The use of Yuan (and currencies other than USD) is still quite low as the article says.

Would betting on Yuan be a good idea for Thailand?

China would have an additional measure to pressure the government in Bangkok for whatever political or economic gains Beijing is aiming at, simply by devaluing (or appreciating) its currency.

This is important as the bilateral trade between the two countries tells a story well known from many others of China’s trade partners: In 2025, Thailand’s exports to China reached almost USD 40 billion, while imports from China were significantly higher at USD 108 billion.

Thailand’s deficit with China in 2025 - USD 68 billion - represents an increase by 50% year-on-year and ranks among the steepest annual widenings of all of China’s trade partners in the Asian region, second only to Malaysia’s 62% deficit increase and similar to Vietnam’s 40% jump.

Maybe more importantly, Thailand’s trade deficit with China has grown every single year for the past five years.

The devastating consequence of China’s export surge is industrial contraction. Thailand’s Kasikorn Research Center estimates that 4,300 Thai factories closed in the two years to 2025, spanning automotive, electronics, garments, furntiture, steel. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has issued a forecast of 1.6% and the World Bank anticipates approximately 1.7% - the lowest growth rate for Thailand outside of crisis mode like the pandemic or the 2008 turmoils.

If and when the Yuan gains ground in Thailand China-trade in a meaningful way, Bangkok risks its economy (and politics) to open up for more coercive tactics and exploitation by Beijing.

As it has long been reported, Indonesia’s over-reliance on China is a warning for other Global South countries,

[A year ago, in June 2025], China imposed a 20% anti-dumping tariff on stainless steel from Indonesia … The penalty will remain in place for five years. But the real story isn’t the tariff. It’s the reckoning behind it: Indonesia is losing control of its most prized asset. And it has only itself to blame …

The country may sit on the world’s largest nickel reserves, but China holds the value—and the power. That imbalance didn’t happen by accident. It was the result of weak governance, poor planning, and a political system too eager to please investors rather than protect national interests …

The recent tariff from Beijing underscores just how exposed Jakarta has become. “The anti-dumping duty will erode the competitiveness of Indonesian products due to shrinking profit margins,” said Sudirman Widhy Hartono, chair of the Indonesian Mining Experts Association (Perhapi) …

Around a quarter of Indonesia’s exports go to China (mainly commodities such as Nickel, mineral fuels, steel), and 36% of its imports come from China (machinery, electronic equipment, vehicles, plastics). Indonesia’s trade volume with China is higher than with the entire ASEAN.

With more debt owed to China (the bond buyers are China-linked investors only), Indonesia’s dependence on China is likely set to rise, the island country’s industrial development about to slow down.

Why? The article linked in this comment says it clear, using the Nickel industry as an example as Indonesia has the world’s largest nickel reserves:

This isn’t the end stage of Indonesia’s nickel policy. It’s the middle. For all the talk of “downstreaming,” most of what Indonesia produces—nickel pig iron (NPI), ferronickel, and stainless steel billets—are still intermediate products. “They’re not the final products of nickel downstreaming,” Sudirman noted. “The domestic downstream industry is still not developed. Nearly all NPI and stainless steel is still exported abroad.”

Why didn’t Indonesia develop those downstream industries? The answer, in part, is corruption.

From sweetheart land deals to opaque tax incentives, many of the major industrial projects were fast-tracked with little transparency and minimal safeguards. Environmental and labor regulations were ignored. Licensing became transactional. Strategic decisions were too often made behind closed doors, benefiting a narrow circle of elites rather than the broader public.

Chinese companies, predictably, capitalized. They responded to the incentives they were given—cheap land, tax holidays, and a compliant regulatory environment. They brought capital and technology, but on their terms. Indonesia never set the rules of the game. It simply played along …

This bond will not cut dependence on the US dollar, it will increase dependence on China’s coercive policies, making Indonesia more vulnerable for Beijing’s coercion such as tariffs and other punishable trade measure.

It’s almost funny that whenever the Florida man imposes tariffs, the media is full of (absolutely justified) critique. If China creates the same trade restrictions, the media is largely silent. As if it made any difference.

Another hostility by another warmongering state.

Nah, China just controls its media space and censors its people better. The ruling party there has already reached what Trump is aiming at.

In June, China imposed 73.5% preliminary tariff on Canadian pea starch.

China may have a different approach than the Trump’s U.S., but the coercion goes on, very much as China does with all its “partners” …

How does it make China better when the U.S. gets worse? It’s sad, but China is still much worse than the U.S., it’s just that the China Communist Party has already the country’s media and its citizen under full censorship control, while Trump is aiming at that.

According to the survey linked in the article,

one area where the U.S. still gets higher ratings than China has to do with personal freedoms: More say the U.S. government respects the personal freedoms of its people than say the same of the Chinese government.

Pew Research did also a survey to find out how views of the U.S. and China compare specifcally in Latin America:

• Views of China are now slightly more positive than views of the U.S., due largely to worsening views of the U.S.
• People generally lack confidence in both Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to do the right thing regarding world affairs.
• People are much more likely to say the U.S. interferes in the affairs of other countries than they are to say the same of China, but the two superpowers are seen in a fairly similar light when it comes to their reliability as a partner and contributions to global peace and stability.

All in all it is a more balanced view and doesn’t serve the Chinese propaganda.

What is absolutely missing in my humble opinion is how the U.S. and China compare to European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and all the other democracies. The choice between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is just a bit like the choice between the plague and cholera. But that’s just my opinion, maybe I am mistaken.

Yeah, Open Source sounds great. I am just afraid that Xi Jinping has a different meaning of it than most people.

There are many good reports and studies about Chinese AI. The Media Journalism Research Center, for example, directly investigated how AI chatbots in China function as information hubs when responding to sensitive queries.

The focus is on whether, and how, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ideological priorities influence user-facing outputs. To enable meaningful comparison, identical prompt-based tests were conducted on domestic Chinese AI systems—such as DeepSeek, Doubao, and Ernie Bot—as well as on Western AI models to assess how they handle the same questions. [Here is the entire study as pdf download.]

It makes a good read, even the few prompt examples are very illuminating. It clearly reveals that Chinese ‘Open Source’ AI are just tools for Chinese Communist Party propaganda.

According to the survey linked in the article,

one area where the U.S. still gets higher ratings than China has to do with personal freedoms: More say the U.S. government respects the personal freedoms of its people than say the same of the Chinese government.

Pew Research did also a survey to find out how views of the U.S. and China compare specifcally in Latin America:

• Views of China are now slightly more positive than views of the U.S., due largely to worsening views of the U.S.
• People generally lack confidence in both Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to do the right thing regarding world affairs.
• People are much more likely to say the U.S. interferes in the affairs of other countries than they are to say the same of China, but the two superpowers are seen in a fairly similar light when it comes to their reliability as a partner and contributions to global peace and stability.

All in all it is a more balanced view and doesn’t serve the Chinese propaganda.

What is absolutely missing in my humble opinion is how the U.S. and China compare to European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and all the other democracies. The choice between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is just a bit like the choice between the plague and cholera. But that’s just my opinion, maybe I am mistaken.

[Edit typo.]

You’re right, that’s waste of time. The topic here is a suspected Chinese espionage against Canada, we should not continue in this distraction.

There is also a report about how fights are breaking out at Russia’s gas stations as the fuel crisis spreads

Russian media have been reporting on a surge of conflicts at gas stations across the country. The fuel crisis, triggered by Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil facilities, has forced people to wait for hours at gas stations. Some drivers try to cut the line, which has at times led to brawls. The situation is compounded by the fact that some stations have taken a liberal interpretation of the requirement to give priority to official vehicles. As a result, local officials in some regions have begun jumping the line, and in Chita, participants in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and their family members were added to the list of those exempt from waiting. All of this has fueled widespread public anger.

I feel many of the short stories in the linked article perfectly fit the ‘not the onion’ comm here ;-)

Just stumbled upon this report stating that China is reducing incentives for academics to submit papers to international journals over leak concerns, national security issue,

The national security concerns have become a new factor in Beijing’s long-running campaign … China’s Ministry of State Security last month accused a researcher of leaking “important technical details” while trying to win acceptance of papers by international journals and academic conferences …

China’s science policy has been shifting from emphasis on global collaboration and publication in international journals towards tighter controls on how knowledge is shared overseas. The change comes amid geopolitical tensions and the country’s rapid technological advance …

China’s security ministry in June warned that submissions to international conferences, publications in foreign journals, cross-border academic exchanges and overseas collaborative research must all “strictly” follow the requirements of “review before public disclosure” and “approval before external release” …

One Chinese scholar in materials science said he had stopped submitting research to foreign journals because it had become “difficult” to pass security reviews, which he said were “unclear and insufficiently objective” and part of a process that discouraged overseas publication … [Here is an archived version of the article.]

So, again it is primarily China where knowledge is not free. Your argumentation in this thread can only be interpreted as an attempt to distract from illegal Chinese activities. Nothing what China does is about free knowledge, let alone for the benefit ‘of all of mankind,’ It’s rather the exact opposite.

@[email protected]

This is, apparently, rubbish. China is illegally hacking into foreign system with malign intention, while at the same time maintaining behind what is called a Great Firewall. The Chinese party-state shows no willingness to share anything or use knowledge in a way that it “benefits all of mankind” (not even its own citizens, btw).

From your comment here and your comment history it is reasonable to assume you are - again - distracting from the Chinese government’s malign intentions by attempting to blame Canada and the West.

India is a major driver of coal power in the world, second only to China.

Global coal plant commissioning in 2025 was heavily concentrated in China, where new coal capacity additions reached a decade high of 78.1 GW. India also saw a rebound in coal commissioning compared to recent years with 10 GW added, although additions remained below mid-2010s levels. Globally, capacity added in 2025 totaled 97.4 GW, the second-highest on record behind only 2015 (107.3 GW). [Archived]

Outside of China and India, coal plant commissioning remained comparatively low at 9.2 GW.

This article is a good example of how China’s propaganda works. As one recent investigation has found,

China’s goal [of its propaganda operations] is to build a positive image of itself. Freedom House describes this as a long-term strategy aimed at “telling China’s story well”. At its core is the image of China as a successful, trustworthy and indispensable partner.

Oh, and the article is referencing to the U.S.-China Business Council, a researcher at Renmin University of China in Beijing, and Zhu Min, a Chinese economist and former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund who also held senior positions at the Bank of China and the People’s Bank of China.

Such articles are pure propaganda.

When?

If a post criticizes the U.S., do you also comment, “Nothing different that what China is doing”?

I guess no, you don’t, this whataboutism works only in one direction.

The usual whataboutism. I am really wondering how many of such comments are coming from bots. This must be automated.

The Lowy Institute titles, “Australians now wary of both China and the US,”

In 2026, Australians are … placing low levels of trust in both the United States and China.

Trust in the United States to act responsibly in the world has fallen to 31%, the lowest level in the history of Lowy Institute polling. This new low represents a five-point drop from last year and a 25-point drop from 2024 …

Trust in China to act responsibly in the world has risen eight points since last year to 28%, narrowing the gap with the United States to just three points. In 2022, that gap was 53 points …

But the positive thing is:

Australians place high levels of trust in liberal democracies and the United Nations.

For the sixth year running, Japan is the most trusted power, with 89% of Australians saying they trust Japan to act responsibly in the world. Germany is the next most trusted power (83%), followed by the United Kingdom (81%). Seven in ten Australians (70%) say the United Nations is either ‘somewhat important’ or ‘very important’ to Australia’s national interests.

For two of Australia’s key regional partners — Indonesia and India — trust remains steady if moderate. Trust in Indonesia to act responsibly in the world sits at 57%, similar to last year’s result. Australians’ trust in India fell four points from last year to 50%.

Of the countries surveyed, Russia was once again the power least trusted by Australians with only 11% saying they trust Moscow to act responsibly in the world.

Yeah, the West bad, China the only solution. This hit piece doesn’t even try to justify the bold headline. It contains not a single number, no sources whatsoever. It’s just the usual Chinese propaganda bot spreading for the teenage tankies.