Beijing Defies US Sanctions; Truck-Mounted Nuclear Reactors; CO2 Into Jet Fuel — China's Week, May 5.
Charge in six minutes, dive 1500 km; Solar exports double thanks to oil crisis; Beijing reviews Washington's ability to make and keep agreement.
Science & Technology
Truck-mounted nuclear reactor could power AI data centers.
Nuclear power sector can now build 50 reactors at a time.
Chinese scientists turn carbon dioxide into jet fuel as prices soar.
Lunar rover Yutu-2 was supposed to work for 3 months, lasted 7 years where daytime temperature rise above 150ºC, and drop to minus 180°C at night.
Nationwide, multilayered computing grid hits 1,882 exaflops, (1,882 billion billion calculations/sec), 6,000X more than reported computing power.
AI computing cluster’s 60,000 accelerator chips switched on. The entire stack is produced within China to avoid external control.
China’s pharma dominance begins: it surpasses the US as the global drug development center.
CATL shocks industry with a new 1,500 km car battery that charges in 6 minutes.
Chinese universities surpassed US rivals in AI ranking in 2022, with Peking University at the top.
Finance & Economy
China’s ports handled 8 million vessel calls and 4.8 billion tons of cargo in Q1—up 6.6% and 22% YoY respectively.
China’s shipyards secured 70% of new orders in 2025! Oil tanker orders as Iran conflict drives demand.
China, Indonesia fully link national QR payment networks, a deliberate move to bypass the dollar. Transactions settle directly in rupiah and yuan. No USD in the chain.
Society & Environment
Chinese outbound trips reach 2019 levels, trips to Turkey rise 47% following visa-free policy.
Record high solar exports double in March, clean power surpasses fossil fuels for the first time.
Fossil fuel electricity generation has declined for the first time this century, by 56 TWh in 2025, as record clean power expansion met all domestic demand growth.
Governance, Geopolitics & Diplomacy
Leading scientists rise to the top in the Communist Party as their numbers double.
World’s first laws govern emotional bonding between humans and AI. The behavioral data shows why.
China to refiners: “Ignore US sanctions; conduct your business regardless,” while Beijing reviews US ‘agreement ability’. This decision suggests the answer.
China’s Global Security Initiative building momentum since 2022, wins Global South recognition as the cooperative alternative to traditional security frameworks.
The overall percentage of Americans viewing China as an enemy dropped from 42% in 2024 to 28% now. — Pew Survey
Defense
The U.S. plans to procure foreign destroyer and frigate designs and build warships in overseas shipyards, tanks to the limited capacities of the U.S. shipbuilding industry.
The US War Machine Underwhelms: American military cannot keep up with Iran’s counter attacks or China’s technological leapfrog and cost advantages. Hua Bin.
Pentagon: PLA has 1,350 to 1,500 land-based SAM launchers, suggestsing a daily launch capacity of 8,000 to 10,000, creating a situation that makes the American siege strategy completely unsustainable, and no anti-aircraft battery is capable of changing that sentence.
China exported 60 tons of yttrium oxide to the USA in March. Vital for weapons and jet engine makers, it’s the biggest yttrium shipment ever.
That 1,882 exaflop compute grid, built entirely on domestic chips, deserves more attention than a bullet point. US export controls bet on chokepoint leverage at the most advanced nodes. China's response has been raw volume on mature processes, and at 6,000x reported capacity, the gap between "best chip" and "enough chips" looks functionally closed. Meanwhile, the record 60-ton yttrium shipment to the US arrived the same month Beijing told refiners to ignore sanctions. Hard to read that as anything other than a demonstration of who actually holds supply chain leverage.
In essence, one party has the recipe for socioeconomic/industrial acceleration. The counter-party deceleration.
Due tell, please.