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Tan Ting: China’s First Deaf Legal Professional, Bridging Silence and Justice

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Tan Ting: China’s First Deaf Legal Professional, Bridging Silence and Justice

Tan Ting was born in 1992 into an ordinary farming family in the remote Daliang Mountains of Sichuan, China. When she was eight years old, she lost her hearing because of an illness. Her childhood changed overnight. She could no longer hear the voices around her and was forced to leave school. While other children carried their schoolbags to class, Tan could only watch them from home.

Her parents refused to give up on her. They spent years taking her to different hospitals, using almost all of their savings in the hope that she could hear again. When Tan was 13, they finally found a special education school in Xichang that was willing to accept her. For Tan, returning to school felt like being given a second chance at life.

She knew she had fallen far behind her classmates, so she worked hard to catch up. She studied whenever she had the chance, sometimes reading under a blanket with a flashlight after her classmates had gone to sleep. Even when she was sick and receiving an IV, she continued studying. Her determination eventually paid off. She progressed rapidly through school and, in 2013, was admitted to Chongqing Normal University, where she studied special education.

At first, Tan planned to become a special education teacher. Her career path changed after she graduated in 2017 and came across a recruitment notice from Tang Shuai, a lawyer who had been providing legal services to deaf people.

Tang was born into a deaf family and had learned sign language from an early age. After becoming a lawyer, he began working extensively on cases involving deaf people. He found that many deaf people faced serious barriers when dealing with the legal system. The problem was not simply a lack of legal knowledge. The natural sign language used by many deaf people could be very different from the formal language used in legal documents and courtrooms. Misunderstandings could therefore have serious consequences.

Tang wanted to train deaf people who understood both sign language and the law. Tan joined his law firm as a deaf assistant. At first, she mainly handled basic tasks such as organizing documents and receiving visitors. But as she encountered more deaf people seeking legal help, she gradually realized how large their unmet legal needs were.

Many of the people who came to the firm did not know what their legal rights were or how to protect them. Some were dealing with domestic violence or marriage disputes. Others had been deceived or defrauded. Tan often found that before she could address a legal problem, she first had to explain the basic legal concepts to the person seeking help.

This convinced her to study law herself. The challenge was enormous. Tan had no formal legal education, and legal textbooks were filled with unfamiliar terminology. Many online law lectures had no subtitles, making them difficult for her to follow. She relied on speech-to-text software, dictionaries, reference materials and help from her colleagues. She studied before work, after work and during every spare moment she could find.

She took the national legal qualification examination twice and failed both times, missing the required score by 10 points the first time and four points the second. She refused to stop.

In 2020, shortly before her third examination, Tan received devastating news. Her mother was diagnosed with late-stage cancer. Tan wanted to stay with her, but her mother insisted that she take the examination. Her mother told her that she should live for herself as well.

Tan eventually went to the examination. She answered the questions while fighting back tears, knowing that every minute away from her mother was a minute she could not spend at her side. This time, she passed.

Tan became the first deaf person in China publicly reported to have passed the national legal qualification examination. For her, however, passing the examination was not the end of the journey. It brought another question: how could she actually serve deaf clients in a legal system designed primarily for hearing people?

Because of the communication barriers involved in courtroom proceedings, Tan could not simply work in exactly the same way as a conventional courtroom lawyer. Instead, she and Tang focused much of their attention on legal consultation and public legal education for deaf people.

Tan began receiving requests for help from across the country. Some people traveled long distances to meet her. Others contacted her through video calls and social media. A consultation that might take a short time with a hearing client could take three times as long or even longer when sign language communication was involved.

She gradually became a bridge between deaf people and the legal system. She helped clients understand their situations, explained what the law required and showed them what options were available. In many cases, the first step was simply helping people understand what the law meant.

Tan also began using short videos and livestreams to provide legal education. She explained everyday legal issues such as divorce, unpaid debts and fraud through sign language. At the same time, she used her platform to introduce hearing audiences to the experiences and communication patterns of deaf people.

She also decided to relearn how to speak. After losing her hearing as a child, she had gradually stopped speaking because she could no longer hear her own voice. To improve her communication with hearing people, she used speech-recognition software to check her pronunciation. She repeated individual sentences again and again, sometimes dozens of times, until the software could recognize them correctly. Even a simple sentence such as “Nice to meet you” took months of practice.

The effort gradually changed her daily life. Today, Tan can communicate using both sign language and spoken language, allowing her to interact with a wider range of people.

Her work has also shown her that one person cannot solve the shortage of legal services available to deaf people. She hopes more professionals will learn about deaf communities and develop the ability to communicate with them. She believes that deaf people need not only lawyers who understand the law, but also legal professionals who understand their language, culture and everyday experiences.

In 2021, Tan began teaching at Southwest University of Political Science and Law. She hopes to help train a new generation of professionals who can provide legal services to deaf people.

Tan’s journey began in a rural village in the Daliang Mountains, where losing her hearing forced her to leave school and made her feel isolated from the world around her. Years later, she entered university, learned law from scratch, failed the legal examination twice and finally passed it on her third attempt.

She has continued moving forward through education, legal work, public legal education and teaching. Her goal is no longer simply to prove what one deaf person can achieve. She wants to help create a future in which deaf people can understand the law, seek legal assistance and participate more fully in society.

For Tan, the law is another language that needs to be made accessible. Through her hands, her words and the knowledge she has worked so hard to acquire, she is trying to bring that language to people who have too often been left outside the conversation.

Source: people cctv, sohu, jfdaily

Why China Keeps Its Military Out of Business: Protecting the State, the Market, and the People

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Why China Keeps Its Military Out of Business: Protecting the State, the Market, and the People

Why must the military stay out of business? In China, this is not merely a matter of military discipline. It is a fundamental question involving political order, economic governance, civil-military relations, and the nature of the armed forces themselves.

In 1998, amid a nationwide campaign against smuggling and corruption, Jiang Zemin stressed that the military, the armed police, and the country’s law-enforcement and judicial organs must be financially supported by the state and must completely cease commercial activities. 

The principle was straightforward: the military exists to defend the country and serve the people, not to compete in the marketplace or pursue commercial profits. Its resources should be guaranteed through the national budget, allowing it to concentrate on training, preparedness, and national defense.

The decision had a clear historical background. During the early decades of reform and opening up, some military-affiliated enterprises engaged in commercial activities. At a time when China’s economic foundation was still relatively weak and military funding was limited, such activities had understandable historical reasons. Yet experience increasingly demonstrated that allowing the military to develop independent commercial interests could create serious problems.

The central issue is not whether the military can make money. It is that the military is fundamentally different from an ordinary market participant. It possesses coercive power and enjoys special institutional status that private businesses and ordinary government agencies do not have. Once an armed organization enters commercial competition, its institutional advantages can easily become economic advantages. Market competition can then become distorted, and public power can become entangled with private interests.

This is why military involvement in commerce can be particularly dangerous. Commercial activities can divert military personnel and institutions from their primary responsibilities, create conflicts between the military and local governments or businesses, and encourage the use of institutional privileges for economic gain. More seriously, when an organization possessing armed force also controls substantial economic resources, economic interests can begin to reinforce political power.

Jiang Zemin identified precisely these dangers when he argued that commercial activities could allow the principles of commercial exchange to penetrate military political life, undermine the discipline and values of military personnel, and create conditions for corruption. Military involvement in business could also put the armed forces in competition with civilians and local governments, damaging both military-civilian relations and the public image of the People’s Liberation Army.

International experience provides further evidence of the risks involved. In a number of countries, military organizations have historically controlled or maintained extensive interests in companies, land, finance, energy, construction, telecommunications, and other sectors. Such arrangements have often created economic interests that are difficult to separate from political power.

Vietnam provides one example. Its military has historically maintained significant economic activities and military-linked enterprises have operated in sectors including telecommunications, ports, construction, and finance. The relationship between military institutions and the civilian economy has deep historical roots, but it has also raised questions about transparency, oversight, competition, and the proper boundary between military responsibilities and commercial interests. Vietnam’s subsequent efforts to reform and restructure military-owned businesses demonstrate that separating military power from commercial interests can become increasingly difficult once such economic structures have become deeply established.

Iran illustrates another dimension of the problem. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has developed extensive political and economic influence, with military-linked organizations involved in areas such as construction, energy, communications, and other strategic sectors. When an armed organization possesses both political authority and substantial economic interests, economic power can reinforce political power, while political influence can in turn protect economic interests. Once such a structure develops, economic reform becomes much more difficult because reform inevitably encounters entrenched interests.

Thailand offers yet another example of how military and economic power can interact. The country’s armed forces have historically exercised considerable political influence, and military-linked economic interests have contributed to the broader political role of the armed forces. The specific institutional circumstances differ from those of China, but the underlying lesson is relevant: when a military develops extensive independent economic interests, it can acquire a source of power beyond its core defense function. This can complicate civilian governance and distort normal economic competition.

These experiences help explain why China chose a fundamentally different path: commercial enterprises should be separated from the military, while the state assumes responsibility for financing national defense. China’s system is a socialist market economy. Businesses are expected to compete within a unified legal and regulatory framework, while the state uses fiscal policy, regulation, and public institutions to provide essential public goods. The military, as the country’s armed force, should not use its special institutional position to compete for commercial profits. Its necessary funding should instead come through the national fiscal system.

The principle often described as the military “living on state funding” is therefore much more than a question of military budgets. It establishes a clear institutional boundary. The military’s survival and development are guaranteed by the state rather than by commercial activity. It does not need to compete with local governments for economic resources, compete with private enterprises for market share, or defend independent commercial interests.

This arrangement also reinforces the political character of the People’s Liberation Army. The fundamental principle is that the military serves the country and the people rather than any individual, organization, or economic interest. Precisely because the military possesses extraordinary coercive power, its relationship with commercial interests must be strictly regulated. The greater the power, the clearer the boundaries must be.

In this sense, keeping the military out of business is essentially about keeping the “gun” and the “wallet” in their proper places. The military is responsible for national defense; civilian institutions are responsible for public administration; businesses operate according to market rules and law; and the state provides the financial resources necessary for national defense. Each sphere has its own responsibilities and limits.

The purpose is not to deny the importance of economic development or market forces. On the contrary, it is to protect the integrity of the socialist market economy by ensuring that market competition is not subordinated to armed power. A modern economy requires predictable rules, fair competition, and unified regulation. It cannot function properly if organizations possessing coercive power are simultaneously major commercial competitors.

The separation of the military from commercial activity therefore serves several purposes at once. It protects the professionalism and combat effectiveness of the armed forces. It protects businesses and local governments from unfair institutional competition. It protects public finances from the emergence of autonomous military economic interests. And it protects the political integrity of the People’s Liberation Army by preventing military power from becoming a source of private economic power.

The broader lesson is simple. Military power should defend the economic order, not control it. Economic resources should be governed through law, public finance, and the institutions of the socialist market economy, rather than through the independent economic power of the armed forces.

China’s decision to end military commercial activities should therefore be understood not simply as a prohibition on soldiers doing business, but as an important institutional choice in modern state governance. By separating military power from commercial interests, China seeks to ensure that the armed forces remain focused on national defense, that markets operate according to law, and that economic resources remain within a unified national system of fiscal and market governance.

A military that is removed from commercial interests can concentrate on defending the country. A market protected from military intervention can operate according to fair competition. And a military whose funding is guaranteed by the state can maintain a clear and stable relationship with both the government and the people.

The principle is ultimately about institutional boundaries: the military protects the nation; the state governs the economy; and the market operates according to law. Those boundaries are essential not only to military professionalism, but also to a stable political order and a healthy socialist market economy.

Source: reformdata, sohu, cpc people, e23, mod gov cn

Korean American Self-Defense in the LA Uprising: A View from the Frontlines of America’s Racial Divide

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Korean American Self-Defense in the LA Uprising: A View from the Frontlines of America’s Racial Divide

The 1992 Los Angeles uprising is often remembered through two images: the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers and the Korean American shopkeepers who stood on rooftops with firearms to protect their businesses. The latter image later produced the controversial label “Roof Koreans,” a term that has been repeatedly invoked as a symbol of immigrant self-reliance, armed resistance, and distrust of the state. 

Yet to understand what happened in Los Angeles, it is not enough to celebrate or condemn the people on those rooftops. Their presence was the visible consequence of a much deeper crisis involving policing, racial segregation, immigration, class inequality, and the failure of the American state to provide equal protection to all of its residents.

The uprising followed the acquittal of police officers involved in the beating of Rodney King, whose assault had been captured on videotape and circulated widely. The verdict was experienced by many Black Americans as confirmation of a long-standing reality: police violence against Black communities could be documented and still go largely unpunished. 

The subsequent unrest was therefore not simply a spontaneous eruption of anger. It reflected decades of racial segregation, unemployment, poverty, discriminatory policing, and unequal political power. Los Angeles presented itself as a multicultural metropolis, but its neighborhoods were deeply divided by race and class. Communities could live only a few blocks apart while inhabiting entirely different social and economic worlds.

Korean American business owners became particularly vulnerable within this structure. During the decades before the uprising, many Korean immigrants had entered small-business sectors such as liquor stores, grocery stores, clothing shops, and other neighborhood businesses. 

These enterprises were often located in predominantly Black or Latino neighborhoods, partly because commercial property was more affordable there and partly because immigrant entrepreneurs faced barriers in entering established professional and corporate sectors. The result was an uncomfortable proximity: Korean immigrants operated businesses in communities whose residents were frequently economically disadvantaged, while the immigrants themselves were often struggling to establish a foothold in American society.

This proximity sometimes generated resentment. Korean shopkeepers could be perceived as outsiders extracting income from local communities, while Korean immigrants could perceive their customers and surrounding neighborhoods primarily through the lens of crime, insecurity, and economic survival. 

Neither perception adequately explained the underlying structure. The problem was not simply “Black prejudice against Koreans” or “Korean prejudice against Black people.” Both communities were being positioned within an unequal urban economy in which access to capital, property, political influence, and public protection was distributed unevenly.

The killing of fifteen-year-old Latasha Harlins by Korean American store owner Soon Ja Du in 1991 became an especially important symbol of this tension. Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter but received probation rather than a prison sentence. For many Black residents, the sentence reinforced the belief that the legal system valued Korean property owners and white institutions more highly than Black lives. For Korean Americans, however, the case existed alongside their own experience of racial vulnerability and economic insecurity. The tragedy therefore became part of a larger pattern in which the grievances of one marginalized community could easily be directed toward another.

This is one of the most important lessons of 1992. American racial politics can encourage subordinate groups to compete with one another for limited economic resources, security, and recognition. It is tempting to describe this simply as a deliberate strategy by “America” to make different racial groups fight each other, but the historical reality is more complicated. 

The conflict emerged from institutional arrangements: residential segregation, unequal schools, concentrated poverty, discriminatory policing, restricted access to capital, and a political system in which different communities competed for scarce resources. When these structural forces are translated into everyday encounters, systemic inequality can appear as interpersonal or cultural conflict. The result is what might be called horizontal racial conflict: communities that share experiences of marginalization become rivals rather than political allies.

The “Roof Koreans” phenomenon has to be understood within this context. The sight of armed Korean Americans defending their stores is sometimes presented as evidence that Koreans possessed an instinctive willingness to defend themselves that other communities lacked. Such an interpretation is misleading. The armed response was shaped by a combination of circumstances: the weakness of police protection during the unrest, the concentration of Korean-owned businesses in affected neighborhoods, immigrant distrust of public institutions, and a cultural background in which military service had been a significant part of male socialization.

South Korea is a society deeply shaped by the experience of war and national division. Under the country’s conscription system, South Korean men have historically been subject to mandatory military service, although the exact obligations have varied by generation and individual status. Many Korean men of the generation who immigrated to the United States before or around the 1990s had military experience. 

This does not mean that Koreans are “naturally militaristic,” nor does military service automatically make a person willing to use violence. It does, however, mean that firearms, uniforms, defensive formations, and the basic idea of responding to a security threat were not entirely unfamiliar concepts to many first-generation Korean men.

That background interacted with another uniquely American reality: the widespread presence of civilian firearms and the cultural legitimacy of armed self-defense in the United States. The “Roof Koreans” were therefore produced by the intersection of Korean military socialization and American gun culture. Their behavior should not be interpreted as proof of an inherent Korean character. It was a historical response to a specific environment in which immigrants believed that the state could no longer guarantee the safety of their families and livelihoods.

The deeper irony is that many Korean immigrants had come to the United States precisely because they believed it offered security, freedom, and opportunity. Korean immigration after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 expanded dramatically, as the abolition of the old national-origins quota system opened the door to larger-scale Asian immigration. 

Migrants arrived for many different reasons: economic opportunity, education, family reunification, political uncertainty, and the desire for a different future for their children. Yet immigration did not necessarily mean upward mobility. Many highly educated immigrants experienced professional deskilling, while others entered small businesses because racial discrimination and the structure of the American labor market limited their alternatives.

The Korean American relationship with the United States has therefore never been simply one of admiration or rejection. For South Korea, the United States represented military protection, economic power, technological modernity, and access to a global system dominated by American institutions. 

At the same time, American military and political power has also been a source of historical criticism. The U.S.–South Korean alliance developed within the Cold War, alongside American involvement in a South Korean political order that was for long periods authoritarian. For many Koreans, particularly among generations shaped by the democratic movements of the 1970s and 1980s, the United States could simultaneously be viewed as protector, hegemon, economic model, military power, and political actor deserving criticism.

American popular culture itself contains evidence of this contradiction. Television programs such as MASH*, although produced in the United States and nominally set during the Korean War, used that war to criticize militarism, bureaucracy, and the absurdity of organized violence. This tradition of American self-criticism matters because the United States is not simply an external oppressor standing outside its own society. 

It is a country whose institutions, media, and citizens have repeatedly argued about the meaning of American power. The Korean American experience consequently developed within an ambivalent relationship with America: immigrants could depend upon the country, admire its opportunities, criticize its racism, and challenge its foreign policy at the same time.

The same contradiction appears in the concept of the “model minority.” Korean Americans and other Asian Americans were increasingly represented as evidence that racial minorities could succeed through discipline, education, family values, and hard work. On the surface, this appeared to be a positive image. In reality, the model-minority stereotype served an important political function. 

It transformed structural questions into individual ones. If one minority group could supposedly succeed through hard work, then poverty and inequality among other minorities could be interpreted as failures of culture or personal responsibility rather than consequences of discrimination and unequal institutions.

The comparison between Asian Americans and Black Americans was especially damaging. It encouraged the idea that the success of one minority proved the failure of another. Korean immigrants could be told that they represented the disciplined immigrant ideal, while Black communities were implicitly presented as examples of social dysfunction. Such comparisons ignored the radically different histories of immigration, slavery, segregation, property ownership, and access to political power that shaped each group.

The 1992 uprising exposed the weakness of this framework. Korean Americans were neither simply privileged Americans nor powerless victims. They occupied an intermediate and unstable position within the American racial hierarchy. They could experience racism while simultaneously benefiting from certain forms of racialization. They could be economically successful while remaining politically marginalized. They could identify strongly with the American dream while discovering that the state did not necessarily protect them when that dream was threatened.

For Korean Americans, 1992 therefore represented more than the destruction of businesses. It forced a reconsideration of what it meant to be an immigrant community in America. The question was no longer simply how Koreans could accumulate wealth and protect their families. It was also how they should participate in American political life, how they should relate to Black and Latino communities, and whether immigrant security could be achieved through private defense alone. In the years that followed, Korean American political participation and community organizing increasingly reflected a recognition that isolation offered limited protection.

The historical significance of the “Roof Koreans” lies precisely in this contradiction. They were armed because they were afraid; they distrusted the state because they had experienced its absence; they defended private property because economic survival was closely tied to that property. 

Their story is neither a simple celebration of immigrant toughness nor a simple indictment of Korean Americans. It is a picture of what happens when an unequal society forces vulnerable communities to protect themselves within a system that has failed to provide equal security.

Seen from this perspective, the central story of Los Angeles in 1992 was not Black people versus Korean people. It was a broader crisis of the American racial and economic order. The conflict between communities was real, and its consequences were devastating, but treating it as a cultural clash between two ethnic groups obscures the institutions that produced the conditions for that clash. The more uncomfortable question is why communities with different histories of marginalization were repeatedly placed in competition with one another while the larger structures of policing, segregation, poverty, and political inequality remained intact.

The image of Koreans standing on rooftops with guns has survived because it is visually powerful and politically convenient. It turns a complicated historical crisis into a simple story about courage, self-reliance, and racial conflict. But history demands a more difficult interpretation. The rooftop was not merely a symbol of Korean toughness. It was also a symbol of state failure, immigrant insecurity, racial fragmentation, and the contradictions of the American dream. 

The United States, a society capable of offering extraordinary opportunity while reproducing profound inequalities, a country that celebrates multiculturalism while allowing racial groups to be separated by class and geography, and a political system in which marginalized communities can be encouraged, sometimes through institutions, sometimes through public narratives, and often simply through economic necessity, to fight horizontally rather than confront the structures that divide them.

The legacy of 1992 should consequently not be reduced to a question of who was right or who was wrong. Its enduring lesson is that racial conflict cannot be understood apart from political economy and state power. 

The history of Korean Americans demonstrates how immigrants can move from outsiders to business owners, from victims to participants in racial politics, and eventually toward a more complicated understanding of America. The rooftop remains a powerful image precisely because it contains all of these contradictions: fear and confidence, dependence and self-reliance, assimilation and alienation, the American dream and the failure of the American state to deliver it equally.

Source: savoirtw, rooftopshooting, sohu, filed ethos, koreatown storytelling program

How a Small Chinese County Became the World’s “Hair Capital”

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How a Small Chinese County Became the World’s “Hair Capital”

“Buying hair, especially long hair.” For decades, this familiar call could be heard in streets and villages across China. In Juancheng County, Heze, Shandong Province, however, the humble business of collecting hair has evolved into a major industrial cluster serving markets around the world.

Today, Juancheng is recognized as an important hub for human-hair raw materials and a major production base for hair products. Its industry covers the entire chain from raw-material collection and processing to product design, manufacturing, branding, logistics and international sales. The county has developed a particular strength in real-human-hair products, especially hair extensions, rather than synthetic wigs.

The origins of the industry date back to the 1960s and 1970s, when people in towns such as Zhengying and Fuchun began collecting and trading human hair alongside other materials such as horsehair and animal hides. As demand increased, local traders expanded their procurement networks from nearby areas to other parts of China and eventually to India and Southeast Asia.

Human hair became a valuable raw material because of its natural appearance, texture and versatility. Compared with synthetic fibers, high-quality human hair offers a more realistic look and feel, making it particularly suitable for premium wigs, extensions and customized hair products.

For many years, Juancheng mainly served as a raw-material trading center. At the beginning of the 21st century, however, rising demand for hair extensions and the upgrading of the beauty industry created an opportunity for local businesses to move further up the value chain. Enterprises began processing raw hair locally, and family workshops and small factories expanded rapidly.

This transformation greatly increased production capacity, but it also exposed structural weaknesses. Many businesses operated independently, with inconsistent product quality, limited standardization and intense price competition. Although the number of enterprises increased, the industry lacked strong coordination and brand influence.

The turning point came with the development of industrial parks and stronger government support. In 2012, Juancheng began planning and developing dedicated hair-product industrial parks. A third industrial park started construction in 2024. Concentrating enterprises in specialized industrial zones enabled businesses to share infrastructure and public services, including water, gas and environmental treatment facilities.

The county also incorporated hair products into its key industrial development programs and established mechanisms to coordinate enterprises, industry associations and government departments. These measures helped transform a fragmented network of workshops into a more organized industrial cluster.

The results have been substantial. Juancheng now has hundreds of hair-product enterprises and a large workforce engaged in the industry. In 2024, the county’s hair-product industry recorded an industrial output value of 54.6 billion yuan. From January to July 2025, output reached 41.68 billion yuan, an increase of 12.46 percent year on year.

The industry has also developed a complete production chain. Products now include hair wefts, wigs, extensions, ponytails, hairpieces and customized products, with thousands of varieties available for different markets.

Behind these products is a production system that combines traditional craftsmanship with modern manufacturing. Human hair must first be sorted according to length, color, thickness and direction before undergoing disinfection, cleaning and processing. In the production of high-end products, weaving and hair-setting processes can require highly skilled manual work.

A premium wig or hair extension may go through dozens or even hundreds of individual procedures. The direction, density and arrangement of each strand can affect the final appearance and comfort. This accumulated craftsmanship has become one of Juancheng’s most important competitive advantages.

For a long period, however, Juancheng remained heavily dependent on contract manufacturing and wholesale trade. Many enterprises had strong production capabilities but limited control over international brands, distribution channels and pricing. As a result, much of the added value was captured elsewhere in the supply chain.

In recent years, local enterprises have increasingly shifted toward independent design, branding and direct international sales. Companies are paying greater attention to consumer preferences, fashion trends and differences between overseas markets. Product development now covers not only manufacturing techniques but also styles, colors, materials and customized solutions.

Digital platforms have accelerated this transition. Juancheng businesses are increasingly using international e-commerce platforms and independent websites to reach customers directly. Social media and livestreaming have also become important tools for marketing hair products and demonstrating their appearance and application.

Cross-border e-commerce has opened another channel for small and medium-sized manufacturers. Instead of relying entirely on traditional trading companies, businesses can now respond more quickly to consumer demand, test new products and build direct relationships with overseas customers.

Logistics has also become a key part of the county’s internationalization strategy. As an inland county, Juancheng once faced relatively high transportation and international shipping costs. To address this challenge, the county has developed public bonded warehouses, cross-border e-commerce service centers and other trade-support facilities, while strengthening connections with Heze Mudan Airport and its international cargo functions.

These improvements are helping create a more efficient system for importing raw materials and exporting finished products, reducing logistics costs and improving the speed of international shipments.

The industry’s global reach continues to expand. Juancheng’s hair products are now exported to more than 80 countries and regions. In 2024, the county’s hair-product import and export volume reached approximately € 3.21 billion, accounting for around 70 percent of the county’s total foreign trade. In the first seven months of 2025, imports and exports reached about € 2.6 billion, up 48.75 percent year on year.

The county has also sought to strengthen its international visibility through trade fairs and industry events. Its first hair-products expo in 2025 brought together domestic manufacturers and international buyers, providing a platform for business cooperation and helping promote the “China Hair Capital” brand.

Juancheng’s development demonstrates how a traditional rural industry can evolve through specialization, industrial clustering, technological improvement and digital transformation. What began with people collecting hair door to door has developed into a sophisticated supply chain connecting raw-material networks, skilled manufacturing, modern logistics and global consumer markets.

The significance of Juancheng’s hair industry lies not simply in the volume of hair it processes, but in the industrial ecosystem built around it. Decades of experience in sourcing and processing human hair have created a deep pool of skills and suppliers, while industrial parks, e-commerce platforms and logistics infrastructure have provided new channels for expansion.

As global consumers increasingly seek personalized and high-quality hair products, Juancheng is moving toward higher-value segments of the market. Greater investment in product design, technology, international branding and direct-to-consumer sales will determine whether the county can further strengthen its position in the global hair-products industry.

Source: xinhua, dzplus, eastmoney, sina

An Open China, A Flourishing Sinology: Growing Through the Exchange of Civilizations

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An Open China, A Flourishing Sinology: Growing Through the Exchange of Civilizations

The formation of any culture is never an isolated process. Every civilization is rooted in its own historical soil, yet it is also shaped and enriched through encounters, exchanges, and mutual learning with other civilizations. 

The history of Sinology is a vivid example of this process. Its emergence and development reflect not only the enduring vitality of Chinese civilization, but also the long history of dialogue between China and the wider world.

Chinese civilization has a long and continuous history. Its philosophy, writing, language, institutions, literature, and arts have together formed a cultural tradition that has endured for thousands of years. Confucianism, Daoism, and the diverse schools of thought that flourished in ancient China provided a profound intellectual foundation for Chinese culture. 

They also became an important basis through which people beyond China came to understand and study the country. Without the accumulated vitality and richness of Chinese civilization, Sinology could not have emerged.

More than two thousand years ago, the Chinese began to reach beyond their immediate geographical surroundings. Zhang Qian’s missions to the Western Regions opened important channels connecting China with Central Asia, West Asia, and regions farther west. 

Silk, porcelain, tea, and other Chinese products traveled along these routes, while ideas, religions, technologies, and cultural practices from other civilizations entered China. What later came to be known as the Silk Road was therefore much more than a commercial route. It was also a bridge between civilizations.

The arrival of Buddhism in China offers a particularly important example. Originating in India, Buddhism entered China during the Han period and gradually became integrated with Chinese culture. Chinese monks traveled westward in search of Buddhist scriptures, while foreign monks came to China to translate and teach Buddhist texts. 

The journeys of Faxian and Xuanzang were not simply religious pilgrimages; they were also extraordinary intellectual journeys that expanded Chinese knowledge of Central and South Asia. Xuanzang’s travels, for example, produced valuable records of the geography, history, society, and customs of the regions he visited. Buddhism itself was transformed through its encounter with Chinese thought, eventually giving rise to distinctly Chinese traditions such as Chan Buddhism.

Christianity, particularly Nestorian Christianity, also entered China during the Tang dynasty. The Nestorian Stele erected in Chang’an in 781 provides important evidence of the religious and cultural exchanges between China and the West. These examples demonstrate that Chinese civilization was not a closed system. Throughout its history, it repeatedly encountered foreign ideas, absorbed what it found valuable, and transformed those ideas within its own cultural context.

The maritime world created another important channel of communication. Beginning in 1405, Zheng He’s voyages connected China with numerous countries and peoples across Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa. His fleets carried Chinese silk, porcelain, tea, and other goods abroad and returned with spices, medicines, animals, plants, and other products. More importantly, these voyages facilitated the exchange of institutions, knowledge, customs, art, religion, and technology.

The significance of these journeys lies not only in their scale, but also in their spirit of engagement. The voyages represented a tradition of seeking contact and friendship with other peoples. They demonstrated that maritime exploration could serve not merely commercial or military purposes, but also the cause of peaceful communication between civilizations. Together, the land and maritime Silk Roads created channels through which China and the wider world gradually came to know one another.

It was within this long history of contact that the foundations of Sinology were laid.

At first, European knowledge of China came largely through merchants, travelers, diplomats, missionaries, and explorers. Their travel accounts and reports introduced European readers to China’s geography, government, economy, products, customs, language, and social life. Marco Polo’s famous account was among the most influential of these works, while numerous other travel diaries, letters, reports, and books followed. Although such writings inevitably reflected the authors’ own cultural assumptions and sometimes contained misunderstandings or exaggerations, they nevertheless played an important role in bringing China into the intellectual horizon of Europe.

From the sixteenth century onward, missionaries became particularly important intermediaries between China and Europe. They studied the Chinese language, read Chinese classics, interacted with Chinese scholars, and recorded their observations of Chinese society. At the same time, they introduced Western knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, geography, and other sciences into China. The resulting process was characterized by both “Western learning spreading eastward” and “Chinese learning spreading westward.”

Among the most important figures in this process were Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci. Rather than treating Chinese culture simply as an obstacle to missionary activity, they sought to understand it from within. They studied Confucian texts and engaged Chinese intellectuals in dialogue. Their efforts demonstrated that meaningful cultural exchange requires more than the transmission of information; it requires the willingness to understand another civilization on its own terms.

A number of major works gradually transformed European knowledge of China from scattered observations into a more systematic body of learning. Juan González de Mendoza’s History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China, published in 1588, brought together a vast amount of information concerning China’s history, geography, government, education, military affairs, customs, products, and everyday life. It was translated into several European languages and circulated widely.

Another landmark appeared in 1687 with the publication of Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, or Confucius, the Chinese Philosopher. Written in Latin, the work introduced European readers to Confucius and major Confucian classics in a systematic manner. Its influence extended far beyond the study of China. European thinkers including Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu encountered Chinese philosophy and political thought through the growing body of literature on China. Chinese civilization thus became not only an object of curiosity but also a source of intellectual reflection for Europe.

This was a decisive stage in the emergence of Sinology as an independent field of study. In 1814, Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat began teaching Chinese and related languages and literature at the Collège de France. Chinese language, history, literature, and geography subsequently entered European academic institutions. Sinology gradually developed in France and then in many other countries, including Portugal, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Japan, and the United States. It increasingly incorporated methods from linguistics, history, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, and other disciplines.

Sinology is therefore both connected with China and distinct from traditional Chinese scholarship. Its object of study is Chinese civilization, but its development has taken place within different intellectual and cultural traditions. Chinese scholars and foreign Sinologists may examine the same historical subject while approaching it from different perspectives, using different questions and methodologies. This difference is not necessarily a weakness. On the contrary, it can provide valuable opportunities for mutual reflection.

Sinology can serve as a mirror through which the world sees China, but it can also become a mirror through which China sees itself.

The history of Sinology reminds us that the vitality of a civilization does not lie in resisting all change. It lies in its ability to communicate, absorb, transform, and renew itself. Chinese civilization has survived and developed over thousands of years partly because of its capacity to incorporate elements from other cultures. Buddhism became deeply integrated into Chinese intellectual and spiritual life; foreign artistic, religious, scientific, and technological influences enriched Chinese society; and in modern times, China has continued to learn from other civilizations.

Cultural exchange, however, is never a one-way process. It is not simply a matter of one civilization giving and another receiving. Genuine exchange is a process in which both sides are changed. Through dialogue, each civilization gains the opportunity to reconsider its own assumptions and discover new possibilities.

This lesson is particularly important in the twenty-first century. Modern transportation and communications have brought societies closer together than ever before, but geographical proximity does not automatically produce mutual understanding. Differences in history, religion, values, and social experience can still create misunderstanding and conflict. In such a world, the importance of understanding, respect, and equal dialogue has become even greater.

The significance of Sinology therefore extends beyond the academic study of Chinese language and culture. It represents a way of understanding another civilization through sustained intellectual engagement. To study a civilization seriously is not simply to judge it by one’s own standards, but to enter, as far as possible, its historical experience and cultural context.

Chinese civilization has produced many ideas that continue to possess value beyond their original historical setting: self-renewal, moral responsibility, respect for others, honesty, trust, and harmony between human beings and nature. At the same time, China has much to learn from the achievements and experiences of other civilizations. Cultural confidence should not mean cultural isolation. Genuine confidence allows a civilization to appreciate its own heritage while remaining open to the strengths of others.

Sinology was born from encounters between civilizations. It began with the movement of people, goods, religions, books, and ideas along ancient roads and across seas. It grew through travel accounts and missionary writings, matured through the translation and study of Chinese classics, and eventually became an established academic discipline. Its history is therefore not merely the history of a field of scholarship. It is also a history of humanity’s long search for understanding across cultural boundaries.

Looking ahead, the value of Sinology should not be measured only by the number of scholars, universities, or publications devoted to the study of China. Its deeper value lies in its capacity to promote dialogue. When different civilizations are willing to understand one another, recognize their differences, learn from one another, and seek common ground, cultural diversity becomes a source of strength rather than division.

Harmony does not mean the disappearance of difference. It means that differences can coexist with mutual respect. The history of Sinology demonstrates that civilizations can meet without losing their identities, and that through sustained exchange they can enrich one another.

Humanity may still be far from the ideal of a world in which different peoples live together in mutual understanding. Yet distance should not be a reason to abandon the journey. The ancient dream that people across the world might live as members of one human family remains worth pursuing.

Sinology came into being through the meeting of civilizations, and its future should continue to be shaped by that meeting. When cultures become more open, more understanding, and more willing to learn from one another, the study of China becomes more than an academic enterprise: it becomes part of the broader human effort to build bridges across differences and to create a world in which civilizations can coexist, communicate, and flourish together.

Source: qstheory, sass org cn, people, uwtsd 

The Return of Japanese Militarism: How Tokyo’s Intelligence Expansion Threatens Global Security

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The Return of Japanese Militarism: How Tokyo’s Intelligence Expansion Threatens Global Security

On May 27, Japan’s Diet formally approved the Act on the Establishment of the National Intelligence Council, marking a significant step in Tokyo’s efforts to fundamentally strengthen its capabilities for intelligence collection, analysis and interagency coordination. Driven by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and unfolding alongside an accelerating military buildup and the resurgence of a new form of militarism, Japan’s increasingly centralized intelligence architecture warrants close scrutiny.

During World War II, Japan relied on an extensive intelligence apparatus to facilitate its overseas aggression and expansion. Intelligence operations served not only military campaigns but also penetrated deeply into domestic governance, social surveillance and ideological control. 

Following Japan’s defeat, the country underwent demilitarization and democratization, and its wartime intelligence apparatus was dismantled. In the decades that followed, Japan gradually developed a system characterized by parallel intelligence institutions, interagency checks and balances, and a significant reliance on the United States.

Today, intelligence responsibilities are distributed among a number of Japanese institutions, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Justice, the Public Security Intelligence Agency and the National Police Agency. 

Since the beginning of the 21st century, however, Japan has sought to upgrade its intelligence capabilities in response to changes in the international security environment and as part of a broader transformation of its national security strategy. In 2001, the government established the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office and the Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center, while the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets formally took effect in December 2014.

The Act on the Establishment of the National Intelligence Council represents an important turning point in this latest phase of intelligence reform. Its stated objective is to enhance coordination across government, but its institutional implications point toward a far more centralized structure in which the Prime Minister’s Office assumes greater control over the country’s intelligence resources. 

Under the legislation, a National Intelligence Council chaired by the prime minister will be established to investigate and deliberate on major intelligence activities and counterintelligence matters, effectively serving as a central command and coordination mechanism for intelligence collection and analysis.

The legislation further requires the chief cabinet secretary and the heads of relevant administrative agencies to provide the council with useful information and materials in a timely manner and, when requested by the chair, to provide explanations and other necessary assistance. In institutional terms, these provisions establish a legally backed mechanism for the upward flow of intelligence from individual agencies to the central government. The Japanese government also plans to establish a National Intelligence Agency in July, initially with a staff of approximately 700, with personnel numbers expected to expand in stages.

On the surface, these reforms can be presented as an effort to overcome bureaucratic fragmentation and make more efficient use of intelligence resources. In practice, however, they represent a fundamental restructuring of Japan’s intelligence system toward greater centralization and a significant departure from the postwar model of dispersed institutional authority. 

The command center of Japan’s intelligence operations is likely to become increasingly concentrated in the Prime Minister’s Office, creating a vertically integrated structure extending from the political leadership downward. This development raises questions about whether an important institutional safeguard established during Japan’s postwar democratization, the dispersal of intelligence authority intended to prevent the re-emergence of militarism, is gradually being weakened.

Japan will remain dependent on the United States for intelligence capabilities and information sharing in the short term. Over the longer term, however, the establishment of a National Intelligence Council and a centralized National Intelligence Agency could provide Tokyo with the institutional foundation to develop greater autonomy in intelligence planning, collection and analysis.

The connection between intelligence reform and military expansion is particularly significant. Historically, Japan’s overseas military campaigns were frequently preceded and supported by extensive intelligence-gathering and espionage activities. From the First Sino-Japanese War through the Pacific War, intelligence operations played a central role in identifying targets, gathering battlefield information and facilitating military expansion.

Against this historical backdrop, the intelligence reforms pursued by the Takaichi government deserve particular attention. On May 14, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara stated during questioning before the House of Councillors Committee on Cabinet Affairs that the newly established National Intelligence Council would cooperate with the Self-Defense Forces in intelligence collection. 

Earlier, on March 23, the Takaichi government formally initiated a reorganization of the Self-Defense Forces. The Maritime Self-Defense Force established a new Intelligence Operations Group, bringing together units responsible for intelligence, cyber operations, communications and maritime surveillance, while the Ground Self-Defense Force established its own Intelligence Operations Unit.

At present, Japan’s intelligence capabilities within the Self-Defense Forces are centered on the Defense Intelligence Headquarters and specialized intelligence units belonging to the individual services. These capabilities have nevertheless been constrained by personnel shortages and institutional fragmentation. 

Greater coordination under the National Intelligence Council could enable the government to integrate resources from civilian agencies and other intelligence organizations with those of the Self-Defense Forces, potentially strengthening Japan’s military intelligence capabilities. At the same time, Tokyo is expected to place greater emphasis on mobilizing civilian resources, incorporating advanced technologies and recruiting specialized personnel to expand its capacity for intelligence collection and analysis.

International intelligence cooperation is another important dimension of Japan’s evolving defense strategy. Tokyo has signed military information protection agreements with the United States, South Korea and India, and has established similar arrangements with Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Canada, Ukraine and NATO. 

On May 12, Japan and the Philippines also announced the launch of negotiations on a related agreement. Through these arrangements, Japan has developed bilateral intelligence-sharing mechanisms with many of the principal members of the Five Eyes community and has increasingly been described by some observers as a potential “sixth eye” within the broader Western intelligence network.

The strategic implications are considerable. By integrating its domestic intelligence resources and strengthening intelligence capabilities within the Self-Defense Forces, Japan could become more deeply embedded in the U.S.-led intelligence architecture in the Asia-Pacific. 

In flashpoints such as the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, closer intelligence cooperation could allow Japan to play a more prominent role in surveillance, reconnaissance and information operations conducted in coordination with the United States. From Beijing’s perspective, such a development would reinforce the perception of Japan as an intelligence outpost supporting U.S. efforts to contain China militarily and strategically. The resulting deterioration in regional strategic trust could, in turn, increase the risks of miscalculation and military confrontation.

Even more troubling are the potential domestic consequences of a highly centralized intelligence structure. The legislation focuses heavily on building a unified institutional framework for intelligence agencies but provides comparatively limited safeguards concerning the boundaries of intelligence activities, particularly the surveillance of Japanese citizens or foreign targets. 

Nor does it establish a robust independent parliamentary or third-party oversight mechanism capable of scrutinizing intelligence operations. This creates concern that agencies entrusted with extensive intelligence powers could acquire broad authority without sufficiently clear or enforceable limits.

The potential risks are particularly acute in an era in which governments possess unprecedented access to personal information. Tax records, social-security data, immigration records, communications information and other forms of personal data have traditionally been administered by separate government agencies under different legal frameworks. 

If such information were increasingly integrated and made available for centralized intelligence purposes, the potential implications for privacy and personal-data protection would be substantial.

Takaichi has also indicated that her government intends to pursue additional legislation and institutional measures, including an anti-espionage law, an external intelligence agency and a national intelligence strategy. Taken together, these initiatives suggest that Japan is not merely making incremental adjustments to existing institutions but is moving toward the construction of a much broader intelligence and surveillance architecture.

These concerns have already been voiced within Japan. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations and other civic groups have expressed opposition to the legislation, while lawmakers have raised concerns that intelligence institutions could be politicized and used for partisan purposes. 

Both chambers of the Diet adopted supplementary resolutions calling for consideration of privacy and personal-information protection in the organization and operation of the National Intelligence Council. Yet such resolutions do not carry the same binding legal force as statutory safeguards and therefore offer limited protection against potential abuses of surveillance powers.

Japan’s history provides ample reason for such caution. During the wartime period, the Special Higher Police, commonly known as the Tokkō, developed an extensive system of domestic surveillance and repression. It targeted anti-war activists, suppressed dissent, controlled public discourse and pursued political opponents in the name of national security. Even after the war, controversies involving police wiretapping of Communist Party officials in Kanagawa Prefecture and surveillance operations by the Public Security Intelligence Agency have periodically raised concerns about the persistence of intrusive intelligence practices.

The issue, therefore, is not simply whether Japan should possess stronger intelligence capabilities. In an increasingly complex security environment, every major power faces legitimate demands to improve its ability to collect and analyze information, counter espionage and respond to emerging threats. The more fundamental question is how such capabilities are organized, who exercises ultimate authority over them, what legal limits constrain their activities, and whether independent institutions possess sufficient power to hold intelligence agencies accountable.

Japan’s current trajectory raises legitimate concerns precisely because institutional centralization appears to be advancing faster than mechanisms of independent oversight. A powerful intelligence apparatus operating under increasingly direct political control can improve the state’s capacity to respond rapidly to security threats, but it can also increase the risks of politicization, mission creep and excessive surveillance. These risks become particularly serious when intelligence institutions are being strengthened simultaneously with military expansion and closer integration into a U.S.-led regional security network.

The significance of Japan’s intelligence transformation consequently extends beyond the technical organization of its security bureaucracy. It touches on the broader question of what kind of security state Japan intends to become. The postwar constitutional order was built in part around institutional restraints designed to prevent the return of militarism and unchecked state power. If intelligence authority is increasingly concentrated at the political center without corresponding safeguards for privacy, parliamentary scrutiny and judicial or independent oversight, one of those postwar restraints could gradually be eroded.

The historical memory of Japan’s wartime intelligence apparatus should not be invoked mechanically, nor should every contemporary security reform be equated with a return to militarism. Yet history does demonstrate that intelligence institutions are never politically neutral. They can strengthen a democratic state’s capacity to protect its citizens, but they can also become instruments of political control when oversight fails.

Japan is therefore approaching a consequential crossroads. The creation of a centralized intelligence structure may enhance the country’s strategic autonomy and military effectiveness, but it also carries significant risks if institutional power expands without equally strong safeguards. As Tokyo seeks a larger role in regional security and deeper integration with its allies’ intelligence networks, the international community will have reason to watch not only how much intelligence capability Japan acquires, but also how that capability is governed.

For Japan, the central challenge is not simply to build a stronger intelligence state. It is to demonstrate that greater intelligence power can coexist with democratic accountability, protection of individual rights and meaningful institutional checks. Without those safeguards, efforts presented as modernization of the national security system could instead deepen political centralization, intensify regional confrontation and revive precisely the historical anxieties that Japan’s postwar order was designed to prevent.

Source: xinhua, china diplomacy, people, theconversation

AI for Whom? Who Benefits from Artificial Intelligence?

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AI for Whom? Who Benefits from Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence is emerging as a powerful force reshaping the global order. From the reorganization of industrial supply chains to the production of knowledge, from transformations in the nature of work to international competition, the impact of AI has already gone far beyond a mere technological revolution. It is becoming a question of the very structure of the societies of the future.

When large corporations control the most advanced AI technologies, could this give rise to a new form of colonialism toward smaller countries that lack such technological capabilities? Are the data generated by people in Africa truly equal, in the eyes of AI, to the data generated in Europe and the United States? Whose intelligence? Who, ultimately, does artificial intelligence serve? Is it creating a more inclusive and equitable future, or is it reproducing, and perhaps deepening, existing inequalities in new technological forms?

In this conversation, Professor Yin Zhiguang of Fudan University speaks with Hansong Li, Assistant Professor at American University and Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for International Affairs, about AI from the perspective of the Global South， examining the global division of labor, data power, and knowledge justice behind the technology.

Why are you interested in AI, and what are your main concerns about its impact on society and the global order?

AI is an unavoidable question of our time because it represents one of today’s most advanced productive forces. But we should neither assume that technology follows a single, linear path nor believe that AI can automatically solve all social problems. Its significance lies not only in transforming production, but also in reshaping social relations and collective consciousness.

I think we can understand AI on at least three levels. The first is the restructuring of global supply chains and the international division of labor: why do some countries and companies control large language models, computing power, and core algorithms, while others are left providing data, labor, minerals, and energy? How did this new division of labor emerge?

How does the future envisioned by large data companies like Palantir differ from our existing forms of social organization, and does it truly promote equality or instead reproduce inequality?

If AI is truly empowering us, is that empowerment universal and equal, or does it accelerate and amplify existing inequalities? This raises a deeper question: What will the AI utopia of the future actually look like?

Many visions promoted by tech leaders appear human-centered, but are in fact centered on a technological elite, surrounded by robots while ordinary people remain outside. In the Global South, this raises an especially urgent problem: as automation advances, many workers may never experience the kind of industrialization that transformed East Asia, nor gain access to the high-end technology sector. Such a future could therefore reproduce profound structural inequalities.

A second vision is human–machine integration, in which AI becomes an extension of human capabilities, a kind of “second brain” that gives us instant access to knowledge and information. But this does not automatically solve social problems. It may increase individual productivity while simultaneously creating new forms of labor, social relations, and alienation. Ultimately, how humans integrate with machines is not simply a technological question; it is a question of political economy and the kind of society we choose to build.

To what extent does AI-enhanced human–machine integration actually increase productivity across different forms of labor, and how should we understand its impact when AI becomes an extension of human capabilities rather than merely a tool?

AI may increase efficiency without necessarily increasing social productivity as a whole, and its impact remains highly uneven across sectors. In developed economies, service-sector jobs such as legal assistants, accountants, financial analysts, and programmers are already being significantly reshaped, while the rise of AI agents and human–machine integration could make the future of human labor increasingly uncertain.

By contrast, agriculture, small-scale production, and the informal economy have a much more complicated relationship with AI. In countries like India, where a vast informal economy exists alongside a rapidly growing AI sector, it is still unclear how deeply AI is actually transforming the lives of ordinary workers. At the same time, the Global South also offers alternative possibilities, such as using AI for weather monitoring, telemedicine, and agricultural services. The question, then, is not simply whether AI increases productivity, but whose productivity it increases, and under what conditions.

Does AI create new forms of inequality, or does it primarily deepen existing disparities between agricultural and industrial countries and between the primary and tertiary sectors?

Both dynamics are happening at the same time. On the one hand, AI is creating new inequalities within its own global supply chain. Countries at the bottom often perform data labeling and content moderation, labor-intensive and psychologically damaging work involving violent, sexual, or otherwise disturbing content. They effectively become the “filters” of the AI industry, absorbing the risks and trauma while others receive the clean data. This echoes older patterns of global production, in which developing countries have long borne the environmental and human costs of global consumption.

On the other hand, AI empowers countries, regions, and social groups very unevenly, creating new forms of dependence and exclusion. Some become the “front of the train,” while others are left behind, or never get on the train at all. When the knowledge economy fails to be inclusive, those excluded may understandably ask, “What does AI have to do with me?” That sense of exclusion can fuel resentment toward technological elites and, ultimately, populist politics.

Given the deep inequalities within and beyond the AI industry, how can we rethink global AI governance to account for these differences and build a more equitable framework?

This goes beyond inequality in the AI supply chain and raises a broader question of global knowledge injustice. Inclusive AI governance must begin with inclusive data. Although AI models are trained on enormous datasets, they still capture only a small fraction of human experience. What gets included as “valid data” is itself a political and epistemic choice, largely shaped by major technology companies and engineers in the Global North.

That is why we need to bring more countries, languages, cultures, and forms of local knowledge into AI development. We can already see this in Africa, where startups in countries such as Uganda and Ethiopia are developing models based on local languages, data, and social realities rather than simply reproducing existing English-language models. This shows that AI does not have to follow a single Silicon Valley model.

Ultimately, this is a question of epistemic justice: Whose data enters the model? Whose knowledge is represented? And who remains excluded from knowledge production? If AI governance is to be genuinely inclusive, we must diversify not only the languages of AI, but also the data, knowledge, and perspectives that shape it.

The third level concerns our imaginaries of the future. Some technology elites in Silicon Valley envision futures in which a small minority controls AI, embodied robots, and other advanced technologies—or even escapes to Mars while the rest of humanity is left behind. Such visions point toward an increasingly technocratic and hierarchical future, with echoes of what has been called the Dark Enlightenment.

What are the material conditions required for AI to become truly accessible and inclusive worldwide, from affordable and open models to low-cost, reliable energy?

Beyond open source, AI needs to be meaningfully integrated into social life and economic production. We could even slow the race to push the limits of generative AI and large language models, and focus more on what they actually contribute to ordinary people and society.

A second priority is sustainable energy. AI depends heavily on electricity, so a diverse and sustainable energy system is itself a foundation for AI development. This is also why energy security and AI governance cannot be treated as separate issues.

Ultimately, however, the most important question is where society wants AI to go. Countries and regions such as Singapore, ASEAN, and the African Union are already exploring new approaches to AI governance, while the United States has traditionally relied more on market-driven innovation, intervening only after problems become serious. This reflects a broader tendency to pursue technological progress without first building the social foundations necessary to sustain it.

We need to bring human needs and lived realities back into discussions of technological development and global governance. Technology cannot be an end in itself; it must be grounded in the material and social conditions of human life. Otherwise, we risk building a technological “second floor” while forgetting that the foundations beneath it are already cracking.

How can we put human needs and lived realities back at the center of technological development and global AI governance, rather than assuming that technological progress alone will solve broader social problems?

The key is collaborative governance. For too long, global resources and decision-making power have been concentrated in the hands of a few countries and corporations, leaving many developing countries with little voice in the rules that govern them. As the old slogan goes, “no taxation without representation.” The same principle should apply to AI governance: countries should not simply be expected to accept rules they had no role in creating.

The most fundamental principle of global AI governance, therefore, should be co-creation and shared governance. We need to develop a shared wisdom around AI, build consensus through participation, and gradually establish norms that everyone has a stake in. These norms will inevitably evolve, but through continued cooperation they can develop into genuinely universal mechanisms of governance.

This also creates an opportunity for the Global South to move beyond being merely a recipient of supposedly “universal” rules. By participating in the construction of those rules, the Global South can become a co-creator of what universality itself means.

Source: guancha, live science, techradar

The South China Sea Dispute

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The South China Sea Dispute

The South China Sea is located between mainland China, Taiwan Island, the Philippine archipelago, the Malay Archipelago, and the Indochinese Peninsula. It is an important marginal sea in the western Pacific, covering an area of approximately 3.56 million square kilometers. 

Because it connects the Pacific Ocean with the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea has been an important international shipping route since ancient times and holds considerable strategic significance. At the same time, the region is rich in natural resources, including oil and natural gas. For these reasons, with the development of modern marine resource exploitation and the evolution of international law, the South China Sea has gradually become an area where the interests of neighboring countries intersect and disputes are concentrated.

The South China Sea disputes mainly refer to disagreements among countries and regions surrounding the South China Sea over issues such as sovereignty over islands and reefs, maritime delimitation, and resource development. The main parties involved include mainland China and Taiwan, as well as Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. The claims of these parties involve not only historical questions concerning territorial sovereignty but also modern international maritime law, exclusive economic zones, and continental shelf regimes. As a result, the South China Sea issue has a complicated historical, legal, and geopolitical background.

The so-called “Nine-Dash Line” is an important concept for understanding the South China Sea disputes. It is a series of intermittent line segments drawn on Chinese maps of the South China Sea, generally forming a U-shaped pattern, and is therefore sometimes referred to as the “U-shaped line.” 

Its history can be traced back to maps published by the Chinese government in the 1940s. At that time, the map contained eleven dashed segments. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the line was adjusted and eventually became what is commonly known today as the Nine-Dash Line. For a long period of time, China has based its claims to relevant islands, reefs, and maritime rights in the South China Sea on historical documents, maps, and evidence of the development and administration of the South China Sea islands.

However, following the discovery of oil and natural gas resources in the South China Sea in the 1960s and 1970s, neighboring countries gradually strengthened their own claims to sovereignty and maritime rights. In particular, after the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) established the legal regimes of the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia increasingly relied on modern maritime law to assert rights over surrounding waters and made sovereignty claims over certain islands and reefs in the South China Sea. 

As a result, the South China Sea disputes developed from relatively straightforward disagreements over the ownership of islands and reefs into a complex combination of territorial sovereignty, maritime delimitation, resource exploitation, and competing interpretations of international law.

The South China Sea islands are generally divided into four major groups: the Dongsha Islands, the Xisha Islands, the Zhongsha Islands, and the Nansha Islands. Among them, the Nansha Islands have become the most contested area because of their large number of islands and reefs, their important geographical location, and the abundance of resources in the surrounding waters. 

Different countries and areas currently exercise control over various islands and reefs and conduct resource exploration, fishing activities, and infrastructure construction in the surrounding areas. China currently controls a number of features in the South China Sea and established Sansha City to administer the relevant islands and waters. Taiwan also exercises effective control over Itu Aba, commonly known as Taiping Island. At the same time, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and other countries control various features in the Spratly Islands and have advanced their own sovereignty and maritime claims.

China’s position on sovereignty over the South China Sea has a long historical background. Chinese historical documents contain records concerning the South China Sea and its islands and reefs dating back many centuries. Since the Han Dynasty, Chinese texts have included descriptions of the geographical environment of the South China Sea. 

During the Tang and Song dynasties, terms such as “Shitang,” “Changsha,” “Qianli Shitang,” and “Wanli Changsha” appeared in historical records. During the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, Chinese geographical records concerning the South China Sea islands became increasingly detailed. Chinese fishermen from coastal areas also engaged in fishing and navigation in the region for centuries. In modern times, in response to foreign occupation of certain islands and reefs in the South China Sea, the Chinese government lodged diplomatic protests. Following the end of World War II, China resumed administration of the South China Sea islands in accordance with postwar international documents and arrangements. China therefore maintains that the South China Sea islands were not terra nullius and that it possesses historical and legal grounds for its sovereignty claims.

However, other claimant states interpret this history differently. Some countries argue that historical navigation, fishing activities, and references on maps do not necessarily constitute continuous and effective state control in the sense required by modern international law. They also emphasize the significance of long-term effective occupation and administration. In addition, these countries rely on the provisions of UNCLOS concerning territorial seas, exclusive economic zones, and continental shelves to advance their maritime claims. 

Because historical rights, territorial sovereignty over islands and reefs, and modern maritime law involve complex and sometimes overlapping legal questions, the South China Sea disputes cannot easily be resolved on the basis of a single legal framework.

The involvement of the United States has further complicated the South China Sea issue. During the Cold War, the United States primarily regarded the South China Sea as an important maritime transportation route and did not directly intervene in the territorial sovereignty disputes over individual islands and reefs. 

From the 1990s onward, as American concerns about China’s strategic intentions increased, the United States gradually expanded its military and diplomatic activities in Southeast Asia. In the 21st century, the United States further strengthened military and security cooperation with countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia while emphasizing the importance of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. The United States also maintains a military alliance with the Philippines, further increasing its influence over South China Sea affairs. Consequently, the South China Sea disputes are no longer merely regional disagreements between China and neighboring claimant states; to some extent, they have also become part of the broader strategic competition between China and the United States.

In practice, resource development, construction on islands and reefs, and the protection of maritime rights remain major challenges in the South China Sea. Several neighboring countries have conducted oil and gas exploration and development in relevant waters for many years, while China has generally taken a more cautious approach toward resource development in disputed areas. At the same time, some countries have sought to strengthen their claims through domestic legislation, administrative measures, and international judicial or arbitral proceedings, further internationalizing the South China Sea disputes. 

In 2013, the Philippines initiated arbitration proceedings concerning the South China Sea. China maintained that it would neither accept nor participate in the arbitration, arguing that the relevant issues involved territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation and therefore fell outside the jurisdiction of the arbitration process. In 2016, the arbitral tribunal issued its award, after which the Chinese government stated that it neither accepted nor recognized the award.

The South China Sea disputes are the result of the interaction of historical issues, international law, resource interests, and major-power strategic competition. China advocates resolving relevant disputes through peaceful negotiations and direct consultations, while also proposing approaches such as “shelving disputes and pursuing joint development.” 

Looking ahead, resolving the South China Sea issue will require not only the protection of legitimate national interests but also deeper research into international maritime law, stronger capabilities in marine legislation, resource development, and ocean governance, as well as continued diplomatic and regional cooperation to reduce misunderstandings and the risk of conflict. 

The South China Sea disputes are unlikely to be completely resolved in the short term. Nevertheless, through peaceful negotiations, the development of regional rules, and practical cooperation, it may still be possible to gradually reduce tensions while safeguarding the core interests of the parties involved and creating more favorable conditions for peace, stability, and common development in the South China Sea.

Source: pmfias, bbc, cgtn, britannica, us state gov

6.6 ms Decision Time, 100% Kill Rate: Chinese Research Team Unveils New UAV Combat Algorithm

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6.6 ms Decision Time, 100% Kill Rate: Chinese Research Team Unveils New UAV Combat Algorithm

A research team led by Associate Professor Zhang Dong from the School of Astronautics at Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) in China has recently introduced a new algorithm that could fundamentally transform the way unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms search for and destroy hostile targets.

The algorithm, known as HG-STR (Heterogeneous Graph Spatio-Temporal Reasoning), enables a formation of fixed-wing UAVs to autonomously search for and eliminate hostile targets across a large battlefield, even when communication signals are jammed and the line of sight is obstructed.

According to a peer-reviewed paper published on May 19 in Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica, one of China’s leading journals in the field of aeronautics, HG-STR achieved a 96% mission success rate and a 100% target elimination rate, significantly outperforming existing benchmark algorithms in both key performance indicators. South China Morning Post also reported that this is currently the first known algorithm capable of achieving a 100% target destruction rate while operating at a speed sufficient for the tempo of modern warfare.

The report further cited an anonymous Chinese defense expert, who noted that most UAV combat missions are still remotely controlled by human operators. According to the expert, this technology points toward a future in which UAV swarms can be deployed into highly contested and communication-denied environments, where they execute a single high-level command, such as search for and eliminate all hostile targets, without requiring further human intervention.

Conventional algorithms generally treat friendly forces, enemy units, terrain, and other battlefield entities as homogeneous data, which can lead to information ambiguity. In contrast, the research team proposed a heterogeneous graph representation that assigns distinct semantic meanings to different battlefield entities. In this framework, friendly UAVs, search regions, and hostile targets are modeled as different categories of nodes.

By learning the semantic relationships among these heterogeneous entities, the algorithm can accurately identify and prioritize meaningful interactions. For example, when a UAV detects a hostile target, the information is immediately recognized as a high-priority threat. Conversely, nearby friendly UAVs are identified as opportunities for cooperative engagement.

According to Zhang Dong and his colleagues, this capability enables UAV swarms to rapidly determine when to support allied units and when to pursue and engage enemy targets.

Traditional rule-based systems, by comparison, operate according to predefined scripts and often fail when facing unpredictable adversaries. Many existing optimization algorithms also suffer from excessive computational complexity, similar to a chess engine exhaustively evaluating possible moves, making them too slow for real-time combat scenarios.

The paper reports that HG-STR performs end-to-end neural network inference with an average decision time of only 6.6 milliseconds per step, representing a substantial improvement over conventional approaches.

For comparison, another method, GA+PSO+MPC, achieves slightly higher area coverage but requires approximately 5.8 seconds for each decision. At a flight speed of 100 meters per second, such latency would result in nearly 600 meters of blind flight before a new decision is made, which could be fatal in electronically contested environments.

Real-world battlefields present numerous uncertainties. Electronic warfare may disrupt communication links, isolating UAVs from one another. Individual UAV sensors have only limited observation ranges, while search-and-destroy missions are constrained by both time and fuel consumption.

To address these challenges, the research team developed several complementary solutions. First, each UAV is equipped with a memory mechanism based on a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU). When communication with teammates is lost, the UAV can recall the last known positions of friendly units as well as the last observed locations of hostile targets.

Second, the researchers designed a hierarchical decision-making framework. Each UAV first determines its high-level objective, deciding whether to continue searching or transition into attack mode. It then selects an appropriate target and finally determines the amount of ammunition required for the engagement.

By decomposing the complex decision-making process into a sequence of hierarchical subtasks, the UAV swarm avoids the confusion and inefficiency associated with attempting to optimize all decisions simultaneously.

Simulation experiments demonstrated that the proposed algorithm maintained a 94% mission success rate even under weakly connected communication conditions with severely limited communication ranges.

The experimental results also indicate that HG-STR possesses strong generalization capability. After being trained in relatively small-scale simulation environments, the algorithm can be directly transferred to much larger and more complex battlefield scenarios involving greater numbers of UAVs and hostile targets without requiring additional retraining.

Looking ahead, the research team plans to transition the algorithm from laboratory simulations to real-world battlefield applications. Future research will further enhance the algorithm’s robustness, improving its resilience not only to communication interruptions but also to transmission delays, packet loss, and corrupted data.

The research paper concludes that future work will focus on lightweight deployment and real-flight validation of the algorithm on computationally constrained embedded airborne platforms. It also proposes incorporating channel contention, random packet loss, and communication latency into the Markov decision process state space to further investigate the resilience of UAV swarm decision-making under non-ideal communication conditions.

Source: guancha, sina, hk01, sohu

How China Upgrades BeiDou Satellites Without Bringing Them Back to Earth

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How China Upgrades BeiDou Satellites Without Bringing Them Back to Earth

From farming and transportation to everyday convenience and intelligent operations, China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System is using precise positioning and timing to create new possibilities for modern life.

Recently, the China Satellite Navigation Office announced that the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System would undergo an in-orbit upgrade, with the operating status of some satellites to be optimized. Why does a system of such scale need to keep evolving? How can it determine a user’s position from tens of thousands of kilometers above Earth and play a precise role in almost every journey? And how has it become a cornerstone of the digital infrastructure supporting modern China?

When people get lost in an unfamiliar place today, the answer is often remarkably simple: open a navigation app. In reality, however, satellite navigation systems such as GPS and BeiDou do not provide the entire navigation service. Their fundamental task is to determine one’s position. Route planning and turn-by-turn navigation are then handled by map applications.

The story of satellite navigation began with the dawn of the Space Age. In October 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite. Scientists soon discovered that by receiving the signals transmitted by Sputnik 1, they could measure the Doppler shift of those signals and determine the satellite’s orbit. This led to a fascinating question: if the orbit of a satellite was already known, could a receiver use the same principle in reverse to calculate its own position?

That idea gave rise to the Transit navigation system, the world’s first satellite navigation system, and opened the era of satellite-based positioning. Transit, however, had only a small number of satellites and could not provide continuous, real-time positioning. It was therefore mainly suitable for relatively slow-moving platforms such as ships. In 1995, GPS became the world’s first truly global, all-weather, continuous, real-time satellite navigation system, fundamentally transforming positioning technology.

If GPS already existed, why did China invest so heavily in developing BeiDou? The answer lies in strategic independence. In sectors such as finance, communications and energy, accurate positioning and timing are essential to the security and stable operation of critical infrastructure. Relying entirely on foreign satellite navigation systems could create vulnerabilities. In this sense, having an independently controlled navigation system is much like keeping your own safety rope firmly in your own hands.

BeiDou also offers a broader range of services than GPS. In addition to global positioning, navigation and timing, the system integrates navigation with communications and provides seven major service capabilities, including satellite-based augmentation, precise point positioning, global short-message communication, regional short-message communication, ground-based augmentation and international search and rescue. GPS, by contrast, primarily provides global positioning, navigation and timing services.

The two systems also differ in their satellite constellations. The BeiDou-3 global constellation combines three types of orbit: geostationary Earth orbit, inclined geosynchronous orbit and medium Earth orbit. GPS satellites, by comparison, operate in medium Earth orbit.

BeiDou has not been without challenges. GPS has a considerable head start, a mature service record and widespread adoption around the world. BeiDou has had less time to accumulate experience, and its service capabilities still have room for improvement. GPS’s early dominance has also made it more difficult for BeiDou to expand its applications internationally. Yet as the system continues to improve, its application ecosystem is steadily growing.

China’s development of BeiDou has proceeded through three major stages. From the formal launch of the BeiDou-1 project in 1994 to the completion and commissioning of the system in 2000, China took only six years to establish a system that used just two satellites and provided positioning, timing, short-message communication and position-reporting capabilities. This made China the third country in the world to develop an independent satellite navigation system.

Although BeiDou-1 initially covered only China and required terminals to communicate with satellites in both directions to determine a position, it introduced an innovative short-message communication function. Unlike GPS, which essentially tells a user where they are, BeiDou-1 could also enable others to know where that user was. This integration of navigation and communications became one of BeiDou’s defining innovations.

In 1998, as BeiDou-1 was approaching completion, China began studying the development of BeiDou-2. At the time, the country’s economic resources and aerospace capabilities were more limited, while building a global constellation of medium Earth orbit satellites would have required overseas ground stations. China therefore adopted a phased strategy: first establish a regional system serving China and the Asia-Pacific region, and then move toward a global system when conditions were ready.

That next step arrived in 2020. On July 31, BeiDou-3 was officially commissioned as a global satellite navigation system, providing users around the world with all-weather, all-time, high-precision and highly reliable positioning, navigation and timing services.

From the two-satellite positioning of BeiDou-1, to the hybrid constellation of BeiDou-2, and finally to the inter-satellite links and other innovations of BeiDou-3, the system has followed a development path shaped by China’s own technological conditions and engineering experience.

It is important to remember that BeiDou is much more than a group of satellites orbiting Earth. The complete system consists of three interconnected segments: the space segment, the ground segment and the user segment. The ground segment, including monitoring stations, master control stations and uplink stations, calculates the parameters that satellites need to broadcast and generates commands for controlling the satellites. The satellites then transmit navigation signals, while user equipment such as smartphones and smartwatches receives those signals and calculates its own position. All three segments work together as an integrated system.

For users, one of the most important elements contained in BeiDou’s navigation signals is the navigation message. It continuously provides basic information such as the satellite’s identity, the current time, its position and the approximate positions of other satellites in the constellation. After receiving this information, a user terminal calculates its distance from the satellites using ranging codes and combines measurements from multiple satellites to determine its own position.

The quality of those signals is equally important. BeiDou uses carefully designed signal structures to provide high-quality measurements and reliable information transmission. Multiple signal channels are available, allowing users to select different signals according to their specific service requirements.

Today, BeiDou has been deployed or used in more than 130 countries, and its applications extend far beyond map navigation. Smart-city management, power-grid synchronization and precise timestamps for financial transactions all depend on accurate spatial and temporal information. BeiDou has increasingly become a form of infrastructure as fundamental as water, electricity and telecommunications. It is now widely used in consumer applications and the sharing economy, as well as in transportation, public safety, disaster prevention and relief, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries.

This expanding ecosystem is often described through two concepts: “BeiDou+” and “+BeiDou.” The first refers to extending BeiDou capabilities into new industries, while the second describes the integration of BeiDou into existing products and services.

Most modern electronic devices with positioning capabilities use chips compatible with multiple global navigation satellite systems. These receivers can process signals from BeiDou as well as GPS and other satellite navigation systems, improving positioning reliability and accuracy.

Consider a smartwatch. Once its GNSS-compatible chip determines the wearer’s location, the position can be transmitted through mobile communication networks, such as 5G, to a paired smartphone, allowing remote location tracking. Shared bicycles can use BeiDou positioning to determine their real-time location and compare it with electronic geofences defining permitted parking areas. This prevents users from locking bicycles outside designated zones and helps operators manage shared mobility more effectively.

In agriculture, autonomous machinery equipped with BeiDou-based positioning technology can achieve centimeter-level accuracy for seeding, fertilizing and harvesting, significantly improving efficiency and resource utilization. Intelligent dispatching for food delivery riders, precision delivery by drones and the safe, punctual operation of high-speed railways all benefit from the precise positioning and timing that satellite navigation provides.

One of BeiDou’s most distinctive capabilities is its short-message service. Following the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, rescue teams in disaster areas used BeiDou short-message communication to send information back to command centers even when conventional communications and electricity were unavailable. The system not only helped commanders monitor the locations and movements of rescue teams but also established a vital communication link between disaster zones and the outside world.

BeiDou short messages have also found applications in aviation. Aircraft can use BeiDou to determine their positions and transmit those positions through short messages to air traffic management authorities, enabling tracking and monitoring during flight.

So why does BeiDou need to undergo in-orbit upgrades now?

The answer is closely related to the life cycle of satellites. BeiDou satellites typically have a designed operational life of around 10 to 12 years. The satellites currently in orbit include both BeiDou-2 and BeiDou-3 spacecraft, and some of the older satellites have already exceeded their original design lifetimes. To maintain and improve the quality of navigation services, optimization and upgrading are therefore a natural part of the system’s evolution.

The process is somewhat comparable to updating the software on a smartphone. Through the ground segment, software can be uploaded to satellites already in orbit, allowing their capabilities to be upgraded without replacing the spacecraft themselves.

Yet maintaining BeiDou is about more than updating individual satellites. To ensure that positioning, navigation and timing services remain accurate and reliable, all three parts of the system—the space segment, the ground segment and the user segment, must continue to evolve through technological innovation and upgrades.

For most people, BeiDou may remain invisible. It is buried inside a smartphone, embedded in a vehicle, built into agricultural machinery or quietly working behind a financial timestamp. But that invisibility is precisely what makes modern satellite navigation so powerful. Once precise time and position become a dependable part of the infrastructure, they can support countless services without demanding our attention.

Source: kepuchina, beidou gov cn, scio gov cn, cgtn, xinhua

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