The latest deterioration of Japan-China ties has highlighted that a dangerous new equilibrium between the two countries is emerging — one that will test each other’s resolve, especially in the year ahead. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/31/japan/politics/japan-china-relations-2026-analysis/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #politics #china #chinajapanrelations #usjapanrelations #xijinping #sanaetakaichi #taiwan #taiwanjapanrelations #donaldtrump #defense #sdf #pla
Taiwanese tech titan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest contract maker of chips, has started mass producing its cutting-edge 2-nanometer semiconductor chips, the company announced. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/12/31/tech/tsmc-production-2nm-chips/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #business #tech #tsmc #chipmakers #taiwan #china #us #computers #tech
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung will make a state visit to China from Jan. 4 to 7 and meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, the Blue House said, as it aims to keep up momentum to restore ties. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/31/asia-pacific/politics/south-korea-lee-visit-china/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #asiapacific #politics #southkorea #china #leejaemyung #xijinping #supplychains
China’s museum boom, take two.
Once-empty halls now heave with visitors—and treasures.
Today, China is again in the grips of a museum boom. But this time it means something else: a giant increase in visitors and a big leap in exhibition quality, especially of ancient splendours.
"Security autism" isn’t a moral failing; it’s a cognitive one. Just as individuals on the autism spectrum struggle with social cues and environmental awareness, nations can lose the ability to read geopolitical signals. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2025/12/30/japan/beware-of-security-autism/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #commentary #japan #us #china #usjapanrelations #chinajapanrelations #defense #sdf #northkorea #donaldtrump
Jan :rust: :ferris:
boosted
Dear #China, you have left me with no choice but to ban you from my entire network.
After months of scraping my Wikiless, Invidious, Nitter, Redlib and Forgejo, compromising the performance of my servers by requesting commits, blames, bulk PR changes, and even repeatedly cloning my repos over HTTPS, and even bypassing captchas and Anubis, all at peak rates of 20-25 requests/second, I have decided that I’m done.
See you again when you stop abusing the Internet.
And I don’t even know which network admin I should report these episodes of network abuse to, when the abuse comes from ALL the Chinese subnets (Huawei, Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, Unicom, and even networks allocated for mobile devices), and the desperate race to win the #AI war has apparently turned the whole country into a giant botnet.
6GB of nginx logs collected just on my Forgejo server only in the past week, from tens of thousands of Chinese IP addresses. At least I have a comprehensive list of subnets to blacklist.
A small but growing number of parents in China are rethinking the country’s rigorous education system and switching to homeschooling, despite a current ban on the practice. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/30/asia-pacific/society/china-homeschool-students-youth/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #asiapacific #society #china #education #eastasia #children #schools
Thailand has accused Cambodia of violating a newly agreed ceasefire, reached after weeks of deadly border clashes, by flying more than 250 drones over its territory. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/30/asia-pacific/politics/thai-army-cambodia-drones/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #asiapacific #politics #thailand #cambodia #borderclashes #drones #asean #us #china
The Chinese military on Tuesday conducted long-range live-fire drills in waters around Taiwan, part of a second day of 'major' exercises focused on blockading the island and deterring aid from Taipei’s partners. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/30/asia-pacific/china-taiwan-military-exercises-missiles/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #asiapacific #china #pla #taiwan #donaldtrump #sanaetakaichi #xijinping #us #usmilitary #defense #missiles
Dear #China, you have left me with no choice but to ban you from my entire network.
After months of scraping my Wikiless, Invidious, Nitter, Redlib and Forgejo, compromising the performance of my servers by requesting commits, blames, bulk PR changes, and even repeatedly cloning my repos over HTTPS, and even bypassing captchas and Anubis, all at peak rates of 20-25 requests/second, I have decided that I’m done.
See you again when you stop abusing the Internet.
And I don’t even know which network admin I should report these episodes of network abuse to, when the abuse comes from ALL the Chinese subnets (Huawei, Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, Unicom, and even networks allocated for mobile devices), and the desperate race to win the #AI war has apparently turned the whole country into a giant botnet.
6GB of nginx logs collected just on my Forgejo server only in the past week, from tens of thousands of Chinese IP addresses. At least I have a comprehensive list of subnets to blacklist.
China's highest-altitude arch dam, the Yebatan Hydropower Station, has begun generating power. This major project on the upper Jinsha River features a 217-meter dam, saves 3 million tons of coal annually, and powers Central China with clean energy, marking a breakthrough in high-altitude, green engineering.
At the start of 2025, western economists predicted "lost decades" for China due to structural problems like deflation, debt, and demographics.
China defied these expectations, hitting a record $1T trade surplus despite US tariffs. Even though Chinese exports to the US tumbling 19% due to trade wars, China successfully pivoted to other markets and internal innovation.
Western elites underestimated China's resilience due to ideological aversion.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-12-23/repeat-after-me-never-ever-underestimate-china
Beijing says Thailand and Cambodia plan to rebuild mutual trust and gradually consolidate a ceasefire after weeks of border clashes, following talks in southwestern China. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/29/asia-pacific/politics/thailand-cambodia-ceasefire-talks/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #asiapacific #politics #thailand #cambodia #china #borderclashes #wangyi #donaldtrump #anwaribrahim #asean
Barely a decade after President Barack Obama announced a “pivot” to Asia, the United States' commitment to the region is as tenuous as the days of the Vietnam War. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2025/12/29/world/asia-adrift-alone/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #commentary #worldnews #us #donaldtrump #trade #defense #china #southkorea #vietnam #southkoreajapanrelations
LandSpace, the first Chinese entity to conduct a reusable rocket test, is now preparing to go public to fund its future projects, as U.S. rival SpaceX considers its own IPO. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/12/29/landspace-spacex-competition/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #business #landspace #china #eastasia #space #rockets #elonmusk
Growing Chinese auto giant BYD stands poised to officially surpass Tesla as the world’s biggest electric vehicle company in annual sales. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/12/29/companies/byd-overtake-tesla-2025/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #business #companies #tesla #byd #electricvehicles #elonmusk #donaldtrump #china #europe #northamerica
On the diplomatic stage, Chinese President Xi Jinping projected strength, but beneath the diplomatic victories, he still has plenty of worries at home — from structural economic vulnerabilities to a personnel purge. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/29/asia-pacific/politics/xi-trump-china-troubles/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #asiapacific #politics #china #xijinping #trade #uschinarelations #tech
China said it will hold large-scale military exercises around Taiwan on Tuesday, releasing an image showing five zones surrounding the democratic island that will be under sea and airspace restrictions. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/29/asia-pacific/china-military-drills-taiwan/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #asiapacific #taiwan #china #pla #chinajapanrelations #sdf #defense #usmilitary #sanaetakaichi
China’s successes are not being recognised in the West because of a racialised, hierarchical view of the world.
Alex Akselrod
boosted
#CentralAsia’s #fruit and #nut #forests: the real Garden of Eden?
Birthplaces of some of the world’s most beloved snacks
by Monica Evans
17 December 2020
"Millions of years ago, in the temperate montane forests of a little-known region in Central Asia, some of the world’s best-loved fruit and nut trees began to grow. #Apples, #apricots, #cherries, #plums, #grapes, #figs, #peaches, #pomegranates, #pears, #almonds, #pistachios and #walnuts all originated in the hills and valleys of the #TianShan mountain range, which stretches from #Uzbekistan in the west to #China and #Mongolia in the east.
"The area is volcanic and geologically tumultuous, but fertile – scientists have hypothesized that in a place prone to frequent eruptions, earthquakes and landslides, shorter-lived tree species that could disperse their seeds widely by making themselves palatable to large mammals had a better shot at survival than long-lived, slow-maturing trees.
"And that tasty survival strategy has served these species well. For residents of the region, the foods represent both security and social currency. 'From the taxi drivers to the ministers to the local people, almost everyone carries some #DriedFruit or #Nuts with them,' says Paola Agostini, a lead natural resources specialist for Europe and Central Asia at the World Bank. 'It’s like this safety net, and it’s also a lovely gift: something to share with others that is always appreciated.'
"Central Asian marketplaces offer a cornucopia of colors, flavors, textures and varieties – many more than those most of us are accustomed to finding in our local supermarket’s produce aisle. 'I was always astonished that people in the region could so easily tell which country a particular dried apricot came from,' says Agostini. 'Their knowledge of these products is just so deep.'
"Procuring and sharing these energy-dense treats is an ancient practice in the area. Fruit and nuts were major commodities on the Silk Road, an ancient network of trade routes that tracked through the heart of Central Asia, linking Europe, the Middle East and Asia, from the first century BC through to the mid-1400s. Over centuries of trade and travel – and lots of munching by humans, camels and horses along the way – prized fruit and nut species spread their seeds wider and wider, and new hybrid varieties were created, many of which are now supermarket and home-orchard staples, cultivated enthusiastically in temperate regions across the globe.
"Narratives of plant domestication often tend to overstate the role of humans, but newer science suggests that 'evolution in parallel' with the plants we love is often a more accurate way of framing this process. 'It’s very unlikely that when somebody took an apple from #Kazakhstan and carried it across an entire continent, they were thinking that they could cross it with another variety and end up with something better,' says #RobertSpengler, a paleo-ethnobotanist at the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany. 'They were more likely just carrying the seeds to plant somewhere else. And in doing so, they inadvertently set off a chain reaction of hybridization events.'
"According to Spengler’s research into the origins of apples, humans were not the first mammals to participate in that process of dispersal and co-evolution, either. In the late #Miocene, which spanned the period from 11.63 to 5.33 million years ago, large mammals such as #mammoths and #horses played critical roles in dispersing apple seeds and facilitating their evolutionary process into the large, sweet, flavor-rich fruits we enjoy today."
#SolarPunkSunday #Ethnobotany #PlantHistory #SaveTheForests #SaveTheTrees #FruitTrees #NutTrees
