Worldcrunch
DeepSeek has become the most downloaded free app in the U.S. just a week after it was launched. Its sudden rise has triggered shockwaves on Wall Street, where U.S. stocks dropped sharply on Monday. With equivalent performances to rival ChatGPT but at the fraction of the cost, the startup is threatening the aura of invincibility surrounding the U.S. technology industry.
If there’s one thing Kamala Harris and Donald Trump can agree on its the demonization of China. After the fall of the Soviet Union, China has become the United States’ ideological adversary — a rival shaping America’s own identity, uniting both left and right. Why does American politics always seem to need an external enemy?
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has assured Xi Jinping that, if elected, Kamala Harris would handle ties between their countries “responsibly.” U.S.-China relations are the major issue of this century, as tensions rise over Taiwan, technology and the South China Sea. A Trump victory would make that prospect scary.
China shares praise, Cambodia throws shade, Germans show pride … and from Moscow?
Beijing recently placed an export ban to the U.S. of two key metals. The move is a retaliation for U.S. bans of Chinese tech. The question remains of whether the superpowers can compromise before a total tech war breaks out.
To some, tensions between the U.S. and China look like a remake of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. Yet the West’s nemesis this time is more sophisticated and tied to us commercially in ways Moscow never was. There are, however, also new kinds of danger.
Let’s call it the “war of the balloons”: Four unidentified flying objects have now been shot down by fighter jets in one week over North America. But the mystery of the details should not hide the bigger picture of how far U.S.-Sino relations have sunk in the past 10 days.
A phone call Thursday between Presidents Xi and Biden may have avoided adding tensions to U.S.-China relations, but now all attention will be back on the question of whether Nancy Pelosi lands in Taipei next month for a meeting that Beijing has been warning against and the Chinese media stirs the pot.
It will be marked in the historical record as the date when China took over control of Far East Asia.