Weblog with daily updates of the news on a frugal, fair and beautiful China, from the perspective of internet entrepreneur, new media advisor and president of the China Speakers Bureau Fons Tuinstra
AI expert Alvin Wang Graylin discusses the future of AI and the role the US and China might play at the Asia Society Northern California. You cannot talk about an AI race if there is no finish line, he argues. We talk about multiple races where nobody is really in charge, he adds.
Easy return policies have been a key in e-commerce, but AI is offering China’s consumers an easy way to commit fraud, writes consumer expert Ashley Dudarenok on her weblog. A buyer purchases a product, photographs it in good condition, and feeds the image into an AI tool with a simple instruction: “Add mold spots to this fruit” or “Create a tear in this clothing item,” she writes.
Ashley Dudarenok:
Return fraud is not a new phenomenon. But the accessibility of generative AI has transformed it from a manual, high-effort activity into a scalable threat. Previously, fake damage photos required basic photo-editing skills. Today, anyone with a smartphone can generate convincing fake photos of damaged goods in under 20 seconds.
The mechanism is straightforward. A buyer purchases a product, photographs it in good condition, and feeds the image into an AI tool with a simple instruction: “Add mold spots to this fruit” or “Create a tear in this clothing item.”
The AI generates a modified image that appears to show a defective product. The buyer then submits this AI-generated evidence as part of a refund-only claim, keeping both the product and the refund.
This form of refund abuse has proliferated across categories from fresh produce to apparel to electronics. The scale is concerning. On social platforms, tutorials openly advertise “refund-only tricks” for a fee of 288 yuan, with claims that a single account can successfully execute approximately 30 refunds. Some operators even offer “代退” services, charging 170 yuan to forge medical certificates or damage evidence.
The blockage of the Street of Hormuz threw the world into a fuel crisis, while China was able to fend off most of the effects. China veteran Kaiser Kuo describes how the strategy of electrification offered a way for China to avoid the spike in fuel prices, although it is not clear if other countries can copy this strategy, he explains at the World Economic Forum.
Kaiser Kuo:
The conflict that erupted at the end of February 2026 was, among other things, an energy shock. Nine weeks of disruption in and around the Strait of Hormuz pushed Brent to nearly $120 a barrel, sent liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices to multi-year highs, and forced governments to confront the fragility of supply chains they had spent the post-COVID years assuming were secure. The shock exposed which economies had built genuine resilience into their energy systems, and which had merely diversified their suppliers of imported hydrocarbons.
On paper, China should have been among the most exposed economies. Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy has noted that roughly 45-50% of its crude imports transit Hormuz, and nearly a third of its LNG comes from the Gulf. But China’s economy proved considerably more insulated than those numbers would predict. Goldman Sachs trimmed its 2026 growth forecast for the country by only 0.2 percentage points – the smallest downgrade in the Asia-Pacific region.
Innovation expert Ashley Dudarenok dives into the successful innovation strategy that has allowed China technology giant Huawei to play the development game differently from its international competitors; she writes on her website, Chozan. “For business leaders trying to understand where China is headed, Huawei is not simply a telecom company to watch,” she writes.
Ashley Dudarenok:
Huawei news has dominated global tech headlines for years, but most Western coverage stops at sanctions, geopolitics, and smartphone bans. That misses the bigger story. Huawei is not just surviving external pressure.
It is using that pressure to build something structurally different from anything the West has seen: a vertically integrated, domestically rooted technology ecosystem that is quietly reshaping industries from smart cities to AI infrastructure.
For business leaders trying to understand where China is headed, Huawei is not simply a telecom company to watch. It is a live case study in how Chinese firms build, compete, and scale under constraints that would have shuttered most multinationals.
This article unpacks Huawei’s innovation model, its latest product and enterprise moves, and what it all signals for global business strategy.
AI expert Alvin Wang Graylin discusses the AI race between China and the US with James M. Lindsay at the Council of Foreign Relations. He explains why the current priorities for winning that race are fundamentally wrong.
Turning AI into a paid platform is a key criterion for China’s success, writes marketing expert Ashley Dudarenokon her weblog, as video AI has become a major commercial success in setting up paid platforms. “Chinese video AI has become one of China’s clearest tests for artificial intelligence commercialization. The category is being judged by paid usage, creator demand, and platform placement,” she writes.
Ashley Dudarenok:
Chinese video AI has become one of China’s clearest tests for artificial intelligence commercialization. The category is being judged by paid usage, creator demand, and platform placement.
China has a rare advantage here. Video tools can enter short video feeds, ecommerce stores, ad accounts, and creator studios at the same time. This embedded distribution gives Chinese video AI a faster route from model release to business use…
Chinese video AI now has commercial numbers that most generative video categories still lack. Kling AI crossed USD20 million in monthly revenue in December 2025. That translated into USD240 million in Annualized Revenue Run Rate (ARR).
Annualized Revenue Run Rate means the yearly revenue implied by one month of recurring revenue. Kuaishou said Kling had reached USD100 million ARR in March 2025, ten months after launch.
These figures put commercial viability at the center of the story. The useful test is whether users keep paying after the launch excitement fades. Kling’s curve suggests that professional creators, merchants, and commercial teams are paying for repeat output.
China’s wider AI base gives this category more room to mature. The State Council said China’s core AI industry exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan (USD176.4 billion) in 2025, with more than 6,200 AI companies. A separate State Council summary put China’s internet user base at 1.125 billion and generative AI adoption at 42.8 percent by the end of 2025.
Xiaomi took off as a successful mobile phone company, but has moved into a wide range of industries, explains consumer expert Ashley Dudarenokon her weblog ChoZan. “Xiaomi EV matters because it shows how a consumer technology company can move into cars quickly, with pricing confidence and ecosystem depth,” writes Dudarenok.
Ashley Dudarenok:
Xiaomi EV has become one of China’s most important smart mobility stories because it integrates cars, phones, AIoT, retail, and software into a single consumer system. In 2025, Xiaomi reported 411,082 vehicle deliveries and RMB 103.3 billion (US$15.2 billion) in smart EV revenue.
For 2026, the company set a 550,000-unit delivery target, making Xiaomi Auto a serious force in China’s crowded EV market.
The point for global executives is clear. Xiaomi EV is leveraging consumer electronics discipline, founder-led brand trust, rapid product cycles, software familiarity, and a large connected-device base to reshape expectations for smart EVs in China…
Xiaomi EV matters because it shows how a consumer technology company can move into cars quickly, with pricing confidence and ecosystem depth. The company’s smart EV, AI, and new initiatives segment reached RMB 106.1 billion (US$15.6 billion) in 2025, with a gross margin of 24.3 percent and positive operating income of RMB 0.9 billion (US$132.4 million).
That financial shift changes the discussion around Xiaomi’s electric vehicles. Many new EV entrants struggle to move from attention to scale. Xiaomi reached a large volume quickly, then placed its auto business inside a wider technology platform that already includes phones, wearables, home appliances, internet services, and AI-enabled user interfaces.
This is why Xiaomi EV car demand differs from that of a normal car launch. Buyers respond to design and range, yet they also respond to a familiar Xiaomi logic. The company has trained consumers to expect strong specifications, accessible premium features, and frequent software improvements across devices.
However, admiration has become more qualified. The US is increasingly seen not as a political role model but as a complex society grappling with many of the same challenges facing other countries: inequality, social division, political polarisation and diminishing trust in institutions. Trump became an unlikely catalyst for this shift.
The US remains powerful and influential, yet the country many educated Chinese once imagined from afar is now viewed less idealistically. More than any other recent American leader, Trump accelerated this transformation, narrowing a psychological distance that had existed for decades.
For many educated Chinese, the US no longer appears as the destination towards which all modern societies naturally evolve. Trump did not merely change the way Chinese people viewed America, he also forced them to rethink long-held assumptions about democracy, modernity and the direction of history itself.
The US has put a row of larger Chinese commercial firms on its Pentagon blacklist for connections with China’s military, including Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, CATL, Unitree, Xiaomi, Huawei and chipmaker CXMT. “It signals that the definition of strategic technology has expanded dramatically, says Winston Ma, adjunct professor at NYU, across a range of media.
The Sri Lanka Guardian:
“When companies like Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, Tencent and Xiaomi are viewed through a national security lens, it signals that the definition of strategic technology has expanded dramatically,” said Winston Ma. He noted that the updated Pentagon list aligns with broader regulatory shifts in the United States, including earlier efforts by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to broaden its review of mergers and acquisitions involving foreign-linked firms. That expansion, implemented in early 2025, was designed to tighten oversight of investments from geopolitical competitors, particularly China. Ma added that these developments reflect a structural shift in how commercial innovation is assessed within policy frameworks. “Both developments reflect a broader reality: The boundary between commercial technology and national security is becoming increasingly blurred,” he said.
Digital strategy expert Bjorn Ognibeni explains why Western retail continues to miss what we are missing from the way China is developing, in an interview with Philipp Labrovsky at Omni Strategies. How the market economy and competition really make China strong.
, 
