Deep inside a limestone cave in southern China, paleontologists have uncovered an assemblage of thirteen fossilized teeth belonging to Gigantopithecus blacki, the largest primate species ever known to have lived.

The post Fossils from Chinese Cave Fill Crucial Gap in History of Gigantopithecus blacki appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

The upper stage from a commercial Chinese rocket that launched last week has broken apart in space, spreading debris in a heavily trafficked part of low-Earth orbit home to the International Space Station and a significant portion of SpaceX's Starlink broadband network.

The breakup occurred shortly after the Zhuque-2E rocket reached orbit on June 9 with two satellites providing direct-to-cell communications, perhaps around the time the upper stage was expected to perform a disposal burn. The US Space Force confirmed the breakup event in a post on space-track.org, a website used by the military to distribute orbit data to the public.

"The tracked pieces are being incorporated into routine conjunction assessment to support spaceflight safety," the Space Force wrote in an advisory. "There are currently no threats to human spaceflight. Analysis is ongoing."

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A cottage industry has emerged on Chinese e-commerce platforms selling tiny plastic doll heads designed to trick Tesla’s cabin camera into thinking a driver is paying attention. The devices cost as little as $20 to $50.

The products — marketed as “travel companions” and “dashboard decorations” — represent the latest and most absurd escalation in the arms race between Tesla’s driver monitoring safeguards and people determined to defeat them. It’s also incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.

Nvidia reportedly told Chinese customers its new Vera CPU for AI data centres could be available in August, in a move to regain ground in a market where its advanced GPU business has been stalled by US export curbs.

Reuters reported the chipmaker is pitching Vera as an alternative route into China after shipments of its H200 AI chip stalled for months. CEO Jensen Huang (pictured) previously said Nvidia’s market share in China had effectively fallen to zero, reflecting tighter US restrictions and Beijing’s push to support domestic suppliers.

The news site noted Vera is Nvidia’s first standalone CPU for agentic AI workloads, with the company claiming it delivers up to 1.8 times the performance of rival processors.

Huang unveiled Vera in March as part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin architecture and cast the CPU as a major new growth engine, as the company looks to expand beyond GPUs and into the server processor market.

Sources told Reuters one major Chinese cloud provider is planning to order more than 300 servers containing two Vera CPUs each for testing, with the chips set to be deployed first in overseas data centres before any wider commitment.

The move also sharpens Nvidia’s challenge to Intel and AMD, which dominate the server CPU market.

Because Vera is based on Arm architecture rather than x86, Nvidia is entering the segment as AI infrastructure demand shifts further toward inference and agentic computing, where CPUs are becoming increasingly important alongside accelerators.

Reuters added selling CPUs into China may prove easier for Nvidia than shipping high-end GPUs, which remain subject to stricter US controls.

Broader adoption, however, is likely to hinge on software compatibility and the willingness of Chinese operators to move workloads away from domestic AI silicon.

The post Nvidia targets China with Vera CPU push appeared first on Mobile World Live.

China’s Booming Dog Preschools Every weekday morning in Shanghai, a small crowd of dogs trots through the doors

This is the most concrete step yet toward complying with a divestiture order Beijing issued roughly two months ago on national security grounds.

A cottage industry of celebrity figurines, blinking screens, and other DIY gadgets is helping drivers bypass Tesla's distracted-driving controls.

In a lawsuit, the tech giant accused the group of using Google’s Gemini system to create hundreds of fake corporate and government websites.

The amount of oil and fuel stored by businesses and governments has fallen sharply since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: While traditional hotspots in the region such as Thailand, South Korea and Malaysia focus on services such as cosmetic surgery, IVF or physicals, China is trying to differentiate itself by providing some of the world's most advanced procedures. "There are two reasons why a patient travels for medical treatments: availability of advanced treatments and price," said Victor Cao, operations director of Joyful Medical, an agency in Shanghai that connects international patients to advanced cancer therapies in China. "Chinese people used to travel overseas for treatments that were not available at home, but now tables have turned." As expanding visa-free policies eased travel in the past year or so, videos are proliferating on social media of foreigners recounting their positive experiences of treatment in China, usually for consumer procedures like acupuncture and tooth scaling. But one treatment that's more quietly gaining traction is CAR-T, among the most promising breakthroughs in oncology but unavailable in most countries, or extremely costly. The process sees doctors collect T cells from the patient's blood then modify them in a lab to produce a special receptor, CAR, that can bind to a specific protein on cancer cells. These engineered cells are then multiplied into large numbers and infused back into the patient. The CAR-T cells seek out cancer cells carrying the target antigen and kill them. In the US, one single infusion can cost between $300,000 to $475,000, according to the American Cancer Society. In China, the equivalent costs about $150,000 to $180,000, and it could get even cheaper -- its drug regulator recently accepted a marketing application for a therapy aimed to be priced below 300,000 yuan ($44,000). China's medical tourism market remains in its infancy. Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone in Hainan, which was designated as the country's only special medical zone in 2013, treated just a few thousand foreign medical tourists last year, compared to hundreds of thousands of domestic patients who visited. There, patients can access advanced drugs, devices, and therapies approved in other countries but not elsewhere in mainland China. But China is pushing to upgrade its economy and reshape its global image from just a manufacturing hub into a provider of high-value services, and demand for medical tourism is surging. Globally, the market is estimated at around $34 billion and expected to reach $126 billion by 2035, according to San Francisco-based Grand View Research. Meanwhile, China's sector is projected to grow from $1.3 billion in 2025 to $3.4 billion by 2035, according to New York-based firm Market Research Future. "The patients chose China for something they can't get at home," said Shi Haoying, the group's founder and chief executive officer. "I think the growing attention to medical tourism to China is the inevitable result of long-term accumulation and development in many areas, such as growing medical technologies, quality of service and cost-effectiveness." Jeroen Groenewegen-Lau, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, added: "Many new treatments, including in very advanced areas, are made in China but too advanced for the state of its healthcare system and the ability of its patients to pay for these things. It's in China's interest to integrate into the international system."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: China was likely behind an online influence operation to sway U.S. perceptions of artificial intelligence technology and reshape the debate in Washington around the infrastructure needed to support it, according to research from OpenAI published Wednesday. OpenAI said it caught the influence campaign because China-backed operatives were using ChatGPT to create content for the social media campaign. [...] OpenAI's researchers identified two clusters of ChatGPT users "likely originating from China" who used the AI chatbot to generate social media content "in support of apparent covert influence operations" promoting certain narratives about AI. This includes claims that data center build-outs are raising electricity costs for the average American family and that President Donald Trump has weaponized tariffs to keep the U.S. ahead in the global tech race. These accounts have since been banned, the report said. One cluster of users asked ChatGPT to generate images and comments pushing these narratives. These comments were then posted on social media by "batches of accounts" posing as Americans, [said Ben Nimmo, principal investigator of intelligence and investigations at OpenAI]. Another cluster identified by researchers used AI to generate social media content criticizing the Trump administration's tariffs as an attempt to "dominate technological competition." Prompts used for this campaign were submitted in Simplified Chinese and asked that AI-generated content not include Chinese President Xi Jinping and focus solely on Trump -- a possible tell that China was behind the operation, according to the report. Nimmo said that the influence campaign amplified existing public backlash in the U.S. against the creation of new AI data centers, which has resulted in dozens of proposed moratoriums at the local, state and national level. "Neither campaign appears to have gained much authentic engagement," Nimmo said. "They're important for what they reveal about the intentions of influence operators from China, and the narratives they're testing and seeking to amplify, but not for the impact."

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China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) granted Xiaomi regulatory approval to produce extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs), clearing a key hurdle for the company’s expansion beyond battery-only EVs.

The approval paves the way for Xiaomi’s first range-extended model — a full-size SUV codenamed “Kunlun N3” that measures over 5.3 meters long and targets Li Auto’s dominant L9.

China has conducted a pair of launches to advance its communications capabilities, using the country’s largest rocket and a commercial launcher.

The post Long March 5 launches classified satellite, Zhuque-2E lofts direct-to-device test sats appeared first on SpaceNews.

Labour’s goal of 'dynamic alignment' with the EU is bad news for the party's beloved Net Zero, says Ben Pile. Even more than in Britain, the backlash in Europe against ruinous climate policies is gathering steam.

The post The Backlash Against Net Zero is Gathering Steam Across Europe appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

BYD is threatening to sue the US government after the Pentagon added the world’s largest EV maker to its list of “Chinese military companies” this week.

Stella Li, BYD’s executive vice-president, said the company will use every legal “weapon” at its disposal to fight the designation, which she called a false claim aimed at hobbling BYD because of its international success.

China is reportedly plotting an outlay of around CNY2 trillion ($295 billion) over the next five years to build out data centres across the country, with state-owned telecoms operators tasked with managing the sites and vendor Huawei providing the bulk of the technology.

Bloomberg sources claim government agencies including the National Development and Reform Commission are drafting up plans to construct a network of “inter-connected computing hubs”, as part of a government initiative to boost domestic AI and increase competition with the US.

Operators China Mobile and China Telecom are named as being tasked with operating and connecting the bulk of the data centres, while suppliers including Huawei will be charged with providing at least 80% of the technology including AI chips.

The plan is in line with steps taken in recent years by the state to pump resources into domestic heavyweights like Huawei, effectively squeezing out US competitors such as Nvidia and AMD.

Funding for the plan will mainly come from sovereign debt including long-term special government bonds with more than a 10 year tenure and state funds for investment in strategic industries, added the sources.

In addition to the AI facilities, which will include data centres and faster mobile infrastructure, China also apparently plans to integrate the power grid to the project.

The planned investment figure does not include separate outlays planned by the country’s technology heavyweights including Alibaba and Tencent, added the sources.

Nvidia locked out
Notably, US AI companies are also planning for major AI investment. Meta Platform has set capex guidance of $125 billion to $145 billion for 2026, while Microsoft has committed to a $190 billion spend over the same period.

Robert Lea, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence said the big winner of China’s plan will be the nation’s economy, rather than private sector companies like Alibaba and Baidu.

“Domestic infrastructure suppliers including Huawei stand to benefit most, with Nvidia unlikely to get a look in,” he added.

The post China sets out $295B AI investment plan appeared first on Mobile World Live.

A atualização anual da chamada "lista 1260H" alarga o escrutínio dos EUA a gigantes tecnológicos e industriais chineses não estatais que, em princípio, não teriam qualquer ligação ao setor da defesa. A medida surge menos de um mês após a cimeira de Trump em Pequim. A China prometeu retaliar.

The post Pentágono acrescenta Alibaba, Baidu e BYD à lista de empresas chinesas com ligações ao exército da China appeared first on Tek Notícias.

China is expanding the role of its commercial rocket companies by shortlisting four such entities for launches of a new space station cargo transport system.

The post Commercial launch providers shortlisted for China’s low-cost cargo spacecraft appeared first on SpaceNews.

Datacentre off Shanghai coast uses less power and water than land-based equivalent

The world’s first wind-powered underwater datacentre has started operations off the coast of Shanghai, as China presses forwards with solutions for energy challenges created by the country’s artificial intelligence boom.

The Shanghai Lingang undersea datacentre demonstration project, which launched in May, has a capacity of 24 megawatts. It is a joint effort between HiCloud Technology and China Communications Construction, a state-owned company.

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© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

China’s rapid switch to electric and other new energy vehicles cut urban air pollution enough to prevent an estimated 262,000 premature deaths, according to a new peer-reviewed study published in Nature Health.

It’s some of the strongest real-world evidence yet that electrifying transportation delivers measurable public-health benefits, not just lower tailpipe emissions on paper.