China's birth rate fell to 5.6 per 1,000 people in 2025, the lowest figure since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, and the country's total population contracted by 3.39 million, the sharpest decline since the Mao Zedong era. The drop marks the fourth straight year of population decline and comes despite government efforts to encourage childbearing, including subsidies of about $500 annually per child born on or after January 1, 2025. Beijing has also imposed a 13% value-added tax on contraceptives this year. The government is betting on automation and productivity to offset the shrinking workforce -- China already leads the world in robot installations -- and President Xi Jinping has written that population policy must transition "from being mainly about regulating quantity to improving quality."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader hackingbear summarizes this report from Bloomberg: China consumed totally 10.4 trillion kilowatt hours (10.4 petaWh) in 2025 according to data from the National Energy Administration. That's the highest annual electricity use ever recorded by a single country, and doubled the amount used by the US and surpassed the combined annual total of the EU, Russia, India and Japan. The surge in demand for power are results of growth in data centers for artificial intelligence (+17% over 2024) and use of electric vehicles (+48.8%)... However, on a per-capita basis, China uses about 7,300 kWh per person vs about 13,000 kWh per American. More details from Reuters: China's mostly coal-based thermal power generation fell in 2025 for the first time in 10 years, government data showed on Monday, as growing renewable generation met growth in electricity demand even as overall power usage hit a record. The data is a positive signal for the decarbonisation of China's power sector as China sets a course for carbon emissions to peak by 2030... Thermal electricity, generated mostly by coal-fired capacity with a small amount from natural gas, fell 1% in 2025 to 6.29 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh), according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). It fell more sharply in December, down by 3.2%, from a year earlier, the data showed... [Though the article notes that coal output still edged up to a record high last year.] Hydropower grew at a steady pace, up 4.1% in December and rising 2.8 % for the full year, the NBS data showed. Nuclear power output rose 3.1 in December and 7.7% in 2025, respectively. Thermal power generation is unlikely to accelerate in 2026 as renewables growth continues apace.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: China is pulling the plug on a key advantage held by high-frequency traders, removing servers dedicated to those firms out of local exchanges' data centers, according to people familiar with the matter. Commodities futures exchanges in Shanghai and Guangzhou are among those that have ordered local brokers to shift servers for their clients out of data centers run by the bourses, according to the people, who said the move was led by regulators. The change doesn't only affect high-frequency firms but they are likely to feel the biggest impact. The Shanghai Futures Exchange has told brokers they need to get equipment for high-speed clients out by the end of next month, while other clients need to do so by April 30, the people said. The clampdown will hit China's army of domestic high-frequency firms but will also impact a swathe of global firms that are active in the country. Citadel Securities, Jane Street Group and Jump Trading are among the foreign firms whose access to servers is being affected, the people said, asking not to be named as the matter is private.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. has approved limited sales of Nvidia's H200 AI chips to China, the Department of Commerce said on Tuesday. Exports will be allowed to "approved customers" with security safeguards and a 25% U.S. government cut. The company's most advanced Blackwell chips will remain restricted. The BBC reports: The H200, Nvidia's second-most-advanced semiconductor, had been restricted by Washington over concerns that it would give China's technology industry and military an edge over the U.S. The Commerce Department said the chips can be shipped to China granted that there is sufficient supply of the processors in the U.S. Nvidia's spokesperson told the BBC that the company welcomed the move, saying it will benefit manufacturing and jobs in the U.S. The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security said its revised export policy applies to Nvidia's H200 chips, as well as less advanced processors. Chinese customers must also show "sufficient security procedures" and cannot use the chips for military uses. Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu told the BBC on Wednesday that Beijing has consistently opposed the "politicization and weaponization of tech and trade issues." "We oppose blocking and restricting China, which disrupts the stability of industrial and supply chains," he said. "This approach does not serve the common interests of both sides."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese authorities have told domestic companies to stop using cybersecurity software made by roughly a dozen firms from the U.S. and Israel due to national security concerns, two people briefed on the matter said. As trade and diplomatic tensions flare between China and the U.S. and both sides vie for tech supremacy, Beijing has been keen to replace Western-made technology with domestic alternatives. The U.S. companies whose cybersecurity software has been banned include Broadcom-owned VMware, Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet, while the Israeli companies include Check Point Software Technologies, the sources said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Prosecutors in Taiwan issued an arrest warrant [non-paywalled source] for the chief executive officer of the Chinese smartphone company OnePlus, stepping up the island's efforts to block China's tech players from recruiting Taiwanese talent. From a report: The Shilin district prosecutors office issued the warrant for CEO and co-founder Pete Lau and indicted two Taiwanese citizens who worked for him, according to an indictment by the office. OnePlus, a niche player whose phones run on a customized version of Android, is suspected of illegally recruiting more than 70 engineers in Taiwan. The autonomous territory has stepped up its efforts to stop Chinese companies from raiding workers, who are often coveted because of their technical knowledge and experience. The Taiwanese officials put such limitations in place because they say recruiting from the semiconductor sector and other tech operations could jeopardize national security.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The viral Chinese app Are You Dead? (known as Sileme in Chinese) targets people who live alone by requiring regular check-ins and alerting an emergency contact if the user doesn't respond. It launched in May and is now the most downloaded paid app in China. Cybernews reports: Users need to check in with the app every two days by clicking a large button to confirm that they are alive. Otherwise, the app will inform the user's appointed emergency contact that they may be in trouble, Chinese state-run outlet Global Times reports. The app is marketed as a "safety companion" for those who live far from home or choose a solitary lifestyle. Initially launched as a free app, "eAre You Dead?" now costs 8 yuan, equivalent to $1.15. Despite its growing popularity, the app has sparked criticism in China, where some said they were repulsed by the negative connotation of death. Some suggested the app should be renamed to "Are You Alive?" The app's creators told Chinese media that they will focus on improving the product, such as adding SMS notification features or a messaging function. Moreover, they will consider the criticism over the app's name.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Deserts are hard to reclaim because plants cannot survive on shifting sand, but scientists in northwest China are changing that -- by dropping vast amounts of blue-green algae onto the dry terrain. These specially selected strains of cyanobacteria can survive extreme heat and drought for long periods, according to China Science Daily on Thursday. When rain finally comes, they spring to life, spreading rapidly and forming a tough, biomass-rich crust over the sand. This living layer stabilises the dunes and creates the perfect foundation for future plant growth. This is the first time in human history that microbes are being used on a massive scale to reshape natural landscapes. As the "Great Green Wall" -- China's massive multi-decade initiative to plant trees and fight desertification -- expands to include efforts in Africa and Mongolia, the unprecedented geoengineering technology could one day transform the face of our planet. This artificial "crusting" technique was developed by scientists at a research station in Ningxia Hui autonomous region, located in northwest China on the edge of the Tengger Desert, according to China Science Daily.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"China recently placed a supercritical carbon dioxide power generator into commercial operation," writes CleanTechnica, "and the announcement was widely framed as a technological breakthrough." The system, referred to as Chaotan One, is installed at a steel plant in Guizhou province in mountainous southwest China and is designed to recover industrial waste heat and convert it into electricity. Each unit is reported to be rated at roughly 15 MW, with public statements describing configurations totaling around 30 MW. Claimed efficiency improvements range from 20% to more than 30% higher heat to power conversion compared with conventional steam based waste heat recovery systems. These are big numbers, typical of claims for this type of generator, and they deserve serious attention. China doing something first, however, has never been a reliable indicator that the thing will prove durable, economic, or widely replicable. China is large enough to try almost everything. It routinely builds first of a kind systems precisely because it can afford to learn by doing, discarding what does not work and scaling what does. This approach is often described inside China as crossing the river by feeling for stones. It produces valuable learning, but it also produces many dead ends. The question raised by the supercritical CO2 deployment is not whether China is capable of building it, but whether the technology is likely to hold up under real operating conditions for long enough to justify broad adoption. A more skeptical reading is warranted because Western advocates of specific technologies routinely point to China's limited deployments as evidence that their preferred technologies are viable, when the scale of those deployments actually argues the opposite. China has built a single small modular reactor and a single experimental molten salt reactor, not fleets of them, despite having the capital, supply chains, and regulatory capacity to do so if they made economic sense... If small modular reactors or hydrogen transportation actually worked at scale and cost, China would already be building many more of them, and the fact that it is not should be taken seriously rather than pointing to very small numbers of trials compared to China's very large denominators... What is notably absent from publicly available information is detailed disclosure of materials, operating margins, impurity controls, and maintenance assumptions. This is not unusual for early commercial deployments in China. It does mean that external observers cannot independently assess long term durability claims. The article notes America's Energy Department funded a carbon dioxide turbine in Texas rated at roughly 10 MW electric that "reached initial power generation in 2024 after several years of construction and commissioning." But for both these efforts, the article warns that "early efficiency claims should be treated as provisional. A system that starts at 15 MW and delivers 13 MW after several years with rising maintenance costs is not a breakthrough. It is an expensive way to recover waste heat compared with mature steam based alternatives that already operate for decades with predictable degradation..." "If both the Chinese and U.S. installations run for five years without significant reductions in performance and without high maintenance costs, I will be surprised. In that case, it would be worth revisiting this assessment and potentially changing my mind." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader cusco for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China has hacked the emails used by congressional staff on powerful committees in the US House of Representatives, as part of a massive cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon. An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese intelligence accessed email systems used by some staffers [non-paywalled source] on the House China committee in addition to aides on the foreign affairs committee, intelligence committee and armed services committee, according to people familiar with the attack. The intrusions were detected in December. The attacks are the latest element of an ongoing cyber campaign against US communication networks by the Ministry of State Security, China's intelligence service. One person familiar with the attack said it was unclear if the MSS had accessed lawmakers' emails. The MSS has been operating Salt Typhoon for several years. It allows China to access the unencrypted phone calls, texts and voicemails of almost every American, and in some cases enables access to email accounts. Salt Typhoon has also intercepted the calls of senior US officials over the past couple of years, said people familiar with the campaign.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new working paper from researchers at the University of Hong Kong has found that Chinese graduate students who plagiarized more heavily in their master's theses were significantly more likely to pursue careers in the civil service and to climb the ranks faster once inside. John Liu and co-authors analyzed 6 million dissertations from CNKI, a Chinese academic repository, and cross-referenced them against public records of civil-service exam-takers to identify 120,000 civil servants and their academic work. Those who entered the public sector had plagiarism scores 15.6% above average. Customs and tax officials fared worst -- their scores ran 25% and 26% higher than private-sector peers respectively. Within the civil service, those who plagiarized more were promoted 9% faster during the first five years of their careers. The researchers validated their plagiarism metric through an experiment involving 443 job applicants who were asked to roll dice for rewards without monitoring. Those who had plagiarized more also reported improbably high rolls.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's Commerce Ministry on Wednesday demanded that the Netherlands "immediately correct its mistakes" over chipmaker Nexperia, escalating a standoff that has disrupted global semiconductor supply chains and triggered warnings from automakers about component shortages. The Dutch government in September invoked a Cold War-era law to effectively seize control of the Chinese-owned chipmaker, reportedly after the United States raised security concerns. China responded by blocking Nexperia products from leaving the country. Nexperia manufactures billions of foundation chips -- transistors, diodes and power management components -- that are produced in Europe, assembled and tested in China, and then re-exported to customers worldwide. These low-tech, inexpensive chips are essential in almost every device that uses electricity, from car braking systems and airbag controllers to electric windows and entertainment systems. The Commerce Ministry spokesperson said the Netherlands "remains indifferent and stubbornly insists on its own way, showing absolutely no responsible attitude towards the security of the global semiconductor supply chain." Dutch Economy Minister Vincent Karremans has repeatedly defended the intervention. Auto industry groups have warned that disruptions have not been fundamentally resolved. Japan's Nissan and German supplier Bosch have flagged looming shortages, and the German Association of the Automotive Industry warned of elevated supply risks "particularly for the first quarter" of 2026.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China is quietly mandating that chipmakers use at least 50% domestically made equipment when expanding capacity, "as Beijing pushes to build a self-sufficient semiconductor supply chain," according to Reuters. From the report: The rule is not publicly documented, but chipmakers seeking state approval to build or expand their plants have been told by authorities in recent months that they must prove through procurement tenders that at least half their equipment will be Chinese-made, the people told Reuters. The mandate is one of the most significant measures Beijing has introduced to wean itself off reliance on foreign technology, a push that gathered pace after the U.S. tightened technology export restrictions in 2023, banning sales of advanced AI chips and semiconductor equipment to China. While those U.S. export restrictions blocked the sale of some of the most advanced tools, the 50% rule is leading Chinese manufacturers to choose domestic suppliers even in areas where foreign equipment from the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Europe remain available. Applications failing the threshold are typically rejected, though authorities grant flexibility depending on supply constraints, the people said. The requirements are relaxed for advanced chip production lines, where domestically developed equipment is not yet fully available. "Authorities prefer if it is much higher than 50%," one source told Reuters. "Eventually they are aiming for the plants to use 100% domestic equipment."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: China on Friday launched three venture capital funds to invest in "hard technology" areas, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The capital contribution plans for the funds have been finalised, each with more than 50 billion yuan ($7.14 billion), according to the report. The funds will primarily invest in early-stage startups and the targets should be valued at less than 500 million yuan, an official said on Friday, adding that no single investment would amount to more than 50 million yuan.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese social media users criticized two key government policies, rare signs of public dissent in the country where the internet is heavily censored. The death of the former head of China's one-child policy agency -- which for decades forced women to carry out abortions and sterilizations -- sparked criticism of the demographic effort, with one netizen lamenting the "children who were lost." Others, meanwhile, criticized Beijing's leadership over its ongoing row with Tokyo, sparked by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi saying her country could intervene to defend Taiwan in a potential Chinese attack on the self-ruled island, which Beijing claims as its own.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China has unveiled new rules to rein in aggressive pricing tactics by online platforms, prohibiting e-commerce operators from forcing merchants to offer discounts or setting different prices based on user demographics without consent. The 29-article regulation -- jointly issued over the weekend by the National Development and Reform Commission, State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), and Cyberspace Administration of China -- lays out detailed compliance requirements that target several long-standing pain points as competition among internet giants has often eroded the rights of both consumers and merchants. To restore merchant autonomy on pricing, the rules ban platform operators from leveraging their dominant scale to impose "lowest price" agreements. Platforms are prohibited from using traffic throttling, search ranking demotions, or algorithm penalties to pressure merchants into predatory price-cutting or exclusive pricing arrangements.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump's closure of the de minimis customs loophole in May -- which previously allowed Chinese packages valued under $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free -- has redirected a flood of cheap goods toward Europe, where similar exemptions for packages under $175.8 in the EU and $180 in the UK remain intact. The shift has been swift: exports of low-value Chinese packages to the U.S. have dropped more than 40% since May, according to Chinese customs data, and the EU has this year overtaken the U.S. as the largest market for China's roughly $100 billion cheap package trade. Shipments to Hungary and Denmark have quadrupled, and those to Germany, France, and the UK have risen 50% or more. Temu has recorded seven straight months of double-digit U.S. sales declines, per Consumer Edge data tracking credit and debit card transactions. Its European sales, on the other hand: up 56% in the EU and 46% in the UK since May compared to a year ago. The EU agreed last week to impose a $3.5 fee on imported small packages starting in July and to close the de minimis exemption entirely by 2028. The UK plans to follow in 2029.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A plush AI toy marketed for children as young as three years old delivers detailed instructions on sharpening knives and lighting matches, and when asked about Chinese President Xi Jinping's resemblance to Winnie the Pooh -- a comparison censored in China -- responds that "your statement is extremely inappropriate and disrespectful." The Miriat Miiloo, manufactured by a Chinese company and among the top inexpensive results for "AI toy for kids" on Amazon, repeatedly insisted in NBC News tests that Taiwan is "an inalienable part of China." The toy would lower its voice and declare this "an established fact." The tests, NBC News reports, indicated "it was programmed to reflect Chinese Communist Party values." NBC News and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group tested five popular AI toys this holiday season and found loose guardrails across the board. Another toy, the Alilo Smart AI Bunny marketed as "the best gift for little ones," engaged in detailed descriptions of BDSM practices during extended conversation. China now has more than 1,500 registered AI toy companies, according to MIT Technology Review. Miriat didn't respond to requests for comment.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese scientists have built a working prototype of an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine in a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, a development that represents exactly what Washington has spent years and multiple rounds of export controls trying to prevent: China's path toward semiconductor independence and an end to the West's monopoly on the technology that powers AI, smartphones and advanced weapons systems. The prototype, completed in early 2025 by former ASML engineers who reverse-engineered the Dutch company's machines, is operational and generating EUV light, though it has not yet produced working chips. The effort is part of a six-year secret government initiative that sources described to Reuters as China's version of the Manhattan Project. Huawei is coordinating thousands of engineers across companies and state research institutes, and recruits are working under false identities inside secure facilities. The Chinese government is targeting 2028 for producing working chips, though sources say 2030 is more realistic -- still years earlier than the decade analysts had predicted it would take China to match the West.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: Every other week, it seems, a new Chinese launch company pops up with a rocket design and a plan to reach orbit within a few years. For a long time, the majority of these companies revealed designs that looked a lot like SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. The first of these copy cats, the medium-lift Zhuque-3 rocket built by LandSpace, launched earlier this month. Its primary mission was nominal, but the Zhuque-3 rocket failed its landing attempt, which is understandable for a first flight. Doubtless there will be more Chinese Falcon 9-like rockets making their debut in the near future. However, over the last year, there has been a distinct change in announcements from China when it comes to new launch technology. Just as SpaceX is seeking to transition from its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket -- which has now been flying for a decade and a half -- to the fully reusable Starship design, so too are Chinese companies modifying their visions. The trend began with the Chinese government. In November 2024 the government announced a significant shift in the design of its super-heavy lift rocket, the Long March 9. Instead of the previous design, a fully expendable rocket with three stages and solid rocket boosters strapped to the sides, the country's state-owned rocket maker revealed a vehicle that mimicked SpaceX's fully reusable Starship. Around the same time, a Chinese launch firm named Cosmoleap announced plans to develop a fully reusable "Leap" rocket within the next few years. An animated video that accompanied the funding announcement indicated that the company seeks to emulate the tower catch-with-chopsticks methodology that SpaceX has successfully employed. But wait, there's more. In June a company called Astronstone said it too was developing a stainless steel, methane-fueled rocket that would also use a chopstick-style system for first stage recovery. Astronstone didn't even pretend to not copy SpaceX, saying it was "fully aligning its technical approach with Elon Musk's SpaceX." And then, on Friday, the state-aligned China.com reported that a company called "Beijing Leading Rocket Technology" took things a step further. It has named its vehicle "Starship-1," adding that the new rocket will have enhancements from AI and is billed as a "fully reusable AI rocket."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.