Drone air taxis pick up first fares: 142 billion trees; massive A2S missile; pig liver works 10 days in human and much, much more
Research & Technology
China’s autonomous passenger drones enter commercial operation, with the first batch of two passenger drone operation certificates issued on Friday.
Beijing Betavolt’s coin-sized 3V batteries last 50 years: now shipping. Powered by a radioactive nickel isotope that decays into stable copper, it’s a practical, scalable nuclear power solution.
Injecting magnesium powder into conventional jet fuel combustion exhaust gases doubles the thrust of scramjets.
Gene-edited pig liver works 10 days in human in a 50-year-old brain-dead recipient, where it performed basic functions for over a week.
The first emergency rescue robot can be quadrupedal, wheeled and tracked. It can walk, run, clim stairs and slopes, lie down and avoid obstacles. It can handle respiration monitoring, infusion, ultrasound, defibrillation, CPR and oxygen levels.
The world’s first mass produced 8” (20.3cm) N-polar gallium nitride wafer cuts GaN chip production costs 40%, with 12” wafers coming. 5G/6G networks, satellite communications, autonomous vehicles and radar systems.
First fusion-fission hybrid nuclear power plant will provide 100 MW of continuous electricity by 2030, aiming for an energy gain factor (Q value) of 30+. CERN’s €20bn Iter achieved a Q value of 1.5 in 2022.
World’s first music reasoning model, Mureka O1, has chain-of-thought technology to enhance music quality, creation efficiency, and flexibility.
First mass production of color e-paper 30+ inches begins. 2,560 x 1,440 px. Digital signage, public information screens and signs. Low power consumption, strong daylight readability and reduced eye strain.
DeepSeek-V3-0324 runs on Apple’s Mac Studio. The 685-billion-parameter large language model has a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture.
GNSS radio occultation satellites leverage radio transmissions from navigation satellites to measure atmospheric data. China will incorporate them into its national system and receive atmospheric profiles with a spatial resolution of 300km x 300km and a temporal resolution of 6 hours.
Xingyu Space raised tens of millions to build 3D-printed rocket engines, one of several companies using 3D printing technology in the launch sector. Genesat’s new factory turns out 150 1-ton-level satellites per year.
Economy & Finance
Hitting $265 billion, China’s pharmaceutical market is #2 behind the US’ $600 billion.
Two 1,000-tonne gold deposits found with advanced technology. Larger than South Africa’s. China output 377 tonnes last year. South Africa, Australia, Russia have more reserves.
Jingye, majority owner of British Steel, invested £1.2bn and lost £700k a day since 2020 to maintain operations. Yesterday, British Steel announced the end of steel production in Britain.
Coal slid 18% last year, but Dahaize Mine made $0.5 Bn net profit. With 100% AI and a 5G backbone, its skeleton crew of 980 produces $1 million of annual output each. Tunnel-inspecting drones scan shafts in eight minutes, while robotic arms repair pipes. Autonomous trucks ferry coal to to AI-powered washers.
Society
Surrogacy Case. A 17-year-old bearing surrogate twins for a 50-year-old man has sparked public outrage.
AI-generated misinformation on Chinese platforms? New regulations require all AI-generated content labeled with ‘explicit and implicit watermarks’. A few details suggest that the regulations will be strictly enforced.
Environment
Researchers counted the trees in China using lasers and found 142 billion. Plus or minus a few, of course.
Governance
Plan for Gradually Converting All Permanent Basic Farmland into High-standard Farmland by 2035 and adding 130 million mu of new water-saving irrigation area.
New regs: 3 M minimum building height, elevators over 5+ floors, sound insulation, higher balcony railings, platforms for outdoor AC units, and improved mobile signals.
China’s AI approach offers US policymakers valuable lessons. U.S. policymakers lack a coherent strategy to manage this challenge, finding themselves in a dangerous cycle of reactive decision-making that plays into Beijing’s hands.
The 2025 Budget discloses central and local government finances, public funds, state-owned capital and social insurance budgets – with detailed explanations – as part of Beijing’s commitment to open governance.
Diplomacy & Geopolitics
China Swoops In, Replaces Canceled Asian USAID Projects — one for child literacy and another to improve nutrition and development for kids under five. A week later, China’s aid agency announced funding for programs to achieve almost identical goals.
Triggering of a war by the US over Taiwan could easily become a Sicilian Expedition
The content below was originally paywalled.
for the US, as its economy is crippled without critical imports, sanctions and blockades fail, and the US military suffers a humiliating defeat. The only real risk to China would be an American nuclear murder-suicide.
Everything the US is doing is about preparing for war on China, which explains Washington’s bipartisan obsession with economically decoupling from China through tariffs, sanctions, and export restrictions and develop a separate supply chain without China — because it can’t keep making weapons for war on China if China is at the heart of the supply chain. Trump wants to colonize Greenland and Ukraine for a new critical mineral supply chain and to militarize the Arctic and block Chinese access — which is why he’d like to colonize Canada as well. Insanely, that is not a joke. The threat of a US colonial annexation of Canada is real. Trump wants to take over the Panama Canal to cut off China’s access to Latin America, which the US empire treats as its colonial ‘sphere of influence’. Everything the US regime is doing is about preparing for war. It fears that its global empire is at stake.
Defense
The KD-21 air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM) has a range of 800-1000 miles. Above seen carried by an H-6K bomber with a range of 3,500 miles, it could strike targets 6,000 miles away if launched from an altitude of 12 miles.
AI autonomy and 90-hour endurance of Rainbow-9 drone, above, will change unmanned warfare. It controls multiple drones simultaneously, a ground crew of five for flight oversight and payload handling.
Ford-class aircraft carriers depend on 6,500 Chinese-sourced semiconductors to operate. Most US Navy ships and aircraft are similarly dependent.
If it was the nation’s top priority, US armaments production would take a decade to achieve the current output of Russia and Iran and will neither, in our lives, nor that of our children’s children’s children, achieve the production output of China.
