Technology & Demographics The Automaton Dividend The population of China has begun to shrink. But does it matter? By Jaime Xiao • January 30, 2026 IF DEMOGRAPHY IS DESTINY, then the recent headlines from Beijing read like a eulogy. China’s population has fallen for two consecutive years, shedding millions of citizens in a statistical retreat … Read more
“The government will not give us a penny.” Liang Wenfeng just broke Washington’s favourite DeepSeek story. A transcript of 118 investor answers reveals a very different narrative.
China is fighting a European war on two fronts. The first front is the product. The second front is the buyer. Marco Girometti has stood on both sides.
NVIDIA, Microsoft, Meta and 22 others signed a letter that, read carefully, is a lobbying front to keep Chinese open-weight models legal in America. Washington sees a geopolitical threat. Silicon Valley sees a supply chain opportunity.
IF DEMOGRAPHY IS DESTINY, then the recent headlines from Beijing read like a eulogy. China’s population has fallen for two consecutive years, shedding millions of citizens in a statistical retreat that Western observers often mistake for an economic surrender. The logic is seductive in its simplicity: fewer workers mean lower growth, collapsing pensions, and the … Read more
Part II of How Stellantis Rewrites the Transatlantic EV Playbook In Part I, we mapped the Wuhan-Paris axis — a dual arbitrage allowing Stellantis to shore up its European defences using Chinese engineering. That was the dress rehearsal. The ultimate prize lies across the Atlantic, where Detroit continues to slumber inside its tariff-protected greenhouse. Stellantis … Read more
Stephen Curry just pulled off the most strategically brilliant move of his career—and it didn’t happen on a basketball court. On June 2, 2026, Curry announced a landmark 10-year partnership with Li-Ning, reportedly worth north of $400 million. But calling this a “shoe deal” misses the point entirely. This is an empire-building move that positions … Read more
Warren Buffett saw the Alpha that Elon Musk laughed at. A Bloomberg interviewer asks Musk about BYD. He laughs. “Have you seen their car?” Three years earlier, Berkshire Hathaway had put $230 million into that same company, at HK$8 a share. Munger called Wang Chuanfu a mix of Edison and Welch. Both men were looking … Read more
Chinese maths just grew up The five-syllable head start behind China.s maths oversupply Chinese are better at maths. In a very childish way. Not genes. Language. The advantage is installed in childhood, by the mother tongue itself, long before the first maths lesson. Seven sevens are forty-nine. In Mandarin, that takes five syllables, and it … Read more
China’s Bid to Flood the World with Cheap AI, Said Bloomberg. Half Right. On Friday at 8:36am, Bloomberg published a sweeping story on China’s plan to flood the world with cheap AI. I am quoted in it, mapping DeepSeek’s investors to the layers of the industry. Sixteen hours before that story ran, 29 countries signed … Read more
The Empire that Forgot to Enter the Next War Warren Buffett held BYD for seventeen years and exited in silence. The smartest investors I know are still arguing about whether BYD has won, but they are arguing about a war that is already over. The story is not BYD versus Volkswagen, but that the auto … Read more