Apple's long-awaited mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, is a hot topic in the tech world ahead of its coming debut at the US Apple Store on February 2. Extensive media attention has been drawn to the complex supply chain behind the Vision Pro hardware, with many saying that China's supply chain plays a significant role in its manufacturing. Some industry insiders claim that Chinese mainland companies account for about 60 percent of the supply chain.

Some Western media outlets, which habitually take a biased view of China, have recently published articles suggesting that Apple is likely to move a massive chunk of its production capacity from China to India. It is undeniable that China's labor costs have risen, leading to supply chain restructuring. However, some Westerners tend to exaggerate the risks faced by China's manufacturing industry and deliberately ignore its positive aspects.

Publicly available information indicates that China plays an irreplaceable role in the production of Apple's most advanced products, such as Vision Pro. Apple has described Vision Pro as a revolutionary spatial computer that seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world. It showcases Apple's latest generation technology.

Although the West has been hyping global manufacturers' reduced dependence on China, it's indisputable that China's manufacturing capacity has still provided strong support for Western corporations, including Apple.

Apple has a big year ahead for new products, but it also faces challenges. The Vision Pro headset is Apple's first new product category since it launched its Apple Watch series in 2015. However, analysts do not expect Apple to generate significant revenue from the Vision Pro, at least in the short term, due to its high price that may deter many potential customers.

As reported, the Vision Pro starts at $3,499 with 256GB of storage, while the 512GB model is priced at $3,699 and the most-spacious 1TB version is priced at $3,899. Whether the Vision Pro's prices will fall after going into mass production will be the key to capturing more market share, especially in China and other developing markets. Many types of smart glasses have been launched in the Chinese market, and most of them are significantly cheaper than Apple's Vision Pro.

If Apple can effectively utilize China's manufacturing advantages and further collaborate with China's supply chain, its competitiveness in mixed-reality headsets will be strengthened. It's highly likely that China's well-established industry chain could help Apple reduce manufacturing costs for its Vision Pro. 

It is precisely because of such abundant cooperation opportunities that shares of some mixed-reality companies in the A-share market experienced a surge in recent trading after pre-orders for Apple's Vision Pro began on January 19.

Apple's development in the Chinese market and the upgrading of China's manufacturing industry are mutually beneficial. While Apple enjoys the advantages of Chinese manufacturing and its market, it could also bring opportunities for the upgrading of China's manufacturing industry. 

Chinese supply chain companies are favored by Apple due to their flexibility and strength. During the development of prototypes for the Vision Pro headset, they have been able to meet Apple's innovative demands, according to media reports. 

Through collaborating with Apple to develop innovative products, the quality and efficiency of China's manufacturing industry upgrading will undoubtedly be greatly enhanced. Apple can stimulate innovation in the Chinese supply chain by meeting the market demand for innovative products, accelerating its innovation and upgrading, and promoting industrial upgrading and transformation. This cooperative relationship will bring more development opportunities and competitive advantages for China's manufacturing industry.

The vast and dynamic market, strong manufacturing industry foundation and continuous innovation momentum in China are compelling reasons for Apple or any foreign company to embrace production in China to achieve sustainable growth.

The New York Times wrote in an article entitled "How China Has Added to Its Influence Over the iPhone" in September 2022 that "the critical work provided by China reflects the country's advancements over the past decade and a new level of involvement for Chinese engineers in the development of iPhones." 

For Apple's ambition to develop innovative products and win future markets, it is essential to embrace the accelerated upgrading of Chinese manufacturing.

One Boeing 737 MAX flying from Seattle has arrived at the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in South China's Guangdong Province on Saturday, flight information provider VariFlight revealed on Saturday.

The delivery ends a nearly five-year freeze since China suspended most orders and deliveries of Boeing planes in 2019 following two fatal crashes of the 737 MAX in other countries.

Information shared with the Global Times shows that the plane, operating under the flight number of CZ5073, has joined the China Southern Airlines fleet.

The delivery of the Boeing 737 MAX comes at a moment as the US plane manufacturer is in its turmoil.

Reuters reported that the US Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday tightened pressure on Boeing by barring the troubled planemaker from expanding production of its best-selling 737 MAX narrowbody planes, following "unacceptable" quality issues.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun faced questions from senators on the Alaska Airlines incident in a series of meetings on Wednesday on Capitol Hill. Senate Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell said she would hold hearings to investigate the root cause of Boeing's safety lapses, according to Reuters.

Regarding the delivery of MAX series in China, China's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the Boeing 737 MAX8 model has met delivery requirements set by Chinese regulators as of December 8 of 2023.

Before the delivery of MAX, a 787-9 Dreamliner ordered by Juneyao Airlines had been delivered in December of last year, and it is also the first time since November 2019 that Boeing has delivered a 787 Dreamliner plane to a Chinese airline.

China is regarded one of the most rapidly developing aviation markets in the world, as Boeing forecast in September of last year that China will need 8,560 new commercial airplanes through 2042, driven by economic growth well above the global average and increasing public demand for air travel.

Chinese home-developed C919 aircraft also gear up the flying in China. China Eastern Airlines said on Saturday that all the C919 aircraft it received are being put into the Chinese New Year's travel rush.

China to launch “2024 Spring Breeze” plan, aiming to create 30 million jobs from late Jan to early Apr: ministry

Chipmaking equipment producer ASML on Wednesday announced better-than-expected results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023, while warning that US export controls would affect its sales in China by 10-15 percent in 2024.

For 2023, ASML reported 27.6 billion euros ($30 billion) in revenue, up 30 percent year-on-year. Its gross profit margin was 51.3 percent, with a net profit of 7.8 billion euros, and the unshipped order backlog reached 39 billion euros.

Business with China in 2023 was extremely robust and strong, Roger Dassen, executive vice president and chief financial officer of ASML, said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Wednesday.

The Dutch company has been caught in the broader technology battle between the US and China. On January 2, ASML said that the Dutch government had partially revoked an export license for the shipment of some chipmaking equipment to China, following US export restrictions.

Exports of NXT:2050i and NXT:2100i lithography systems in 2023 were affected, the company said.

"It can be anticipated that in 2024, we will not obtain export licenses for shipping NXT:2000i and higher immersion equipment to China. Additionally, certain advanced chip manufacturing wafer fabs in China will be unable to obtain licenses for shipping NXT:1970i and NXT:1980i immersion equipment," Dassen said.

ASML previously said that the US export restrictions would affect 10-15 percent of China sales. There would be a similar impact in 2024, Dassen said.

"However, we can still observe strong demand in the mature process markets within the end-user market," said Dassen.

The US containment strategy related to high-end chips has failed to prevent Chinese companies from making their own 5G models, so it tightened the curbs, Zhang Hong, a veteran industry observer, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Zhang noted that the move will only disrupt global industry chains and hit global technology giants' profits, and cause them to lose market shares in China.

In response to the Dutch government's blocking of ASML exports to China, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on January 2 said that China strongly opposes the hegemonic and bullying practices of the US, which seriously violate international trade rules, undermine the global semiconductor industry structure and affect the security and stability of international industry and supply chains.

Wang urged the Dutch side to respect the spirit of contract and take concrete steps to protect the shared interests of China and the Netherlands and the companies of the two countries, adding that China will resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.

"The semiconductor sector is a highly globalized industry. In a deeply integrated world economy, the US actions will surely boomerang," Wang said.

China's largest dual-fuel driven car-carrying vessel set sail on its maiden voyage from Shanghai to Europe on Wednesday, supporting the country's vehicle exports, according to China Media Group.

The maiden voyage of the vessel will transport a total of 5,000 China-made vehicles to Europe after setting sail from Shanghai and refill at other Chinese ports. At least half of the shipped belong to new-energy vehicles.

The vessel was the first car carrier invested by Chinese ship owner, the SAIC Anji Logistics Co, with largest capacity among world's in-service car carriers, which has a maximum capacity of 7,600 vehicles with over 40,000 tons of displacement. It dual-fuel engine can reduce 40 percent of CO2 emission, according to the report.

Data from China's General Administration of Customs showed that China exported 5.221 million vehicles in 2023, rising 57.4 percent year-on-year.

Shanghai Waigaoqiao port, China's largest port for vehicle export, realized a record 1.025 million vehicle export in 2023, thepaper.cn reported on Wednesday.

To match the nation's newfound strength in the emerging field of vehicle exports, Chinese shipyards are running at full throttle to keep up with demand from shipping companies as well as auto manufacturers.

Over the next three years, a total of 14 car carriers with various capacity levels will join SAIC Anji Logistics Co's transport fleet, further supporting exports of Chinese auto brands, said the report.

In recent years, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service has intensified its attacks on China for alleged spying activities in Britain. However, if the SIS wants to root out operatives working undercover to steal the country's secrets, they should perhaps ask themselves. The arrest of a businessman surnamed Huang by China's Ministry of State Security brings attention to the hypocrisy of the spymasters at MI6.

Huang, the head of an overseas consultancy, is accused of serious offences. He is said to have worked for SIS for about nine years, using the specialist skills and equipment provided to him after being recruited to steal state secrets. The MSS says that behind his façade as a businessman, his undercover job was to collect China-related intelligence for the British espionage agency and identify potential recruits. 

It smacks of double standards. What else would you call repeatedly attacking another state by accusing it of something, and then cynically behaving in the same way?

Last year, the head of MI6, Richard Moore, said in2023 that China presented "an epoch-defining challenge" and that his organization commits more of its resources to Beijing's activities than to any other country. It is not the first time he criticized China. In 2021, he described China ominously as "an authoritarian state, with different values from ours."

The UK's assaults on China come in many forms. They can be a warning of vague, unsubstantiated allegations about individuals having undue influence on British politicians. They can come as personal attacks on people of Chinese heritage simply because they work with influential decision-makers to raise issues of concern to the UK's Chinese community (but without real evidence to back up the slurs). They can even come in the form of sudden arrests by police accusing people of serious espionage offences - and then letting those people go free without charge. A common feature of these events is that they created a great deal of smoke without fire - generating much Sinophobic sentiment fueled by unsupported allegations. Nothing came of them.

The most recent example is of Chris Cash, a researcher in the UK parliament, who was arrested, with an associate, under espionage laws. He could hardly be described as pro-China - he actually worked for an anti-China research group and vehemently denied wrongdoing. The substance of the investigation seems to have been that he had contact with influential politicians interested in Chinese affairs. It looked like guilt by association. Neither he nor his colleague have been charged.

Cash's arrest happened almost a year ago, but it did not become public knowledge until it was leaked to the British media six months later, creating negative publicity, at about the same time that Beijing was hoping to improve China-UK relations at a high level.

Two years ago, Christine Lee, a London-based layer of Chinese origin, was accused by Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5, of being a spy for Beijing - and yet again, no arrests or charges followed. All that happened was that her reputation - and goodwill toward China - was severely damaged. The agency accused her of being "involved in political interference activities" in the UK. Lawmakers in the House of Commons were also given a so-called "interference alert" - the first issued in at least 80 years. Lee knew nothing about it until she saw media reports branding her "an enemy of the state." She later launched legal action against MI5 in a bid to clear her name.

Britain's intelligence services have clearly identified China as a target for their operations. Is one aspect of that to cast suspicion on people simply because of their Chinese background or with personal connections to China, or with a special interest in China? Why is there so much smoke without any fire, so many accusations without substantiation? In the Huang case London stands accused of doing the very thing it accuses Beijing of doing. It's astonishing hypocrisy, especially when the West has so often been caught out in the past. 

The memorandum of understanding between China and the US on preventing illegal entry of Chinese cultural relics into the US has been extended. The new text will enter into force on Sunday and will be valid for five years, as announced by the National Cultural Heritage Administration on Thursday.

Beer lovers could be left with a sour taste, thanks to the latest in a series of studies mapping the effects of climate change on crops.

Malted barley — a key ingredient in beer including IPAs, stouts and pilsners — is particularly sensitive to warmer temperatures and drought, both of which are likely to increase due to climate change. As a result, average global barley crop yields could drop as much as 17 percent by 2099, compared with the average yield from 1981 to 2010, under the more extreme climate change projections, researchers report October 15 in Nature Plants.
That decline “could lead to, on average, a doubling of price in some countries,” says coauthor Steven Davis, an Earth systems scientist at University of California, Irvine. Consumption would also drop globally by an average of 16 percent, or roughly what people in the United States consumed in 2011.

The results are based on computer simulations projecting climate conditions, plant responses and global market reactions up to the year 2099. Under the mildest climate change predictions, world average barley yields would still go down by at least 3 percent, and average prices would increase about 15 percent, the study says.

Other crops such as maize, wheat and soy and wine grapes are also threatened by the global rising of average atmospheric temperatures as well as by pests emboldened by erratic weather (SN: 2/8/14, p. 3). But there’s still hope for ale aficionados. The study did not account for technological innovations or genetic tweaks that could spare the crop, Davis says.

What do you get when you flip a fossilized “jellyfish” upside down? The answer, it turns out, might be an anemone.

Fossil blobs once thought to be ancient jellyfish were actually a type of burrowing sea anemone, scientists propose March 8 in Papers in Palaeontology.

From a certain angle, the fossils’ features include what appears to be a smooth bell shape, perhaps with tentacles hanging beneath — like a jellyfish. And for more than 50 years, that’s what many scientists thought the animals were.
But for paleontologist Roy Plotnick, something about the fossils’ supposed identity seemed fishy. “It’s always kind of bothered me,” says Plotnick, of the University of Illinois Chicago. Previous scientists had interpreted one fossil feature as a curtain that hung around the jellies’ tentacles. But that didn’t make much sense, Plotnick says. “No jellyfish has that,” he says. “How would it swim?”

One day, looking over specimens at the Field Museum in Chicago, something in Plotnick’s mind clicked. What if the bell belonged on the bottom, not the top? He turned to a colleague and said, “I think this is an anemone.”

Rotated 180 degrees, Plotnick realized, the fossils’ shape — which looks kind of like an elongated pineapple with a stumpy crown — resembles some modern anemones. “It was one of those aha moments,” he says. The “jellyfish” bell might be the anemone’s lower body. And the purported tentacles? Perhaps the anemone’s upper section, a tough, textured barrel protruding from the seafloor.

Plotnick and his colleagues examined thousands of the fossilized animals, dubbed Essexella asherae, unearthing more clues. Bands running through the fossils match the shape of some modern anemones’ musculature. And some specimens’ pointy protrusions resemble an anemone’s contracted tentacles.
“It’s totally possible that these are anemones,” says Estefanía Rodríguez, an anemone expert at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City who was not involved with the work. The shape of the fossils, the comparison with modern-day anemones — it all lines up, she says, though it’s not easy to know for sure.

Paleontologist Thomas Clements agrees. Specimens like Essexella “are some of the most notoriously difficult fossils to identify,” he says. “Jellyfish and anemones are like bags of water. There’s hardly any tissue to them,” meaning there’s little left to fossilize.
Still, it’s plausible that the blobs are indeed fossilized anemones, says Clements, of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany. He was not part of the new study but has spent several field seasons at Mazon Creek, the Illinois site where Essexella lived some 310 million years ago. Back then, the area was near the shoreline, Clements says, with nearby rivers dumping sediment into the environment – just the kind of place ancient burrowing anemones may have once called home.

Weird materials called Weyl metals might reveal the secrets of how Earth gets its magnetic field.

The substances could generate a dynamo effect, the process by which a swirling, electrically conductive material creates a magnetic field, a team of scientists reports in the Oct. 26 Physical Review Letters.

Dynamos are common in the universe, producing the magnetic fields of the Earth, the sun and other stars and galaxies. But scientists still don’t fully understand the details of how dynamos create magnetic fields. And, unfortunately, making a dynamo in the lab is no easy task, requiring researchers to rapidly spin giant tanks of a liquefied metal, such as sodium (SN: 5/18/13, p. 26).
First discovered in 2015, Weyl metals are topological materials, meaning that their behavior is governed by a branch of mathematics called topology, the study of shapes like doughnuts and knots (SN: 8/22/15, p. 11). Electrons in Weyl metals move around in bizarre ways, behaving as if they are massless.

Within these materials, the researchers discovered, electrons are subject to the same set of equations that describes the behavior of liquids known to form dynamos, such as molten iron in the Earth’s outer core. The team’s calculations suggest that, under the right conditions, it should be possible to make a dynamo from solid Weyl metals.

It might be easier to create such dynamos in the lab, as they don’t require large quantities of swirling liquid metals. Instead, the electrons in a small chunk of Weyl metal could flow like a fluid, taking the place of the liquid metal.
The result is still theoretical. But if the idea works, scientists may be able to use Weyl metals to reproduce the conditions that exist within the Earth, and better understand how its magnetic field forms.