China is rapidly expanding AI infrastructure and scaling projects faster than the U.S., aiming to seize the economic lead from first-to-scale AI use.
I. From Cultural Showcase to Strategic Signal: The Spring Festival Gala as a Demonstration of Military-Grade Robotics The 2026 CCTV Spring Festival Gala program “China Kungfu Robots” marked a decisive shift in the perception of humanoid robotics. What appeared on the surface to be a cultural performance was, in practical terms, a highly controlled public … Read more
Over the past thirty years, China’s communications industry has experienced one of the most profound structural transformations seen anywhere in the global economy. From fewer than 5 million mobile subscribers in the early 1990s to nearly 1.8 billion mobile SIM cards by December 2025, the sector has expanded beyond its origins as a basic public … Read more
The tension between Huawei and Cisco within the Linux networking subsystem was not a spy drama or a morality play. It was a governance conflict shaped by incentives, dependency, and maintainer authority inside one of the most critical open source infrastructures in the world: the Linux kernel. Stripped of hero–villain framing, the episode reflects not … Read more
I. The Zhang Weiying–Lin Yifu Debate: A Dispute Frozen in Time 1. A Clash of Perspectives, Not Competence: The Zhang Weiying vs. Lin Yifu Debate The long-standing debate between Zhang Weiying and Lin Yifu, especially their high-profile 2014 academic confrontation at the Yang Xiaokai memorial symposium, is often misconstrued as a battle of intellectual prowess. … Read more
China’s approach is deliberate, multi-layered, and strategically coordinated over decades, combining long-term planning, financial direction, state involvement, and regional execution. Crucially, it operates with an explicit awareness that unchecked financialization is corrosive, even as structural constraints prevent its full elimination. What distinguishes China is not purity, but active governance of distortion. Planning Against the Pull … Read more
I. The De Facto “G2” Economic Loop A. Mutual Benefit Through Asymmetric Global Roles For decades, the United States and China have functioned as a de facto “G2,” quietly orchestrating a global economic system that primarily serves their own interests. Their roles are complementary and asymmetric: the United States issues the world’s reserve currency, consumes … Read more
I. Trigger Event: The Tom Cotton–Shou Zi Chew Hearing 1. What Happened During a congressional hearing in February 2024, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton repeatedly pressed TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew with questions centered on Chew’s personal background rather than the company’s operations. Cotton fixated on Chew’s nationality, asking whether he had ever applied for Chinese … Read more
This study undertakes a critical examination of the logic behind the so-called “China global price revolution,” exploring how and why it has functioned, where it shows structural weaknesses, and under what conditions it might fail. By situating this analysis within a broader historical and economic context, the discussion considers how China’s impact on global prices … Read more
I. Reframing the “Great Divergence”: Not Race or Values, but Cost-Efficient Violence and Industrial Power 1. The Foundations of the Great Divergence: Power, Production, and Coercion The historical “Great Divergence” between the Global North and the Global South was not enabled by racial superiority, cultural refinement, or the intrinsic legitimacy of Western values. Rather, it … Read more
Over the past several decades, the West—especially the United States—has drifted into what anthropologist David Graeber termed a “big idea famine,” marked by a decline in transformative innovation despite abundant capital and talent. Military and strategic technological progress has slowed as ethical hesitation, bureaucratic inertia, and weak prioritization constrain experimentation, while the civilian tech sector … Read more