In a normal world, this should be an immense scandal in Europe.

Le Monde has a long article (lemonde.fr/international/…) describing the hellish life of Nicolas Guillou, a French judge at the ICC in The Hague, due to U.S. sanctions punishing him for authorizing arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes in Gaza.

Guillou's daily existence has been transformed into a Kafkaesque nightmare. He cannot: open or maintain accounts with Google, Amazon, Apple, or any US company; make hotel reservations (Expedia canceled his booking in France hours after he made it); conduct online commerce, since he can't know if the packaging is American; use any major credit card (Visa, Mastercard, Amex are all American); access normal banking services, even with non-American banks, as banks worldwide close sanctioned accounts; conduct virtually any financial transaction.

He describes it as being "economically banned across most of the planet," including in his own country, France, and where he works, the Netherlands.

That's the real shocking aspect of this: the Americans are:
- punishing a European citizen
- for doing his job in Europe
- applying laws Europe officially supports
- at an institution based in Europe
- that Europe helped create and fund

and Europe is not only doing essentially nothing to protect him, they're actively enforcing America's sanctions against their own citizen - European banks closing his accounts, European companies refusing him service, European institutions standing by while Washington destroys a European judge's life on European soil.

Again, in a normal world, European leaders and citizens should be absolutely outraged about this. But we've so normalized the hollowing out of European sovereignty that the sight of a European citizen being economically executed on European soil for upholding European law is treated, at best, as an unfortunate technical complication in transatlantic relations. I already wrote about this when I visited the ICC this summer 👇

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1957865502631428327?s=20

We're on the edge of Europe's most humiliating moment in history.

The White House is apparently about to achieve a comprehensive peace deal with Russia which Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian negotiator, say is "a much broader framework [than just a ceasefire agreement], basically saying, 'How do we really bring, finally, lasting security to Europe, not just Ukraine.'"

So in effect it looks like this is an agreement which redraws the entire European security architecture.

The thing, however, is that Europeans are NOT part of the discussions and, when asked about them, the White House replied: “We don't really care about the Europeans.”

This would make it probably the first time EVER in history that Europe's security is decided completely by outside forces, as a proxy with zero say in its own fate (indeed with explicit contempt for its input).

I actually looked into this for my August article "Not at the table: Europe's colonial moment" (arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/not-at-the-t…). The only comparable parallel I could find is the fall of Constantinople in 1453. But even this was a somewhat “classic” military defeat where the victor simply dictated terms. At the time, there wasn't another external power negotiating with the Ottomans about how to carve up Byzantine territory - it was at least a straightforward conquest.

Don't misunderstand me. I'll be the first to applaud if the Ukraine war comes to an end. It was, as I have argued since day 1 (x.com/RnaudBertrand/…), one of the most predictable and therefore one of the most avoidable wars in history.

BUT, and this is a huge "but", having your continent's security architecture redesigned without you sets a catastrophic precedent: it defines Europe as nothing more than geography to be bargained over by others.

This is the natural consequence of decades of appalling strategic choices by Europeans, starting with the fundamental decision to outsource their security to NATO - effectively to Washington - rather than building genuine strategic autonomy. This shaped how Europe dealt with both Russia and Ukraine: following hawkish US policy, dictated by its own interests to keep Eurasia divided ("divide and conquer"), as opposed to Europe's own interests which clearly lay in continental integration and stability.

Now we see the wages of these choices: a continent whose opinion literally doesn't matter when its security is being negotiated.

Src for the screenshot: politico.com/playbook Caveat: Tass (Russia's official news agency) says "Russia has no OFFICIAL information from US about some 'agreements'" 👇
x.com/imetatronink/s…

The emphasis on "official" is mine because this means there is *unofficial* information, which is indeed the case here given that the talks between Steve Witkoff (Trump envoy) and Kirill Dmitriev (who runs Russia's sovereign wealth fund) are backchannel negotiations.

My point still stands of course: the White House - backchannel or not - is negotiating with Russia without Europe at the table and they did say they "don't really care about the Europeans." Europe wasn't at the table either during Trump's *official* discussion with Putin in Alaska this summer.

Which means that even if this particular deal falls through or the timeline is premature, the pattern is clear: Europe's security is something the U.S. and Russia discuss between themselves and Europe isn't a participant in these conversations - it's the subject matter.

This is a genuinely incredible story: China found in U.S. archives an energy source that could power its entire future for 20,000 years - and they just made it work.

I'm not exaggerating. In the 1960s the U.S. - specifically Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee - invented a revolutionary type of nuclear reactor that could run on thorium instead of uranium (much more abundant and cheaper), with no meltdown risk, generating 50x less waste, and requiring no water. Then, due to messy politics, they killed the program in 1969 and fired the visionary behind it.

Afterwards the declassified blueprints for the project sat forgotten in archives for decades. That is until Chinese scientists found them and decided in 2011 to run an experimental project in the Gansu desert to see if they could make it work.

A few days ago, after 14 years of work, they finally did.

I spent many days researching this and wrote the full story - how the technology works, the bureaucratic politics that killed it in America, and why this could genuinely be game-changing.

Here's the link to the article: open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert… Preempting many similar "China stole IP" type comments

300 million tourists a year, free to roam everywhere unimpeded in Xinjiang, and still not a single photo evidence of this so-called "Uyghur genocide" 🤔

On the contrary you do get an overwhelming amount of photo evidence of Uyghurs just living normal lives.

Compare and contrast this with Gaza: zero tourist (or journalist, or anyone) allowed in and you still get overwhelming photo evidence.

Because, guess what, in the age of social when people are actually being mistreated and mass murdered, you can't hide it.

You can't hide it in a place that's completely blockaded, you can hide it even less in a place that's fully open to anyone (many foreigners, like almost all European countries, don't even need a visa nowadays to enter China and Xinjiang).

The BBC - which previously pushed the Xinjiang narrative hard - is trying hard to square this circle by claiming "there's a side of Xinjiang" that these 300 million tourists "don't see."

And what is that "side they don't see" according to the article? That even though the Uyghurs are there and Uyghur culture is everywhere, that's apparently not "the real Uyghur culture" because, as they claim, old towns were rebuilt for tourism and tourists see made-for-tourism ethnic performances.

Except this is literally how tourism development works everywhere in China (and pretty much everywhere in the world, frankly). Heck, this is how development - period - works: no-one wants to see the "real" old town from 1970s China because, guess what, it was completely run down and poor AF.

I partially grew up myself in a street of Paris called "rue Mouffetard" in the extremely touristic 5th arrondissement. The name of the street comes from the old French verb "mouffeter", which means to stink: this street used to be famous for smelling like shit because it was a very poor area of Paris back in the old days. Should it have been left as such so that people get to experience the "real" Paris instead of the heavily gentrified "Emily in Paris" version you get today? Anyone with a brain can see how idiotic that is.

Anyhow that's the new - utterly ridiculous - narrative: "the visible Uyghur culture doesn't count because things got redeveloped and updated."

Well, at least the Western media narrative seems to have been downgraded from crimes against humanity to "we don't like their tourism development model" - progress, I guess...

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1984767831095779662

Correction for the French purists ☺️

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1985295364233347319?t=np1UDe5j_Os0whCXn-pDaQ&s=19

I suspect David is right here 👇 And if so it'd be the most ironic possible resolution for the Nexperia debacle.

What the White House factsheet (whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/20…) says about Nexperia is: "China will take appropriate measures to ensure the resumption of trade from Nexperia’s facilities in China, allowing production of critical legacy chips to flow to the rest of the world."

Not a word about the Netherlands or Europe, it says trade will resume FROM CHINA.

So it's entirely possible, even likely, that the deal is that Nexperia China, which effectively split from Nexperia Netherlands after the Dutch seized the company, will become the main contracting party.

Meaning the deal would effectively hand China full operational control of Nexperia's operations while leaving Europe with a hollowed-out shell company.

The theory makes sense: Nexperia China already handled 70% of the actual production for Nexperia overall. The main thing they were getting from Europe were the silicon wafers, which Europe has now stopped sending (reuters.com/world/europe/n…). But those are legacy chips products that Chinese foundries like SMIC and Hua Hong can also produce at scale so the European fabs weren't providing anything irreplaceable.

If this all gets verified, there are so many layers of irony here.

This whole debacle occurred because of the new "BIS 50% rule" introduced by the U.S. in late September that expanded US sanctions to any company that was at least 50% owned by entities on Washington's trade blacklist. Wingtech Technology, the Chinese owner of Nexperia, was added on the blacklist since last December and so Nexperia was going to get sanctioned by the U.S. too. Unless, that is, as the U.S. told the Dutch (ft.com/content/db0198…), they were to seize the company away from its Chinese owners, which is what prompted the Dutch to do exactly that simultaneously to the U.S. introducing the new "BIS 50% rule."

Since then, as part of the deal between Xi and Trump, the U.S. has agreed to suspend this "BIS 50% rule," thereby removing the whole rational the Dutch had to seize the company.

However, probably out of misplaced pride, or rather shame of looking like complete U.S. vassals, the Dutch are ridiculously claiming their seizing the company was unrelated with the "BIS 50% rule" but rather had to do with "mismanagement" by the Chinese CEO of the business who, according to them, was seeking to move Nexperia's manufacturing operations to China and transfer technological knowledge to its Chinese parent company.

Which is laughable: since when does a government seize an entire company because it wants to produce in China, all the more a company that was already producing 70% of its output in China and had Chinese ownership for years? Apparently the Dutch suddenly discovered in September 2025 - coincidentally within 24 hours after the U.S. introduced its "BIS 50% rule" - that a manufacturing footprint established years earlier now posed an urgent national security threat.

If this resolution gets confirmed it's ironies upon ironies:
- Washington created the BIS 50% rule to decouple Chinese firms from Western supply chains. In practice, it may have just decoupled from the Dutch middleman while leaving China with more control
- The Dutch justified their action by claiming it was done to prevent Nexperia moving operations to China and the result of their action seems to have caused this exact outcome
- Trump suspended the BIS 50% rule after having pressured the Dutch to act on it, leaving them holding the bag for a decision made to satisfy American strategic interests that America itself has now walked back
- Europe positioned itself as defending its technological sovereignty and it looks like they'll end up losing both the company and its credibility as a sovereign actor, all the more since the resolution was negotiated between Trump and Xi in South Korea with Europe completely absent from the table Boom: this just got essentially confirmed by Nexperia China in a statement

https://x.com/zzbar/status/1984822064881008689

Extraordinary words by Nvidia's CEO.

In polite terms, he effectively says that the chips export controls on China were one of the most self-destructive decisions ever taken by the US government: x.com/Yuchenj_UW/sta…

He says it caused Nvidia to go "from 95% market share to 0%" in China, and that he "cannot imagine any policymaker thinking that’s a good idea. That whatever policy we implemented caused America to lose one of the largest markets in the world to 0%.”

In a separate interview (linked below) he effectively says that might have lost the US the AI race. Because, as he puts it, "winning" the AI race means that "80% of the world uses the American tech stack" and that, given that China on its own is "50% of AI research" and "30% of the technology market", then them not using the American tech stack means that by definition America is "forfeiting and conceding" the AI race.

In that separate interview he also completely ridicules the narrative - used by the US to justify the export controls - that they were to prevent "dual use" of advanced Western chips for military purposes by China, saying that "no government, surely the Chinese government, is going to be building their defense on Western technology nor does the Pentagon use Chinese chips to build our national security."

So to sum up: in a foolish attempt to slow China's AI development, not only did the US lose its largest market, they may have lost the AI race itself. The other interview 👇

She supports the U.S. waging war against her own country for regime change (theguardian.com/world/2019/may…).

The Nobel "Peace" Prize, being its usual mockery of itself. Basically a reward for the most rabid defendents of a western liberal order, "peace" being a distant afterthought. x.com/NobelPrize/sta… The ideological aspect is crystal clear, see 👇 "Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace"

By which they mean liberal democracy, of course. And it couldn't be more false: the countries that have waged the most wars, by far, over the past few decades were liberal democracies (the US first and foremost).

https://x.com/NobelPrize/status/1976574190049247348

Ok, I looked into this because sometimes claims that "China invents Y" can be somewhat exaggerated. But this is real, and completely insane.

This technology called "Bone 02" (inspired by the well-known "502 glue" in China) has been developed for the past 9 years by a team of orthopedic surgeons in Zhejiang province. The team leads are Professor Fan Shunwu (范顺武, Director of the Orthopedics Department at Zhejiang University) and Lin Xianfeng (researchgate.net/profile/Xianfe…).

It's inspired by oysters because the researchers noticed their extraordinary ability to firmly attach themselves in harsh underwater environment by secreting a special adhesive known as bio-cement, which creates a strong chemical interaction with surfaces and hardens quickly.

The properties of the glue are almost miraculous (sources: news.cn/20250910/1df93… and news.ifeng.com/c/8mVMq4PBdmJ):
- Nearly instant adhesion in blood-soaked wet physiological environments (it just takes 2-3 minutes)
- Extremely strong adhesive properties (bonding tensile force of over 400 pounds - over 181 kg)
- Complete biodegradability that naturally absorbs after about 6 months as the bone heals (no need for secondary surgery previously required in conventional treatments)
- Vast reduction of infection risks related to the traditional metal plates and screws normally needed for bone surgery
- Minimally invasive and rapid surgery since you just need a small opening large enough to apply the glue (as opposed to a complex surgery attaching metal fixations)

This glue could be especially useful for fractures with small bone fragments which are very difficult to fix with metal plates and screws.

The glue has already undergone a proper "prospective, multicenter, blinded, randomized, parallel-controlled, non-inferiority clinical trial" with over 150 patients (c.m.163.com/news/a/K95S9C0…). They've announced positive results - the glue "achieved seamless bonding of all fracture fragments" - and will soon publish the peer-reviewed paper in an orthopedics journal detailing full trial data.

They've launched a company for the product called 源囊生物 (Yuannang Bio) which just raised 2 weeks ago RMB100 million in Series A financing (bydrug.pharmcube.com/news/detail/ef…). 😅 x.com/LaowaiLaogai/s…

They could also do:
- "Yes, China's bone glue works, but at what cost?" (a classic)
- "China's bone glue is part of its biological warfare on the West"
- "Congress demands investigation into 'Dual-Use' nature of Chinese oyster technology"
- "Did China just weaponize oysters?"
- "Oysters are a Western mollusk: experts say China's bone glue violates the Convention on the Law of the Sea"
- "Oysters evolved in Europe 60 million years ago -here's how China stole their essence"

The Guardian isn't even trying anymore, just going for basic "darkness v light" propaganda, including the holy halo around the head of the pro-EU politician 😅

The story (theguardian.com/world/2025/sep…) focuses entirely on supposed "Kremlin interference" but doesn't as much as mention that:
- a) the current pro-EU government just barred two pro-Russian political parties just 2 days before the elections (and one day before this article was written)
- b) that Moldova literally has its elections supervised by the EU on the ground, including (according to Kaja Kallas: x.com/RnaudBertrand/…) a "specialist team... to address illicit financing around the elections" and "a hybrid rapid response team [fighting] against the foreign interference"

So the side of the "light" is literally banning opposition parties at the last minute, and having foreign teams actively helping them shape electoral outcomes on the ground.

And they make the story all about "Russian interference". This isn't even remotely journalism, this is just stenographing for one side. And then there's this 👇 Only 2 polling stations opened in the whole of Russia for Moldovans who live there to vote, vs 301 in the EU

https://x.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1972175689404370969?t=RTO7B7NHGQ5zCbodAnFBZw&s=19

Yesterday we had a fascinating tour of the ICC, in The Hague, with the opportunity to speak with some senior people there.

The main reflection I get from the visit is that this place is a fascinating - yet tragic - illustration of the paradox between our ability to institutionalize idealism and our inability to surrender cynicism.

In many ways this place is a monument to what we could be if we weren't what we are.

First of all, there's no overstating how ambitious - even idealistic - the vision for the ICC is. When you think about it, it's even incredible it ever got created: a court that can prosecute sitting heads of state in order to transform the logic of "might makes right" into something closer to "right constrains might."

Together with the UN, I really can't think of a more ambitious attempt to change the operating system of international relations itself.

But here comes the cynicism and the limitations: the place created to constrain might doesn't have any might itself, it relies on that of those whose might it is tasked to constrain... In some way we created a referee who needs to control a game where the players ultimately decide whether fouls count.

This tension is very palpable when you're on site, and particularly when it comes to the Palestine case which the institution is obviously shaken by.

As a reminder, the U.S. and Israel are pulling all the stops to impede the procedure: the U.S. imposed unprecedented sanctions on ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan in February 2025 (whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…), followed by four judges in June (state.gov/releases/offic…) - including asset freezes, travel bans extending to their families, and threats to any individual or entity that dares to work with them.

The U.S. is, of course, not an ICC member state but what I could measure when visiting is the extent to which member states - EU countries in particular - have been complicit in both the intimidation campaign and the practical neutering of the Prosecution and the court.

It would for instance be enough for the EU to use its Blocking Statute to issue directives to their financial institutions and businesses to not apply the U.S. sanctions relating to the ICC, its Prosecutor and Judges for the sanctions to lose most of their bite. After all, what is the U.S. going to do - sanction the entire European banking system and all EU businesses? They would effectively be sanctioning themselves.

The fact that this hasn't happened, that to my knowledge no EU leader has even suggested it, illustrates not only once more the pathetic weakness of EU leaders but also the tragic truth at the heart of this whole enterprise: we built an institution that in-fine relies on the willingness of politicians to stand for principles when standing costs something. It may work when you have some actual De Gaulle-like statesmen in charge but not with the current crop of unprincipled managers of decline. And in any case, any institution whose survival depends on the courage of politicians is by definition built on sand.

A common criticism of the ICC is that it mostly goes after weaker African states. I believe that it was at some point even nicknamed the "International Caucasian Court" for that reason.

But when you look at the very architecture of it, you understand much better why that might be the case. Not because there's some actual evil intent there - the people we saw are all surely very committed to their principles and to justice - but simply because the court can only function where power permits it to function. It's like asking why a sailboat only sails where there's wind - it's not the captain's preference, it's physics. The ICC doesn't have an Africa bias; it has a weakness bias.

And, as we've seen, the moment it tried to expand beyond those boundaries, suddenly everyone discovers sovereignty and they get sanctions, threats, etc.

Which means that the world as it currently works effectively cannot tolerate international justice but merely a sophisticated form of victor's justice, dressed in the robes of universality, despite the best intentions of those who staff it, who find themselves cast as both the guardians of humanity's conscience and the proof of its absence.

In the end, the ICC is exactly what I said at the beginning: a monument to what we could be if we weren't what we are, maintained by people brave enough to pretend, if only within those walls, that we're already something better.

It's arguably better than nothing: even monuments to our hypocrisy remind us that we know what we should be doing instead, so that we might - might - one day do it. While in The Hague, we also went to check out the ICJ, the other big international law organization based here (in the so-called "Peace Palace").

Unfortunately in that case we couldn't visit the building, we just took some pictures from the outside.

That's probably one of least known yet coolest facts about China: in almost all large cities (that I've seen) people swim or fish in the rivers.

This is Liangma river in Beijing 👇 Other example (my video) in Shenyang 👇

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1677953679272611841

I have to say, there's something immensely ironic about the Dalai Lama arguing his reincarnation should be determined by a tax-exempt Swiss foundation incorporated in Zurich (dalailamafoundation.org/who-we-are/the…), while Beijing insists on maintaining the traditional centuries-old Golden Urn selection process.

And the even bigger irony is that everyone will doubtlessly denounce China for "destroying Tibetan traditions and culture" for doing so. 👇

To illustrate just how nonsensically these tariffs were calculated, take the example of Lesotho, one of the poorest countries in Africa with just $2.4 billion in annual GDP, which is being struck with a 50% tariff rate under the Trump plan, the highest rate among all countries on the list.

Why? Does Lesotho apply extortionate tariffs on U.S. products and the U.S. is merely being "reciprocal" here? Not at all, despite what Trump is saying, it's NOT the way these tariffs are defined.

As a matter of fact Lesotho, as a member of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), applies the common external tariff structure established by this regional trade bloc.

Which means it applies the same tariffs on U.S. products as South Africa does, as well as the 3 other members of the bloc: Namibia, Eswatini and Botswana.

So since the tariffs charged by these 5 countries on U.S. products are exactly the same, they must all be struck with a 50% tariff rate by the U.S., right? Not at all: South Africa is getting 30%, Namibia 21%, Botswana 37% and Eswatini just 10%, the lowest rate possible among all countries.

So what gives? Again, the way these tariffs are calculated has absolutely zero relationship with actual tariffs imposed by these countries on U.S. products. Instead, they appear to be simply derived from trade deficit calculations.

Looking at Lesotho specifically, every year the U.S. imports approximately $236 million in goods from Lesotho (primarily diamonds, textiles and apparel) while exporting only about $7 million worth of goods to Lesotho (wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile…).

Why do they export so little? Again this is an extremely poor country where 56.2% of the population lives with less than $3.65 a day (databankfiles.worldbank.org/public/ddpext_…), i.e. $1,300 a year. They simply can't afford U.S. products, no-one is going to buy an iPhone or a Tesla on that sort of income...

The way the tariffs are ACTUALLY calculated appears to be based on a simplistic and economically senseless formula: you take the trade deficit the U.S. has with a country, divide it by that country's exports to the U.S and declare this - falsely - "the tariff they charge on the U.S."

And then as Trump did in his speech last night, you magnanimously declare that you'll only "reciprocate" by charging half that "tariff" on them.

As such, for Lesotho, the calculation goes like this: ($236M - $7M)/$235M = 97%. That's the "tariff" Lesotho is deemed to charge this U.S. and half of that, i.e. roughly 50% is what the U.S. "reciprocates" with.

It's extremely easy to see why this makes no sense at all.

First of all, there's nothing Lesotho can do about it: they can't change tariffs they allegedly charge the U.S. to reduce the tariff rate the U.S. "reciprocates" with because, again, it's NOT based on any tariff that they charge.

Similarly they can't do much about reducing the trade deficit they have with the U.S. because, again, they simply don't have enough money to buy U.S. products.

Also the main rational Trump gave for the tariffs is to get production back to the U.S., to "bring manufacturing back". 47.3% of Lesotho's exports are diamonds: how do you bring the "manufacturing" of that "back to the U.S."? Anyone can see it makes just about zero sense.

The Lesotho example exposes the fundamental economic incoherence of these tariffs. Rather than addressing actual trade barriers, they punish countries based on trade deficits that arise from structural economic realities. All the more countries like Lesotho which pose zero competitive threat to American industry.

Worse yet, these tariffs will likely make these structural realities even worse: the U.S. is Lesotho's second most important export destination so it's a fair bet that applying 50% tariffs on their products will make people in Lesotho even poorer, and therefore even LESS able to afford U.S. products.

But perhaps the most unfair and detrimental aspect of all this is that these tariffs represent a complete reversal of longstanding U.S. development policy, and therefore a betrayal of countries - like Lesotho - who chose to follow U.S. advice in the past.

For decades the U.S. has used preferential trade access to encourage economic development in the world's poorest nations, recognizing that trade, not just aid, could get them out of poverty and ultimately put them in a position where they too could afford iPhones or Tesla.

They're now effectively penalizing countries for following previous U.S. policy, a lesson which I bet they won't forget anytime soon.

So all in all the irony is painful: in the name of fighting unfair trade, America has just demonstrated what truly unfair trade looks like.

This isn't something designed to address genuine trade issues, but simply a mechanism based on arbitrary math to punish countries for the affront of selling more to the United States than they buy. The arbitrary math used to define the tariffs (which has nothing to do with tariffs charged on the U.S.) was just unwittingly confirmed by Deputy White House Press Secretary Kush Desai, in a way that shows he himself doesn't understand it 👇😅

https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1907657860793696281

This could potentially be quite transformational for peace in Ukraine and for Europe generally: welt.de/politik/auslan…

German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag, citing "EU diplomatic sources familiar with the matter", reports that "China proposed to the EU to participate in the 'Coalition of the Willing'" so as to "increase Russia's acceptance of peacekeeping forces in Ukraine."

Russia has so far vehemently rejected the idea of European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine but could indeed potentially be swayed if China were to be part of the coalition.

Such a move would also of course have the potential to fundamentally change the nature of EU-China relations and mark a huge shift in the continent's security architecture, where China would be an alternative security partner to the US in European affairs.

It would also strategically position Europe in a much more enviable position were it wouldn't be at the mercy of Washington's every whims, and could leverage competition between Beijing and Washington in a way that'd enhance its sovereignty and bargaining position.

All that being said, given the EU's proven history of diplomatic incompetence and strategic inertia, this scenario is more likely than not to remain theoretical. Some people reply that this could be fake news because this is inconsistent with China's historical position BUT it isn't: China was already one of the guarantor states in the 2022 draft "Treaty on Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees for Ukraine" negotiated in Istanbul (see screenshot, from here static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/d…).

2022 treaty on which Lavrov said a peace deal must be based ("Our approach to the potential settlement has not changed: we are ready for dialogue on the basis of the 2022 agreements", mid.ru/en/foreign_pol…) 🤷

This "China is depleting the oceans with its huge fishing fleets" story is yet another utterly shameless piece of propaganda when China actually proportionally fishes much less than the rest of the world, since - unlike others - it gets the immense majority of its fish supply from aquaculture 👇 (src: openknowledge.fao.org/items/06690fd0…)

The worst culprit when it comes to depleting the oceans is actually Europe, relative to its population size. They fish about 33kg of fish per person per year compared with 10kg for China, a crazy 230% more! Actually if you read the report it's 13 million tones for China x.com/realSandkraken… Which corresponds to 14.3% of global captures of aquatic animals, which is less than Europe with 15.2 million tones or 16.7% of global captures. This is of course despite China having twice Europe's population...

In other words, Europe has 9% of the world's population but fishes 16.7% of the fishes while China has 18% of the world's population but fishes 14.3% of the fishes.

Now you tell me who is overfishing and who isn't...

If anyone wonders how to constitute the China allocation of their portfolio, these tickers, based on seating arrangements, are probably not a bad place to start.

That was actually the basic strategy of a friend of mine, very successful investor in China: he simply studied policy statements very deeply as well as signals like this meeting 👇 to understand what were China's strategic economic objectives and which companies would benefit from this. Just like the US has a "don't fight the fed" investment principle, China has in some way a "don't fight the government" equivalent.

(Not investment advice 😉) A list of some of the attendees 👇

https://x.com/shen_shiwei/status/1891363977722241261

Wow, this is huge. I just tried it myself with a foreign phone number (you can apparently choose any country, see screenshot) and it's true: you can now join Douyin - the Chinese version of TikTok - as an international user.

Which means the Great Firewall is coming down in the most unexpected way: with the world joining the China side of the wall.

Really feels like a Berlin wall moment, except in the opposite direction.
For people wondering where the hell I found the app, given it's not on Western app stores: apkpure.com/douyin/com.ss.…

This 👇 is arguably an even bigger Sputnik moment for China than the 6th generation fighter jet: a Chinese AI Model called DeepSeek v3 rivals - and often surpasses - the latest ChatGPT and Claude models in pretty much all respects for a tiny fraction of the training cost (only $5.5m), and it's open sourced (meaning anyone can use, modify, and improve it).

The fact that it's so cheap to train is particularly important as it completely changes the game of who can participate in advanced AI development. Up until now, the assumption was that you needed hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to train such a model, yet DeepSeek did it with just $5.5m, a sum of money accessible to just about any startup anywhere. Concretely, this means that DeepSeek has just proven that serious AI development is not limited to tech giants.

And their model is not only cheap to train, it's also extremely efficient to run. They use an architecture called Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) where, while their full model has 671 billion parameters (which is huge), it only uses 37 billion at a time. To compare, Meta has 405 billion parameters in their latest Llama3.1 model and uses all 405 billion at a time. DeepSeek V3 is more than 10 times more efficient, yet performs better than Llama3.1 at almost all benchmarks (English, Math, Coding, etc.).

DeepSeek V3's performance at key benchmarks is impressive across the board:
- Crushes advanced math problems (90.2% on MATH-500, vs 78.3% for Claude-3.5-Sonnet and 74.6% for GPT-4o)
- Excels at coding (82.6% on HumanEval, vs 81.7% for Claude-3.5-Sonnet and 80.5% for GPT-4o)
- Can process huge amounts of text at once (128K tokens, roughly equivalent to 100,000 words in English)
- Processes text at 60 tokens per second, about twice faster than GPT-4o

And the craziest part is that it's open-source, meaning that:
- Anyone can download and study the code
- Developers can modify and improve it
- Companies can integrate it into their products without paying API fees
- The entire AI community can learn from it

Lastly, this obviously comes during an interesting context in China-US relations where the US is doing its utmost to prevent China from progressing technologically, especially in AI. As such, this is an absolutely beautiful response by China: "despite all your restrictions, we just built a world-class AI model for 1% of your cost, made it more efficient than anything you have, and open-sourced it for the whole world to use."

It's also a triumph of brains over money and raw power: with its restrictions the US placed China in a situation where it had to use resources more intelligently. As the saying goes "necessity is the mother of inventions"... And here we now are: China may have just changed the rules of the game forever, democratizing the very technology the US tried to restrict and proving, once more, that human ingenuity always finds a way. Interesting background on the company behind the model 👇

https://x.com/kevinsxu/status/1872492822529495251?t=Ec-rcEx51gIhqqaxyQQqng&s=19

This 👇 potentially changes everything, it looks like Trump envisions a U.S.-China G2.

He says that "China and the United States can together solve all the problems in the world".
x.com/kyleichan/stat…

From the point of view of a citizen of the Earth, I'm all for an improved relationship between the U.S. and China. And so far, despite some of his hawkish appointments, all of the statements by Trump himself point to that. Actions must follow of course, which is anything but a given: U.S. rhetoric often bears little correlation to their actions...

From the point of view of a European though, a US-China G2 would be a strategic disaster of the highest order. In fact it's long been something that many European strategic thinkers have warned about: if a US-China G2 materializes without Europe at the table, it will be on the menu.

A U.S.-China G2 would effectively mark an end to the undeclared world war we've been witnessing these past few years and declare the U.S. and China to be the 2 winners, setting the new rules of the game together the way the winners of WW2 did. Europe had a De Gaulle and a Churchill back then to defend its interests, there's virtually no-one today...

Which is why I've long said it was so strategically dumb for Europe to blindly follow the U.S. in its hostile strategy against China as one day (which looks like it may be coming soon) the U.S. would be bound to flip its position, leaving Europe exposed and with a damaged relationship with China. The smarter approach would have been to maintain an equally balanced relationships with both powers while building up European strategic autonomy. Instead of following Washington's lead on chip restrictions, decoupling initiatives, and confrontational rhetoric, Europe could have carved out its own path...

The question now is whether Europe can still recover its strategic position. And unfortunately the challenge appears nearly insurmountable: years of strategic complacency have left Europe vulnerable at precisely the moment when strength and independence are most crucial, with a complete absence of leaders of the caliber needed to navigate such tricky waters... Love how this is already being mischaracterized by "China watchers" as Trump playing into Beijing's hands: the "G2 that Xi Jinping has hoped for".
x.com/BonnieGlaser/s…

When actually the concept of a G2 originates from the very heart of the U.S. establishment, from people like Fred Bergsten, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Kissinger: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_…

And China has actually historically been very critical of it, even rejecting the very concept. Here's for instance what Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told Barack Obama when the idea was floated during his administration (gov.cn/ldhd/2009-11/1…): "The main reasons we don't agree with the concept of a 'G2' are: First, China is a developing country with a large population, and we remain clear-headed about the long road ahead to build a modernized nation; Second, China pursues an independent and autonomous peaceful foreign policy and does not ally with any country or group of countries; Third, China maintains that world affairs should be decided jointly by all countries, not dictated by one or two countries." (original Chinese: 我们不赞成有关"两国集团"提法的主要原因是：第一，中国是一个人口众多的发展中国家，要建成一个现代化国家还有很长的路要走，对此我们始终保持清醒；第二，中国奉行独立自主的和平外交政策，不与任何国家或国家集团结盟；第三，中国主张世界上的事情应该由各国共同决定，不能由一两个国家说了算)

And again now we have the proposal coming from the U.S., not China, and we can quite safely assume it will likely again face quite a lot of opposition from China.

This is crazy... So let me get this right:
- Yoon lost recent parliamentary elections
- He's invoking national security to justify emergency powers
- He's labeling the opposition as North Korean sympathizers
- He is strongly aligned with US policy (even strengthening ties with Japan, which is deeply unpopular with the population)

This sounds like a bad remake of the classic transitions to right-wing military dictatorship we saw in so many US vassals during the cold war.

Hopefully South Korea will be strong enough to prevent history from repeating itself... Couldn't be more appallingly undemocratic: martial law can be lifted by a vote in parliament but he's blocking access to it 👇

https://x.com/josungkim/status/1863951342777286858?t=14aSRy0p4FvSqY8tD_EygA&s=19

Goodbye Uniqlo China business (22% of their revenue!) 👋

It's a virtual certainty that Chinese consumers will stop shopping at Uniqlo after this. A *Japanese* company that publicly chooses to align with the West's Uyghur narrative against China (which not a single Chinese believes in, even those most critical of the government): it's the closest you can get to corporate suicide in China.

Puzzling why they'd do that. The last company that said it'd stop using Xinjiang cotton was H&M. Their sales in China immediately decreased by 41% ()bloomberg.com/news/articles/…