Living in Shenzhen, China. Creating content about China & Geopolitics.
Shenzhen, China
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An interesting development in the European automotive market.
Chinese automaker Leapmotor has partnered with Stellantis to manufacture vehicles in Spain, helping it avoid the tariffs that would apply if those vehicles were imported directly from China.
Its B10 will be produced at Stellantis’s Zaragoza plant, while a nearby battery facility will support local production. The initial localisation rate is expected to exceed 40%, and the project is forecast to create between 450 and 600 local jobs.
There is a certain symmetry to this. It follows much the same model European automakers used when entering China decades ago: partner locally, establish production, develop a local supply chain and manufacture closer to the customer.
Rather than tariffs simply stopping Chinese manufacturers from entering Europe, they may accelerate the localisation of Chinese technology and manufacturing within Europe.
European workers gain jobs, local suppliers gain business, and Chinese manufacturers gain access to the market. Stellantis also benefits from Leapmotor’s platforms and technology.
It is a good example of how trade barriers often change the structure of global business rather than bringing it to a halt.
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So Rishi Sunak has just noticed that China makes things. Well done.
He’s now warning that China wants the whole world dependent on it. Who do you think made us dependent? Nobody in Beijing forced British and European companies to close their factories and ship production east. Our own boardrooms did that, with governments in London and Brussels cheering them on, because cheap production meant fatter margins and better quarterly results. The long-term cost? Someone else’s problem. Turns out that someone is us.
For decades, the UK and EU lectured the rest of the world about free trade. Open your markets. Let competition decide. Protectionism is for losers. Very easy to say when you’re the one winning.
Now China has climbed the value chain, building EVs, batteries and machine tools at a scale nobody else can match, and suddenly the free-market crowd wants tariffs, trade barriers and emergency kill switches.
Funny how open markets are a sacred principle right up until you start losing.
China didn’t steal their industrial base. They sold it off for short-term profit. If politicians actually want to fix that, they can start by looking in the mirror instead of pointing at Beijing.
Double standards, plain and simple.
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When I was young, that would be girls in the school playground. Now it's humanoid robots, and a robot dog...
When machines start reading each other. 🤖🐕
A humanoid and a quadruped robot coordinating in the same space — reacting and moving in real time. The next leap in AI isn't on a screen; it's on its feet.
📹 via @Fabriziobustama
#China #Robotics #AI
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Washington wanted to cripple China's AI industry by cutting off access to advanced American chips. Instead, it may have just handed Huawei one of the biggest opportunities in its history. And Nvidia is paying the price!
According to a new IDC report seen by Reuters, Nvidia's share of China's data-centre AI chip market has fallen to just 34% in the first half of 2026, with shipments plunging 44% year-on-year. Meanwhile, Huawei has surged ahead, shipping 572,000 AI accelerators and capturing 28% of the market. That's just six percentage points behind Nvidia.
The United States has spent years tightening restrictions on China's access to advanced semiconductors, supposedly to slow down its technological development. Yet those very restrictions have created an enormous opportunity for Chinese companies to develop, manufacture and deploy their own alternatives.
And it's not just Huawei. Alibaba's T-Head, Cambricon, Baidu's Kunlunxin and Hygon are all gaining ground. In fact, nine of the eleven Chinese chipmakers tracked by IDC increased their shipments compared with last year.
Perhaps the most interesting finding is that China is increasingly moving beyond traditional GPUs. Shipments of other AI accelerators jumped nearly 80%, overtaking GPUs in volume for the first time. Chinese companies are also focusing on complete computing systems, rather than simply trying to match Nvidia chip for chip.
Even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly warned that Washington's restrictions are effectively handing China's enormous AI chip market to Huawei.
I've said this many times before: when you try to contain China's technological development, you don't necessarily stop it. You give Chinese companies a very powerful incentive to find their own solutions.
And once those domestic alternatives become competitive, why would China want to return to depending on American technology that Washington can restrict whenever it chooses?
Nvidia still leads in China, but the gap is narrowing rapidly. The bigger question now is whether US policymakers have inadvertently accelerated the very technological independence they were trying to prevent.
Washington wanted to slow China down. Instead, it may have helped create Nvidia's biggest future competitor.
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Many say that China cannot innovate, only steals technology from the West. Check out this video explaining how Huawei and Qualcomm just signed a huge patent licensing deal, and as part of that deal purchased patents from Huawei.
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Human vs Robot! What happens when you challenge a humanoid robot to a game of tennis? At the China Open in Beijing, I went head-to-head with Galbot’s AI-powered humanoid robot. Join me as I put China’s latest robotics technology to the test and experience the future of embodied AI firsthand!
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Is this Optimus about to face off against Galbot in a tennis match. @elonmusk
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I've been seeing posts about test rides in the XPENG L03 in Paris, as someone who follows XPENG quite closely I looked into what’s happening at the show.
Turns out more than 60 automakers are at the Paris Motor Show, and only two are giving the public intelligent driving rides on real roads. XPENG is one of them, alongside Tesla.
Inside the show’s official Autonomous Lab, visitors are experiencing XPENG FSD in the new L03 SUV coupe. It’s XPENG’s first large-scale NGP test ride experience in Europe.
The leadership extends beyond the show floor. XPENG now serves as OICA Secretary of a newly established UNECE task force on automated driving, which brings together regulators, technical experts and industry from around the world to share real-world experience.
XPENG and Tesla, two names leading the way, setting the pace for global intelligent driving.
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While the USA threatens other countries for buying Oil from Iran & Russia, Trump does a deal to buy Russian Diesel. You could not make this up.....
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The US wants to cut China out of its supply chains. But there's one rather big problem — American companies are discovering they simply can't replace what China makes. And it's not Chinese media saying this. It's CNN.
A recent report from America's own flagship network spelled out what happens when Washington tries to cut China out of the supply chain: US robotics firms can't get the parts they need, American machine shops are telling startups "we can't make this," and the bill is landing on businesses, universities and ordinary consumers.
Take Chef Robotics in San Francisco. After the tariffs went up, the founder tried to move production of some parts out of China. US costs were through the roof, and most suppliers outside China simply couldn't handle the order. Now investors are asking him why he's still using foreign parts. What exactly is he supposed to use instead?
Kopin, which makes drone optics for the US military, spent more than two years moving part of its microdisplay production home. It now costs around 25% more. And China turns out more of those displays in a week than the US makes in a year.
At the University of Illinois, an engineering professor reckons replacing the Chinese humanoid robots used in his courses could cost ten times as much, if a replacement even exists.
Meanwhile the ban list just keeps growing. Humanoid robots, power inverters, drones, cars with Chinese parts. Even robot vacuums, pool cleaners and lawnmowers.
One founder summed it up nicely: by the time an American company builds its first prototype, a Chinese company might already be on version three.
You can't ban your way to being competitive. And in the end, it's American consumers who'll be paying for it.
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America can't compete with China, so now it wants to stop Chinese laboratories from testing electronics destined for the US market. Seriously, where does this end?
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is preparing to vote on October 29 on a proposal to ban ALL Chinese laboratories from testing electronic products such as smartphones, computers and cameras for the American market.
According to the FCC itself, 82% of electronic products were tested in China in 2025, compared with less than 4% in the United States.
China has spent decades building one of the world's most advanced electronics manufacturing ecosystems, including testing facilities, suppliers and engineering expertise. American companies have benefited enormously from this, keeping costs down and bringing products to market faster.
But rather than investing in its own capabilities, Washington seems more interested in disrupting the very supply chains American businesses rely on.
Of course, we're hearing the usual arguments about "national security" and "fair competition". But seriously, where is the national security threat in having a smartphone tested in a Chinese laboratory?
The ban wouldn't take effect until December 2028. If this really is such a serious security concern, why wait over two years?
I've spent years visiting factories and technology companies across China, and one thing I've learned is that China's manufacturing strength isn't something you can simply switch off with sanctions and restrictions.
You don't make American industry more competitive by making it more expensive to do business.
At some point, Washington needs to realise that competing with China means investing in innovation and manufacturing, not putting up more barriers.
Meanwhile, China will continue doing what it does best: building, innovating and moving forward.
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Barrett retweeted
HUAWEI'S 500,000 CHIP ANSWER TO NVIDIA
There is lot of talk about Huawei’s new Mate 90 smartphone, which uses their LogicFolding chip design.
But I think everyone is watching the wrong part of Huawei's AI stack.
The most important innovations are in the AI Data Centers
1. HUAWEI IS REBUILDING AI INFRASTRUCTURE AT SCALE.
Huawei’s new Atlas 960E SuperPoD has 4,096 NPUs working as one giant integrated computer.
And these can be combined into a SuperCluster with more than 500,000 NPUs.
That’s what’s coming this year.
They are matching Nvidia in large scale AI compute.
2. INTERCONNECT INNOVATIONS HAVE BEEN MAKING A BIG DIFFERENCE.
Huawei lacks the most powerful NVIDIA GPUs, so it links many weaker chips as peers with its UnifiedBus.
And in the 960E, they have used 5,500 new optical engines to replace more than 48,000 pluggable optical modules.
This drops latency and doubles fault free operating time.
3. MEMORY IS THE STORY NOBODY TALKS ABOUT.
The SuperPod system treats the memory on all chips as one shared pool of 1.1 petabytes.
Agents create exploding context, so Huawei extends the KV cache to SSD layers and a single cluster reaches 64 petabytes.
This whole AI architecture has been moving really fast for the past 1-2 years.
***TAKEAWAYS FOR MANAGERS:
→ Ask your infrastructure team whether latency and memory, not chips, are the real limits on your AI workloads.
→ Estimate how much context your planned agents will carry, then budget memory and storage before you scale them.
I WRITE ABOUT AI AGENTS EVERY WEEK IN MY FREE AGENTIC FRONTIER EMAIL.
Sign up here and get my book Moats and Marathons free:
jefftowson.com/free-email-si…
#Huawei #AIInfrastructure #AgenticAI #DataCenters #TechStrategy
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How Huawei is beating western sanctions and innovating in semiconductor technology. The Tau Scaling Law.
I've said this many times. Do not underestimate China.
Huawei's new Mate 90 series launched today, and I'll be honest, it's the chip story that's caught my attention more than anything else.
"The HUAWEI Mate 90 Series is equipped with the flagship Tau chipset across the entire series." — Richard Yu
For as long as I've followed phones, performance upgrades have mostly come down to one thing: who can shrink their transistors the most. It's the same race every year. So it's refreshing to see Huawei take a different route with LogicFolding, rethinking how the chip itself is built rather than just chasing a smaller process. Huawei describes it as moving away from the idea that "process determines everything." Whatever you think of that, it's a bold thing to put your flagship behind.
The Kirin 9050 Pro sits at the top of the range, and on paper it's a proper step up. What I'm most interested in isn't the benchmark numbers, though, it's how that feels day to day. Do apps open instantly? Does it stay cool after an hour of gaming? Does on-device AI actually feel quicker when nothing has to go to the cloud? Those are the things that matter once the launch buzz settles.
It's not all about the chip, either. The camera side looks seriously exciting, especially the XMAGE Z10 modular camera with its 1-inch sensor. Clipping a proper camera onto your phone is the kind of idea that sounds like a gimmick until you see what it can do, and I really want to try it. The new Linglong display, built to stay clear even in bright sunlight, is another one I'm keen to see in person.
Launches like this are a good reminder that there's still room for genuinely different thinking in smartphones. I'm looking forward to spending some real time with it.
#HUAWEIMate90 #Kirin9050Pro #LogicFolding
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The #HUAWEIMate90 series is officially here, and every model runs on a LogicFolding Tau chip.
"Today, we step into a new era of brilliance." — Richard Yu
For me, the chip is the most interesting part. For years, phone performance has mostly come down to who can shrink transistors fastest, so seeing Huawei rethink how the chip itself is built feels like a genuinely different direction.
Huawei calls it a break from the idea that "process determines everything." That's a bold claim, and I'm really curious to see how it feels when I get hands on with one.
#LogicFolding #Kirin9050Pro
HUAWEI launches the Mate90 Series, equipping all models with flagship τ chips, including Kirin 9050 Pro, the world's 1st chip with LogicFolding architecture. HUAWEI Mate90 Pro Max features the most powerful Kirin chip ever, Kirin 9050 Pro, taking Kirin performance to new heights!
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Huawei's new Mate 90 series launched today, and I'll be honest, it's the chip story that's caught my attention more than anything else.
"The HUAWEI Mate 90 Series is equipped with the flagship Tau chipset across the entire series." — Richard Yu
For as long as I've followed phones, performance upgrades have mostly come down to one thing: who can shrink their transistors the most. It's the same race every year. So it's refreshing to see Huawei take a different route with LogicFolding, rethinking how the chip itself is built rather than just chasing a smaller process. Huawei describes it as moving away from the idea that "process determines everything." Whatever you think of that, it's a bold thing to put your flagship behind.
The Kirin 9050 Pro sits at the top of the range, and on paper it's a proper step up. What I'm most interested in isn't the benchmark numbers, though, it's how that feels day to day. Do apps open instantly? Does it stay cool after an hour of gaming? Does on-device AI actually feel quicker when nothing has to go to the cloud? Those are the things that matter once the launch buzz settles.
It's not all about the chip, either. The camera side looks seriously exciting, especially the XMAGE Z10 modular camera with its 1-inch sensor. Clipping a proper camera onto your phone is the kind of idea that sounds like a gimmick until you see what it can do, and I really want to try it. The new Linglong display, built to stay clear even in bright sunlight, is another one I'm keen to see in person.
Launches like this are a good reminder that there's still room for genuinely different thinking in smartphones. I'm looking forward to spending some real time with it.
#HUAWEIMate90 #Kirin9050Pro #LogicFolding
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WASHINGTON SPENT YEARS TRYING TO SLOW CHINA’S TECHNOLOGY RISE. NOW LOOK AT WHO IS LEADING HUMANOID ROBOTICS.
China now accounts for 60.8% of humanoid robot patents across the world’s five major patent offices. The US sits at just 21.8%, and the gap is widening. In the first half of 2026 alone, China filed 1,584 humanoid robot patent applications, compared with only 113 from the US and 35 from South Korea. That is roughly fourteen times more than the United States.
And this isn’t just about mechanical hardware. China also accounts for 66.3% of patents in robot foundation models, the AI systems that allow robots to learn new physical tasks and adapt without being individually programmed for every movement.
This is where the whole Western narrative around China starts to fall apart. For years, the US has rolled out export controls, chip restrictions and technology barriers, all supposedly designed to slow China’s progress in advanced industries. Yet while all of that was happening, China was building something far more important: a complete robotics ecosystem. Motors, actuators, reducers, sensors, batteries, electronics, AI software, precision manufacturing and, crucially, the factories and supply chains needed to produce all of it at scale.
Humanoid robotics is not simply an AI competition. You can have the best software in the world, but if you cannot manufacture the joints, actuators, sensors and electronics cheaply and in huge quantities, you are not going to dominate this industry. China has spent years building exactly that capability, much like it did with EVs, batteries, drones and solar.
The irony is hard to miss. The more pressure Washington applied, the more incentive China had to localise technology, strengthen domestic supply chains and pour investment into strategic industries. Sanctions were supposed to slow China down. Instead, in sector after sector, they have helped create an enormous determination to become less dependent on the United States.
Patent numbers alone do not prove technological superiority, and even the original data cautions against making that claim. But when one country holds 60.8% of humanoid robot patents, 66.3% of robot foundation model patents, and arguably the deepest manufacturing supply chain on the planet, it is becoming increasingly difficult to pretend China is simply “catching up.”
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The future of power and energy is moving fast — and this December, I’ll be at EP Shanghai 2026 to see what’s coming next.
⚡ 2,200+ exhibitors & brands
⚡ 86,000m² of exhibition space
⚡ Smart grids, energy storage, automation, transmission & distribution, data-centre power and more
📍 Shanghai New International Expo Center
📅 3–5 December 2026
If you’re looking for new suppliers, new technologies or new business opportunities in the power and energy sector, this is one exhibition worth having on your radar. Pre-register for EP Shanghai 2026 now.
#EPShanghai2026 #Energy #PowerIndustry #SmartGrid #EnergyStorage #China
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Something is changing in America’s attitude towards China, and reality is finally beginning to outweigh the politics.
As Xi Jinping prepares to visit Washington this week, a new Chicago Council survey shows that 57% of Americans now favour friendly cooperation and engagement with China, while only 40% favour actively trying to limit China’s rise. That’s a significant shift from just a few years ago.
And Americans are beginning to realise something very simple: trade wars have consequences at home.
Earlier polling found 66% of Americans believed tariffs on Chinese imports had been bad for the US economy, while 76% said they had been bad for their own cost of living.
American businesses are feeling it too. A 2026 US-China Business Council survey found that 72% of responding US companies were being affected by tariffs, with 42% passing at least some of those additional costs downstream. At the same time, an extraordinary 95% said China remains important to their ability to compete globally.
For years we have heard about tariffs, sanctions, export controls and "decoupling" from China. But you cannot isolate the world's two largest economies from one another without somebody paying the price And often that somebody is the business importing the product, the farmer losing a market, or ultimately the consumer standing at the checkout.
China and the US will obviously continue to compete. They will disagree on plenty of things. But competition doesn't have to mean confrontation.
More trade, more dialogue and more business between the world's two largest economies could benefit people on both sides of the Pacific.
Perhaps the question Americans are increasingly asking isn't "How do we stop China?"
It's "How do we do business with China?"
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CXMT just put 5th-gen DRAM into mass production. 24Gb LPDDR5X. 50% more dies per wafer. Already heading into phones. Export controls were meant to freeze China’s memory industry. They didn’t. They gave it a reason to catch up. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron still lead. But the gap is closing without permission from Washington. That’s the part people keep missing.
China just took another major step towards breaking its dependence on foreign memory chips, and this time, it’s not a laboratory experiment. It’s entering mass production.
Chinese semiconductor manufacturer CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies) has announced that its fifth-generation DRAM manufacturing platform has entered mass production, marking another significant advance in China’s push to build a domestic semiconductor supply chain.
According to Reuters, CXMT says its new process has reduced critical feature spacing to 11.95 nanometres, using advanced quadruple-patterning techniques.
The company has also unveiled 24-gigabit LPDDR5X memory chips, designed for smartphones and other mobile devices. CXMT says these provide 50% greater capacity than its previous equivalent products, while the new manufacturing platform can produce at least 50% more gross dies per wafer than its fourth-generation process.
And CXMT is making a very bold claim.
Company vice-president Luo Xiaodong says its manufacturing capability is now “on par with the most advanced mass-produced nodes” in the global DRAM industry.
Advanced memory is a critical part of everything from smartphones and computers to data centres and AI infrastructure, and the global DRAM market has long been dominated by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.
But there is another important part of this story: U.S. technology restrictions have not stopped China from continuing to advance its domestic semiconductor industry.
Washington’s export controls were designed in part to restrict China's access to advanced chips and the equipment needed to manufacture them. Those restrictions have certainly created obstacles and increased the difficulty and cost of developing leading-edge technology in China.
But developments like this from CXMT also highlight the limits of that strategy.
By restricting access to foreign technology, the United States has simultaneously given China an enormous incentive to replace it. Billions of dollars are being invested across the Chinese semiconductor supply chain, from lithography and etching equipment to processors, memory, packaging and AI accelerators.
The more difficult it becomes for Chinese companies to buy certain American and allied technologies, the greater the commercial and strategic incentive becomes to develop Chinese alternatives.
That doesn't mean China has overcome every technological bottleneck, nor does CXMT's announcement prove that it has matched Samsung, SK Hynix or Micron across every measure of performance, yield and manufacturing capability.
But it does raise an increasingly important question:
Are technology restrictions permanently holding China back, or accelerating China's determination to build an independent semiconductor ecosystem?
Processors. Memory. Semiconductor equipment. AI models. Interconnects. Data centres.
Piece by piece, China is building more of the technology stack at home.
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China just took another major step towards breaking its dependence on foreign memory chips, and this time, it’s not a laboratory experiment. It’s entering mass production.
Chinese semiconductor manufacturer CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies) has announced that its fifth-generation DRAM manufacturing platform has entered mass production, marking another significant advance in China’s push to build a domestic semiconductor supply chain.
According to Reuters, CXMT says its new process has reduced critical feature spacing to 11.95 nanometres, using advanced quadruple-patterning techniques.
The company has also unveiled 24-gigabit LPDDR5X memory chips, designed for smartphones and other mobile devices. CXMT says these provide 50% greater capacity than its previous equivalent products, while the new manufacturing platform can produce at least 50% more gross dies per wafer than its fourth-generation process.
And CXMT is making a very bold claim.
Company vice-president Luo Xiaodong says its manufacturing capability is now “on par with the most advanced mass-produced nodes” in the global DRAM industry.
Advanced memory is a critical part of everything from smartphones and computers to data centres and AI infrastructure, and the global DRAM market has long been dominated by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.
But there is another important part of this story: U.S. technology restrictions have not stopped China from continuing to advance its domestic semiconductor industry.
Washington’s export controls were designed in part to restrict China's access to advanced chips and the equipment needed to manufacture them. Those restrictions have certainly created obstacles and increased the difficulty and cost of developing leading-edge technology in China.
But developments like this from CXMT also highlight the limits of that strategy.
By restricting access to foreign technology, the United States has simultaneously given China an enormous incentive to replace it. Billions of dollars are being invested across the Chinese semiconductor supply chain, from lithography and etching equipment to processors, memory, packaging and AI accelerators.
The more difficult it becomes for Chinese companies to buy certain American and allied technologies, the greater the commercial and strategic incentive becomes to develop Chinese alternatives.
That doesn't mean China has overcome every technological bottleneck, nor does CXMT's announcement prove that it has matched Samsung, SK Hynix or Micron across every measure of performance, yield and manufacturing capability.
But it does raise an increasingly important question:
Are technology restrictions permanently holding China back, or accelerating China's determination to build an independent semiconductor ecosystem?
Processors. Memory. Semiconductor equipment. AI models. Interconnects. Data centres.
Piece by piece, China is building more of the technology stack at home.
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