Your weekend listen: What's behind the curtain of ByteDance's viral AI video generator, Seedance 2.0?
@rachelcheung.bsky.social, @eliotchen.bsky.social, and Savannah Billman examine new developments in China's AI space in episode six of our podcast: pod.link/1873741567
Read this week's Q&A with Jake Sullivan on what he was trying to achieve in dealing with Beijing, where he thinks Trump 2.0 has taken a wrong turn on China and why the president concedes too much to Xi and Putin.
buff.ly/xTnc5G6
Iran sends 100 percent of its oil to China, bringing in more than $40 billion annually.
Get the big picture on China's ties to Iran, and how the sanctioned oil trade has shaped their relationship:
Last spring, U.S. agents discovered pallets of advanced chips sitting in a New Jersey warehouse. They were labeled with a fake company name, but were actually Nvidia chips — disguised and ready to be sent to China.
@eliotchen.bsky.social reports on a global chip-smuggling ring:
Op-Ed: Some Chinese companies manage to survive — and even thrive — despite the brutal price competition...But this is only a small share of Chinese corporates.
@aligarciaherrero.bsky.social writes on why so many Chinese companies aren't making money:
Cambricon, often called "China's Nvidia," reported its first full-year profit since going public in 2020.
Learn more about the company:
This week's cover story: China aims to be a major space power by 2030, with ambitious plans for a lunar base, space exploration and space resource utilization.
Paddy Stephens writes on China's fragmented commercial rocket industry this week:
"Germany — as the most affected country in the Sino-European relationship — needs to go further, by offering a separate and totally new win-win offensive strategy."
Read Jörg Wuttke's op-ed in this week's issue of The Wire China: buff.ly/FUG7slI
Smugglers in Texas, New Jersey, and New York. A mysterious Hong Kong client. And a plot to illegally sell Nvidia AI chips to China.
Episode five maps out a chip smuggling network with @eliotchen.bsky.social and @andypeaps.bsky.social : pod.link/1873741567/
🎧️ Don't miss our latest podcast drop every Friday morning EST! Subscribe on Substack to get the episode (plus transcript) delivered right to your inbox:
From the Archives: "Since the 1970s, the U.S. and China had nurtured close agricultural collaboration to mutual gain. Those ties are all but threadbare now."
Even though China is highly online, with over 90 percent of the population internet users, the country’s top AI models have fewer regular users compared to U.S. models.
Get the big picture on China's AI adoption lag:
Who is behind the popular chatbot Kimi? Unlike some of its Chinese start-up peers that have developed LLMs for specific industries or tasks, Moonshot AI has maintained a generalist approach:
Panama seized back ports from the now-former Chinese operator of key parts of the Panama Canal. Take a closer look at CK Hutchison, a company with ties to one of Hong Kong's richest men:
Read the full interview with Frank Dikötter: buff.ly/PpCXbxf
"German exports to China have collapsed. In 2025 Europe’s industrial powerhouse sold more goods to neighboring Poland than to the People’s Republic."
Jörg Wuttke writes in The Wire China:
The Wire China will have no new issue this week, but you can catch up with our reporters and go behind the scenes of our latest investigation on the China connections in the Epstein files:
buff.ly/EJvY28C
"There were vastly more Communists, as a proportion of the overall population, in almost any country in Europe than there were in China throughout the 1930s."
Frank Dikötter discusses his new book, Red Dawn Over China, with @jmchatwin.bsky.social for The Wire China:
🎧 We've sorted your weekend listening:
China's economic rise beckoned Jeffrey Epstein. Though no concrete deals ever materialized, the Epstein files demonstrate how power, connections, and opportunities flowed among the elite as China's star continued to rise.
pod.link/1873741567
Washington needs a robotics strategy to keep up with China's advances. Read more: buff.ly/yCr9QzG
From the Archives: The U.S. company that refuses to decouple from China.
No, it's not in tech...It's Walmart.
Read more:
New year, new winner in the robotics race?
At China's annual spring festival gala, humanoid robots performing a complex martial arts routine captivated audiences. Is 2026 the year humans and bots finally live side by side?
buff.ly/RKIBFL3
Why did China's arms revenue sink in 2024?
Get the big picture on China's declining weapons exports:
"Even though the Chinese internet is still enclosed within this firewall, it has expanded beyond its borders."
@rachelcheung.bsky.social interviews @yilingliu95.bsky.social on her new book, "The Wall Dancers." buff.ly/I7eDuwh
Missed our latest podcast drop?
Listen to the latest The Wire China Podcast episode + transcript, and subscribe on Substack to get both delivered to your inbox each Friday.
In an adaptation of her forthcoming book, The New Tech Titans of China, Rebecca Fannin profiles Shanghai-based Qiming Venture Partners and its American founder, Gary Rieschel: buff.ly/WfxgcF8
Op-Ed: China is already positioning itself to deploy robots at scale, in peace and in war.
Sunny Cheung and Nathanael Cheng write for this week's issue of The Wire China:
Documents recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice reveal how associates of Jeffrey Epstein sought to help him and his business partners build ties in China.
The Wire China maps the networks involved in the dealmaking:
buff.ly/gZHYQik
Jeffrey Epstein and a network of associates aspired to do deals in China. The Wire China reviews email trails from the Epstein files:
🎧️ A Tale of Two Exports: Tom Mitchell and Noah Berman explore why China's arms exports decreased in 2024 — and why Chinese EVs still might make their way onto U.S. streets.
Listen to The Wire China Podcast: pod.link/1873741567
