Staggering solar bonanza, the Tao of the deal, military mosquito drones
Solar energy record, trade war stasis, tiny drones, 100 million Party members, military purges, Iran's defense minister goes to China, annals of repression and assimilation.
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Flagging: Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, turns 90 on July 6. He's expected to release a video message on July 2 that may name a successor—a move that will almost certainly provoke a clash with Beijing.
—Jeremy Goldkorn
Renewable energy
Staggering solar bonanza
China installed a staggering 93 gigawatts of solar capacity in May, setting a new global record for any single month. That's more than most countries manage in an entire year, and it comfortably beat China's previous monthly record of 71 gigawatts from December 2024.
The surge was partly driven by developers rushing to complete projects before government price protections that essentially guaranteed profits for solar installations ended on June 1. The inevitable flipside is that June's installation figures are expected to drop sharply. It is not clear whether this solar installation spree will actually hurt the manufacturers themselves: The industry is already grappling with fierce price competition and overcapacity issues, as well as difficulties for China's electricity grid in handling all this new solar capacity.
The Tao of the deal
Trump's trade war with China in stasis
“The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name.”
That’s the famous first line of the foundational Taoist text, the Tao Te Ching 道德經 (dào dé jīng in pinyin). It could have been written about Donald Trump’s trade deals with China: Whatever he announces on social media is not what will actually happen; whatever is agreed to in writing or in meetings by U.S. and Chinese negotiators is not what he will honor.
This is the current state of affairs:
On Thursday, June 26, Trump said, without going into details: “We just signed with China the other day.”
The next day, a Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesperson said at a press conference that “the two sides” have “further confirmed the details of the framework” that was agreed to in London on June 9 and 10.
The spokesperson said that “China will approve the export applications of controlled items that meet the conditions in accordance with the law,” presumably referring to the export of rare earth minerals, and that “the United States will cancel a series of restrictive measures taken against China.”On June 28, Nikkei reported that “U.S. officials are drawing up plans for President Donald Trump to visit China later this year with a delegation of dozens of CEOs.”
Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired on June 29 that he has a group of “very wealthy people” who could buy TikTok. He said he could reveal their identities in about two weeks time, and that the the deal will probably need Beijing’s approval. Earlier in June, Trump extended the deadline until September 17 for ByteDance to divest from TikTok’s U.S. business, for the third time since the Supreme Court upheld the TikTok ban enacted during the Biden administration law just a few days before Trump’s inauguration in January.
Of course, everything could change between the time that I hit “send” on this email, and the time that you read it. Stay tuned.
Drones and military tech
Mosquito-sized espionage drones
Researchers at China’s National University of Defense Technology 国防科技大学announced on the nationwide broadcaster CCTV that they have successfully produced a mosquito-sized drone that could be used for reconnaissance and espionage (video here).
Reports say the device has a camera and a sensitive microphone, and that it can “even intercept electronic signals without being noticed,” but that the technology is not ready for real world application yet.
In related news:
Passenger drone company EHang announced “that its flagship pilotless passenger-carrying aerial vehicle EH216-S completed its inaugural demo flight in downtown Shanghai.”
DJI, the world’s largest consumer drone manufacturer may be quietly exiting the U.S. market, where it has been the subject of hostile scrutiny for several years.
The Beijing Sports Bureau declared that the "2025 World Humanoid Robot Games will be held in the city in mid-August. Robots will participate in track and field, soccer, martial arts, free gymnastics and other events.
A big party for a big party
Party turns 104 with more than 100 million members
Today, July 1, the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its 104th birthday. According to the latest statistics from the Party’s Central Organization Department, atthe end of 2024, the total number of Party members was “100.271 million, a net increase of 1.086 million over the previous year.”
A good general is hard to find
Military purges continue
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