Kinaforum

mandag 26. januar 2026

Germany weighs boon and bane of China's industrial expansion

Inside a hall stretching more than 100 meters (about 330 feet), countless robots hum as lights blink and warning signals chirp. Currently, only about a dozen people are working on the floor, with the remaining work being handled by high-performance machines.

Journalists are rarely allowed inside this high-tech factory from China, and when they are, the rules are strict: no photos, smartphone cameras are taped over, and even short audio recordings require approval from a press spokesperson.

The plant shrouded in secrecy is not located somewhere in China, but in Arnstadt, a small town in the eastern German state of Thuringia. It belongs to Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the Chinese global market leader in electric vehicle batteries. The factory produces 14 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery capacity a year — enough for at least 200,000 electric cars — supplying, among others, European automakers.

Japan returns last 2 pandas to China amid strained ties

The twin pandas Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei received visits from hordes of fans at their zoo home in Tokyo on Sunday ahead of their return to China at the end of the month, which comes as strained Japanese-Chinese ties make it unlikely that they will be replaced any time soon.

Their departure will leave Japan without the cuddly black-and-white animals for the first time since 1972, when China presented the country with two pandas, Kang Kang and Lan Lan, as a gift intended to mark the normalization of bilateral diplomatic ties.

China is known for sending pandas to other countries as a sign of good will. However, Chinese-Japanese ties have deteriorated greatly over the past few months, particularly since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in November that a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island Beijing claims as its own, could bring about a Japanese military response.

China didn’t grab many headlines at Davos, but it’s the elephant in the room

While high-profile world leaders in Davos last week opined on U.S. claims to Greenland, China’s envoy reiterated calls for cooperation. Businesses and analysts in China said the developments highlighted an opportunity for Beijing to expand its influence globally as tensions between the U.S. and its allies grow.

This year’s Davos is a “watershed” moment, said Hai Zhao, a director of international political studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a state-affiliated think tank. He said countries are likely to shift toward regional trade, rather than a global economy centered on the U.S.

The world’s second-largest economy sent He Lifeng, one of its four vice premiers, to Davos, where he promoted business opportunities in China and called for the fair treatment of Chinese companies. In his speech Tuesday, He cited U.S.-China trade talks as an example of cooperation, with no specific discussion of other countries.

Carney says Canada not pursuing free trade deal with China as Trump threatens 100% tariffs

Canada has “no intention” of pursuing a free trade deal with China, Prime Minister Mark Carney said, after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to slap punitive tariffs on Ottawa. Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Carney said that the country respects its obligations under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, known as CUSMA in Canada and the USMCA in the U.S., and will not pursue a free trade agreement without notifying the other two parties.

Carney’s remarks come after Trump threatened to put a 100% tariff on Canadian exports if Ottawa “makes a deal” with Beijing. “If Governor Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken,” Trump posted on Truth Social Saturday.

Russia looks to India to fill labor shortage

At least 40,000 Indian citizens are expected to come to Russia as workers in 2026.

This was recently announced by Boris Titov, Russia's special representative for relations with international organizations in the field of sustainable development, to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. Vinay Kumar, the Indian ambassador in Moscow who also spoke with the agency, said between 70,000 and 80,000 Indian citizens were already working in Russia at the end of 2025.

This movement from India to Russia has its origins in an agreement on labor mobility signed in December 2025 at a meeting in New Delhi between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The document plans for a quota of over 70,000 Indian citizens for 2026.

Nvidia’s Huang to visit China as AI chip sales stall

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang plans to visit China in the coming days ahead of the mid-February Lunar New Year, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC. The trip comes as questions persist over the U.S. chip giant’s ability to sell in the Chinese market, which once accounted for at least one-fifth of revenuefrom Nvidia’s data center business.

U.S. export restrictions have prevented Nvidia from selling its most advanced chips to China as Washington seeks to maintain an edge over Beijing in chips used to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence. Huang is expected to attend an Nvidia company party in Beijing on Monday, said one of the sources, who requested anonymity to speak about the trip.

He is also set to meet with potential buyers in China and discuss recent logistical challenges in supplying U.S.-approved Nvidia chips into the market, according to a person with direct knowledge of the travel plans.

Where is the US-China AI 'race' heading in 2026?

One year ago this week, Silicon Valley and Wall Street were shocked by the release of China's DeepSeek mobile app, which rivaled US-based large language models like ChatGPT by showing comparable performance on key benchmarks at a fraction of the cost while using less-advanced chips.

DeepSeek opened a new chapter in the US-China rivalry, with the world recognizing the competitiveness of Chinese AI models, and Beijing pouring more resources into developing its own AI ecosystem.

In its AI action plan released several months after DeepSeek's emergence, President Donald Trump's administration laid out the stakes in stark terms: "The United States is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence (AI)." The plan, titled "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan," called for rolling back regulatory barriers that allegedly hinder innovation and leveraging the dominance of US tech around the world.

EU, India set for historic trade deal amid US tariffs

At a high stakes summit in New Delhi this week, the EU and India are expected to finalize a free trade agreement and sign a new security and defense partnership, the third such agreement between the EU and an Asian country after Japan and South Korea.

"Despite longstanding arguments in favor of a closer partnership, including shared competition with China and trade incentives for both parties, it was Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Trump's punitive tariffs that have brought momentum to the relationship," said Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group based in Delhi.

Before the summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa will be the chief guests at India's Republic Day celebrations on Monday, when diverse floats from all over country will be on display alongside parading tanks and soldiers. They are the first top EU officials to be invited to take part in the event.

Pentagon to reduce its role in deterrence of North Korea

The Pentagon foresees a “more limited” role in deterring North Korea, with South Korea taking primary responsibility for the task, a Pentagon policy document released on Friday said, in a move likely to raise concern in Seoul.

South Korea hosts about 28,500 US troops in combined defence against North Korea’s military threat and Seoul has raised its defence budget by 7.5% for this year. “South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support,” said the National Defense Strategy, a document that guides the Pentagon’s policies.

“This shift in the balance of responsibility is consistent with America’s interest in updating US force posture on the Korean Peninsula,” the document added. In recent years, some US officials have signalled a desire to make US forces in South Korea more flexible to operate outside the Korean peninsula in response to a broader range of threats, such as defending Taiwan and checking China’s growing military reach.

Chinese asylum seeker who exposed rights abuses fights to stay in the US

Guan Heng, who exposed human rights abuses in his native China, has been in U.S. custody since being swept up in an immigration enforcementoperation in August. He says he dares not even think about what would happen to him if he were sent back. “I would be prosecuted, I would be jailed, I would be tortured. All of that could happen,” Guan, 38, told The Associated Press in a recent call from the Broome County Correctional Facility in New York.

A judge on Monday is to consider his appeal to remain in the United States, where he sought asylum after fleeing his homeland more than four years ago to publish video footage of detention facilities in China’s Xinjiang region.

A US warship is making a friendship visit to a Cambodian naval base upgraded with China’s help

The USS Cincinnati arrived at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base on Saturday, marking the first time a U.S. Navy warship has docked at the facility since its Chinese-funded renovation was completed early last year.

The completion of a new pier and dry dock at Ream has fueled concerns in Washington that China — Cambodia’s close ally and main provider of aid and investment — may have been granted exclusive access to the base.

Controversy has persisted since 2019 over reports of a potential 30-year agreement for Chinese military use of the site on the Gulf of Thailand. Although Beijing funded the base’s expansion, the Cambodian government has denied any agreement for exclusive Chinese privileges. Prime Minister Hun Manet, who oversaw the base’s reopening in April 2025, has maintained that Ream is open to all friendly nations for joint exercises, provided the ships are not too large for the facility.

Report: 3.36 million Tibetans affected by China’s forced labour drive since 2000, 650,000 in 2024 alone

UN rights experts have on Jan 22 expressed deep concern stemming from allegations of forced labour affecting Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz minority groups as well as Tibetans in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and across other parts of the People’s Republic of China. In the case of Tibetans, they have said the policy not only devastatingly affects their livelihood but also threatens their cultural identity and way of life.

Referring to a persistent pattern of alleged State-imposed forced labour involving ethnic minorities across multiple provinces in China, the experts have said, “In many cases, the coercive elements are so severe that they may amount to forcible transfer and/or enslavement as a crime against humanity.”

Noting that forced labour in China is enabled through the State-mandated “poverty alleviation through labour transfer” programme in the case of Xinjiang, the experts have said Tibetans are also subjected to forced labour through similar schemes such as the Training and Labour Transfer Action Plan, which involves systematic training and transfer of “rural surplus labourers.”

Citizens’ servility to censorship China’s strongest weapon?

US tech billionaire entrepreneur Palmer Luckey has said in a podcast interview that despite their advanced weapons capabilities, China’s strongest weapon may be the government’s ability to control the populace with propaganda and get people to buy into causes that might be completely false.

He has expressed astonishment with China’s culture and how it differs from America, saying they’re much more open to censorship.

Providing a sweeping assessment of China’s control over political memory and public discourse, Luckey has argued in a conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, that social norms and state systems reinforce one another. And he has described how many Chinese citizens dismiss Western concerns about historical atrocities such as Tiananmen Square as irrelevant, portraying those who raise the topic as disruptive.

Can India's 'heritage walks' make learning history more fun?

India's capital, Delhi, sits at the crossroads of history, shaped by centuries of empires, cultures and political change. From the Delhi sultanate and the Mughal empire to British colonial rule — Delhi bears the imprints of each era, making it one of the most historically rich cities in the Indian subcontinent, and one that attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year.

No history book covering India would be complete without a chapter on Delhi. But the study of that history does not capture the imagination of many young students in India. This is compounded by the increased politicization of history in recent years, which has opened deep political fissures.

But Delhi's "heritage walks" are attracting more young people to the subject by making learning about the past an immersive experience.

India: Security, terrorism laws used to silence dissent

Thousands of prisoners in India are trapped in a legal limbo under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, commonly known as UAPA, with recent Supreme Court decisions fueling the debate on India's definition of terrorism and its use of security laws.

This month, the Supreme Court denied bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, two activists accused in the 2020 Delhi riots case, while granting bail to five others charged in the same conspiracy. The two face accusations of inciting clashes in New Delhi that killed 53 people, most of them Muslims. They have now spent more than five years in prison without trial.

"Of the 18 accused in the 2020 riots cases, 16 are Muslims; while ruling Bharatiya Janata Party leaders whose hate speeches preceded the violence, faced no charges. Neither Khalid nor Imam were even present in Delhi during the violence," Brinda Karat, senior Communist Party of India leader, told DW.

The Firewall Against Chinese Cars Is Cracking

Two decades ago, a California company called Tesla Motors almost single-handedly created the electric vehicle as we now know it. Elon Musk’s company has dominated the industry across the globe ever since. But last year, for the first time in a long time, the world’s biggest seller of EVs wasn’t Tesla. It was the Chinese auto giant BYD.

The secret to BYD’s success is simple: The company makes high-tech electric and hybrid cars and sells them at incredible prices. The tiny BYD Seagull costs as little as $8,000 in China, and it’s a megahit in several countries. The Chinese car industry—not just BYD but also its many competitors that also make affordable cars—is quickly taking over the world. In Europe, Chinese models make up nearly 10 percent of new-car sales, in large part because they’re typically thousands of dollars cheaper than options from homegrown Volkswagen and Renault. And in Mexico, about 20 percent of new cars are made in China.

How Mark Carney left Donald Trump in the dust in Davos

The meeting and venue were the same, but the style and tone of the two most anticipated keynote speeches at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss town of Davos could not have been more different.

On Tuesday, January 20, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney addressed the assembled political and business leaders as one of them: a national leader with deep expertise in finance.

He spoke about a “rupture” in the world order and the duty of nations to come together through appropriate coalitions for the benefit of all. It was a paean to multilateralism, but one that recognized that the US would no longer provide the glue to hold alliances together. Carney never mentioned the US by name in his speech, instead talking of “great powers” and “hegemons.”

Trump at Davos marked start of a new world era

Donald Trump’s concern about the strategic positioning of Greenland is rational. But the way the US president has approached the issue is not – and could still rupture NATO and cause enduring harm to North Atlantic political and economic relations.

The question for those attending the World Economic Forum in Davos all week has been how to respond to Trump’s ambition for the US to own Greenland by hook or by crook.His speech on January 21 – which appeared to concede that the US will not take Greenland by force – and his subsequent claim of having negotiated what he referred to as a “framework agreement” with the Nato secretary-general, Mark Rutte, have at least given the assembled heads of state something to work with.

But America’s allies are faced with a series of options. They could try to wait out the 1,093 days left in Trump’s term in the hope that nothing drastic happens. They could appease Trump by conceding to some of his demands.