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Tag: China
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Opinion | Has Japan Found Its Margaret Thatcher?
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Japan may soon have another Prime Minister after Sanae Takaichi this weekend won the race to lead the (barely) ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). There are reasons to be modestly hopeful, but also reason to curb your enthusiasm.
Ms. Takaichi, who would become Japan’s first female leader, defeated Shinjiro Koizumi in a runoff in an intraparty campaign centered on whether the LDP can get its mojo back. The party hasn’t had compelling leadership since Shinzo Abe’s retirement and then assassination. It’s been buffeted by election losses as voters flee to upstart parties, especially on the right.
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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The Editorial Board
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Opinion | Pacific Allies Need U.S. Support
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We set out across the Indo-Pacific in August to assess U.S. military readiness and consult with allies. In the Philippines, Palau and Taiwan, we found partners determined to resist Chinese coercion and willing to share the burden.
In Taiwan we spoke with President Lai Ching-tse and senior officials. They understand the gravity of the threat and are responding with urgency to meet it. Mr. Lai has committed to increasing defense spending and mobilizing the public behind a resilience plan.
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Roger Wicker
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Taking These 50 Objects Out of Orbit Would Cut Danger From Space Junk in Half
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“In their rush to move quickly, they are adding to the long-term collision hazard,” McKnight said.
The deputy head of China’s national space agency, Bian Zhigang, addressed the International Astronautical Congress on Monday. He was asked about China’s commitment to good stewardship of the space environment. Bian acknowledged a “very serious challenge” in this area, “especially with megaconstellations.” He did not mention China’s problem with leaving rockets in orbit.
Bian said China is “currently researching” how to remove space debris from orbit. One of the missions China claims is testing space debris mitigation techniques has docked with multiple spacecraft in orbit, but US officials see it as a military threat. The same basic technologies needed for space debris cleanup—rendezvous and docking systems, robotic arms, and onboard automation—could be used to latch on to an adversary’s satellite.
Silver Lining
McKnight and his coauthors (from the US, the UK, Italy, Japan, and Russia) went the extra mile to assess how the space debris threat would change if some of the most hazardous objects dropped off the list. He said the results are promising.
“If you take out 10 of the objects, you reduce it by 30 percent,” McKnight said. “That’s a measurable change. I think that’s what’s been missing in the past about justifying active debris removal.”
Active debris removal is an elusive proposition. While it is technically feasible, as several missions have shown, there’s the question of who pays. Is there a viable market for space debris cleanup services? The European Space Agency and Japan’s space agency have invested low levels of funding in debris removal initiatives. One of these projects, led by a Japanese company named Astroscale, completed a successful demonstration last year to set the stage for a future attempt to dock with a defunct Japanese rocket and steer it back into the atmosphere.
Astroscale was founded in 2013 for the purpose of ridding low-Earth orbit of space junk. Realizing the limited market for those missions, the company has pivoted to also pursue satellite servicing and refueling technology.
“We can make a measurable impact on the debris-generating potential, and the potential for the onset of the Kessler Syndrome by removing 10 or 20 objects,” McKnight said. “The bad news is we just added 26 new objects in the last two years.”
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
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Stephen Clark, Ars Technica
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Farm bankruptcies surging amid U.S.-China trade war
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This week, President Trump is expected to announce billions of dollars in aid for the nation’s farmers. Many are in financial crisis and may be forced to sell their crops at steep losses this year as China, once the largest buyer of the U.S. soybean exports, retaliates against U.S. tariffs. Lana Zak has more.
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Trump considers massive bailout of at least $10 billion for American farmers hurt by his trade war
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Washington (CNN) — American farmers are having a tough year, in no small part because of President Donald Trump’s trade war. Now, the White House is gearing up to extend them a multi-billion-dollar bailout, sources tell CNN.
Surging costs and foreign retaliation from tariffs have hurt the US agriculture industry — as have immigration-related labor shortages and plummeting commodity prices. Farm production expenses are estimated to reach $467.4 billion in 2025, according to the Agriculture Department, up $12 billion from last year.
Farm bankruptcies rose in the first half of the year to the highest level since 2021, according to US courts data.
Trump’s policies have exacerbated those woes, from the deportation of the industry’s key migrant workforce to renewed trade tensions between the United States and China. And for traditional American crops, such as soybeans, the situation has grown particularly precarious.
“There’s no doubt that the farm economy is in a significant challenge right now, especially our row croppers,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters Tuesday. “So not just soybeans, although I think they’re probably the top of the list, but corn, wheat, sorghum, cotton, et cetera.”
Indeed, the US soybean industry has become the poster child of the farm economy’s plight in the first year of Trump’s second term. The president recognizes these problems, White House officials tells CNN, and has increased pressure on his administration to address them urgently.
Over the past few weeks, the White House has held a series of interagency meetings with the Departments of Agriculture and Treasury as they attempt to finalize a relief package for US farmers, the sources said. Discussions over the best way to aid the agriculture industry are ongoing, the officials said, but they have zeroed in on two options.
“There are a lot of levers we can use to help ease the pain they are feeling,” one of the officials told CNN. One idea, floated publicly by Trump as recently as Wednesday, is to give farmers a percentage of the income the United States is receiving from the administration’s tariffs on goods being imported into the country.
“We’ve made so much money on Tariffs, that we are going to take a small portion of that money, and help our Farmers. I WILL NEVER LET OUR FARMERS DOWN!” Trump wrote on social media this week. The other is tapping into a “slush fund,” as the officials described it, at the Department of Agriculture.
The Trump administration also dipped into the fund, known as Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP), in March to similarly provide assistance to farmers. USDA at the time issued $10 billion in direct payments to eligible agricultural producers of eligible commodities for the 2024 crop year.
The administration has also discussed implementing a combination of the two, depending on where they can most quickly pull the funds from, one White House official said. The current range of aid they are looking to offer ranges from $10 billion to $14 billion.
“The final figure will depend on how much farmers need and the amount of tariff revenue coming in,” the official told CNN.
Trump himself as privately been applying pressure on his team to ensure that American farmers, many of whom the Trump administration credit for helping the president win the November 2024 election, are protected. But the other reason they are making the agriculture industry such a priority, officials say, is because the Trump administration views protecting farmers as a national security issue.
“We need to grow our own food. We can’t rely on imports from other countries, that poses a problem for national security. And right now, the government is subsidizing a lot of that process,” one Trump administration official argued.
US soybean industry in crisis
An issue complicating the Trump administration’s goals revolve around soybeans — America’s largest agricultural export, valued at more than $24 billion in 2024, according to USDA data.
Last year, about half of those exports went to China, but since May, that’s dropped down to zero as a result of an effective embargo China has placed on US soybeans in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on the country. China has implemented 20% tariffs on US soybeans, making the crop from other countries significantly more attractive.
That couldn’t come at worse time for soybean farmers, with the harvest season in full swing and some farms reporting strong yields. And their luck might not change anytime soon, with Beijing ramping up its reliance on South America — inadvertently aided the US Treasury’s financial lifeline provided to Argentina in recent weeks.
A combine harvester during a soybean harvest at a farm outside St. Peter, Minnesota. Credit: Ben Brewer/Bloomberg / Getty Images via CNN Newsource Last week, the Trump administration said it would arrange a $20 billion lifeline to Argentina’s central bank, which would exchange US dollars for pesos to help stabilize Argentina’s financial market. Argentina also temporarily scrapped export taxes on grains to help stabilize the peso, but China didn’t waste any time.
Beijing purchased “at least 10 cargoes of Argentine soybeans,” according to a report from Reuters. Brazil has also helped meet China’s demand for soybeans, with both countries announcing a pact in July to deepen agricultural trade ties.
As a result, America’s hobbled soybean industry is calling on the Trump administration to finish its trade negotiations with China.
“US soybean farmers have been clear for months: the administration needs to secure a trade deal with China. China is the world’s largest soybean customer and typically our top export market,” American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland said last week in a statement.
Pressure on Trump
Many farmers say time is of the essence as they start to bring in this year’s crop.
“We’re always hopeful that those negotiations are moving forward, but yet with harvest here, patience may be running thin,” one Indiana farmer told CNN, describing the industry’s many challenges, which also include the deportation of key workers.
Trump has heard the calls for action.
On Wednesday, Trump blamed China for the pain soybean farmers are facing, arguing Beijing is refusing to buy soybeans for negotiating purposes amid the two countries’ tariff dispute. He added that he plans to make soybeans “a major topic of discussion” when he meets face-to-face with China’s President Xi Jinping in South Korea next month.
Part of the reason Trump has given the issue so much attention, White House officials say, is because Rollins has forced the issue with not only the president, but also one of his closest advisers: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
On Tuesday, a photo of Bessent’s phone captured by the Associated Press went viral, showing a text from a contact named “BR,” presumed to be Rollins. Her messages illustrated panic within the Trump administration over the soybean industry’s woes, which worsened over the Argentina ordeal.
During this “time of uncertainty” for farmers and ranchers, Rollins said that she is in “constant communication” with the White House and partners across the government. Rollins also called Trump’s idea of temporarily giving tariff revenue to farmers “a very elegant solution.”
“To this moment of uncertainty, the ability to offset any payments to the farmers through potential tariff revenue is really where the president wants us to head, and that’s what we’re looking at,” she added.
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Alayna Treene, Bryan Mena and CNN
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX Took Money Directly From Chinese Investors, Company Insider Testifies
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ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has taken money directly from Chinese investors, according to previously sealed testimony, raising new questions about foreign ownership interests in one of the United States’ most important military contractors.
The recent testimony, coming from a SpaceX insider during a court case, marks the first time direct Chinese investment in the privately held company has been disclosed. While there is no prohibition on Chinese ownership in U.S. military contractors, such investment is heavily regulated, and the issue is treated by the U.S. government as a significant national security concern.
“They obviously have Chinese investors to be honest,” Iqbaljit Kahlon, a major SpaceX investor, said in a deposition last year, adding that some are “directly on the cap table.” “Cap table” refers to the company’s capitalization table, which lists its shareholders.
Kahlon’s testimony does not reveal the scope of Chinese investment in SpaceX or the identities of the investors. Kahlon has long been close with the company’s leadership and runs his own firm that acts as a middleman for wealthy investors looking to buy shares of SpaceX.
SpaceX keeps its full ownership structure secret. It was previously reported that some Chinese investors had bought indirect stakes in SpaceX, investing in middleman funds that in turn owned shares in the rocket company. The new testimony describes direct investments that suggest a closer relationship with SpaceX.
SpaceX has thrived as it snaps up sensitive U.S. government contracts, from building spy satellites for the Pentagon to launching spacecraft for NASA. U.S. embassies and the White House have connected to the company’s Starlink internet service too. Musk’s roughly 42% stake in the company is worth an estimated $168 billion. If he owned nothing else, he’d be one of the 10 richest people in the world.
National security law experts said federal officials would likely be deeply interested in understanding the direct Chinese investment in SpaceX. Whether there was cause for concern would depend on the details, they said, but the U.S. government has asserted that China has a systematic strategy of using investments in sensitive industries to conduct espionage.
If the investors got access to nonpublic information about the company — say, details on its contracts or supply chain — it could be useful to Chinese intelligence, said Sarah Bauerle Danzman, an Indiana University professor who has worked for the State Department scrutinizing foreign investments. That “would create huge risks that, if realized, would have huge consequences for national security,” she said.
SpaceX did not respond to questions for this story. Kahlon declined to comment.
The new court records come from litigation in Delaware between Kahlon and another investor. The testimony was sealed until ProPublica, with the assistance of lawyers at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the law firm Shaw Keller, moved in the spring to make it public. SpaceX fought the effort, but a judge ruled that some of the records must be released. Kahlon’s testimony was publicly filed this week.
Buying shares in SpaceX is much more difficult than buying a piece of a publicly traded company like Tesla or Microsoft. SpaceX has control over who can buy stakes in it, and the company’s investors fall into different categories. The most rarefied group is the direct investors, who actually own SpaceX shares. This group includes funds led by Kahlon, Peter Thiel, and a handful of other venture capitalists with personal ties to Musk. Then there are the indirect investors, who effectively buy stakes in SpaceX through a middleman like Kahlon. (The indirect investors are actually buying into a fund run by the middleman, typically paying a hefty fee.) All previously known Chinese investors in SpaceX fell into the latter category.
This year, ProPublica reported on an unusual feature of SpaceX’s approach to investment from China. According to testimony from the Delaware case, the company allows Chinese investors to buy stakes in SpaceX so long as the money is routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore secrecy hubs. Companies only have to proactively report Chinese investments to the government in limited circumstances, and there aren’t hard and fast rules for how much is too much.
After ProPublica’s report, House Democrats sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth raising alarms about the company’s “potential obfuscation.” “In light of the extreme sensitivity of SpaceX’s work for DoD and NASA, this lack of transparency raises serious questions,” they wrote. It’s unclear if any action was taken in response.
Kahlon has turned his access to SpaceX stock into a lucrative business. His investor list reads like an atlas of the world. The investors’ names are redacted in the recently unsealed document, but their addresses span from Chile to Malaysia. One is in Russia. At least two are in mainland China. One is in Qatar. (In one email to SpaceX’s chief financial officer, Kahlon said a Los Angeles-based fund had money from the Qatari royal family and was already invested in SpaceX.)
“You made a big fortune,” a China-based financier wrote to Kahlon four years ago. “Lol something like that. SpaceX has been the gift that keeps on giving,” Kahlon responded. “All thanks to you.”
Kahlon first met with SpaceX when it was a fledgling startup, according to court records. SpaceX’s CFO, Bret Johnsen, who’s been there for 14 years, testified that Kahlon “has been with the company in one form or fashion longer than I have.” Johnsen also testified that SpaceX has no formal policy about accepting investments from countries deemed adversaries by the U.S. government. But he said he asks fund managers to “stay away from Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean ownership interest” because that could make it “more challenging to win government contracts.”
There are indications that by 2021, Kahlon was wary of raising funds from China. The U.S. government had grown increasingly concerned about Chinese investments in tech companies, and that June, Kahlon told an associate he was “being picky” with who he’d let buy into a new SpaceX opportunity. “Only people I want to have a relationship with long term. No one from mainland China,” Kahlon said.
But as he raced to assemble a pool of investors, those concerns appeared to fade away. By November 2021, Kahlon was personally raising money from China to buy SpaceX stakes. He told a Shanghai-based company that if it invested with him, it would get quarterly updates on SpaceX’s business development, “visits to SpaceX, and the opportunities to interview with Space X’s CFO,” court records show.
The Shanghai company ultimately sent Kahlon $50 million to invest in Musk’s business, according to court records. SpaceX had the deal canceled after the plan became public.
Do you have any information we should know about Elon Musk’s businesses? Justin Elliott can be reached by email at [email protected] and by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240. Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at [email protected] and by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383.
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Justin Elliott and Joshua Kaplan, ProPublica
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Apple and Google Pull ICE-Tracking Apps, Bowing to DOJ Pressure
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Plus: China sentences scam bosses to death, Europe is ramping up its plans to build a “drone wall” to protect against Russian airspace violations, and more.
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Matt Burgess, Andy Greenberg, Andrew Couts
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China Is Leading the World in the Clean Energy Transition. Here’s What That Looks Like
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Speaking by video at the UN Climate Summit in New York last week, China’s president Xi Jinping laid out his country’s climate ambitions. While the stated goals may not have been aggressive as some environmentalists would like, Xi at least reaffirmed China’s green commitment.
“Despite some countries going against the trend, the international community should stay on the right track, maintain unwavering confidence, unwavering action, and undiminished efforts,” he said. Any reference to Donald Trump and the United States was surely intended (though not explicit).
The march of the energy transition is a long one, but it has to start somewhere. And with this approach, China has already taken quite a few steps.
Beijing Stands (Mostly) Alone
Today, there is no race to be a climate leader. The world is a far fry from the COP26 conference in November 2021, when tackling the threat of climate change seemed like a global priority. A few months later, Russia invaded Ukraine; the ensuing energy crisis and inflation kicked climate off of many political agendas.
While Joe Biden and the United States responded to soaring prices with the Inflation Reduction Act, which prioritized investment in renewable energy, Donald Trump subsequently withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement—an international accord to limit global warming—for the second time. The European Union has also stuttered: Too internally divided, it did not go beyond a drab declaration of intent at the UN Climate Summit. There hasn’t been much movement from India, a country of nearly 1.5 billion people. And other nations’ emissions are simply too small to matter.
Given this background, it becomes easy to understand how, in this scenario, China has become a global leader in the clean energy transition. Xi’s speech did not go into much detail, but it did mention all the main points of China’s strategy.
Cut Emissions Between 7 Percent and 10 Percent by 2035
In New York, Xi acknowledged the importance of the transition, and for the first time, agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions rather than simply promise to slow them down. China’s stated goal is between 7 percent and 10 percent reduction by 2035.
How do you evaluate these pledges? While the commitment is vague, it’s still significant; previously the regime had merely promised to reach peak emissions by 2030, tying the cuts to economic growth. In Xi’s speech you can seen China transition from a developing country approach to a role more akin to that of industrialized countries, whose emissions have been declining for decades.
Slow Going?
It should be pointed out that reducing emissions at the pace promised by Beijing means a decline of about 1 percent a year. According to an analysis by William Lamb of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, this is a slower pace than that held by most industrialized nations. Italy, for example, has reduced them by an average of 3.2 percent every 12 months since their peak in 2006; the United Kingdom by an average of 2.8 percent since 2004; France by 2.3 percent.
“China has often promised little and achieved much,” notes Andreas Sieber, associate director for policy and campaigns for the global climate nonprofit 350.org, suggesting that China might overdeliver. The country’s lack of democracy also means its policies are not at risk of reversal every election cycle.
On Renewables
Xi Jinping’s speech included a commitment to reach 3,600 gigawatts (GW) of installed wind and solar capacity by 2035, six times the country’s 2020 figures. This is already the leading country in terms of installed renewable power, and a giant on the technology front as well, with universities churning out environmental and climate tech research at full speed, and attracting scientists from abroad across numerous fields. He also announced a commitment to an energy mix with more than 30 percent renewables.
On Electric Vehicles
Mobility has long been an issue for China, which has moved from bicycles, ubiquitous until the 1990s, to the mass automobile. The images of the 2008 Beijing Olympics are unforgettable: A blanket of smog buried the city. The government has in recent years given a strong boost to electric mobility: At the Climate Summit it announced plans to make EVs “mainstream,” that is, prevalent in sales. It helps that it has ready access to rare earth minerals that are essential for building batteries. And for that matter, the country hosts giant automotive companies like BYD and Catl, which supplies batteries to some 50 global brands including Tesla and Volkswagen.
On the carbon market
Xi has declared his intention to expand the national carbon emission trading market to more emission-intensive sectors than today.
On forests
China made additional commitments on forests, which it says will reach an extent of 34 billion cubic meters.
China has reshaped the market for green technologies.
To skeptics expecting broader measures and the mantle of true global leadership from China, well, that’s not a particularly coveted title these days—especially if the US continues to reverse course on climate science. As senior advisor Bernice Lee of the think tank Chatham House notes, China invested $625 billion in the clean energy transition last year alone; that’s nearly a third of the gobal total.
Not only that: Research and massive adoption of renewable technologies have led to the dramatic drop in prices, and China’s very large domestic market is a formidable driver in this regard. “The rise of Chinese renewables is reshaping the global economy and replacing coal in the domestic market,” Lee says.
The hope is that other countries, reassured by that commitment, will follow China’s example rather than America’s.
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Antonio Piemontese
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China Rolls Out Its First Talent Visa as the US Retreats on H-1Bs
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The bottom line is that, unlike the US, China is not a country of immigrants. In 2020, only about .1 percent of the mainland population was made up of foreigners, according to one estimate by researchers from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. That’s roughly 1.4 million people in a country of more than 1.4 billion. In the United States, by contrast, 15 percent of the population is made up of immigrants. Even other East Asian nations, like Japan and South Korea, are home to far more foreigners than China in terms of their relative population size.
Because the US already has a large immigrant population from all over the world, it can be easier for new arrivals to adjust. Local companies operate in English, the language of global business. Colleagues and friends communicate through platforms like Gmail and Instagram, which are available in most parts of the world. And when it comes to creature comforts, H-1B recipients from India or China who land in San Francisco or New York will have no trouble finding restaurants (even good ones!) that serve food that tastes like home.
In China, however, newcomers must navigate a corporate landscape that operates largely in Chinese, a language few foreigners study in grade school or while pursuing a STEM degree. The country’s tech ecosystem is also totally unique. New arrivals face not only an unfamiliar language and culture, but also a suite of unfamiliar programs and apps, most notably WeChat.
Better Reputation
There are signs that more people might be willing to overcome these barriers to experience the benefits of living in China, a place now increasingly associated with high-speed trains, electric cars, and futuristic cities. In places like Greece, Spain, and Germany, the majority of people now view China as the world’s top economic power, according to the Pew Research Center. Africa, the continent with the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population, already sends more students to study in China each year than to the US or UK.
I’ve personally noticed that my American friends and family seem to have much more positive impressions of China than they did a few years ago. That might be in part due to the popularity of Chinese exports like TikTok, Temu, and Labubu. Several friends have even told me they specifically want to visit Chongqing, a Chinese megacity that didn’t attract many foreign tourists until videos of its skyline and hot pot restaurants went viral on Instagram and TikTok.
Whether this growing curiosity translates into people actually moving to China will depend in part on how the government handles programs like the new K visa. The policy lowers barriers for people who want to study or work there, but it has also stirred anxieties at home. For now, it’s unclear whether it will become a genuine gateway for new waves of international talent, or falter in the face of the same rising nationalist sentiments reshaping politics around the world.
This is an edition of Zeyi Yang and Louise Matsakis’ Made in China newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.
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Louise Matsakis
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China’s Latest Digital Headache for American Corporations: ‘Export-Only’ Piracy
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Digital pirates in China are getting more sophisticated and are blocking their services domestically to avoid local law enforcement, and U.S. copyright holders would like to speak to the manager.
The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), which represents various U.S. entertainment industries from Hollywood to gaming, is calling on China to do more to stop these operations, which have been dubbed ‘export-only’ piracy.
The IIPA called out the practice and named notable offenders in a submission last week to the U.S. Trade Representative. The submission was part of the Trade Representative’s annual review of China’s compliance with World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations, TorrentFreak reports.
“While significant piracy in China’s domestic market remains an enduring challenge, the exporting of pirated content, piracy services, and piracy devices (PDs) from China to foreign markets is a growing and equally troubling global trend,” the submission reads.
The report highlights several of the worst offenders, including the internet TV platform and privacy device exporter FlujoTV (formerly MagisTV), which targets Latin America; the app LokLok, serving Southeast Asia; and the website GIMY, popular in Taiwan.
The IIPA underscored how pirates are shifting tactics and searching for new loopholes to exploit. Another example provided by the group was the reskinning of video games.
“Instead of traditional methods that involve technical cracking of game software for complete duplication and distribution, game piracy in China is increasingly characterized by reskinning the original games with non-substantial revisions,” the report says. It added that the changes could be as simple as making slight adjustments to the games’ source code.
Additionally, the IIPA’s comments paint a picture of China’s copyright enforcement as slow, inconsistent, and bureaucratic. For example, even after initial sanctions against violators, rights holders often have to file new complaints for repeat offenses. E-commerce platforms usually only have to delist specific items, rather than shutting down entire shops. And geo-blocked services can operate completely under the radar.
“This allows China-based operations to evade enforcement action by simply geo-blocking their services from access within China or serving a different set of content to users accessing these services from within China,” the IIPA wrote.
The group is now calling for specific reforms to address the issue, including more resources and better coordination for the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC), simpler complaint procedures, and clearer rules for user-uploaded content platforms.
They also want China to enforce its laws against all piracy operations run from the country, even if the services aren’t accessible locally, and to improve cross-border cooperation so geo-blocked piracy doesn’t slip through the cracks.
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Bruce Gil
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A Journey Into the Heart of Labubu
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The day after I failed to secure a Labubu from Pop Mart’s original store, I decide to console myself with a visit to Pop Land, the company’s 10-acre theme park in central Beijing—and perhaps the clearest sign that it intends to come for Disney’s lunch. (“Our art toys are like Disney’s movies,” Wang says in A Company One of a Kind. “They use movies to reach consumers, cultivate fans, and build IP and fan communities. We do it through art toys.”)
Pop Land is about 1 percent the size of Universal Studios in Beijing and Shanghai’s Disneyland, but unlike other theme parks, it sits right by the consulate district and a few subway stops away from Beijing’s most populous business areas. It’s in a city green space, which meant that Pop Mart wasn’t allowed to move even a single tree. Instead, the company renovated an abandoned building on the property and named it Molly’s Castle. A leafy area became Labubu Adventure Forest, though it looks much brighter and more kid-friendly than Lung’s original depiction. At one end of the forest, actors put on a “Warriors Training Camp” in full-size Labubu suits.
I stop for lunch at the park’s restaurant, on the third floor of Molly’s Castle. The minute I’m seated at a table and inform the waitress I came alone, she puts a 23-inch-tall plush doll in the chair opposite me. My dining buddy is Zimomo, the male chief of the Labubu clan in the original children’s book and one of the rarest Pop Mart products sold. Throughout my lunch, other Pop Land visitors keep coming over to ask whether I bought the Zimomo doll myself and if they can take a picture of it. I feel like I’m dining with a celebrity.
At the table next to me is a mother with her young daughter. I ask what brought them here. The mom tells me that her daughter, who’s turning 4 in less than a month, found and fell in love with Labubu through watching videos on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. She thought about buying two Zimomo dolls for her daughter, but they cost $200 each on the resale market, so she’s still debating. Just the day before, she saw on social media that a friend’s daughter had a Labubu-themed birthday party, where the room was stuffed with dozens of rare Labubus. She shows me videos of the party on her phone. “Her mom paid a lot to get these,” she says.
Since I began my own Labubu hunt, I’ve known the option exists to go to a reseller, often referred to in China by the slang term huangniu (literally “yellow ox”). I heard from Dong, a Pop Mart customer since 2018 in Shanghai, that many huangniu he knows use bots that monitor social media for restock announcements and grab new merchandise the millisecond it drops. Dong has paid a small amount to join group chats where huangniu release early information. He calls himself a fenniu now—between a fan and a huangniu. He has already collected most of the Labubu products ever released, so he’s only buying new ones to sell to other fans for a profit. (Which, to me, sounds like he is a huangniu.)
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Zeyi Yang
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Australia PM concerned about China’s reported pause on BHP iron ore purchases
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MELBOURNE (Reuters) -Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday he was concerned about a report that China’s state iron ore buyer had taken steps to pause purchases of iron ore cargoes from miner BHP.
Bloomberg News, citing people familiar with the matter, reported on Tuesday that state-owned China Mineral Resources Group (CMRG) had asked the country’s steelmakers and traders to pause purchases of BHP’s dollar-denominated seaborne iron ore cargoes during annual price negotiations.
“I am concerned about that and what we want to make sure is that markets operate properly,” Albanese told reporters.
“We have seen those issues in the past. I want to see Australian iron ore to be able to be exported to China without hindrance.”
CMRG has not responded to an emailed request for comment. A BHP spokesperson said on Tuesday the company does not comment on commercial negotiations.
Albanese said he hoped the issue would be resolved quickly and acknowledged differences could happen during price negotiations.
Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers said he would set up a meeting with BHP CEO Mike Henry.
Iron ore is Australia’s most valuable export product, though a government report in June said earnings from that could fall to A$105 billion ($69.39 billion) for the financial year ending in June 2026, from A$116 billion the prior year as global supplies increase.
China, the world’s largest iron ore consumer, buys about 75% of global seaborne iron ore and set up CMRG three years ago to buy ore on behalf of its steelmakers to gain more leverage as a large, single buyer.
BHP is the world’s largest listed miner and China’s third-biggest iron ore supplier behind Rio Tinto and Vale.
($1 = 1.5131 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Melanie Burton in Melbourne and Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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Germany Jails Chinese Spy, Marking New Low in China-Europe Relations
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The sentencing of the former assistant to a German far-right lawmaker casts fresh light on China’s spying efforts in Europe.
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Bertrand Benoit
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Minnesota soybean farmers face uncertain future as China shuts out U.S. from market
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China, the top export market for the United States for soybeans, is not purchasing any of the crop from American farmers right now, leaving Minnesota producers uncertain about the future.
Minnesota’s 26,000 soybean farmers send 60% overseas and China is their top buyer, according to the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association. It’s the number one agricultural export from the state.
Last year, China purchased $12.6 billion worth of soybeans from the U.S., federal data from the agriculture department shows.
As harvest season gets underway this year, the country’s orders are $0.
“Our main exporter, where we export our beans to, is kind of putting up a zero on the board, which is overall, not a great thing for our prices,” said Matt Purfeerst, a sixth-generation corn and soybean farmer in Faribault, Minnesota, where he grows 2,000 acres of soybeans alongside members of his family.
Purfeerst said Brazil and Argentina — where China has turned to this fall — are the top competition for American farmers like him and those markets are growing rapidly, outpacing what the U.S. produces.
“You just don’t want to lose that market share to them because they just continue to grow acres and grow good crops down there,” he said in an interview Monday.
Darin Johnson, president of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association, last month warned that the protracted trade dispute between the U.S. and China would put pressure and financial strain on farmers this harvest if the situation did not change.
He urged President Trump to take action and prioritize soybean producers.
“Unfortunately, we’re bearing a lot of this trade war,” he said.
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the Republican of South Dakota, said farmers would likely need an aid package from Congress as a result and that federal lawmakers could use funds collected from the tariffs to pay for the financial assistance.
Purfeerst said he prefers open markets to bailouts. And the strain comes as farmers are feeling the pinch from higher fertilizer prices on the front end, too.
“A bandaid is great, but you don’t want to impact or damage that relationship long term, whatever the long-term implications might be from losing that [market],” he explained.
But despite the uncertainty, he remains optimistic farmers will see a rebound.
“I think eventually it’s gonna come back. Now the question is, how long is that going to take? No one knows,” he said.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, signed a proclamation Monday declaring this week “Soybean Week” to underscore the role these farmers play in the state’s economy.
The 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee took a swipe at Mr. Trump’s policies in a statement.
“They’ve produced a bumper crop this year, just to find out they have nowhere to sell their harvest thanks to Trump’s trade policies,” the governor said. “Minnesota’s got the best beans in the world – I encourage Minnesotans to stand with our farmers and continue to advocate for federal trade reform.”
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Caroline Cummings
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Pentagon Asks to Quadruple Missile Production: Report
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The Pentagon has told suppliers of missiles to the U.S. that their production of the weapons needs to as much as quadruple, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
This urgency to increase missile production, as the U.S. looks with concern at its stockpiles over the potential for a future war with China, was laid out at meetings between top Pentagon officials and representatives from U.S. weapons manufacturers, the Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The depletion of missiles has been a focus of concern in recent years, particularly as the U.S. supplied Ukraine during Russia’s ongoing invasion. U.S. President Donald Trump is now weighing whether to give Ukraine Tomahawk cruise missiles.
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.
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Donald Trump’s TikTok Deal Looks Like Crony Capitalism
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Donald Trump is a compulsive issuer of executive orders: since January, there have been more than two hundred of them. Some are glorified press releases; others are more significant. “Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security” falls decidedly into the second category. Signed last week, on the same day that the Department of Justice indicted James Comey, it is designed to facilitate the transfer of a social-media platform with a hundred and seventy million American users to a consortium that features several of the President’s political and financial benefactors. According to news reports, the potential investors in the TikTok deal include two conservative billionaires—Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, and Rupert Murdoch, the proprietor of Fox News—and two investment firms with ties to the Administration: Susquehanna, which already owns a stake in TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance; and Andreessen Horowitz. Also said to be involved is MGX, an investment fund backed by the government of the United Arab Emirates that recently deposited two billion dollars into crypto assets created by World Liberty Financial, a company that the Trump family controls.
Perhaps the timing of these developments was coincidental, but it didn’t appear that way. Indicting Comey and bringing the U.S. arm of TikTok into the MAGA fold seem like part of the same grand project to concentrate media power in Trump’s hands, or the hands of his allies, and to rout his perceived enemies. To be sure, the executive order was signed days after Disney pushed back against the White House’s pressure campaign and restored Jimmy Kimmel to the air after a brief suspension. But, in today’s media ecosystem, late-night comics on network television don’t have anything comparable to the reach of a social-media behemoth such as TikTok.
The campaign to force TikTok to divest its U.S. operations started out as a bipartisan initiative driven by ill-defined concerns that the app represented a threat to national security. Trump, toward the end of his first term, issued an executive order to ban the social-media platform on these grounds, but the courts struck it down. When Joe Biden was in the White House, he formally rescinded Trump’s ban but demanded a divestment. In 2024, Congress passed a bill, with support from both parties, that mandated a sale or closure of the app by January of this year. While campaigning for reëlection, Trump used TikTok to reach out to younger voters and had a change of heart about banning it. Since coming to office, he has disregarded the language of 2024 legislation and postponed the deadline for a sale four times. The deal he has finally come up with to resolve the impasse warrants inspection from every angle.
When a major company decides or is legally obliged to dispose of one of its big subsidiaries, it would normally engage an investment bank to find a buyer or buyers. This intermediary would then obtain financial and operational information about the business and pass it on to potential bidders, with the goal of starting an auction and commanding as high a price as possible. Organizing an initial public offering of stock in the subsidiary would be another option. In this case, the law requiring a divestment and the involvement of the Chinese government complicated things. But we know precious little about how the potential sale was arranged, whether any financial intermediaries were involved, or how the Ellison consortium was selected.
We do know, partly because Trump said so earlier this year, that at least four groups expressed interest in bidding. They included a cadre led by the billionaire Frank McCourt, who formerly owned the Los Angeles Dodgers. In June, McCourt told the “CBS Mornings” show that he and his associates had informed Vice-President J. D. Vance’s office that they were “ready, willing, and able to buy the platform.” Other potential buyers reportedly included Amazon, the A.I. firm Perplexity, and a coalition led by Tim Stokely, the founder of OnlyFans. The executive order that Trump signed doesn’t say what happened with the other suitors, or how the winning consortium was put together. It merely notes that Vance led an interagency process that determined that the proposed deal amounted to a “qualified divestiture” under the 2024 legislation. This interagency process involved not only Vance’s office but the National Security Council, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of the Treasury, the Justice Department, the Department of Commerce, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Last week, Trump said the owners of the U.S. operations of TikTok would be “American investors, American companies, great ones, great investors.” He didn’t mention the investment firm MGX, which is backed by the Emirati government and run by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al-Nahyan, an Emirati royal who is also the monarchy’s national-security adviser. When MGX bought two billion dollars’ worth of stablecoins issued by World Liberty Financial earlier this year, the purchase established the Trump company as a major player in the crypto world. And, as the Times reported earlier this month, the move came as the U.A.E. was trying to buy thousands of advanced microchips designed by the U.S. firm Nvidia. The Trump Administration subsequently approved the purchase of the chips.
How did MGX pop up in the TikTok transaction? That’s another open question, as is the issue of whether the potential buyers are getting a sweetheart deal. Last week, Vance said the deal would value TikTok’s U.S. operations at fourteen billion dollars. That is a lot lower than previous estimates of its worth, which ranged as high as fifty billion dollars. It “could be the most undervalued tech acquisition of the decade,” Ashwin Binwani, the founder of an eponymous investment firm, told Bloomberg last week. However, another report from Bloomberg provided a possible explanation for the low valuation: even after the divestiture deal goes through, ByteDance will continue to receive about half of the profits that TikTok generates in the United States even though its ownership stake will be reduced to twenty per cent.
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John Cassidy
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How China Plans to Cut 10 Percent of its Emissions by 2035
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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — With China leading the way by announcing its first emission cuts, world leaders said Wednesday they are getting more serious about fighting climate change and the deadly extreme weather that comes with it.
At the United Nations’ high-level climate summit, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced the world’s largest carbon-polluting country would aim to cut emissions by 7% to 10% by 2035. China produces more than 31% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and they have long been soaring.
The announcement came as more than 100 world leaders gathered to talk of increased urgency and the need for stronger efforts to curb the spewing of heat-trapping gases.
With major international climate negotiations in Brazil 6½ weeks away, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres convened a special leaders summit Wednesday during the General Assembly to focus on specific plans to curb emissions from coal, oil and natural gas.
After more than six hours of speeches, promises and announcements, about 100 nations — responsible for about two-thirds of the world’s emissions — gave plans or some kind of commitments to further curb fossil fuel emissions and fight climate change, Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed said.
In a video address, Xi pledged that China would increase its wind and solar power sixfold from 2020 levels, make pollution-free vehicles mainstream and “basically establish a climate adaptive society.”Europe then followed with a less detailed and not quite official new climate change fighting plan. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said last week, member states agreed that their emissions cutting targets would range between 66% and 72%. The EU will formally submit its plan before the November negotiations.
While the new promises are in the right direction and show stronger commitment to fighter climate change, “these targets will not be enough to keep us safe from climate destruction,” said Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director for international climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Xi and Brazil’s leader also made statements on Wednesday afternoon that may have referred to U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks a day earlier on renewable energy and the concept of climate change. “While some countries are acting against it, the international community should stay focused on the right direction,” Xi said.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is hosting the upcoming climate conference, said, “no one is safe from the effect of climate change. Walls at borders will not stop droughts or storms,” Lula said. “Nature does not bow down to bombs or warships. No country stands above another.”
Said Guterres: “The science demands action. The law commands it. The economics compel it. And people are calling for it.”
Time to ‘wake up’ amid catastrophes
Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine said she was there to issue “a demand for us all to wake up from a community whose hospitals and schools are being destroyed” by rising tides. She said she has regularly been awakened by floods and drought emergencies in her small island nation and that it will soon be others’ turn.
“If we fail to wake up now and end our dependence on fossil fuels the leaders of every country in this room will be woken up by calls about catastrophes of wildfires, of storms, of heatwaves, and of starvation and drought,” she said.
Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif said his country knows this all too well, with recent floods that have affected 5 million people across over 4,000 villages, killing over 1,000.“As I speak to you, my country is reeling from intense monsoon rains, flash floods, mudslides and devastating urban flooding,” he said. “We are facing this calamity at a time when the scars of the 2022 floods that inflicted losses exceeding $30 billion and displaced millions are still visible across our land.”
Anthony Albanese, prime minister of Australia, called this a decisive decade for climate action and said Australians know the toll of more frequent and extreme weather events like cyclones, floods, bush fires and droughts. “Australia knows we are not alone,” he said.‘Here we must admit failure’
“Warming appears to be accelerating,” climate scientist Johan Rockstrom said in a science briefing that started the summit. “Here we must admit failure. Failure to protect peoples and nations from unmanageable impacts of human-induced climate change.”
“We’re dangerously close to triggering fundamental and irreversible change,” Rockstrom said.
Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe told leaders that every tenth of a degree of warming is connected to worsening floods, wildfires, heat waves, storms and many more deaths: “What’s at stake is nothing less than everything and everyone we love.”
In a news conference, Lula said he invited both Trump and Xi to the November climate negotiations, saying it’s important that leaders listen to scientists.
Under the 2015 Paris climate accord, 195 nations are supposed to submit new more stringent five-year plans on how to curb carbon emissions from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.U.N. officials said countries really need to get their plans in by the end of the month so the U.N. can calculate how much more warming Earth is on track for if nations do what they promise. Former U.S. President Joe Biden submitted America’s plan late last year before leaving office and the Trump administration has distanced itself from the plan.
Before 2015, the world was on path for 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times, but now has trimmed that to 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit), Guterres said.
However, the Paris accord set a goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid 19th century and the world has already warmed about 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) since.
Simon Stiell, UN’s climate chief, said the Chinese plan “is a clear signal that the future global economy will run on clean energy. And that for every country, stronger and faster climate action means more economic growth, jobs, affordable and secure energy, cleaner air, and better health, for all of us, everywhere.”
Lula also praised China’s announcement, but some advocates were underwhelmed, but they said China has reputation for under-promising and over-delivering on climate action.
“China’s latest climate target is too timid given the country’s extraordinary record on clean energy,” said former Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos, chair of the group The Elders. “China must go further and faster”
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Associated Press
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Mahjong Master Jennie Jethwani Brings the Game to L.A.’s Elite
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Jennie Jethwani is at the center of the clacking culture of mahjong, which is having a huge moment in Los Angeles
Jennie Jethwani teaches the wildly popular game mahjong at ultra-trendy spots all over Los Angeles Credit: Courtesy of Jennie JethwaniMahjong —yes, mahjong— is enjoying a modern resurgence, bringing traditions new and old to not just to kitchen and living rooms all over Los Angeles, but to some of the city’s toniest social clubs.
Jennie Jethwani is a mahjong master and is taking her teaching skills to people’s homes and places like the Soho House and Club Joyful in Venice, where she will be teaching next month in a mahjong and mingle event (tickets are still available). The game’s profile is surging and not just with older Asians; it was featured in the 2018 romantic comedy “Crazy Rich Asians, which featured a pivotal mahjong scene. “Mahjong is having a moment with everyone,” Jethwani said. “It’s a fantastic people connector, and I am seeing rising interest in the game among millennials and Gen Z who love the strategy.”
The game became wildly popular in China in the late 1800s, but in the centuries since, it has traveled the world. But this year, the U.S. has become mahjong-crazed, especially in Los Angeles, said Jethwani, who learned the game during the pandemic as a way to stay connected online with family all over the world. She wasn’t the only one. TikTok became inundated with videos of heated clacking tile games, and Jethwani was sought after for mahjong nights all over the place. “The scene started to get crazy, and now mahjong is everywhere,” she said.
There are Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Filipino, and American Jewish styles of the game; there are 13-tile and 16-tile versions; and every household has its own system regarding points and scoring. Better yet, the sets themselves are gorgeous, collectibles doubling as objets d’art for collectors.
“It’s a great way to make new friends and show people the benefits of playing on their brain health. I always loved teaching dance and naturally transitioned to teaching mahjong when I was asked to by Soho House,” Jethwani says. Now her business has exploded with requests for private events and one-on-one lessons.
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Michele McPhee
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China Finds Ingenious Solution for Its Decommissioned Wind Turbine Blades
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Many wind turbine blades in China are approaching retirement, and researchers have come up with a creative way to reuse the giant components.
In a study published earlier this summer in the journal International Soil and Water Conservation Research, scientists suggest repurposing decommissioned wind turbine blades in sand control measures. Namely, in sand barriers. The approach could be the solution to two problems: dealing with old blades and finding optimal sand control measures.
“Wind turbine blades with high strength and durability can be directly cut and drilled into sand barriers,” the researchers wrote in the paper. “This approach not only addresses the recycling challenges of decommissioned wind turbine blades but also mitigates the shortage of windbreak and sand stabilization materials in the desert and the Gobi areas.”
Two birds with one stone
In arid and semiarid regions, wind can wreak havoc on both human and natural landscapes, and sand control measures such as sand barriers aim to decrease the resulting economic losses and protect habitats. While sand barriers such as those made out of reeds and branches are inexpensive, easy to construct, and environmentally friendly, they’re short-lived and don’t hold up well to extreme environments.
More effective artificial sand control materials don’t offer perfect solutions, because they also face challenges in extremely windy areas along railways. As such, people sometimes turn to stronger barriers made of materials such as cement, metal, and rocky sand. Ultimately, the materials should be strong, long-lasting, wind-abrasion-resistant, thermally stable, available, reasonably priced, and with optimal porosity.
As for the wind power industry, the question of what to do with old wind turbine blades faces high costs and complex traditional recycling processes, in addition to the risk of pollution in the case of improper management.
As such, the researchers investigated the efficacy of sand barriers made from decommissioned or damaged wind turbine blades. “First, we tested the mechanical properties of this material, including ultraviolet (UV) aging resistance, thermal stability, bending strength, and erosion resistance,” the researchers explained in the paper. “Second, through wind tunnel experiments and numerical simulations, we analyzed the shelter and sand stabilization effects of the new sand barriers with different porosities compared with traditional nylon net sand barriers.”
Real-life application
The approach revealed that the new barrier’s erosion rate can be 56% lower than that of wood composite materials, and its bending strength was 14 times greater. The researchers also found that a porosity of 20% was the best for the reduction of sediment transport.
“Therefore, the new porous sand barriers made from decommissioned or damaged wind turbine blades possess excellent UV and erosion resistance, high strength and thermal stability, recyclability, and long service life,” the researchers concluded. “It combines the porous structure of flexible sand barriers with the strength of rigid sand barriers, making it well-suited for regions with strong winds, large temperature variations, and intense UV radiation, which has significant potential for application in sand control practices.”
The study is the ultimate reminder of an age-old saying—one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Or, in this case, one industry’s trash is another’s solution.
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Margherita Bassi
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