They have to. China’s economy (and likely the government?) would be facing even more severe trouble without extensive export growth. Foreign markets are the country’s only lifeline after a decade of so of failed economic policy. The world is waking up only slowly, but at least supply chain diversification is underway.

It is a really racist and dictatorial policy:

The new law was needed to provide better legal safeguards for the party’s “ethnic work” in order to “maintain the security and stability of China’s border regions and ethnic regions […]

and

[there is] “no way” that non-Han people would be able to safely express “any type of discontent without being accused of being essentially separatists or terrorists."

Modi has been hugging also Putin when they met in the last two years. Seems he should rethink his friendships …

‘Welcome to CHINA’ greets Philippine officials on trip to disputed South China Sea

• Philippine officials visit Thitu amid Chinese presence
• Roaming message says “Welcome to CHINA”
• Filipino fishermen say China stops them fishing best waters
• China claims most of South China Sea despite 2016 Hague ruling

Alarming Statistics: Retractions and China’s NSFC Sanctions Rock Chinese Academia

China leads global retractions, with studies showing 40% of biomedical papers tainted by misconduct per surveys. In 2025, NSFC [National Natural Science Foundation of China] disclosed multiple batches: 26 cases in April (plagiarism, data forgery) and 25 in July, affecting top institutions. 96 By early 2026, another 46 sanctions linked to 20 universities emerged.

• 2023 Hindawi: 8,200+ Chinese-linked retractions out of 9,600 total.
• NSFC 2025: 51 sanctions, including 11 proposal plagiarisms.
• Medical universities: 14.81% lack public RM [research misconduct] investigation records.

These figures underscore pressure from ‘publish or perish’ metrics at elite ‘Double First-Class’ universities, where 15% report incidents.

… a more useful study …

What is a ‘more useful study’? The researchers tested a hypothesis, and the result is clear.

There are many other studies. A comparison of how different authoritarian countries approach this issue would also be very interesting, but this is absolutely valued research imo.

I disagree. It just depends what you want to analyze.

This is just another study that proves Chinese censorship regarding LLMs. There’s ample evidence.

The US or anyone else may also censor (if the US hasn’t done so already, I wouldn’t be surprised if they do in the future), but this isn’t an excuse for China.

This is not a ‘trend’ but a controlled influence campaign by the Chinese party-state.

“As a Chinese person who has been online throughout years and years of heavy Sinophobia, it felt refreshing to have the mainstream opinion finally shift regarding China,” Claire, a Chinese-Canadian TikTok user, tells BBC Chinese.

There has been no “heavy sinophobia” but reports that were and still are critical about the Chinese government. Nor does the mainstream opinion now shift as people are still if not even more aware of Beijing’s atrocities. This is just an influencer saying something like that for money, and I would like to know who pays her.

The article itself says later:

[Chinese state media and the government] have sought to portray the US as a decaying superpower because of inequality, a weak social safety net and a broken healthcare system. According to a commentary in state-owned Xinhua, the “kill line” meme “underscores how far the lived reality can drift from the ideals once broadcast to the world”.

And:

It’s little wonder that Chinese authorities are pleased with Chinamaxxing […] Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said […] he was “happy” to see foreigners experiencing the “everyday life of ordinary Chinese people”.

Sure, they are pleased. They control the entire campaign on social media.

As the article says at the end:

It’s hard to know what Chinese people make of so many things because all public conversation and activity is heavily policed. Criticising the government is risky and protests are quickly quashed.

Tere is a lot the memes making it to the West don’t show. China’s youth are facing an unemployment rate that sits at more than 15% and burning out from a gruelling work culture, yet sharing too much of their pessimism online could alert internet censors. They are worried about finding a home as the country’s property crisis continues, and dating is no easier than anywhere else.

Yes, and there is a lot more what is not displayed on Chinese social media given the state’s censorship.

The headline and the article are highly misleading imo. This is pure Chinese Communist Party propaganda.

Yeah, South Africa’s exports to China in 2025 stood at USD 13.6 billion, up 9.6% year-on-year.

South Africa’s imports from China in 2025 grew to USD 24.9 billion, up 14.6%.

South Africa’s trade deficit with China has been growing in recent years.

South Africa is also supporting Beijing’s one-China policy and says Taiwan is part of China. Economic and political coercion works it seems.

China’s ‘four-year spree energy spree’ has not only eclipsed the entire US power grid. It is even worse: China’s solar industry’s capacity reached levels capable of satisfying global demand roughly twice over, according to figures from late last year.

And this is only solar. China is also the world’s largest producer, importer, and consumer of coal. The country burns 56% of the world’s coal, has tripled consumption since 2000 and is building coal plants at the fastest pace in the last decade.

China not only increases its coal dependence but is also building solar panels it cannot use, in part because the Chinese grid is still unfit. Issues such as curtailment, where solar energy production has to shut down due to grid limitations, have become an obstacle China hasn’t yet solved.

As Morningstar reports,

China’s solar-capacity factor … stood at just 14.7% in 2023, compared with 23.3% in the United States.

And it’s getting worse. In 2024, solar capacity grew by 45% while generation increased only 28%. Do the math and the implied capacity factor drops toward 11% or 12%. IEEFA data shows utilization hours collapsed from 1,030 in 2020 to just 473 in 2024.

That means that roughly five-sixths of the time China’s solar installations sit there doing nothing. They are the world’s most expensive decorations - a clean-energy Potemkin village stretched across the provinces.

China is building solar capacity faster than it can use it, faster than its grid can absorb, faster than any economic logic would justify. The result is panels producing power that nobody can buy, connected to a grid that cannot handle the load.

But the Chinese government has been up to sustain investment growth at any cost to compensate for the decline of the country’s troubled property sector and stalling domestic consumption. So China built new factories not just in solar, but also in electric cars and batteries.

Similar as in these other industries, the policy led to fierce price wars in Chinese solar markets and to an overcapacity that is now desperately seeking its solution in export markets. But despite huge state subsidies, more than 40 Chinese solar manufacturers have already gone bankrupt or halted production since 2024. One-third of China’s 121 listed solar producers are operating at a loss with China’s top four solar manufacturers - Longi Green Energy, Jinki Solar, JA Sola, and Trina Solar - collectively lost $1.5 billion in the first half of 2025 alone.

Chinese solar companies have already responded by laying off a third of their workers, according to a Reuters analysis of company filings.

Yet the headline tells you of a thriving Chinese renewable energy industry.

I could continue this for a long time, but I don’t want to overdo it. The linked reports make an excellent read, though, and you’ll find more across the web.

Some say that exceptionally low prices help accelerate solar adoption to save the climate, but this is short-term thinking imo. In the long-term it is much better if we develop diverse suppliers working across different supply chains to reach a more stable, fast, and - above all - just energy transition.

I am not ‘dense’ but this is about the Russia connection. This is unrelated to any other issues.

Whataboutism, the rhetorical practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation, by asking a different but related question, or by raising a different issue altogether […] - Source

@subversive_dev

This is a questionable interpretation and a highly misleading title and content.

TL;DR: China’s export-focused economy is doing relatively well, all other sectors fall further behind. It’s another proof for Beijing’s mercantilism and its increasing dependency on foreign markets.

China’s official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index fell back in contraction to 49.3. The fact that it diverges from the (private) RatingDog PMI provided by S&P (and cited in linked the article), suggests that external activity continues to be much stronger than domestic demand.

In other words: China’s economy is still highly reliant on exports, it does carries over its troubles into 2026 (this interpretation is in line with several analysts, see, for example, the report by ING Bank).

Unlike China’s official PMI, the private RatingDog PMI has a sample size focused on private and particularly export-oriented companies. We have seen that the gap between the two PMIs has been growing especially in the second half of 2025, and this gap is now even larger.

We also see that China’s official NBS Non-Manufacturing PMI fell back into contraction to 49.4 in January 2026 from 50.2 in December 2025, reflecting cautious consumer spending and and persistent stress in the property sector.

The consequences of China growth model are felt already by ordinary people, as one analysis reads:

[China’s] The country’s growth has become increasingly expensive to maintain, and its dividends are reaching ordinary households with diminishing force.

The divergence between headline growth and household reality is now impossible to ignore. While GDP expanded by 5 percent in 2025, median per capita disposable income – a more representative measure of what typical families actually earn – rose by only 4.4 percent, slowing from the 5.1 percent gain in the previous year. Urban residents fared even worse, with median income growth of just 3.7 percent – worse than the 4.6 percent growth in 2024. The slowdown may seem modest in percentage terms, but it signals something profound: the transmission mechanism that once converted aggregate growth into broadly shared prosperity is weakening. – (Archived)

[Edit typo.]

@Cowbee@lemmygrad.ml

Lemmygrad. ml is explicitly ML.

Exploring Left-Wing Extremism on the Decentralized Web: An Analysis of Lemmygrad. ml

… findings reveal a substantial increase in user activity and toxicity levels following the migration of these subreddits to Lemmygrad. ml. We also identify posts that support authoritarian regimes, endorse the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and feature anti-Zionist and antisemitic content … Moreover, their support can extend beyond backing these authoritarian regimes, even cheering on their violent actions, as evidenced by their posts on the Russian invasion of Ukraine …

The whole study makes a good read.

never anything that paints China (let alone its government) in the slightest positive light

Feel free to change that. Just use quite sensible and well-sourced articles.

How many journalists have taken sponsored China trips? Or trips to any other country?

We know how things work.

You are just parroting propaganda.

It’s time for some allies, like Europe

Yeah, but Carney didn’t make a deal with Europe last week but rather with another bully that doesn’t value the rule of law. I hope Mr. Carney corrects this mistake.

Oh, no, your fellow Chinese worker will still suffer from forced labour under the same regime while the markup goes the corporation owner. It’s just now a Chinese company owner under the control of a dictator. That’s the same thing, but you criticize the one and praise the other. What a hypocrisy.

with a small markup for the fellow poorly paid American assembly worker

You forget that the fellow poorly paid Chinese assembly worker endures even more hardship under a coerced labour regime. We must have transparent global supply chains - something China has been lobbying against for years - ‘if this shit is to ever get better.’