China's Newest Aircraft Carrier

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) — China’s newest, largest and most-advanced aircraft carrier, the Fujian, took a big step to joining the world’s largest naval fleet on Wednesday as it set out from Shanghai for its first sea trials.

The naval assessment is expected to take place in the East China Sea, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) from the Jiangnan Shipyard where the carrier has been under construction for more than six years, according to Shanghai’s Maritime Safety Administration.

“The sea trials will primarily test the reliability and stability of the aircraft carrier’s propulsion and electrical systems,” read an announcement from the state-run Xinhua news agency on Wednesday.

The warship was launched in 2022 and has “completed its mooring trials, outfitting work and equipment adjustments” working up to the latest sea trials, Xinhua said.

With a displacement of 80,000 metric tons, the Fujian dwarfs the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) two active carriers, the 66,000-ton Shandong and the 60,000-ton Liaoning. Only the United States Navy operates bigger aircraft carriers than Fujian.   READ MORE...

China is Developing Space Weapons

 China is developing anti-satellite weapons as part of a “breathtaking” military expansion, US defense experts have warned Gen Stephen Whiting.

Get info without leaving the page., the head of the US Space Command, said Beijing had “tripled the number of intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance satellites on orbit” in just six years.

“Frankly, the People’s Republic of China is moving at breathtaking speed in space and they are rapidly developing a range of counter-space weapons to hold at risk our space capabilities,” Gen Whiting said.


Counter-space attacks range from disruption of GPS signals or spoofing, to destroying a satellite by detonating a missile in space.

Experts have long warned of Beijing’s misuse of anti-satellite weapons and the need to clean up space from an environmental perspective. Debris still lingers in space from the ballistic missile China fired in 2007 to destroy an orbiting satellite.  READ MORE... 

China Scan Norfolk US Naval Base

In a display of its growing space prowess and surveillance capabilities, radar images of a US Navy base taken by a Chinese satellite are circulating online. Appearing first on China’s domestic social media platform Weibo, defense analysts later identified the spacecraft as the Taijing-4 03 “flat-plate radar imaging satellite” and identified the naval facility as the Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.

The radar image showed three aircraft carriers, what appeared to be two Arleigh Burke-class warships. Four other vessels in the image, however, cannot be identified.

The Norfolk base, on the east coast of the US, is one of the premier naval bases responsible for projecting power and operations in the Atlantic Ocean and is home to the Military Sealift Command and the submarines of the Atlantic Fleet. It is also the world’s largest shore-based naval establishment, supporting 75 ships and 134 aircraft alongside 14 piers and 11 aircraft hangars.  READ MORE...

BRICS is Expanding Against USA

The origins of BRICS — a bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and, as of 2024, new members Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates — can be traced back to a 2001 publication by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill titled ‘Building Better Global Economic BRICs’. O’Neill argued that Brazil, Russia, India and China were poised to play an increasingly significant role in the global economy.

His prediction was that by 2050, these countries would collectively account for 40 per cent of the world’s economic output. In reality, from 2012 to 2022 China alone has accounted for around a quarter of global GDP growth, and the BRICS countries together contributed over 45 per cent.

BRIC was officially launched in 2009 and was renamed BRICS in 2010 when South Africa joined the group. Since then, trade relations have clearly grown, but in a very unbalanced manner.

Most of the growth in trade has been China-centric, with the contribution from the rest of BRICS remaining quite flat until recently. The recent increase is mostly explained by India, which has experienced an acceleration in economic growth. BRICS members are increasingly intertwined with China as far as trade is concerned, but the remaining members have very few ties among themselves. Bilateral trade between BRICS members other than China remains extremely low.  READ MORE...

Minerals Found on the Moon

A panoramic photo of the lunar surface captured by China’s Chang’e 5 as it landed on the Moon in 2020. Credit: China National Space Administration




China’s Chang’e 5 lander returned to Earth on 16 December 2020 with the first sample brought back from the Moon since 1976. Within the roughly 1.7 kg sample, researchers found a glass bead with a pit about 9 µm across, formed by the impact of a piece of fast-traveling space dust known as a micrometeorite. On the rim of the tiny crater they found two titanium-based minerals—trigonal and triclinic Ti2O—that had not been found on the Moon before and do not occur naturally on Earth. Those are now the seventh and eighth new minerals discovered on the Moon to date, as described in a recent Nature Astronomy paper by Xiaojia Zeng, Yanxue Wu, and colleagues.

Above Earth, the friction generated by meteors moving through the atmosphere slows them down and can burn them up, depending on their incoming size and speed. Above the Moon and other airless bodies, though, there is no atmospheric buffer between the debris of space and the rocky surface. The Moon is thus bombarded not only with the large meteors and asteroids that have given rise to its iconic cratered surface but also with tiny dust-sized meteors that travel at high speeds—as fast as 20 km/s, about 30 times as fast as an F-16 jet. Those micrometeorite impacts are crucial to the weathering of the lunar surface.     READ MORE...

Evidence of Gravitons

A research team led by Chinese scientists has provided the first experimental evidence hinting at the existence of gravitons, theoretical particles believed to mediate the force of gravity, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

This discovery marks a significant step towards bridging the gap between quantum mechanics and general relativity, two pillars of modern physics that have remained largely incompatible.

The research, carried out by a collaboration between scientists from Nanjing University in eastern China, the United States, and Germany, involved placing a thin layer of semiconductor under extreme conditions. 

By cooling the semiconductor to near absolute zero and applying a magnetic field 100,000 times stronger than the Earth’s, the team managed to excite the semiconductor’s electrons to move in unison. This collective motion caused the electrons to spin in a manner consistent with predictions about gravitons, despite not confirming the particle’s direct existence.

“Our work has shown the first experimental substantiation of gravitons in condensed matter since the elusive particle was conceptualized in the 1930s,” Du Lingjie, the study’s lead author from Nanjing University, told state news agency Xinhua, as reported by SCMP.  READ MORE...

India Challenges China on Technology

For years, China has been Asia’s technology powerhouse.

It is home to what once were some of the world’s most valuable companies, from Tencent to Alibaba. It is where most of the world’s iPhones and other electronics products are produced. And it is now a serious player in electric vehicles.

But a shift appears to be underway, with other countries in Asia trying to take China’s crown.

India is one of these contenders. New Delhi has sought to woo foreign tech companies and has been increasingly successful, with giants like Apple increasing their presence in the country.

India is looking to boost areas such as high-tech electronics and semiconductor manufacturing, as well as support its burgeoning yet challenged startup scene.     READ MORE...

China's New Aerial Cluster Drone

Chinese scientists have developed a new type of war drone that can rapidly multiply midair, a tactical shock and awe phenomenon against potential adversaries like the US, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.

The new drone is similar to a consumer-grade Chinese DJI multirotor, which can split into two, three or even six smaller drones depending on battle needs.

Each drone has only one blade but can hover, move freely like a regular drone and communicate with other drones. Each can also play a specific role such as command, surveillance, tracking and even attack while collaborating to complete a mission.

SCMP notes that progress in this technology has been slow due to the significantly decreased flight efficiency of traditional drones combined.     READ MORE...

A Chinese Humanoid Robots Sets Record

The human body isn’t really an ideal template for a robot. Out of the entire family of primates, Homo sapiens are the only ones who spend a majority of their time on two feet—a biological outlier that isn’t exactly easy to replicate in artificial form. In the past decade, many companies have created impressive facsimiles: robots that can run, jump, and stumble just like a real boy. But none of them have been able to generate very much speed while doing so. That’s beginning to change.

Earlier this month, the Chinese robotic company Unitree uploaded a sizzle video to Youtube that highlighted the impressive attributes of its H1 humanoid robot. Chief among those impressive attributed is the robot’s startling speed, clocking in at an impressive 3.3 m/s, or roughly 7.4 mph. That beats the previous record holder, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, which can book it at a steady 5.59 mph. Unitree claims that its artificial creation can even reach speeds of up to 11 mph.     READ MORE...

Russia & China to put Nuclear Plant on Moon

MOSCOW, March 5 (Reuters) - Russia and China are considering putting a nuclear power plant on the moon from 2033-35, Yuri Borisov, the head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos said on Tuesday, something he said could one day allow lunar settlements to be built.

Borisov, a former deputy defence minister, said that Russia and China had been jointly working on a lunar programme and that Moscow was able to contribute with its expertise on "nuclear space energy".

"Today we are seriously considering a project - somewhere at the turn of 2033-2035 - to deliver and install a power unit on the lunar surface together with our Chinese colleagues," Borisov said.

Solar panels would not be able to provide enough electricity to power future lunar settlements, he said, while nuclear power could.

"This is a very serious challenge...it should be done in automatic mode, without the presence of humans," he said of the possible plan.  READ MORE...

Boiling Tap Water Can Remove Microplastics

Boiling tap water before use can remove at least 80 per cent of the tiny, potentially harmful plastic particles it contains.

Nano and microplastics (NMPs) are pieces of plastics like polystyrene, polythene and polypropylene that range from between 0.001 to 5 millimetres in diameter. Their impact on health is still being studied, but researchers suspect they are damaging to humans.


Eddy Zeng at Jinan University in China and his colleagues took samples of tap water and measured their levels of NMPs, finding an average concentration of 1 milligram per litre. They then boiled the samples for 5 minutes, before allowing them to cool. The levels of NMPs were then remeasured and found to have reduced by more than 80 per cent.  READ  MORE...

China Obsessed with Sinking US Aircraft Carriers

Summary: The Third Taiwan Crisis in 1995-1996 exposed China to the strategic dominance of U.S. aircraft carriers, marking a turning point in Chinese military planning. Following Taiwan's democratic elections and the U.S.'s military support, China initiated military exercises as a form of intimidation, which included missile tests near Taiwan. 

The U.S. responded with a powerful carrier presence, highlighting China's military limitations. This event spurred China into expanding its naval capabilities, purchasing and refurbishing an unfinished Russian carrier into the Liaoning, and developing anti-ship ballistic missiles. Today, China aspires to a significant carrier fleet while innovating in carrier countermeasures.  READ MORE...

China's Aggressive & Insidious Behavior in the Pacific

Soldiers from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion 69 Infantry Regiment , New York Army National Guard acting as an opposing force defend their positions during the final battle of Exercise Talisman Sabre at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area, Queensland, Australia on July 19, 2017.U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Michael Tietjen



The US Army is conducting various training and exercises with international partners in the Indo-Pacific region.

US Army Pacific's commanding general said the land power network across the region is stronger than ever.

The increased partnership is the "greatest counterweight" to China's "aggressive, insidious" approaches, he added.


Facing challenges from China and the possibility of a future fight in the Pacific, the US Army is training closer than ever with its international allies and partners to harness the skills needed for land combat across the challenging and diverse region.

Those exercises, from biennial training in Australia to US Army Pacific's new Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center rotations in Alaska and Hawaii, and the "persistent state of partnering" with allies is "the greatest counterweight" against China's "aggressive, insidious" behavior, US Army Pacific's commanding general told Business Insider during an interview at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska.     READ MORE...

China Hacking US Documents

More than 570 documents reported to be from a Chinese state-backed hacking group were posted online.


They mentioned targets in at least 20 countries and territories, The Washington Post reported.


Officials have issued repeated warnings about China's hacking operations.


A reported trove of leaked Chinese hacking documents may have given the world a glimpse of how widespread and effective China's hacking operations could be.


More than 570 files and documents were posted to the developer platform GitHub last week, The Washington Post reported. They appear to document hacking activity across multiple countries and come from iSoon, which the Post identified as a private security contractor with ties to China's Ministry of Public Security.  READ MORE...

Offensive Cyber Attacks Via Generative AI

Microsoft said Wednesday it had detected and disrupted instances of U.S. adversaries — chiefly Iran and North Korea and to a lesser extent Russia and China — using or attempting to exploit generative artificial intelligence developed by the company and its business partner to mount or research offensive cyber operations.


The techniques Microsoft observed, in collaboration with its partner OpenAI, represent an emerging threat and were neither “particularly novel or unique,” the Redmond, Washington, company said in a blog post.  READ MORE...

Global Markets Moving Apart

The world's biggest economies are seeing a "decoupling," Bank of America says.
The US is showing surprising resilience, European growth is weak, and China is faltering.
Global stocks have reflected the shifting tides in trade and supply chains.

The biggest players in the global economy are on different trajectories, and markets around the world are reflecting the shifting landscape.

In Bank of America's view, the US economy continues to show remarkable resilience, European growth has faltered, and China faces the most challenging outlook amid real estate woes, deflation, and demographic headwinds.

"Signs of decoupling are present in global growth, trade, and equity markets," Bank of America strategists wrote in a Friday note.  READ MORE...

An AI Simulated Child

A Chinese scholar has unveiled what he's calling the world's first AI child — and saying the creation could bring the technology into a new age.

As the South China Morning Post reports, visitors at the Frontiers of General Artificial Intelligence Technology Exhibition held in Beijing at the end of January were able to interact with the avatar representing Tong Tong, a virtual toddler whose name translates to "Little Girl" in English.


Created at the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI) — which, yes, are dedicated to building artificial general intelligence, or human-level AI — Tong Tong is the brainchild of Zhu Songchun, the institute's computer scientist founder who specializes in "cognitive artificial intelligence," or AI designed to mimic human cognition.

While AI avatars can have all kinds of simulated appearances and personalities, they say Tong Tong is designed to break new technical ground by not only executing tasks given to her in a virtual environment, but independently giving herself new tasks as well.     READ MORE...

The Comeback of the Russian Navy

According to reports from the Kremlin, the Russian Navy will receive 12 surface warships and four submarines in 2024 – while it also claimed to achieved total import substitution in the construction of those vessels.

The Resurgence of the Russian Navy is Already Underway - The United States has increasingly put a focus on the size of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), which is now the largest naval force in the world. However, it may not just be China that should be seen as a potential concern.

According to reports from the Kremlin, the Russian Navy will receive 12 surface warships and four submarines in 2024 – while it also claimed to achieved total import substitution in the construction of those vessels. Import substitution industrialization (ISI) is a policy that has been typically enacted by developing countries with the intention to enable domestic development and self-sufficiency through the creation of an internal market. However, Russia faced international sanctions following its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.   READ MORE...

Not Enough Military Power for China to Invade Taiwan

A new survey of leading experts from the US and Taiwan casts doubt on China's ability to invade Taiwan with its current military strength.

The survey, released on Monday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, gathered opinions from 52 US experts in November and December last year.

These included people with extensive experience in the US government, academics, and think-tank experts who had testified in Congress before, the center said.

And only 27% of them said they strongly or somewhat agreed the People's Liberation Army had the might to pull off an amphibious invasion, per the report.     READ MORE...

CHINA Leading EV Exporter GLOBALLY

There's a new king of the global auto market. The global shift to electric cars, signified by companies like Tesla and BYD, has helped China's carmakers potentially reach two important milestones, unseating once-dominant players and unnerving legacy automakers in Europe, Japan and the U.S.

Chinese carmakers exported 3.83 million passenger cars in 2023, a 62% increase from the year before, the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) estimated during a press conference on Tuesday. That would mark the first time its exports have surpassed those of Japan—Japanese carmakers exported 3.5 million cars between January and November, according to Reuters. The CPCA estimated that 5.26 million vehicles in total were exported from China, compared to 4.3 million from Japan.

Chinese brands also outsold foreign carmakers inside China, taking 52% of the domestic market, up 4.6 percentage points from the year before.     READ MORE...