All posts tagged: Chinas

Remembering China’s Empress Dowager Ling, a Buddhist who paved the way for future female rulers

Remembering China’s Empress Dowager Ling, a Buddhist who paved the way for future female rulers

Published by skeptic

(The Conversation) — In sixth-century China, a woman known to history as Empress Dowager Ling ruled over an empire called the Northern Wei. Historians do not know her birth name or in what year she was born, but they do know that she served as empress dowager between 515 and 528. As the spouse of a ruling emperor prior to his death, she retained the title of empress dowager in her widowhood. She ruled on behalf of her young son, the heir to the throne; however, her regency was interrupted by a coup d’etat from 520 to 525. Although the empress dowager was expected to rule only as a regent, historical records indicate that she administered court in her own name. These same records also reveal that she adopted a personal pronoun – “zhen 朕,” otherwise known as the Chinese “royal we” – that was reserved for the exclusive use of the emperor. In my recent book, “The Women Who Ruled China,” I offer an overview of these historical sources and records that document her …

Manus probably isn’t China’s second ‘DeepSeek moment’

Manus probably isn’t China’s second ‘DeepSeek moment’

Published by skeptic

Manus, an “agentic” AI platform that launched in preview last week, is generating more hype than a Taylor Swift concert. The head of product at Hugging Face called Manus “the most impressive AI tool I’ve ever tried.” AI policy researcher Dean Ball described Manus as the “most sophisticated computer using AI.” The official Discord server for Manus grew to over 138,000 members in just a few days, and invite codes for Manus are reportedly selling for thousands of dollars on Chinese reseller app Xianyu. But it’s not clear the hype is justified. excellent https://t.co/TfeV9QZ1d0 — jack (@jack) March 9, 2025 Manus wasn’t developed entirely from scratch. According to reports on social media, the platform uses a combination of existing and fine-tuned AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude and Alibaba’s Qwen, to perform tasks such as drafting research reports and analyzing financial filings. Yet on its website, Monica — the Chinese startup behind Manus — gives a few wild examples of what the platform supposedly can accomplish, from buying real estate to programming video games. In a …

US Charges 12 Alleged Spies in China’s Freewheeling Hacker-for-Hire Ecosystem

US Charges 12 Alleged Spies in China’s Freewheeling Hacker-for-Hire Ecosystem

Published by skeptic

Only rarely does the West get a glimpse inside the vast hacker-for-hire contractor ecosystem that enables China’s digital intrusion campaigns worldwide. Now a new set of criminal charges against a dozen Chinese men, including two government officials, accuses them of a vast espionage campaign that included breaching the US Treasury, and goes as far as revealing the internal communications of some of those alleged hackers, their tools, and their business relationships. The US Department of Justice on Wednesday announced the indictments of 12 Chinese individuals accused of more than a decade of hacker intrusions around the world, including eight staffers for the contractor i-Soon, two officials at China’s Ministry of Public Security who allegedly worked with them, and two other men who were allegedly part of the Chinese hacker group APT27 or Silk Typhoon, which prosecutors say was involved in the breach late last year of the US Treasury. “Today, we are exposing the Chinese government agents directing and fostering indiscriminate and reckless attacks against computers and networks worldwide, as well as the enabling companies …

Why China’s Xiaomi Can Make an Electric Car and Apple Can’t

Why China’s Xiaomi Can Make an Electric Car and Apple Can’t

Published by skeptic

After nearly a decade of trying, Apple finally gave up its effort to produce an electric car last year, canceling a project that soaked up $10 billion. But last year in China, the electronics maker Xiaomi launched its first electric car after just three years of development and delivered 135,000 vehicles. It has vowed to double that number in 2025. Xiaomi’s ability to succeed where Apple could not shows how thoroughly China has come to dominate the supply chain for electric vehicles. Chinese companies have mastered electric vehicle manufacturing. By tapping that infrastructure, Xiaomi was able to get components quickly and cheaply. More Chinese electric vehicle companies — including Leapmotor, Li Auto and Seres Group — are starting to turn a profit after burning cash for years in their intense competition for the world’s largest auto market. And Xiaomi is not the only Chinese consumer electronics company that has branched out to electric vehicles. The telecommunications giant Huawei, which the U.S. government has targeted with sanctions and legal action for years, is making autonomous driving …

China’s Salt Typhoon Spies Are Still Hacking Telecoms—Now by Exploiting Cisco Routers

China’s Salt Typhoon Spies Are Still Hacking Telecoms—Now by Exploiting Cisco Routers

Published by skeptic

When the Chinese hacker group known as Salt Typhoon was revealed last fall to have deeply penetrated major US telecommunications companies—ultimately breaching no fewer than nine of the phone carriers and accessing Americans’ texts and calls in real time—that hacking campaign was treated as a four-alarm fire by the US government. Yet even after those hackers’ high-profile exposure, they’ve continued their spree of breaking into telecom networks worldwide, including more in the US. Researchers at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future on Wednesday night revealed in a report that they’ve seen Salt Typhoon breach five telecoms and internet service providers around the world, as well as more than a dozen universities from Utah to Vietnam, all between December and January. The telecoms include one US internet service provider and telecom firm and another US-based subsidiary of a UK telecom, according to the company’s analysts, though they declined to name those victims to WIRED. “They’re super active, and they continue to be super active,” says Levi Gundert, who leads Recorded Future’s research team known as Insikt Group. “I …

how China’s embrace of open-source AI caused a geopolitical earthquake

how China’s embrace of open-source AI caused a geopolitical earthquake

Published by skeptic

We are in the early days of a seismic shift in the global AI industry. DeepSeek, a previously little-known Chinese artificial intelligence company, has produced a “game changing”“ large language model that promises to reshape the AI landscape almost overnight. But DeepSeek’s breakthrough also has wider implications for the technological arms race between the US and China, having apparently caught even the best-known US tech firms off guard. Its launch has been predicted to start a “slow unwinding of the AI bet” in the west, amid a new era of “AI efficiency wars”. In fact, industry experts have been speculating for years about China’s rapid advancements in AI. While the supposedly free-market US has often prioritised proprietary models, China has built a thriving AI ecosystem by leveraging open-source technology, fostering collaboration between government-backed research institutions and major tech firms. This strategy has enabled China to scale its AI innovation rapidly while the US – despite all the tub-thumping from Silicon Valley – remains limited by restrictive corporate structures. Companies such as Google and Meta, despite …

China’s CATL to file for at least US billion Hong Kong listing this week, sources say

China’s CATL to file for at least US$5 billion Hong Kong listing this week, sources say

Published by Sam

SYDNEY: Chinese battery giant CATL plans to file a Hong Kong listing application this week to raise at least US$5 billion, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. The filing could come on Tuesday or Wednesday, added the sources, who could not be identified discussing confidential information. CATL did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. A listing of the Shenzhen-listed firm, the largest battery maker in the world, would be the largest listing in Hong Kong in four years, according to Dealogic data. At US$5 billion, it would be the biggest listing since Kuaishou Technology’s 2021 initial public offering that raised US$6.2 billion, the data showed. The city’s equity capital markets have languished in the past three years as a result of Chinese regulators slowing down the approval process and volatile global financial markets. CATL’s planned float in the Chinese offshore market comes amid rising geopolitical tensions as the US in January added Chinese tech companies including CATL and Tencent Holdings to a list of firms it says …

How China’s DeepSeek AI Chatbot Became an Overnight Success

How China’s DeepSeek AI Chatbot Became an Overnight Success

Published by skeptic

One week ago, a new and formidable challenger for OpenAI’s throne emerged. A Chinese AI start-up, DeepSeek, launched a model that appeared to match the most powerful version of ChatGPT but, at least according to its creator, was a fraction of the cost to build. The program, called DeepSeek-R1, has incited plenty of concern: Ultrapowerful Chinese AI models are exactly what many leaders of American AI companies feared when they, and more recently President Donald Trump, have sounded alarms about a technological race between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. This is a “wake up call for America,” Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, commented on social media. But at the same time, many Americans—including much of the tech industry—appear to be lauding this Chinese AI. As of this morning, DeepSeek had overtaken ChatGPT as the top free application on Apple’s mobile-app store in the United States. Researchers, executives, and investors have been heaping on praise. The new DeepSeek model “is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever …

The Download: China’s DeepSeek, and useful quantum computing

The Download: China’s DeepSeek, and useful quantum computing

Published by skeptic

However, history shows that brilliant people are not immune to making mistakes. Huang’s predictions miss the mark, both on the timeline for useful quantum computing and on the role his company’s technology will play in that future. I’ve been closely following developments in quantum computing as an investor, and it’s clear to me that useful quantum computing is inevitable and increasingly imminent. And that’s good news, because the hope is that they will be able to perform calculations that no amount of AI or classical computation could ever achieve. Read the full story. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 AI pioneers are clashing over its potential dangers  Yann LeCun, Meta’s AI chief scientist, has branded experts’ grave warnings hypocritical. (FT $)+ AI’s biggest cheerleaders tend to know the least about it. (Wired $)+ How existential risk became the biggest meme in AI. (MIT Technology Review) 2 This surveillance tech could enable Donald Trump’s deportation plansFrom mass biometric databases to phone jailbreaking tools. (NYT $)+ It really …

China’s Tibet Dam Project Has Its Neighbors Worried

China’s Tibet Dam Project Has Its Neighbors Worried

Published by Sam

Step aside, Three Gorges Dam. China’s latest colossal infrastructure project, if completed, will be the world’s largest hydropower dam, high up in the Tibetan plateau on the border with India. China says the Motuo Hydropower Station it is building in Tibet is key to its effort to meet clean energy targets. Beijing also sees infrastructure projects as a way to stimulate the sluggish Chinese economy and create jobs. But this project has raised concerns among environmentalists and China’s neighbors — in part, because Beijing has said so little about it. The area where the dam is being built is prone to earthquakes. The Tibetan river being dammed, the Yarlung Tsangpo, flows into neighboring India as the Brahmaputra and into Bangladesh as the Jamuna, raising concerns in those countries about water security. What’s known about the project? China announced in late December that the government had approved construction of the Motuo project in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo, but it has released few details about it. That includes the cost of the project, where …