eventually make synthetic diamond a strategic material rather than simply a consumer product.

The potential applications extend further into quantum technology. High-purity diamonds containing carefully controlled defects, such as nitrogen-vacancy centers, can be used in quantum sensing and precision measurement. Researchers are investigating diamond-based systems for detecting magnetic fields, temperature and other physical parameters with extraordinary sensitivity.

The technological challenge here is very different from producing a jewelry stone. For a diamond ring, size, color, clarity and cut are central. For advanced electronics and quantum applications, purity, crystal quality, defect control and reproducibility matter much more. This is where China’s existing industrial scale could become strategically important.

A country capable of producing large quantities of ordinary synthetic diamonds can use that manufacturing base to move toward increasingly specialized materials. The evolution is from industrial diamond to gemstone-quality diamond, and potentially from gemstone-quality diamond to high-purity functional diamond.

That is a much more important industrial transition than the growth of the jewelry market alone. It also explains why synthetic diamonds should be viewed alongside other critical materials. Much of the current discussion about China’s position in global supply chains focuses on rare earths and other minerals. But advanced manufacturing depends on a much wider range of materials that rarely receive the same attention.

Some are valuable because they are difficult to extract. Others are valuable because they are difficult to manufacture. Synthetic diamond belongs to the second category. Its strategic importance comes not from geological ownership but from manufacturing capability.

This distinction matters in an era of supply-chain competition. If a country controls a large share of global production of a critical material, downstream industries elsewhere may become dependent on that supply even if the material itself represents only a small fraction of the final product’s value.

For the United States and other advanced economies, this creates a familiar dilemma. Building an alternative domestic supply chain is possible, but doing so requires equipment, skilled labor, technical knowledge, capital and customers willing to support the new industry during its early years. The challenge is therefore not simply building a factory. It is rebuilding an ecosystem. That is precisely what China has spent decades doing.

The comparison with rare earths is useful, but it should not be overstated. Synthetic diamonds are not irreplaceable in every application, and a disruption in Chinese supply would not automatically shut down an entire aerospace or defense industry. Alternative materials and production technologies exist, and companies can redesign components when necessary.

But substitution comes with costs. In advanced manufacturing, a material is valuable not merely because it has unique physical properties, but because it performs reliably at scale and can be incorporated into an established production process. Replacing it may require new designs, qualification procedures, equipment and years of testing.

That creates a form of strategic dependence even when technical substitutes exist. The issue is particularly relevant to aerospace and defense. Diamond-based cutting tools are already important in precision machining. Diamond’s thermal and optical properties also make it potentially valuable for high-power electronics, lasers and other systems operating under extreme conditions.

As defense systems become more dependent on high-performance computing, advanced sensors, directed-energy systems and compact power electronics, the demand for materials capable of operating under extreme thermal conditions is likely to increase.

The same trend is visible in civilian technology. AI data centers, electric vehicles, 5G infrastructure and next-generation power electronics all require better thermal management and more efficient materials. A material that can dissipate heat more effectively can increase the performance of an entire system.

This creates an unusual economic dynamic. When the price of a material falls because production becomes more efficient, conventional economics might suggest that its producers should suffer. But cheaper materials can also expand demand. New applications become economically viable, and previously impractical technologies can enter the market.

This is potentially what is happening with synthetic diamonds. The long-term opportunity for China may therefore lie less in selling more diamond jewelry and more in creating an industrial ecosystem around diamond-based technologies. There is also a geopolitical dimension.

India, for example, has traditionally dominated global diamond cutting and polishing. Its industry employs hundreds of thousands of workers and has been built around the processing of natural diamonds. The rapid growth of synthetic diamonds puts pressure on this model.

India has increasingly moved into lab-grown diamonds itself, but the economics are different. China’s enormous production base gives it an advantage upstream, while India’s established expertise remains concentrated in cutting and processing.

This could lead to a restructuring of the global diamond industry. Natural diamonds may increasingly move toward the luxury, heritage and high-end jewelry segments, where scarcity itself remains part of the product. Synthetic diamonds, meanwhile, can occupy mass-market jewelry and industrial applications.

The global value chain could consequently become less about controlling natural diamond deposits and more about controlling manufacturing technology. That would represent a profound change.

For decades, the diamond industry was fundamentally a resource industry. Whoever controlled diamond mines controlled the supply of the raw material. The rise of synthetic diamonds changes that equation. The most important assets are increasingly factories, equipment, engineering expertise, electricity and intellectual property.

China has many of these assets in abundance. That does not mean China will automatically dominate every downstream application. Producing synthetic diamonds is only the first step. Turning them into sophisticated semiconductor components, optical systems or quantum devices requires additional technologies, design capabilities and intellectual property.

China will therefore face its own challenge: moving from being the world’s largest producer of synthetic diamond material to becoming a major developer of products and technologies built around that material.

That transition could determine how much economic value the country ultimately captures. The first stage was production. The second is technological integration. And the third is control over high-value applications. The latest export figures from Shanghai suggest that the first stage is already well advanced. The rapid growth of exports indicates that Chinese synthetic diamonds are moving through global supply chains at increasing speed.

The next question is where they will go. If most of the additional output continues to enter jewelry markets, synthetic diamond will remain primarily an important export industry and a disruptive force in the global diamond business.

But if increasing volumes move into advanced thermal management, high-power electronics, lasers, quantum sensing, aerospace and other high-tech applications, the implications will be much larger.

China would no longer simply be exporting diamonds. It would be exporting the material foundation of technologies that other countries increasingly need. That is why the most important fact about China’s synthetic-diamond industry is not that it can make diamonds faster or cheaper than nature.

It is that China has demonstrated an ability to take a material once defined by extreme scarcity and turn it into something that can be manufactured at industrial scale. In the global competition over advanced manufacturing, that may prove to be the more consequential achievement. The diamond story is therefore shifting from geology to industry, from jewelry to technology, and from scarcity to abundance.

And for China, the strategic prize may not be the diamond itself, but the manufacturing system that makes the diamond increasingly abundant, and potentially makes a growing number of future technologies possible.

Source: guancha, xinhua, shanghai customs gov cn, finance people

From Weeding by Hand to Weeding by Laser: China’s High-Tech Farming Revolution

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From Weeding by Hand to Weeding by Laser: China’s High-Tech Farming Revolution

Since the dawn of agriculture, farmers have had to contend with one persistent problem: weeds.

For centuries, the answer was labor. Farmers pulled weeds by hand or removed them with hoes. As agriculture became mechanised, tractors and cultivators took over much of the work. Chemical herbicides later offered an even more efficient solution, but at the cost of environmental concerns and growing dependence on agricultural chemicals.

Now, another technology is making its way into China’s fields: lasers.

Laser weeding uses cameras, artificial intelligence and high-energy laser beams to identify and destroy weeds without disturbing the surrounding soil. The principle is straightforward. Cameras continuously scan the field, while AI models distinguish crops from weeds. Once a weed is identified, the system directs a laser beam at the target, delivering a burst of energy within milliseconds. The resulting heat rapidly evaporates water in the weed’s cells and damages its chlorophyll and cellular structure, eventually killing the plant.

In essence, laser weeding is still a form of burning. The difference is that it is highly selective: the machine first identifies its target and then applies heat precisely where it is needed.

The technology is advancing rapidly. Some laser-weeding systems developed in China can achieve weed-removal rates above 95 percent, while keeping crop damage below 0.1 percent. Certain systems can process an image and determine the laser target in just a few milliseconds. A machine equipped with a single laser head can eliminate roughly 10,000 weeds an hour; with 32 laser heads operating simultaneously, that capacity can rise to about 320,000 weeds per hour. Large-scale systems have already demonstrated the ability to treat nearly 100 mu, about 16.5 acres, of farmland in a day.

Laser technology is also being adapted for other agricultural tasks. In Xinjiang, a laser-based cotton-topping robot has been developed by Xinjiang University and Xinjiang Jimu Robotics Technology. Equipped with solid-state LiDAR and a machine-vision system, the robot is designed to navigate cotton fields and precisely remove the growing tips of plants.

These developments are part of a broader push to bring robotics and artificial intelligence into Chinese agriculture. Commercial laser weeding itself is still in its early stages. In 2022, US-based Carbon Robotics launched an autonomous laser weeder, helping establish the technology as a commercial agricultural application. But the machines were expensive, with some foreign systems priced at more than $1m.

Chinese researchers and manufacturers soon began working to develop domestic alternatives. Huagong University of Science and Technology, together with the Harbin Institute of Technology, began research into laser-weeding robots, while universities and agricultural research institutes across the country launched their own programmes.

In 2024, a Chinese all-weather intelligent laser-weeding robot entered field trials in Heilongjiang. Since then, domestic equipment has moved steadily towards commercial deployment. Other research teams have progressed from laboratory prototypes to successive generations of engineering machines, improving AI-based crop recognition, positioning accuracy and the ability to operate under changing field conditions.

One of the biggest advantages of this domestic development has been cost. Imported laser-weeding machines can cost between $1.1m and $1.6m. Chinese manufacturers have brought the price of some systems below 1m yuan. Some companies have also begun offering rental models. One such service charges farmers about 50 yuan per mu for an entire growing season, compared with roughly 200 yuan for manual weeding.

The economics become more complicated when laser weeding is compared with chemical herbicides, which can cost only 30-50 yuan per mu. Yet chemical application itself requires labour or machinery, while the environmental costs of herbicide use are harder to capture in a simple price comparison. Laser systems leave no chemical residue, cause little soil disturbance and may be particularly attractive for high-value organic crops and medicinal plants.

The emergence of laser weeding illustrates a broader feature of China’s agricultural technology sector: the speed with which research can move from laboratories into mass production. Chinese research institutions are increasingly supplying the underlying technologies, universities are working with manufacturers to commercialise them, and a mature domestic supply chain is helping companies reduce production costs. The same pattern is visible in other areas of agricultural robotics.

Drones are now routinely used for crop protection, seeding, fertilisation and field mapping. Strawberry-picking robots are being tested and deployed in farms. Automated feeding machines are being introduced into livestock operations. In Henan, Muyuan Foods has built multi-storey pig farms equipped with a digital management system that uses artificial intelligence to process billions of data points and monitor thousands of indicators, including those related to disease and animal health.

The underlying goal is not simply to replace human labour with machines. It is to make farming more precise. That matters because Chinese agriculture faces two structural challenges. The first is labour. Rural populations are aging, while fewer young people are willing to undertake physically demanding agricultural work. Automation can reduce the amount of manual labour required to manage large areas of farmland.

The second is efficiency. Conventional farming often applies water, fertilizer and pesticides across entire fields, even when only part of a field requires treatment. AI and sensors allow farmers to identify individual problem areas and respond accordingly. In principle, this means applying the right input, in the right place, at the right time.

China’s agricultural statistics reflect the broader transformation. The contribution of scientific and technological progress to agricultural growth has risen from 54.5 percent in 2012 to more than 64 percent in 2025. The comprehensive mechanisation rate for crop ploughing, planting and harvesting has increased from 57 percent to 76.7 percent over the same period.

The country’s current five-year planning targets call for the contribution of agricultural science and technology to reach 67 percent by 2030, while the comprehensive mechanisation rate is expected to exceed 80 percent. Policy support has increasingly focused on combining artificial intelligence with agriculture and expanding the use of drones, the Internet of Things and agricultural robots.

The market opportunity is considerable. Global sales of laser-weeding robots were estimated at about $133m in 2025 and are projected to reach roughly $247m by 2032. China’s potential market is still larger. In the country’s northeastern provinces alone, the 237m mu of corn farmland could generate demand for hundreds of thousands, potentially more than one million, laser-weeding machines as the technology matures.

Chinese companies are also beginning to look beyond the domestic market. In July, Huagong Intelligent Agriculture’s Laser Weeder H8, a domestically developed large-scale laser-weeding robot, was shipped to Australia. The export marked an important step in the internationalisation of China’s intelligent agricultural machinery.

The significance of laser weeding therefore extends well beyond the replacement of herbicides. It represents a convergence of several technologies, computer vision, artificial intelligence, robotics, precision manufacturing and lasers, and demonstrates how these technologies can be adapted to one of the world’s oldest industries.

For China, the transformation is being driven by a combination of technological research, government policy, a vast agricultural market and a highly developed manufacturing base. Technologies that were once too expensive for ordinary farms can become commercially viable as domestic production expands and costs fall.

Source: xinhua, sciencenet, 36kr, stdaily, chinadaily

China’s robotics, artificial intelligence and innovative pharmaceuticals gain remarkable traction around the world

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China’s robotics, artificial intelligence and innovative pharmaceuticals gain remarkable traction around the world

In Australia and elsewhere, Chinese-developed cleaning robots are now scaling walls and glass façades, taking on dangerous high-altitude work once performed by so-called “spider men.” In Brazil, Chinese large language models are helping local power companies inspect and maintain electricity grids, overcoming the challenges posed by complex terrain and harsh operating environments. Meanwhile, an innovative drug capsule developed in Shanghai has been incorporated into an internationally recognized treatment guideline, offering new hope to patients.

These examples illustrate a broader transformation. Robotics, artificial intelligence and innovative medicines are emerging as the latest global calling cards of Chinese trade, following the earlier success of what came to be known as the “old three” and the “new three.”

China’s export structure offers a revealing picture of its industrial transformation. In the early decades of reform and opening-up, products such as clothing, furniture and household appliances entered international markets by leveraging China’s abundant labor force and cost advantages. 

In more recent years, China has seized the opportunities created by the global green transition, with new energy vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and photovoltaic products becoming the pillars of its “new three.” Today, as the world enters a new era shaped by artificial intelligence and advances in the life sciences, China is moving into emerging fields, investing heavily in core technologies and accelerating the shift from “Made in China” to “Innovated in China.”

The scale of this new wave is already evident in the numbers. In the first half of this year, China’s industrial robot exports increased by 18.6 percent, reaching 141 countries and regions, while exports of surgical robots surged 3.3-fold year on year. Data from OpenRouter, a global platform aggregating AI models, showed that Chinese large language models recorded 36.11 trillion token calls in the third week of July, maintaining the world’s top position for 12 consecutive weeks. 

In pharmaceuticals, all 11 new drugs targeting novel mechanisms or targets approved by Chinese authorities during the first half of the year were developed by Chinese pharmaceutical companies. Overseas licensing deals involving Chinese innovative medicines reached approximately $110 billion, equivalent to 80 percent of the total for the whole of last year. Chinese pharmaceutical companies also occupied eight of the top ten positions in the global pharmaceutical deal rankings.

Behind these figures lies a fundamental change: China is moving beyond its role as the “world’s factory” and increasingly positioning itself as a global hub for innovation.

This transformation did not happen by accident. It reflects, on the one hand, China’s recognition of the opportunities presented by a new wave of technological and industrial change and its determination to act on them. On the other, it reflects a sustained commitment to technological self-reliance and long-term investment in research and development.

There is no shortcut to technological innovation. Competitive advantages cannot simply be copied from elsewhere; they have to be built through persistent investment, experimentation and breakthroughs in difficult areas. Over the past five years, China’s total social R&D expenditure has grown at an average annual rate of 10 percent, with the country’s overall R&D investment remaining second only to that of the United States. 

As Wang Xiaosong, a professor of economics at Renmin University of China, has noted, the upgrading of Chinese manufacturing rests on a complete and continuously evolving industrial system, sustained investment in research and development, and the advantages created by the country’s vast domestic market. In other words, China’s technological rise has been built through years of strengthening its own capabilities while remaining engaged with the world.

The significance of the “new three” extends beyond China’s own economic growth. They are also creating new opportunities for other countries.

In robotics, a report by Morgan Stanley suggested that without Chinese participation, the development costs of the supply chain for Tesla’s second-generation humanoid robot, Optimus, would rise by several times. In artificial intelligence, China has placed considerable emphasis on open-source ecosystems, allowing small and medium-sized enterprises and developing countries to gain access to advanced AI capabilities at relatively low cost. In healthcare, Chinese companies are using indigenous innovation and increasingly digitalized manufacturing to shorten drug development cycles and reduce production costs.

China’s growing competitiveness in innovative medicines is particularly significant because technological progress is meaningful only when it becomes accessible to ordinary people. With its sophisticated manufacturing infrastructure, integrated supply chains and enormous economies of scale, China can often bring innovative medicines to market at substantially lower prices than comparable products in Europe and the United States. French media have reported that after certain cancer treatments entered France’s public healthcare system, patients could save tens of thousands of euros in annual treatment costs.

The broader impact is even more important. China’s new generation of technologies is lowering the barriers to accessing cutting-edge innovation and making advanced solutions more affordable and widely available.

Across Southeast Asia, Chinese AI technologies are helping small businesses improve their operations and narrow the digital divide. In Thailand, Chinese medical robots are being used to transport medicines and medical samples around the clock, helping address shortages of healthcare resources. In South America, Chinese companies have used telemetry technologies to develop systems for allocating ride-hailing orders, contributing to the emergence of new services such as motorcycle transportation and delivery.

For many countries in the Global South, such technologies are not abstract demonstrations of technological prowess. They provide practical solutions to concrete challenges in economic development and everyday life. As Pakistani analyst and retired Air Force officer Sultan Hali has argued, China’s experience demonstrates that technological innovation can serve not only as an engine of domestic development but also, through international cooperation, as a source of opportunities for countries around the world.

Perhaps more importantly, China’s approach is taking shape at a time when parts of the Western world are moving toward greater technological restrictions and barriers. Rather than closing itself off, China is increasingly presenting openness and collaboration as an alternative path for innovation.

Chinese open-source AI models have now accumulated more than 10 billion downloads globally. International platforms, including Pinterest and Airbnb, have already incorporated Chinese open-source models into their products and services. Meanwhile, the establishment of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization in Shanghai marks another step toward international collaboration on the development and governance of artificial intelligence.

The same spirit of openness is visible in pharmaceuticals. Chinese companies are not only investing in independent research and development; they are also pursuing overseas licensing agreements, joint development projects and joint ventures, helping expand the global ecosystem for medical innovation.

The history of global industrial development has repeatedly shown that openness creates progress, while excessive isolation ultimately limits it. China’s “new three”, robotics, AI and innovative pharmaceuticals, are therefore more than a new engine of Chinese economic growth. They are increasingly becoming channels through which technological advances can be shared, adapted and put to practical use around the world.

The rise of these industries offers a broader lesson about China’s economic transformation. The country’s development is no longer defined simply by its ability to manufacture products efficiently and at scale. It is increasingly defined by its capacity to develop new technologies, build integrated innovation ecosystems and bring advanced products and services to global markets.

China’s technological rise should therefore not be viewed solely through the lens of competition. Its greater significance lies in the opportunities it can create: more accessible technologies, more affordable healthcare, more efficient industries and new possibilities for economic development.

Source: cgtn, xinhua, guancha

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