China’s youth unemployment hits 11-month high as army of graduates joins job hunt | South China Morning Post - "China’s youth unemployment rate rose to its highest level in 11 months in July, as a record number of graduates enter an already shaky labour market. The urban jobless rate for the 16-24 age group, excluding students, rose to 17.8 per cent last month from 14.5 per cent in June, putting an end to four straight months of decline and marking the metric’s highest level since last August, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday."
China Mulls Helping Local Governments With $1 Trillion of Bills - Bloomberg - "China is preparing to tackle the significant backlog of unpaid bills owed by local governments to the private sector, according to people familiar with the matter, an amount of arrears some have estimated at over $1 trillion. The government is considering asking state lenders and policy banks including China Development Bank to lend to local authorities so they can make the payments in arrears... President Xi Jinping warned in a February speech made public last month that the government’s delayed payments to companies risks undermining people’s trust in the authorities. Underscoring the importance Beijing is placing on the issue, China’s top leader said unpaid bills could “cripple” affected businesses in the embattled private sector and was hurting “society at large.”... Local government-related entities in China are estimated to owe 10 trillion yuan, or about $1.4 trillion, to corporates and civil servants — equivalent to 7% of the country’s gross domestic product last year, according to economist David Li Daokui’s estimate... Chinese banks are struggling with their profitability after being enlisted over the past few years to help prop up the economy with cheap loans, driving their margins to a record low. At the same time, their balance sheets are under pressure from a growing pile of bad loans. In the first half of this year, the five biggest commercial banks set aside allowances for losses on loans of 3.51 trillion yuan, up almost 6% from the end of last year."
Calvin Cheng | Facebook - "The huge military parade celebrating China’s victory in WW2 is truly ironic. China would never have been so easily liberated from Japanese occupation if not for the Americans. Before Japan’s unconditional surrender after the US dropped 2 atomic bombs , this was the situation in China: Japan controlled all the major city cities and coastal areas ; the Chinese resistance fought them to a stalemate in the countryside. The KMT was making some slow gains in Guangxi and Hunan. Without American being drawn into the war against Japan, China would have been occupied for a much longer time. But America was not invited to this massive victory parade. Worse , the parade was used as a chance to gather America’s rivals. And showcase military equipment that could possibly be used to challenge America. What an irony."
Simulated Chinese blockade of Taiwan reveals Singapore as lifeline - "Southeast Asians account for about 94% of the almost 1 million foreign nationals resident in Taiwan, according to Taiwan's National Immigration Agency. Indonesians, Vietnamese and Filipinos make up the vast majority of those foreigners, with comparatively small numbers of Japanese and Americans."
Lord Bebo on X - "🇹🇼🇨🇳🇯🇵 Taiwanese blogger Gym Boss warns not to get too close to Japan! "If it's Taiwan alone, mainland China probably will not attack, 80%. But If Taiwan stands with Japan, I can guarantee they will 10000% attack. … Japan has slaughtered over 35 million Chinese. All the Chinese attach great importance to this period of history.""
Dan Collins on X - "Taiwan gym bro is correct. Mainland just didn’t forget WW2. At one time I remember just browsing thru the 🇨🇳TV channels to count how many programs were set in the “Kang Ri” 抗日 period. (Resist Japan) It was about 1/4. Even kids cartoons."
涵瞰世界/杨涵 Han Yang on X - "Dan, the reason you see so many anti-Japanese war dramas on Chinese TV is, first, the government promote them for their propaganda values, falsely setting up the Communists as the main fighting force against Japanese invaders (they weren't), whipping up patriotic fervor among the masses; second, along with historical palace intrigues dramas, they are the safest topics for producers, since more contemporary themes touch too many censorship minefields."
Melissa Chen on X - "Let me sum up the Japan -China row that has now made it to the UN:
China: Taiwan belongs to us - reunification is a matter of when, not if. Here, look at our unprecedented military buildup!
Japan: if warships and the use of force are involved to take Taiwan, that threatens Japan’s survival. We may have an obligation to get involved.
China: you should be beheaded! As a defeated WWII Axis power, Japan must reflect on its historical crimes and stop making provocative statements, and withdraw Takaichi’s erroneous remarks immediately. Japan is behaving “dangerously” so we hereby cite UN Charter Article 53 which allows us to take military action without the UN Security Council approval against Japan
******
This is the classic inversion where the perpetrator plays the victim. There’s a Chinese idiom that goes 贼喊捉贼(zéi hǎn zhuō zéi) - it translates to "the thief cries 'catch the thief!’” It describes a tactic where the real culprit (the thief) deliberately shouts to catch the thief in order to shift suspicion away from themselves, or even to frame someone else. This is what’s happening here"
David Walpiri on X - "Here’s a reminder: China has destroyed 20,000 acres of coral reefs in the South China Sea, mostly in Philippine and Vietnamese waters. If they can wreck reefs at home and in neighboring countries, they could do worse in Latin America or Africa."
Michael Ron Bowling on X - "David's video shows how China is destroying the environment of its nearest neighbors. Clams and coral reefs devastated in the waters of the Philippines and Vietnam. The map below shows how it's state subsidized fishing fleet is expanding this destruction around the world."
Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "China is responsible for a global-level catastrophe that is destroying natural ecosystems & biodiversity all across the world. And no one is talking about it. Instead, all the "environmentalists" continue to nag the West. The Right needs to reclaim environmental / X
Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 on X - "“Greenpeace needs to do what they did to Japanese whalers in the 1980s to Chinese fishing trawlers today”. They won’t do this because China is not aligned with the West. Greenpeace types were vaguely critical of China and supported Tibet in the 90s, when America supported China. Now that America and China are opposed, they no longer care. They only care about opposing the West"
NERV2nd Branch on X - "Japanese whalers couldn't shoot back."
China’s War on Dissidents Comes to the United Kingdom - The Atlantic - "he was walking down a quiet street in London, three masked men jumped him and beat him unconscious. Now 31, Lau still has a faint scar on his boyish face. British authorities called the incident a hate crime, but Lau was convinced that Beijing had sent the men to silence him. He wasn’t being paranoid: Last year, Chinese authorities declared that Lau would be “pursued for life.” They froze his remaining assets in Hong Kong and offered a bounty for information leading to his arrest. Since then, fake journalists have approached Lau seeking interviews, dozens of social-media accounts have impersonated him, and he’s received death threats. A group on Telegram posted his address in London, forcing him to move multiple times. The intimidation extended to his family members in Hong Kong. Eventually they had to flee too. Lau is one of thousands who fled Hong Kong to Britain once the protests started—and particularly since June 2020, when China passed a national-security law that led to often-violent suppression. I’ve spoken with more than 30 activists like Lau who have come to the United Kingdom, where the harassment and surveillance they tried to escape has followed them. Assailants have stalked them in public and smeared them online. Letters have shown up at their neighbors’ doors promising a reward for turning over dissidents to the Chinese embassy. Back home, government authorities have suspended their retirement savings and interrogated their families. Some have been attacked. Their stories illustrate a campaign that China is waging against dissidents across the globe. Not all of the incidents in the U.K. can be tied directly to the Chinese government, but the tactics mirror those Beijing has used to discredit and silence critics in Europe, Canada, Australia, and the United States. Last month, Freedom House found that China was responsible for more recorded cases of repression beyond its borders than any other country over the past decade. The nonprofit had already concluded that the Chinese Communist Party’s war on exiles is “the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign” of its kind in the world. “This is the product of a top-down system, ordered by Xi Jinping,” Yaqiu Wang, a senior researcher at Freedom House, told me. “Whether this comes directly from Beijing or from Hong Kong, it’s ultimately a part of the CCP’s global, transnational campaign to silence anyone who is critical.” Even though China’s responsibility is an open secret, Western governments have struggled to deter the country from interfering on their soil. Xi’s crusade appears so brazen and far-reaching that it suggests he has little fear of provoking the West. By the same measure, it seems to reveal that something else really does scare him: China’s exiles. The United Kingdom is home to the largest Hong Kong diaspora in the world. Since relinquishing its former colony in 1997, the country has admitted hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers, who represent a growing threat to China’s leaders. Thanks to globalization and social media, dissidents can organize and inspire political opposition from abroad more easily than before. That helps explain why the Hong Kong government has steadily escalated its campaign against exiles. Last year, it enacted another national-security law, called Article 23, which carries penalties that extend to activists outside the country; authorities have used it to sanction organizers overseas and revoke their passports. Many exiles told me they no longer feel safe returning to Hong Kong because they fear interrogations, imprisonment, or the confiscation of their passports. They worry that Hong Kong authorities have started importing elements of Xi’s surveillance state in order to track them abroad. Xi “feels threatened by any kind of collective action,” Wang told me—whether it originates at home or overseas. Since 2019, more than 5,000 emigrants have moved to the South London borough of Sutton, where a local group organized a camp in 2023 to educate children of the Hong Kong diaspora about Chinese repression. Then the former chief executive of Hong Kong heard about it—and warned on social media that the organizers would be reported to British and Hong Kong police. Accounts of intimidation and harassment have emerged from virtually every corner of Britain where Hong Kongers have gathered... She showed me a video on her phone of a Chinese man shouting death threats at her during a protest she helped organize in November. After another demonstration, two Asian men followed her into a restaurant; she alerted the police, who opened an investigation. On Instagram and X, strangers send her sexually explicit messages written in Mandarin. Friends have asked her to stop contacting them, worried that ties to her could create problems for their relatives in Hong Kong. “It feels impossible, suddenly, to meet new people or apply for jobs,” she said. “I have no idea who I can trust.”... Police had summoned some of his extended family to tea, where they unfurled printouts of Alvin’s posts on Telegram and photos of him demonstrating in London. One team of officers had traveled from mainland China to treat Alvin’s parents in Hong Kong to an extravagant dinner. The officials said he could face a lengthy prison sentence for helping “high profile” activists—a charge that could extend to his mother and father, too, unless they persuaded their son to become an informant... China has two main goals when it targets activists online: to encourage self-censorship and to “discredit the targets in the eyes of the audience hosting them.”... In 2022, someone hacked the artists’ page and replaced their profile photo with an image of an ISIS flag, which prompted Facebook to remove them. “That account held all our important connections from the past five years. They disappeared overnight,” Lumli and Lumlong told me. “It was like a company going bankrupt.”
Scottish Labour MP warns Chinese Communist Party to keep 'hands off Hong Kong Scots' - "Blair McDougall said many of his constituents "live in fear of repression" from China. The East Renfrewshire MP said this was partly because of a 'secret police station' run by the Chinese state in a Glasgow restaurant. It was revealed in 2022 that the Scottish Government and Police Scotland were aware of a secret Chinese outpost operating out of the Loon Fung restaurant on Sauchiehall Street. A report from the time claimed the station was part of an attempt to force Chinese dissidents to return to the country. It shut last year. McDougall said in the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon: "My constituency is home to a new and growing population of Hong Kongers, who, although they live in a free country, live in fear of the repression."
Are Hong Kong trade offices just Chinese propaganda machines? | The Spectator - "Bill Yuen, the office manager of the Hong Kong trade office in London and a retired Hong Kong police officer, was arrested and charged under Britain’s new National Security Act. He and two others were accused of espionage, including gathering information and surveillance of Hong Kong exiles, during which they allegedly broke into a residential address in the UK. At the time, Regina Ip, a former security chief and convener of the Hong Kong’s executive council, declared that it was reasonable and legal for trade office staff to conduct intelligence on ‘anti-China MPs and Hong Kong exiles’. The territory’s government offered a reward of 1 million Hong Kong dollars (£100,000) for information about wanted fugitives, while John Lee, its chief executive and himself a former Hong Kong policeman, said that fugitives should be treated like ‘rats in the street’, who would be ‘pursued for life’ and ‘spend their days in fear’. He has embraced with enthusiasm the role of Communist party enforcer, and there is plenty of reason to fear that he expects the territory’s de-facto embassies to do the same."
Boko Haram Destroyed Chinese-made VT-4 Temu Tanks in Nigeria using RPG - "The Chinese VT-4 is touted as an advanced main battle tank, but the Nigerian Army questions its performance. Pakistan and Nigeria reported significant mechanical failures by both export customers. The Nigerian Army purchased 35 VT-4 tanks under a reported $152 million agreement with Norinco and received the initial tanks in April 2020. These tanks were intended to fight back against the terrorist group Boko Haram, but instead, Boko haram is blowing up these Chinese tanks like a tin can... Nigerian defence sources have reported critical failures. During a military demonstration observed by high-ranking army officials, a VT-4 reportedly failed to fire its main cannon. Nigerian media outlets confirm the VT-4 fleet suffers from persistent breakdowns and difficulties obtaining necessary spare parts, leaving numerous tanks non-operational. A similar incident occurred publicly in November 2024 when a VT-4 reportedly broke down during a dynamic display at the Zhuhai Air Show in China. These recurring issues raise concerns about the tank’s build quality and Norinco’s commitment to providing adequate after-sales support to its international clients. Pakistan, another major customer for the VT-4, is experiencing similar difficulties"
The cope is going to be that they didn't maintain them properly
Melissa Chen on X - "🚨Breaking: US and UK universities collaborated with Chinese state + military-linked AI labs that are embedded in or linked to China's surveillance and security system. The 20+ institutions include MIT, Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Oxford. This report is based on tens of thousands of publications, grant records and institutional documents from 2020-2025. We trace how Western expertise and public funding connect to state-backed Chinese labs through co-authorships, joint projects, and shared grants. Major public funders acknowledged in this work include the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), UK Research and Innovation’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UKRI/EPSRC), and Horizon Europe. What this means:
- US and UK taxpayers are funding the development of dual-use AI technologies in collaboration with PLA-linked Chinese universities and research institutes
- These technologies are already being deployed in China's surveillance state apparatus on its own people, political dissidents and Uyghurs in Xinjiang
In collaboration with @HRF , we examined two Chinese AI labs: Zhejiang Lab and SAIRI (Shanghai AI Research Institute).
These state-backed labs partner with defense conglomerates and work on surveillance technologies. Crucially, both labs have collaborated with leading Western universities since 2020. Zhejiang Lab partners with CETC (China Electronics Technology Group Corporation) the defense conglomerate and state-owned enterprise sanctioned by the US for building IJOP, the mass surveillance platform used to detain Uyghurs in Xinjiang. SAIRI is run by a senior CETC scientist and partners with iFlytek and SenseTime - both sanctioned for Xinjiang abuses. Western taxpayers funded Zhejiang Lab and SAIRI’s work:
> National Science Foundation - 106 acknowledgments; >UK's EPSRC - 31 acknowledgments (including formally listing Zhejiang Lab as partner) > @NIH - 27 acknowledgments; Horizon Europe - 26 acknowledgments.
Out of ~30 major AI ethics centers worldwide, only 2 publicly condemned Chinese AI practices: Ada Lovelace Institute and Stanford HAI. The rest were silent on these collaborations, which is ridiculous if you consider that their telos is to weigh in on the ETHICAL dimension of AI development. Our report details the extensive network of collaboration between Western universities and institutions linked to China's state security apparatus and military. Western institutions lend credibility, knowledge, and resources to China's surveillance apparatus. Funding bodies such as the US National Science Foundation (NSF) have no due diligence procedures, instead relying on universities themselves, which often have a strong financial incentive to defend these collaborations and the traditional scientific culture of openness and transparency, even though this is being systematically exploited by Beijing. This isn't about blocking all research collaboration. It's about recognizing the structural reality that you are simply not in a neutral academic space when you partner with labs embedded in authoritarian surveillance infrastructure, when there is no separation between academia, the military and the state. You're simply enabling repression. And this further begs the question: if we are indeed in an AI race, why are US taxpayers funding AI research in a nation considered a geopolitical adversary? During the Sputnik era, Americans were not funding and collaborating with Soviet scientists and researchers. US taxpayers were rightly incensed when it was revealed that American public money was used to fund risky research on coronaviruses at the PLA-linked Wuhan Institute of Virology through shady NGOs. Now, it's been revealed that taxpayer resources are being used to generate knowledge that flows into institutions embedded in China’s apparatus of repression, and develop cutting-edge AI technologies while our nations are locked in a competitive AI race. It's time for the Trump administration to mandate transparency and for these universities to be subjected to greater scrutiny. @SecRubio @DrJBhattacharya @SenateForeign @ChinaSelect @DOJNatSec @StateDept"
Michael A. Arouet on X - "German carmakers‘ business model was based on growing sales in China to subsidize overblown, unions protected structures at home. Guess what, the party is over. Good luck negotiating with the unions and the workers councils."
Melissa Chen on X - "Germany escaped the first China shock that hit the US economy because it produced higher end goods and because China needed the machinery that the Germans produced. The core of German industry is being threatened by China now because China has moved up the value chain, producing the machinery that it once had to import. The German-China shock will be even more severe than the US shock as machinery and cars are the heart of German industry. I hope Germans wake up to how their leaders sold their country out under the guise of promoting trade and "win-win" business opportunities with China. The list of culprits include Helmut Schmidt, Gerard Shröder and Rudolf Scharping. An export nation was seeking a huge market of consumers but the truth of the matter is, China never wanted to consume foreign goods. This was a Faustian bargain all along. Germans should re-read Goethe."
Lim Tean | Facebook - "The Great Myth Of China Never Having Invaded Other Countries !
Nothing irks me more than to hear the persistent claim, often repeated in public debate, and even by renown scholars such as Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, that China has never invaded other countries and that there is nothing to fear from her unparalleled military build-up over the past 2 decades, and that she is a benign power. This assertion does not withstand serious historical scrutiny and should be rejected plainly and without equivocation. China’s own imperial history tells a very different story. For more than 2 thousand years, successive Chinese dynasties expanded their territory through military conquest, occupation and coercion, just as other great powers have done throughout history. The Han dynasty pushed Chinese armies deep into Central Asia, conquering the Tarim Basin and waging sustained offensive wars to secure strategic depth and trade routes. The Tang dynasty projected military power across much of Inner Asia, subjugating Turkic states and repeatedly intervening by force in Korea and Vietnam. The Yuan dynasty launched large-scale invasions across East and Southeast Asia, including Korea, Vietnam and Burma. The Ming dynasty occupied Vietnam for 2 decades, following military conquest while the Qing dynasty- the most territorially expansive of all- used force to absorb Xinjiang, Tibet and Mongolia, effectively doubling the size of the Chinese state. These were not defensive actions. They were wars of expansion, conducted to secure dominance over China’s periphery. Some argue that these campaigns were softened by so-called tributary system. That, too, is a distortion. Tributary relations were not partnerships of equals ; they were hierarchical arrangements enforced by the credible threat and frequent use of military force. States that resisted were punished. Those that complied did so under pressure. This was order imposed by power, not harmony achieved by consent. Those who promote the myth of China’s historical exceptionalism ignore one of the most enduring insights of human experience. The great Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote the history of the Peloponnesian Wars, warned us that human nature does not change, and that fear, interest and power drive the behaviour of states across all eras and cultures. Winston Churchill put it even more starkly when he observed that “the story of the human race is war”. China, like every civilisation before it, is not exempt from these truths. We must be clear-eyed instead of viewing China through rose-tinted glasses. Power, when unchecked, has always sought expansion. That lesson is as relevant today as it was in antiquity. China’s rise to become a powerful country was never peaceful. It is therefore pointless to pontificate whether her continued rise will be peaceful. It can never be. If we ignore this simple truth and choose to be hypnotised by the smiling Tiger mouthing multi-literalism, we do so at our peril. In a subsequent post, I shall explain how China has continued with her hard-edged expansionism even in the 20th and 21st centuries."
The West has woken up to China’s threat far too late - "A Pentagon report in 2021 warned that concentrated supply chains, offshoring and a “business climate that has favoured short-term shareholder earnings” had all “severely damaged” America’s ability to arm itself. Suppliers went from two to one to none, in critical defence sectors ranging from milling to chemicals. It’s what Karl Marx identified when he predicted, “the last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope”. He was saying that greedy businessmen can’t resist a deal, even if it’s a deal that ultimately kills them. Alas, the modern, monopoly-friendly, globalist version of capitalism has left us in the same spot. A war with any adversary will be very short indeed."
Hundreds of British buses have Chinese ‘kill switch’ - "Hundreds of electric buses on Britain’s roads could be remotely switched off by China with a “kill switch”, Britain’s security services have found. The buses are connected to the internet by onboard SIM cards that are intended to be used for software updates, but could also be vulnerable to meddling by Beijing, officials at the Department for Transport (DfT) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) believe. The security experts launched an inquiry in November after concerns were raised in Norway that Yutong electric buses from China could be remotely “stopped or rendered inoperable by the manufacturer”. The NCSC, the public-facing branch of Britain’s GCHQ, said it was “technically possible” for the buses to be remotely shut down from China. But Whitehall sources said that ministers are not able to block the sale of the buses in Britain because there is no concrete evidence of Chinese subterfuge and that banning them could cause further diplomatic tension with Beijing... the findings will fuel concern about the level of Chinese control over British infrastructure, after calls from Labour MPs for Beijing to be shut out of industry, rail, water and power. Downing Street has instead pushed for more foreign investment from China, which ministers believe will boost economic growth and provide private sector capital for Labour’s green power plans."
