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In 2024, Congress passed and President Biden signed into law a bill that would make it illegal for data brokers to sell American’s personal information to foreign adversaries, including China. The CCP doesn’t just want your data to sell you stuff, it wants your data so that it can topple the U.S. without a fight.
Joining us once again is Nicholas Eftimiades. He’s a retired senior intelligence officer, specializing in China. Over the past three decades, he’s written a number of books on Chinese spying operations, including “Chinese Espionage Operations and Tactics”.
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In 2024, Congress passed and President Biden signed into law a bill that would make it illegal for data brokers to sell American’s personal information to foreign adversaries, including China. The CCP doesn’t just want your data to sell you stuff, it wants your data so that it can topple the U.S. without a fight.
Joining us once again is Nicholas Eftimiades. He’s a retired senior intelligence officer, specializing in China. Over the past three decades, he’s written a number of books on Chinese spying operations, including “Chinese Espionage Operations and Tactics”.
Join our fight to expose the CCP at and get ALL the new full-length interviews!
And check out our other channel, China Uncensored:
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Xi Jinping is tightening his grip on the Chinese Communist Party, purging powerful officials and demanding absolute loyalty. As China’s economy struggles, is Xi preparing to rule for another decade—or creating a system so fearful that nobody dares to fix the country’s problems?
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Xi Jinping is tightening his grip on the Chinese Communist Party, purging powerful officials and demanding absolute loyalty. As China’s economy struggles, is Xi preparing to rule for another decade—or creating a system so fearful that nobody dares to fix the country’s problems?
Operation Honey Pot: Paste this emoji 🍯 in your comment below.
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Europe’s six largest luxury groups have lost about 280 billion US dollars in combined market value this year. Weak spending by Chinese consumers continues to weigh on the industry. Stock market swings tied to artificial intelligence have also made consumers less willing to buy luxury goods.
Europe’s luxury industry has had bad years before, but it has rarely had one like this. The continent’s six largest luxury groups — LVMH, Hermès, Kering, Richemont, Prada and Moncler — have lost a combined €251 billion in market value since the start of 2026, roughly $280 billion, according to Financial Times calculations. The slide is not being driven by scandal, mismanagement, or a single bad quarter. It is being driven by the customer the entire industry reorganised itself around for a decade: the Chinese luxury shopper, who has stopped spending the way she used to.
The losses are concentrated at the very top. LVMH, the empire behind Louis Vuitton, Dior, Tiffany and Moët Hennessy, accounts for €131.6 billion of the decline on its own, and its shares have fallen more than 40 percent this year, underperforming every major rival. Hermès, long treated as the sector’s bomb shelter, has lost €93.3 billion — the second-largest hit of all. When the safest name in an industry is its second-biggest loser, investors are not punishing individual companies. They are re-pricing the whole business model.
Even Hermès Is Not Immune
Hermès earned its safe-haven reputation honestly. Its waiting lists, controlled supply, and ultra-wealthy clientele carried it through downturns that battered competitors, and for years its results were the ones analysts cited to prove luxury was different from ordinary retail. That is why its latest quarter landed so hard: the Paris house reported weaker growth than expected, held back by soft demand in China, and its shares fell almost 5 percent in a single session on the numbers. If Hermès cannot outrun the Chinese slowdown, the market concluded, nobody in the sector can.
LVMH’s third quarter told the same story at larger scale. The group posted a bigger-than-expected sales miss in its fashion and leather goods division — the profit engine that houses Louis Vuitton and Dior — with China again in focus, and the disappointment knocked sector shares across the board. Reuters calculated in mid-October that the top ten European luxury firms had already shed around $350 billion in combined market value this year. The damage has also reached the industry’s most famous fortune: the slide has knocked billions off the wealth of LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault, once the richest man in the world.
China: The Engine That Stalled
To understand the rout, you have to understand the dependence. For more than ten years, Chinese consumers drove luxury’s global expansion — at home, in Hong Kong, and on shopping trips to Paris, Milan and Tokyo — and brands built their growth plans, store networks, and pricing on the assumption that the flow would keep rising. The recovery many analysts expected after China’s post-pandemic reopening has instead stalled into a multiyear downturn. A property slump has eaten the wealth effect that made households feel rich, consumer sentiment has deteriorated, and discretionary spending on handbags and watches is among the first casualties.
Analysts who cover the sector describe a structural pause rather than a passing dip. “The pause in Chinese consumer demand has fed through into poorer results, pressure on share prices and a sweeping reassessment of valuations across the industry,” said Luca Solca of Bernstein, summarising how one country’s mood became every boardroom’s problem. The longer view is starker still: Goldman Sachs figures put the sector’s total market value at €888.9 billion at its 2024 peak, against €499.4 billion now. In under two years, European luxury has given back close to half its value — a collapse in the stock market sense, whatever the boutiques still look like from the street.
America Cannot Carry It Alone
The industry’s fallback plan was the United States. American spending helped carry the European houses this year, buoyed by a surge of wealth linked to artificial intelligence stocks, and for a while it masked how deep the Asian weakness ran. But that cushion is thinning: Citi data shows US luxury spending fell by at least 4 percent between July and September. Analysts increasingly question how long the market can lean on a narrow stratum of very wealthy buyers while the aspirational shoppers who used to enter at the lower price points — the small leather goods, the fragrances, the first designer purchase — quietly disappear from the funnel.
That two-front squeeze is what separates this downturn from previous ones. Geopolitical tension, US tariffs, a weakening Chinese economy, and unsteady equity markets have all contributed, and stock-market swings tied to AI have made even wealthy consumers more cautious about conspicuous spending. Richemont, with its weight in watches and jewellery, has bucked the trend better than the fashion-led groups, which only sharpens the point: this is a demand crisis in soft luxury, not a uniform collapse. Two of the industry’s biggest sources of demand are cooling at the same moment, and so far no group has found a way around it.
What a Recovery Would Require
Nobody serious expects the Chinese luxury consumer to vanish; the question is what kind of consumer returns. A generation of younger Chinese shoppers is more price-aware, more willing to buy domestic brands, and less impressed by logo-driven pricing than the customers who fuelled the boom — while years of aggressive price increases have left entry-level products far more expensive than the incomes of the buyers they were meant to recruit. Brands now face an awkward choice between protecting the exclusivity their valuations assume and rebuilding the broad customer base their growth requires. Store networks built for the boom years are being quietly trimmed back to match the smaller reality.
The market has already delivered its verdict on the old story: valuations now sit at their lowest multiples in over a decade, which means investors no longer believe the China engine restarts on its own. What would change the story is visible in the same place the damage started — Chinese household confidence, property prices, and a consumer willing to spend on visible luxury again. Until those turn, the most valuable industry Europe built on Chinese demand will keep repricing to a world in which that demand is smaller, pickier, and no longer guaranteed. The $280 billion is not really about handbags. It is the price of discovering that your best customer has changed her mind.
Former New York Congressman George Santos joins David Pollack on David Pollack Primetime to discuss Brazil’s presidential election, China’s growing influence in the region, and the potential implications for U.S. national security.
Santos argues that Americans should pay close attention to Brazil’s political direction and urges voters to remain engaged ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.
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Former New York Congressman George Santos joins David Pollack on David Pollack Primetime to discuss Brazil’s presidential election, China’s growing influence in the region, and the potential implications for U.S. national security.
Santos argues that Americans should pay close attention to Brazil’s political direction and urges voters to remain engaged ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.
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Like in many communist countries, China doesn’t let people succeed on their own merits, they have to make sacrifices to the power that be—including making the ultimate sacrifice.
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Like in many communist countries, China doesn’t let people succeed on their own merits, they have to make sacrifices to the power that be—including making the ultimate sacrifice.
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Chinese exports are surging into Europe, threatening carmakers, manufacturers and 100,000s of jobs. Germany and France are responding with a new “Made in Europe” strategy, tariffs and even a proposed trade “kill switch.” Is this the start of a new trade war between Europe and China?
Chinese exports are surging into Europe, threatening carmakers, manufacturers and 100,000s of jobs. Germany and France are responding with a new "Made in Europe" strategy, tariffs and even a proposed trade "kill switch." Is this the start of a new trade war between Europe and China?
North Korean state TV station KCTV released an 18-minute video featuring Kim Jong-un’s previously unannounced visit to the Chinese border city of Dandong on Saturday. The report repeatedly stressed the importance of the China-North Korea relationship, describing the bilateral tie as “invincible”.
North Korean television devoted an 18-minute report to a trip its leader was never announced to be taking. KCTV’s broadcast showed Kim Jong Un’s previously unannounced visit on Saturday, October 24, to Dandong, the Chinese city that sits across the Yalu River from North Korea’s Sinuiju. The report stressed the China–North Korea relationship again and again, describing the bilateral tie as “invincible.” State media in Pyongyang called the bond “unbreakable” — a relationship, in Kim’s own quoted words, sealed by blood.
The visit itself was over almost as soon as it was revealed. Kim crossed into China by road, toured a Korean War memorial, met senior Chinese officials, and returned home the same day, with North Korean state media confirming the trip only on Sunday. There was no meeting with Xi Jinping, no joint statement, and no new agreement announced. Yet analysts who follow North Korea closely say the combination of the trip’s purpose, its brevity, and its staging makes it one of the more revealing pieces of diplomacy Pyongyang has performed this year.
A Bridge Twelve Years in the Making
Start with the route, because the route was part of the message. Kim crossed into Dandong over a newly opened bridge linking the Chinese city with Sinuiju — a bridge completed back in October 2014 that sat unused for roughly twelve years before finally opening on October 15, days before his visit. It was the first time Kim himself had crossed it. Infrastructure like that is built for trucks and trade, not ceremony, so sending the leader across it in person was a deliberate signal. Reuters reported that the quick trip symbolized a push by Beijing and Pyongyang to expand the trade ties on which North Korea’s economy overwhelmingly depends.
China is North Korea’s biggest international backer and trading partner by an enormous margin. Nearly all of Pyongyang’s legitimate commerce, and much of what keeps its sanctions-strained economy functioning, moves through crossings like Dandong. A leader-level visit that blesses a new trade artery therefore carries economic weight beyond its symbolism. It tells officials on both sides of the river that the relationship’s practical machinery — customs, commerce, transport — has the top man’s attention. For a border city whose fortunes rise and fall with that traffic, the signal was unmistakable.
Honoring the Volunteers of 1950
The occasion for the trip was commemoration. Kim traveled a day ahead of the 76th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Volunteers entering the Korean War in October 1950, when China’s intervention saved the North Korean state from collapse. Guided by Wang Huning, the fourth-highest-ranking official in the Chinese Communist Party, Kim paid tribute at the Monument to Resisting America and Aiding Korea and toured the memorial hall dedicated to that war. His delegation was heavyweight: his sister Kim Yo Jong and Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui accompanied him, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was among those receiving him.
KCNA quoted Kim saying the North Korean people would “forever remember the glorious years of fighting alongside the Chinese people” and would pass down “generational gratitude to the Chinese people who helped our revolution with blood.” The word “blood” did a great deal of work in that sentence. As 38 North’s Rachel Minyoung Lee noted in her analysis of the trip, Pyongyang had conspicuously avoided “blood-forged” language during the 65th anniversary of the bilateral friendship treaty in July, and kept its messaging similarly restrained the following month. Its return now, repeated and emphasized, appears to be a chosen escalation of warmth.
What the Trip Did Not Include
Equally instructive is what did not happen. Kim and Xi had agreed in June to jointly preserve memorials honoring fallen Chinese soldiers and to promote their shared wartime history, but that agreement did not commit Kim to attending any particular anniversary event. Last year, for the 75th anniversary — a milestone year, traditionally given special weight — Kim marked the occasion at a cemetery for fallen Chinese soldiers inside North Korea, in South Phyongan Province. This year he went to China instead, a step up in deference that Beijing will have registered. Yet he did not travel on to the capital, and there was no summit with Xi.
That calibration fits the pattern analysts describe: this visit highlighted historical solidarity rather than contemporary cooperation, and offered no indication of an opening to Washington. The timing adds another layer. The trip came ahead of a visit to the region by U.S. President Donald Trump next month, and while Pyongyang has spent two years deepening military ties with Russia, it is simultaneously re-investing in its oldest relationship. Beijing, for its part, received the tribute on its own soil, hosted by a Politburo Standing Committee member, without having to offer a summit in return.
How State Media Framed It at Home
The KCTV report — the video at the top of this story — is the domestic half of the performance. Eighteen minutes is a substantial commitment of airtime, and the framing was pure relationship: the tie described as “invincible,” the shared war presented as the foundation of everything that followed. For North Korean viewers, the message is that their country is not isolated; it stands beside the region’s great power, bound by sacrifice. For foreign analysts, every such broadcast is also a text to be parsed, because North Korean media language is chosen centrally and changes in wording are rarely accidental.
Read that way, the Dandong trip was a compact, carefully priced gesture. It cost Kim a single day, required no summit and no concessions, and yet it reopened a bridge, honored China’s founding wartime myth, and revived the vocabulary of a blood-sealed alliance at a moment when both capitals want the relationship visibly warm. Whether trade actually expands across that bridge in the months ahead will say more than any broadcast. But as a piece of signaling — to Beijing, to Washington, and to his own people — the surprise visit did exactly the work it was designed to do.
The fifth plenum of the Communist Party’s 20th Central Committee began in Beijing on Monday, according to state news agency Xinhua. Discussions are expected to focus on internal party governance, discipline and political loyalty, with the outcomes to be released in a plenum communique on Thursday, the closing day of the event.
Behind closed doors in Beijing this week, roughly 300 of the most powerful people in China are holding one of the most consequential meetings of the political calendar. The fifth plenum of the Communist Party’s 20th Central Committee opened on Monday, October 26, and runs through Thursday, October 29. It is the fifth full gathering of the Central Committee elected at the 20th Party Congress in 2022. State news agency Xinhua announced the session months ago, back in July, but what happens inside it will shape the party that rules the world’s second-largest economy for years to come.
Unlike a parliament, the Central Committee does not debate in public or vote on camera. Its plenums are where the leadership aligns the vast party and state apparatus behind decisions that have usually been drafted in advance by the Politburo. The formal output is typically a short communique, expected when the session closes on Thursday, followed days later by a fuller decision document. For anyone trying to understand where China is heading — its economy, its military, its relations with Washington — these meetings are among the few fixed points where real signals are sent.
A Plenum About the Party Itself
The headline agenda this time is not the economy. According to Xinhua, the session’s main business is a draft decision on advancing “full and rigorous self-governance” of the party, alongside a work report from the Politburo. In plain terms, the meeting is about discipline: internal party governance, supervision of officials, political loyalty, and the rules that govern how cadres behave, spend, and advance. Xi Jinping personally briefed the opening session on the draft document, Xinhua reported. The emphasis, in the agency’s words, is that major decisions of the Central Committee “must not be empty rhetoric.”
That focus marks a change from the usual script. Fifth plenums have traditionally been where the party adopts recommendations for its next five-year economic plan. That work, however, was already done a year early: the fourth plenum, in October 2025, approved the recommendations for the 15th Five-Year Plan covering 2026 to 2030. With the economic framework settled, this session turns inward. The subject is the party’s own machinery — and whether it can be tightened further before the next leadership reshuffle.
The Anti-Corruption Campaign at the Center
Running through the agenda is Xi’s signature anti-corruption campaign, now well into its second decade. Since he took power, millions of people inside China’s bureaucracy have been investigated to varying degrees, and hundreds of senior officials and top generals have been purged — including figures once considered Xi’s own allies. The campaign has reached deep into the armed forces, where a string of senior officers has fallen in the past two years. The party portrays this as necessary renewal, describing a military that must be “forged anew.” Critics argue the purges are destabilizing and have thinned experienced command ranks.
The human arithmetic of the campaign is visible in this week’s attendance. Reporting by AFP, carried by CNA, counts eight Central Committee seats already vacant and another fifteen members under investigation and at risk of replacement. That is why analysts expect this plenum’s turnout to be the lowest at such a meeting since Mao Zedong died in 1976. A gathering meant to project unity and control will therefore also quietly document how far the discipline drive has cut into the party’s own top ranks. Expulsions and replacement appointments, if any are made, will be among the most closely read lines of Thursday’s communique.
One Year Before the Congress That Matters Most
The timing gives the plenum its deeper significance. In roughly a year, the party will hold its 21st National Congress, the once-every-five-years gathering at which the top leadership is formally selected. Xi is widely expected to seek a fourth term as general secretary, extending a rule that has already broken the post-Mao norm of two terms. A plenum devoted to discipline and loyalty, held twelve months before that congress, is a mechanism for clearing the field: aligning cadres, removing the compromised, and signaling that advancement runs through obedience to the center. Analysts describe this week’s session as possibly the last major party gathering before that 2027 reshuffle.
“The plenum will present Xi as in control, and able to continue his command,” Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, told Reuters ahead of the meeting. Brown added that appearances may matter as much as substance this week, with everything centered on Xi to dispel doubts about his authority. Xi himself set the tone days earlier, using a speech marking the 90th anniversary of the Long March victory on October 22 to call for sustained, strict party governance. The historical echo was deliberate: discipline, in that telling, is what carried the party through its hardest years.
What to Watch When the Communique Lands
For outside observers, the practical questions are narrow and specific. Does the communique announce expulsions of Central Committee members, and are alternate members promoted to fill the vacancies? How far do the new discipline rules reach — into officials’ spending, project approvals, and the military chain of command? Does the language on implementing central decisions hint at friction between Beijing and local governments, a recurring theme as the center presses provinces to execute policy exactly as written? And does anything in the document speak, even indirectly, to the succession positioning already under way for 2027?
Markets, too, will read the text closely, though for a different reason. A party visibly tightening discipline and enforcing predictable implementation can look, to investors, like a bid for policy consistency after years of abrupt regulatory turns. The fuller decision document, expected days after the communique, will carry the operational detail. Until then, the fifth plenum remains what it was designed to be: a room of 300 people deciding, in private, how the party of 100 million members will be run — and who will be running it when the congress convenes next year.
A growing interest among Hong Kong women in an anti-ageing injection containing human tissue has prompted a recent crackdown by health authorities, as the product, widely known in Chinese as the “cadaver skin jab”, has not been registered for use in the city.
A growing interest among Hong Kong women in an anti-ageing injection containing human tissue has prompted a recent crackdown by health authorities, as the product, widely known in Chinese as the “cadaver skin jab”, has not been registered for use in the city.
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Wanying “Heather” Zhang seemed to have it all – tons of money, a husband, child and a successful career. Then she was arrested for spying for China.
Joining us is Nicholas Eftimiades, a former senior intel officer and author of “Chinese Espionage Operations and Tactics”
Join our fight to expose the CCP at and get ALL the new full-length interviews!
And check out our other channel, China Uncensored:
Watch the full podcast!
Wanying "Heather" Zhang seemed to have it all – tons of money, a husband, child and a successful career. Then she was arrested for spying for China.
Joining us is Nicholas Eftimiades, a former senior intel officer and author of “Chinese Espionage Operations and Tactics”
Join our fight to expose the CCP at and get ALL the new full-length interviews!
And check out our other channel, China Uncensored:
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China has just made it legal to kidnap foreigners in China if they obey US law.
New regulations could put foreign companies in a legal Catch-22: investigate forced labor in Chinese supply chains and risk violating Chinese law, or follow Chinese rules and risk breaking Western law. And with China expanding its power to stop people from leaving the country, even a business trip could turn into an unwanted extended stay.
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Limited Time: Get your free Tank Man set when you join the 50-Cent Army:
China has just made it legal to kidnap foreigners in China if they obey US law.
New regulations could put foreign companies in a legal Catch-22: investigate forced labor in Chinese supply chains and risk violating Chinese law, or follow Chinese rules and risk breaking Western law. And with China expanding its power to stop people from leaving the country, even a business trip could turn into an unwanted extended stay.
Operation Honey Pot: Paste this emoji 🍯 in your comment below.
Want to go deeper than YouTube will let us? Check out our website:
A growing interest among Hong Kong women in an anti-ageing injection containing human tissue has prompted a recent crackdown by health authorities, as the product, widely known in Chinese as the “cadaver skin jab”, has not been registered for use in the city.
A growing interest among Hong Kong women in an anti-ageing injection containing human tissue has prompted a recent crackdown by health authorities, as the product, widely known in Chinese as the “cadaver skin jab”, has not been registered for use in the city.
Chinese internet users are commenting on the French protests with a blend of dark humour, national pride and regret over the damage caused to historic landmarks. Some, however, have tried to provide deeper perspectives on how a protest against deteriorating school conditions spiralled into a full-blown social crisis.
Chinese internet users are commenting on the French protests with a blend of dark humour, national pride and regret over the damage caused to historic landmarks. Some, however, have tried to provide deeper perspectives on how a protest against deteriorating school conditions spiralled into a full-blown social crisis.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has done it again. The 80-year-old Brazilian president won Sunday’s runoff election with about 51.8 percent of the vote, defeating Senator Flávio Bolsonaro and securing a historic fourth term in office. It is a comeback with no precedent in modern Brazilian democracy: Lula finished second in the first round on October 4 and overturned the result in three weeks. His rival, the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro and a close ally of Donald Trump, says he will not accept the outcome. And in Beijing, officials who never comment on foreign elections have every reason to quietly welcome this one, because no leader in the Americas is more important to China’s long game in the region than Lula.
A Comeback Three Weeks in the Making
The scale of the turnaround is easy to miss in the final margin. In the first round, Flávio Bolsonaro finished ahead with roughly 47 percent of the vote to Lula’s 45 percent, and polls still had the challenger leading by two points the day before the runoff. Between the two rounds, the Workers’ Party candidate added more than ten million votes while his rival gained only a fraction of that. No candidate who lost a first round had gone on to win the presidency since Brazil returned to direct elections in 1989. Turnout surged to help him do it, with abstention falling to 19 percent, the lowest in the country’s history. Lula, who turns 81 within days of the vote, ended what he called the last campaign of his life by making history one more time.
The Loser Refuses to Lose
Flávio Bolsonaro followed his father’s script from 2022 and refused to concede. He blamed a Supreme Court decision, taken by Justice Cristiano Zanin, to extend voting by two hours in parts of the country, and said the uneven application of that measure made the result impossible to recognize. His team promised legal action to have the election annulled, a challenge Brazil’s electoral court is widely expected to reject. The defeated candidate had spent the campaign advertising his closeness to the Trump administration and suggesting constitutional changes were within reach. Instead, the Bolsonaro movement has now lost two straight presidential elections to the same man. The legal fight will dominate Brazilian headlines for weeks, but few observers expect it to change who governs in Brasília.
Washington Backed the Other Horse
The result is a direct setback for the White House’s Latin America strategy. Over the past year, Washington has openly favored conservative candidates across the hemisphere, building a string of allied governments in countries including Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras and Peru. Brazil, the region’s largest economy, was the biggest prize of all, and Flávio Bolsonaro campaigned as the candidate who would bring it into that orbit. Lula accused the American government of intervening to help his opponent, and he turned sovereignty into his closing argument. “This country doesn’t accept being anybody’s colony,” he told supporters on election night. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum rushed to congratulate him, while Donald Trump and Argentina’s Javier Milei stayed publicly silent.
Why Beijing Wins Without Campaigning
China did not endorse anyone in Brazil’s election, because it did not need to. China has been Brazil’s largest trading partner for well over a decade, buying vast quantities of Brazilian soy, iron ore, beef and oil, and Lula has spent his presidency deepening that relationship through the BRICS bloc and state visits. A Bolsonaro government in Brasília, aligned with Washington’s push to sideline Beijing from the hemisphere, would have put that trade under political pressure for the first time. Lula’s victory removes the risk entirely for another four years. French analysts described Washington’s regional doctrine as an effort to push China out of America’s backyard, and Brazil was its central battleground. The backyard’s biggest country just voted to keep both doors open, and the trade numbers say the Chinese door is the wider one.
What a Fourth Lula Term Means
Lula inherits the problems that nearly ended his presidency in the first round. Voters ranked the cost of living, crime and corruption above everything else, and affordability anger powered Bolsonaro’s early lead. The president promised on election night to govern differently, giving ordinary people a greater role in decisions and working with a conservative-leaning Congress he does not control. His room for manoeuvre is narrow: public finances are stretched, the currency and markets will punish missteps, and his own age shadows every long-term plan. He also returns to a region where most of his neighbours now lean right and look to Washington. How he balances a friendly Beijing, a hostile White House and an impatient electorate will define the term.
The Bigger Picture for the US-China Contest
Elections like this one are where the US-China rivalry is actually decided, far from the warships and tariff schedules. Brazil did not vote for China on Sunday; it voted on prices, safety and sovereignty, and the pro-China outcome arrived as a by-product. That is precisely what makes the result durable, because it rests on trade and sentiment rather than on any deal a future government could tear up. Washington can still compete in Latin America, but Brazil shows the cost of being seen to pick another country’s president. For Beijing, the lesson of Lula’s fourth term is the oldest one in its playbook. Show up as a customer, stay out of the campaign, and let the voters do the rest.
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China wants to beat America in the AI race—but its data centers have a serious problem: they need water, and China is running short.
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China wants to beat America in the AI race—but its data centers have a serious problem: they need water, and China is running short.
Operation Honey Pot: Paste this emoji 🍯 in your comment below.
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Apple’s first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, went on sale in China on October 23. Strong demand sparked a rush to line up outside stores. Many customers arrived two days early just to get the new phone as soon as possible.
Apple’s first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, went on sale in China on October 23. Strong demand sparked a rush to line up outside stores. Many customers arrived two days early just to get the new phone as soon as possible.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited the Chinese border city of Dandong on Saturday, with both sides underlining their traditional friendship and calling to boost cooperation. The trip was Kim’s first visit to China in more than a year and had not been announced in advance.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited the Chinese border city of Dandong on Saturday, with both sides underlining their traditional friendship and calling to boost cooperation. The trip was Kim’s first visit to China in more than a year and had not been announced in advance.
France has been rocked by protests and political unrest. But a much bigger question is emerging: who funds the activist networks that operate across borders?
At the center of this investigation is Neville Roy Singham, an American technology entrepreneur who founded ThoughtWorks, worked as an adviser to Huawei, and later became a major financial supporter of left-wing organizations around the world.
After selling his company, Singham helped fund a network of nonprofit organizations, media outlets, and political advocacy groups spanning multiple continents. His activities and reported connections to China have attracted scrutiny from American lawmakers.
How does this network operate? What role do media organizations play in amplifying protest movements? And what do Singham’s connections to Shanghai reveal about the relationship between political activism and China’s global influence?
In this episode, we trace Singham’s journey from a young Maoist activist in Detroit to a wealthy technology entrepreneur, and examine the funding networks, political relationships, and allegations surrounding his activities.
France has been rocked by protests and political unrest. But a much bigger question is emerging: who funds the activist networks that operate across borders?
At the center of this investigation is Neville Roy Singham, an American technology entrepreneur who founded ThoughtWorks, worked as an adviser to Huawei, and later became a major financial supporter of left-wing organizations around the world.
After selling his company, Singham helped fund a network of nonprofit organizations, media outlets, and political advocacy groups spanning multiple continents. His activities and reported connections to China have attracted scrutiny from American lawmakers.
How does this network operate? What role do media organizations play in amplifying protest movements? And what do Singham's connections to Shanghai reveal about the relationship between political activism and China's global influence?
In this episode, we trace Singham's journey from a young Maoist activist in Detroit to a wealthy technology entrepreneur, and examine the funding networks, political relationships, and allegations surrounding his activities.
COVID cases continue to rise in China, and virology researchers are warning about emerging variants. Respiratory illnesses become more common in fall and winter. Air pollution could add to the health risks for people who become infected.
COVID cases continue to rise in China, and virology researchers are warning about emerging variants. Respiratory illnesses become more common in fall and winter. Air pollution could add to the health risks for people who become infected.
Veteran actors including Shu Chen and Yu Qingbin have drawn attention for filming during the day and delivering food at night in Hengdian, a film and television production hub in Zhejiang.
Veteran actors including Shu Chen and Yu Qingbin have drawn attention for filming during the day and delivering food at night in Hengdian, a film and television production hub in Zhejiang.
In China, “zombie companies” generally means businesses that can no longer sustain themselves. They have lost money for years and owe more than their assets are worth. They survive mainly on government subsidies or renewed bank loans. They used to be mostly local state-owned companies or traditional manufacturers with excess capacity, including state-run steel and cement plants. Now many companies in emerging industries backed by Chinese Communist Party policies, such as electric vehicles and solar power, have also become zombies with help from local subsidies. Lists of these companies touch on highly sensitive financial risks, including bad bank loans, local government finances, jobs and social stability. Officials and financial institutions usually keep those lists confidential and rarely release them.
In China, “zombie companies” generally means businesses that can no longer sustain themselves. They have lost money for years and owe more than their assets are worth. They survive mainly on government subsidies or renewed bank loans. They used to be mostly local state-owned companies or traditional manufacturers with excess capacity, including state-run steel and cement plants. Now many companies in emerging industries backed by Chinese Communist Party policies, such as electric vehicles and solar power, have also become zombies with help from local subsidies. Lists of these companies touch on highly sensitive financial risks, including bad bank loans, local government finances, jobs and social stability. Officials and financial institutions usually keep those lists confidential and rarely release them.
Rescuers pulled survivors from the rubble after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck China’s remote Tibet region late on Thursday. At least 16 people were killed, according to state media.
Rescuers in China’s Tibet region worked through the night and into Friday pulling survivors from collapsed homes after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck one of the most remote and highest inhabited places on Earth. The quake hit late on Thursday near Nagqu, a city north of the regional capital Lhasa that sits some 4,800 metres above sea level. At least 16 people were killed and 54 injured, according to Chinese state media, and at least 339 homes collapsed. More than 5,000 rescuers from three local counties have been sent into the epicentre zone. With temperatures low, snow in the forecast, and aftershocks still rolling through, officials say the search is a race against both the rubble and the altitude.
A Quake at the Top of the World
The United States Geological Survey recorded the earthquake at 10:33 p.m. local time on Thursday, with its epicentre 191 kilometres east-northeast of Nagqu and a depth of 18 kilometres. That is a shallow, powerful quake by any measure, and in this terrain its effects are amplified. Settlements across the Tibetan plateau are scattered, roads are few, and many homes are built from materials that perform badly when the ground shakes hard. The USGS recorded at least seven aftershocks between magnitude 4.3 and 5.2, each one a fresh threat to buildings already cracked by the main shock. Officials told reporters they feared further collapses from those aftershocks, as well as casualties from rockslides on the mountain roads rescuers depend on.
Three Rounds Through Every Household
By Friday afternoon, rescuers had completed three full rounds of searches, going household by household and village by village, Nagqu’s acting mayor Dunzhu told a press conference. Video from the scene shows teams climbing into the remains of collapsed buildings and carrying survivors out to open ground, where displaced families were given makeshift beds and blankets on sports fields. More than 12,400 people were forced from their homes, according to state media reporting. Relief supplies have been pushed into the region in bulk: 2,000 prefabricated housing units, around 3,400 tents, and 2,000 folding beds, along with flashlights and winter clothing. In a place where night falls hard even in October, a tent and a blanket are not comforts. They are survival equipment.
An All-Out Order From Beijing
China’s president, Xi Jinping, called for an all-out effort to find survivors, the standard signal that a disaster has become a national priority and that provincial resources will be reinforced. Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that communications were down in some of the areas hit, complicating the basic task of learning which villages are worst affected. Local railway authorities halted trains passing through the region as an emergency precaution. Rockfalls forced the closure of a section of National Highway 317, with only emergency, rescue, and official support vehicles allowed through while crews cleared debris. Every closure narrows the corridor through which help can arrive, which is why the first wave of rescuers came from the three nearest counties rather than waiting for distant reinforcements.
Why Rescue Here Is Unlike Anywhere Else
Search-and-rescue doctrine assumes ambulances, hospitals, and helicopters within reasonable reach. The Tibetan plateau rewrites every one of those assumptions. At 4,800 metres, the air holds roughly half the oxygen of sea level, and heavy physical work in rubble exhausts even acclimatised rescuers quickly, while survivors trapped in the cold lose body heat far faster than they would in a lowland disaster. Intermittent snowfall is forecast for the affected region in the coming days, threatening both the searches and the tent camps now housing the displaced. Distances are measured in hours of mountain driving, not minutes, and a single blocked highway can isolate a valley entirely. It is the combination that kills in high-altitude earthquakes: not only the shaking, but exposure, delay, and the difficulty of moving help across the landscape afterward.
What Happens Next
The immediate priorities are the ones officials listed on Friday: finish the searches, treat the injured, and get the displaced under shelter before the snow arrives, with the injured count still being updated as more villages report in. Engineers will have to judge which damaged homes can be re-entered and which must come down, a process shadowed by every new aftershock. For Beijing, the response is also a test of the emergency system it has built for the plateau, where earthquakes are a recurring fact of life along the collision zone that raised the Himalayas. Tibet has been struck hard before, and each disaster has pushed more building standards, monitoring, and pre-positioned supplies into the region. Whether those preparations were enough this time will be measured in the days ahead, in the villages above Nagqu, by the people still waiting beside the rubble of their homes. For now, the measure is simpler and more human: another survivor carried out alive, another village reached, another night in a tent survived at altitude. The rescuers pulling people from the rubble on Friday know exactly what their work is worth. So do the families watching them do it.
More than 1,000 residents are expected to ride in autonomous vehicles (AVs) as Chinese tech giant Baidu launches Hong Kong’s first large-scale public trial.
More than 1,000 residents are expected to ride in autonomous vehicles (AVs) as Chinese tech giant Baidu launches Hong Kong’s first large-scale public trial.
At least 16 people were killed when a magnitude 7 earthquake struck China’s Tibet autonomous region late Thursday. According to the US Geological Survey, the quake’s epicentre was in a mountainous region around 190km (120 miles) east-northeast of Nagqu and 390km northeast of Lhasa, the regional capital. The People’s Liberation Army said it has deployed drones and hundreds of troops to assist with rescue efforts.
At least 16 people were killed when a magnitude 7 earthquake struck China’s Tibet autonomous region late Thursday. According to the US Geological Survey, the quake’s epicentre was in a mountainous region around 190km (120 miles) east-northeast of Nagqu and 390km northeast of Lhasa, the regional capital. The People’s Liberation Army said it has deployed drones and hundreds of troops to assist with rescue efforts.
Programming used to be one of China’s best-paid careers. With its concentration of tech companies, Beijing attracted large numbers of workers born in the 1990s. Now, a weak economy, intense competition, pay cuts, and layoffs are forcing many to leave and return home to make a living. Once well-paid office workers, they now face a new struggle to support themselves.
Programming used to be one of China’s best-paid careers. With its concentration of tech companies, Beijing attracted large numbers of workers born in the 1990s. Now, a weak economy, intense competition, pay cuts, and layoffs are forcing many to leave and return home to make a living. Once well-paid office workers, they now face a new struggle to support themselves.
As DeepSeek’s servers went down, “What happened to Liang Wenfeng?” also trended on Weibo. Online speculation ranged from him fleeing the country to being arrested. The rumors grew out of talk of a technical breakthrough at DeepSeek, spawning various theories about external security threats.
As DeepSeek’s servers went down, “What happened to Liang Wenfeng?” also trended on Weibo. Online speculation ranged from him fleeing the country to being arrested. The rumors grew out of talk of a technical breakthrough at DeepSeek, spawning various theories about external security threats.
