An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US crackdown on chip exports to China has continued with the arrests of four people accused of a conspiracy to illegally export Nvidia chips. Two US citizens and two nationals of the People's Republic of China (PRC), all of whom live in the US, were charged in an indictment (PDF) unsealed on Wednesday in US District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The indictment alleges a scheme to send Nvidia "GPUs to China by falsifying paperwork, creating fake contracts, and misleading US authorities," John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's National Security Division, said in a press release yesterday. The four arrestees are Hon Ning Ho (aka Mathew Ho), a US citizen who was born in Hong Kong and lives in Tampa, Florida; Brian Curtis Raymond, a US citizen who lives in Huntsville, Alabama; Cham Li (aka Tony Li), a PRC national who lives in San Leandro, California; and Jing Chen (aka Harry Chen), a PRC national who lives in Tampa on an F-1 non-immigrant student visa. The suspects face a raft of charges for conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, smuggling, and money laundering. They could serve many decades in prison if convicted and given the maximum sentences and forfeit their financial gains. The indictment says that Chinese companies paid the conspirators nearly $3.9 million. One of the suspects was briefly the CTO of Corvex, a Virginia-based AI cloud computing company that is planning to go public. Corvex told CNBC yesterday that it "had no part in the activities cited in the Department of Justice's indictment," and that "the person in question is not an employee of Corvex. Previously a consultant to the company, he was transitioning into an employee role but that offer has been rescinded."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Dutch government suspended its powers over chipmaker Nexperia, restoring control to its Chinese owner (paywalled; alternative source) and defusing a standoff with Beijing that had begun to hamper automotive production around the world. The order that gave the Netherlands powers to block or revise decisions at Nexperia was dropped as "a show of goodwill," Economic Affairs Minister Vincent Karremans said Wednesday in a post on social media site X. Bloomberg had reported earlier this month that the Netherlands was prepared to take the step if chip deliveries from the company's site in China could be confirmed. The move marks a significant de-escalation of a dispute that underscored the global nature of supply chains and highlighted Beijing's growing leverage. Even though Nexperia's chips aren't advanced and the company only operates one facility in China, the spat disrupted automakers from Honda Motor Co. to Volkswagen AG. The reversal by the Dutch government was set in motion after a breakthrough in talks earlier that involved Chinese and Dutch officials, with input from Germany, the European Union as well as the US. To help resolve the stalemate, Beijing agreed to loosen export restrictions from Nexperia's Chinese plant, the largest of its kind in the world. The Dutch economic affairs ministry sent a delegation to Beijing this week to negotiate a "mutually agreeable solution," according to a ministry statement.

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Chinese economist Gao Shanwen told a Washington panel in December that China's real GDP growth might be around 2% rather than the official figure near 5%. By January, Gao was no longer chief economist at SDIC Securities and went silent for almost a year. As FT points out in a long piece, China does not publish quarterly GDP breakdowns showing consumption, investment and net exports. Every other major economy produces these figures. The IMF in 2024 gave China a C grade for national accounts. The rating puts China on par with India and below Vietnam. Fixed asset investment data showed negative growth in 2025 for only the second time in decades. Property investment has fallen consistently since 2022. But official GDP investment data shows no signs of declining. The National Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing sectoral breakdowns of fixed asset investment in 2018. It discontinued a price series in 2021 and a land sales series in 2023. Beijing has restricted researcher access rather than addressing longstanding questions about data quality. China says it disagrees with the IMF's C rating. The government argued its production-side GDP approach is appropriate. Why does it matter? China is too large and too interconnected with the global economy for unreliable data to be a purely domestic issue. The lack of transparency creates problems for everyone trying to make decisions based on understanding China's economic trajectory. As Eswar Prasad, a professor at Cornell University and former IMF official, told FT: China is one of the two biggest economies in the world. "It would be nice to know what is really going on."

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MI5 has warned U.K. lawmakers that Chinese intelligence operatives are using LinkedIn and recruitment fronts to target them for information gathering and long-term cultivation. PBS reports: Writing to lawmakers, House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said a new MI5 "espionage alert" warned that Chinese nationals were "using LinkedIn profiles to conduct outreach at scale" on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security. "Their aim is to collect information and lay the groundwork for long-term relationships, using professional networking sites, recruitment agents and consultants acting on their behalf," he said. MI5 issued the alert because the activity was "targeted and widespread," he added. The MI5 alert cited LinkedIn profiles of two women, Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen, and said other similar recruiters' profiles were acting as fronts for espionage. Home Office Minister Dan Jarvis said that apart from parliamentary staff, others including economists, think tank consultants and government officials have been similarly targeted. Jarvis said the government is rolling out a series of measures to tackle the risk, including investing 170 million pounds ($224 million) to renew encrypted technology used by civil servants to safeguard sensitive work. Opposition parties say authorities are not doing enough and are too wary of jeopardizing trade ties with China.

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"Three Chinese astronauts returned from their nation's space station Friday," reports the Associated Press, "after more than a week's delay because the return capsule they had planned to use was damaged, likely from being hit by space debris." The team left their Shenzhou-20 spacecraft in orbit and came back using the recently arrived Shenzhou-21, which had ferried a three-person replacement crew to the station, China's Manned Space Agency said. The original return plan was scrapped because a window in the Shenzhou-20 capsule had tiny cracks, most likely caused by impact from space debris, the space agency said Friday... Their return was delayed for nine days, and their 204-day stay in space was the longest for any astronaut at China's space station... China developed the Tiangong space station after the country was excluded from the International Space Station over U.S. national security concerns. China's space program is controlled by its military.

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schwit1 shares a report from the Business Times: General Motors (GM) has directed several thousand of its suppliers to scrub their supply chains of parts from China, four people familiar with the matter said, reflecting automakers' growing frustration over geopolitical disruptions to their operations. GM executives have been telling suppliers they should find alternatives to China for their raw materials and parts, with the goal of eventually moving their supply chains out of the country entirely, the people said. The automaker has set a 2027 deadline for some suppliers to dissolve their China sourcing ties, some of the sources said. GM approached some suppliers with the directive in late 2024, but the effort took on fresh urgency this past spring, during the early days of an escalating US-China trade battle, the sources said.

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Xpeng's flying-car subsidiary Aridge has begun trial production at the world's first dedicated flying-car factory in Guangzhou. Euronews reports: The 120,000-square-meter facility has produced its first detachable eVTOL aircraft for the modular "Land Aircraft Carrier." With an annual capacity of up to 10,000 modules, the factory will eventually assemble one aircraft every 30 minutes. Trial operations focus on process verification, equipment testing, and producing prototypes for airworthiness certification before moving into mass production.

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bobthesungeek76036 writes: Beijing's proposed regulation aims to tame rapid launches by forcing cars to boot up in a restricted performance mode after every ignition. Under a proposed update to the National Standard, every passenger car would need a default mode in which it takes no less than five seconds to reach 100 km/h (62 mph) at startup, unless the driver manually selects a quicker setting. The draft title "Technical Specifications for Power-Driven Vehicles Operating on Roads" appears to be part of a broader safety and road behavior initiative in China. It is intended to replace the current GB 7258-2017 standard that didn't impose such restrictions.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The Chinese electric car has become a symbol of the country's seemingly unstoppable rise on the world stage. Many observers point to their growing popularity as evidence that China is winning the race to dominate new technologies. But in China, these electric cars represent something entirely different: the profound threats that Beijing's meddling in markets poses to both China and the world. Bloated by excessive investment, distorted by government intervention, and plagued by heavy losses, China's EV industry appears destined for a crash. EV companies are locked in a cutthroat struggle for survival. Wei Jianjun, the chairman of the Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor, warned in May that China's car industry could tumble into a financial crisis; it "just hasn't erupted yet." To bypass government censorship of bad economic news, market analysts have opted for a seemingly anodyne term to describe the Chinese car industry's downward spiral: involution, which connotes falling in on oneself. What happens in China's EV sector promises to influence the entire global automobile market. China's emergence as the world's largest manufacturer of EVs highlights the serious challenge the country poses to even the most advanced industries in the U.S., Europe, and other rich economies. Given the vital role the car industry plays in economies around the world, and the jobs, supply chains, and technologies involved, the stakes are high. But the wobbles in China's EV sector demonstrate the downside of China's state-led economic model. China's government threw ample resources at the EV industry in the hopes of leapfrogging foreign rivals in the transition to battery-powered vehicles. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that the government provided more than $230 billion of financial assistance to the EV sector from 2009 to 2023. The strategy worked: China's EV makers would likely never have grown as quickly as they have without this substantial state support. By comparison, the recent Republican-sponsored tax bill eliminated nearly all federal subsidies for EVs in the U.S. The problem is that China's program encouraged too much investment in the sector. Michael Dunne, the CEO of Dunne Insights, a California-based consulting firm focused on the EV industry, counts 46 domestic and international automakers producing EVs in China, far too many for even the world's second-largest economy to sustain.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Atlantic: In China, you can buy a heavily discounted "used" electric car that has never, in fact, been used. Chinese automakers, desperate to meet their sales targets in a bitterly competitive market, sell cars to dealerships, which register them as "sold," even though no actual customer has bought them. Dealers, stuck with officially sold cars, then offload them as "used," often at low prices. The practice has become so prevalent that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to stop it. Its main newspaper, The People's Daily, complained earlier this year that this sales-inflating tactic "disrupts normal market order," and criticized companies for their "data worship." This sign of serious problems in China's electric-vehicle industry may come as a surprise to many Americans. The Chinese electric car has become a symbol of the country's seemingly unstoppable rise on the world stage. Many observers point to their growing popularity as evidence that China is winning the race to dominate new technologies. But in China, these electric cars represent something entirely different: the profound threats that Beijing's meddling in markets poses to both China and the world. Bloated by excessive investment, distorted by government intervention, and plagued by heavy losses, China's EV industry appears destined for a crash. EV companies are locked in a cutthroat struggle for survival. Wei Jianjun, the chairman of the Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor, warned in May that China's car industry could tumble into a financial crisis; it "just hasn't erupted yet." To bypass government censorship of bad economic news, market analysts have opted for a seemingly anodyne term to describe the Chinese car industry's downward spiral: involution, which connotes falling in on oneself.

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China has introduced a visa that will allow young foreign researchers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to move there without having to secure a job first. From a report: Before the introduction of the K visa, most foreign STEM researchers hoping to move to China had to find a job in advance and then apply for a work visa. The Chinese government is making "a serious bid" to attract the world's brightest minds in STEM, says Jeremy Neufeld, the director of immigration policy at the Institute for Progress, a think tank in Washington DC. South Korea, Singapore and several other countries have also launched STEM-oriented visa programmes. The K visa was officially rolled out on 1 October, but Nature understands that applications are yet to open. Few details about eligibility have been released, except that restrictions will apply on the basis of an applicant's age, education and work experience. Foreign researchers who have graduated from 'famous' universities or institutes in China or abroad with a bachelor-or-higher degree in STEM will be eligible to apply. That also includes people who teach or research STEM topics in such organizations.

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The UK and China today signed a new bilateral agreement on scientific collaboration [non-paywalled source], narrowing the scope of their partnership to exclude sensitive technologies. Lord Patrick Vallance, Britain's science and technology minister, met his Chinese counterpart Chen Jiachang in Beijing and agreed to focus cooperation on health, climate, planetary sciences, and agriculture. The previous agreement from 2017 had included satellites, remote sensing technology and robotics. Those fields are absent from the new accord. The countries announced no new funding for joint research. Vallance said the UK had "deliberately gone for areas which we think are not carrying such a security risk."

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China's CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months, "adding evidence to the hope that the world's biggest polluter has managed to hit its target of peak CO2 emissions well ahead of schedule," reports the Guardian. From the report: Rapid increases in the deployment of solar and wind power generation -- which grew by 46% and 11% respectively in the third quarter of this year -- meant the country's energy sector emissions remained flat, even as the demand for electricity increased. China added 240GW of solar capacity in the first nine months of this year, and 61GW of wind, putting it on track for another renewable record in 2025. Last year, the country installed 333GW of solar power, more than the rest of the world combined. [...] The analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea), for the science and climate policy website Carbon Brief, found China's CO2 emissions were unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, thanks in part to declining emissions in the travel, cement and steel industries. But China has a record of underpromising and overdelivering on climate targets. Li Shuo, the director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, a US-based thinktank, said in a recent note that the latest Chinese climate targets should be seen as a baseline and not a ceiling.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The Netherlands is prepared to suspend its powers over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia in a move that would de-escalate a fight with Beijing that threatens to disrupt automotive production around the world. The Dutch government is ready to shelve the ministerial order that gave it the power to block or change key corporate decisions at Nexperia, if China allows exports of its critical chips again, according to people familiar with the matter. If the shipment of supplies resumes and is verified in the coming days, the Dutch are willing to revoke its powers as soon as next week, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Financial issues between Nexperia and its Chinese operations would also need to be resolved. [...] In a sign of easing tensions, the Dutch government said in a statement late Thursday that it expects Nexperia's Chinese unit to resume chip supplies in the coming days.

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Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has warned that China will beat the US in the AI race, thanks to lower energy costs and looser regulations. From a report: In the starkest comments yet from the head of the world's most valuable company, Huang told the FT: "China is going to win the AI race." Huang's remarks come after the Trump administration maintained a ban on California-based Nvidia selling its most advanced chips to Beijing following a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week. The Nvidia chief said that the west, including the US and UK, was being held back by "cynicism." "We need more optimism," Huang said on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Financial Times' Future of AI Summit. Huang singled out new rules on AI by US states that could result in "50 new regulations." He contrasted that approach with Chinese energy subsidies that made it more affordable for local tech companies to run Chinese alternatives to Nvidia's AI chips. "Power is free," he said.

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China has delayed the return of its Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft after it was suspected to have been struck by space debris while docked at the Tiangong space station. "The Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft is suspected of being struck by a small piece of space debris, and impact analysis and risk assessment are underway," the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) statement Nov. 5 read. "To ensure the safety and health of the astronauts and the complete success of the mission, it has been decided that the Shenzhou-20 return mission, originally scheduled for Nov. 5, will be postponed." SpaceNews reports: CMSEO did not specify the location of the suspected strike, the extent of any damage, or the data that indicated an impact. No potential dates were noted for a return to Earth. The Shenzhou-20 spacecraft launched April 24, carrying three astronauts -- commander Chen Dong and crewmates Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie -- to the Tiangong space station. The spacecraft docked at the radial port of Tiangong's Tianhe core module. The crew have completed their six-month-long mission in orbit, and had handed over control of the space station to the newly-arrived Shenzhou-21 crew Nov. 4. Checks on the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft could include telemetry and leak tests, verifying guidance and propulsion systems, and screening for impacts in accelerometer and acoustic sensor data. A key concern would be potential damage to the spacecraft's thermal protection system or parachute deployment structures, both critical for safe atmospheric reentry and landing. Tiangong features a 10-meter-long robotic arm, capable of crawling, and a smaller, more precise arm. These could be employed to position cameras and provide closeup imagery of a potential impact. Crews may be able to conduct an extravehicular activity (EVA) to assess the situation. Tiangong crews have recently added debris shields during a number of EVAs; the same procedures, tools, and arm support can be adapted for a Shenzhou inspection.

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The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data centre projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically-made AI chips, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centres that are less than 30% complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage will be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China's most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a pause in trade hostilities between Washington and Beijing, and achieve its quest for AI chip self-sufficiency. China's access to advanced AI chips, including those made by Nvidia, has been a key point of friction with the U.S., as the two wrestle for dominance in high-end computing power and AI. U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview aired on Sunday following talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week that Washington will "let them deal with Nvidia but not in terms of the most advanced" chips.

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Longtime Slashdot reader hackingbear writes: South China Morning Post, citing Chinese state media, reported that an experimental reactor developed in the Gobi Desert by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics has achieved thorium-to-uranium fuel conversion, paving the way for an almost endless supply of nuclear energy. It is the first time in the world that scientists have been able to acquire experimental data on thorium operations from inside a molten salt reactor according to a report by Science and Technology Daily. Thorium is much more abundant and accessible than uranium and has enormous energy potential. One mine tailings site in Inner Mongolia is estimated to hold enough of the element to power China entirely for more than 1,000 years. At the heart of the breakthrough is a process known as in-core thorium-to-uranium conversion that transforms naturally occurring thorium-232 into uranium-233 -- a fissile isotope capable of sustaining nuclear chain reactions within the reactor itself. Thorium (Th-232) is not itself fissile and so is not directly usable in a thermal neutron reactor. Thorium fuels therefore need a fissile material as a 'driver' so that a chain reaction (and thus supply of surplus neutrons) can be maintained. The only fissile driver options are U-233, U-235 or Pu-239. (None of these are easy to supply.) In the 1960s, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA) designed and built a demonstration MSR using U-233, derived externally from thorium as the main fissile driver.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese President Xi Jinping joked about security backdoors while presenting a pair of Xiaomi smartphones to his South Korean counterpart, a rare moment of spontaneous levity captured during a week of tense trade negotiations with Donald Trump. Xi, in South Korea to meet Trump on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, presented the pair of devices to Korean President Lee Jae Myung. In a video circulated on social media, Lee asked: "Is the line secure?" Xi chuckled, pointed at the gadgets and replied through an interpreter: "You can check if there's a backdoor." The two leaders burst into laughter. The exchange was striking because the issue of security and alleged espionage is a sensitive one and a major thorn in US-Chinese relations. American lawmakers have raised the possibility that tech companies such as Huawei build backdoors -- ways to gain access to sensitive data -- into their equipment or services, something the firms have repeatedly denied.

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schwit1 shares a report from IOL: China has enacted a new law regulating social media influencers, requiring them to hold verified professional qualifications before posting content on sensitive topics such as medicine, law, education, and finance, IOL reported. The new law went into effect on Saturday. The regulation was introduced by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) as part of its broader effort to curb misinformation online. Under the new rules, influencers must prove their expertise through recognized degrees, certifications, or licenses before discussing regulated subjects. Major platforms such as Douyin (China's TikTok), Bilibili, and Weibo are now responsible for verifying influencer credentials and ensuring that content includes clear citations, disclaimers, and transparency about sources. A separate report notes that if influencers are caught talking about the "serious" topics, they will face a fine of up to 100,000 yuan ($14,000).

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