China

MERICS | English | AcademicThink | Dec. 12, 2025 | Regulation

Chinese greenfield investment in the EU, particularly from electric vehicle (EV) and battery makers, has tripled to EUR 5.9 billion between 2019 and 2024. However, these investments often rely heavily on imported parts and labor, limiting local job creation, technology transfer, and supplier opportunities. Examples include Chery and Leapmotor assembling imported semi-knockdown kits in Spain and Poland, and CATL planning to bring in 2,000 Chinese workers for its new Spanish battery plant, raising concerns about limited local economic benefits and poor working conditions.

The EU currently regulates foreign direct investment (FDI) through member states, but application is inconsistent and sometimes lacks conditions, as evidenced by EUR 900 million in state aid given to CATL and LG Energy without strings attached. However, EU officials have indicated a shift toward conditioning Chinese investments on technology transfer and other requirements. The European Commission’s new economic security communication highlights a move from risk identification toward active risk reduction, with an Industrial Accelerator Act expected to introduce local content rules.

To maximize local benefits from greenfield investments, the article suggests imposing EU-wide minimum conditions. These include setting concrete local content targets within the EV supply chain, especially at the supplier level, requiring co-funding of local research partnerships or minimum local R&D expenditure, and enforcing social conditions like worker rights, local hiring, and funding for infrastructure and training. These measures could be applied either as prerequisites for public support or as binding conditions for investment approval, potentially necessitating a comprehensive reform of EU FDI screening.

Despite potential opposition from China, which has tightened export controls on battery technologies, the EU holds significant leverage due to its large automotive market. With limited access to the US market, Chinese EV makers cannot easily forgo the EU. Moreover, Europe’s leadership in sectors like high-end machine tools and aerospace offers additional strategic advantages. The article concludes that Europe must enhance its regulatory approach to ensure that Chinese greenfield investments deliver real economic and technological benefits to the region.

China Daily | English | News | Dec. 12, 2025 | UndeterminedEnergy Prices

China's first national-level continental shale oil demonstration zone in Xinjiang has surpassed its annual crude oil production target of 1.7 million metric tons ahead of schedule, according to China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). This marks a major breakthrough in extracting shale oil, a highly challenging unconventional resource.

The demonstration zone's success addresses three key technical challenges in continental shale oil extraction: identifying sweet spots, reservoir modification, and achieving profitable development. These advancements have increased the full life-cycle output per well from 24,000 tons to 36,000 tons, significantly improving operational efficiency.

The technological framework developed at this site is expected to be extended to other domestic shale oil resources. Given China's position with the third-largest recoverable shale oil reserves globally, this breakthrough is strategically important for optimizing the country’s energy mix and boosting crude oil self-sufficiency.

开源模式重构产业竞争格局

Guangming Daily | Local Language | News | Dec. 12, 2025 | UndeterminedTech Development/Adoption

As of the end of 2024, China's active open source projects have surpassed 3 million with 2.27 million active developers, creating a large and diverse talent pool. The openEuler community, nurtured by the OpenAtom Open Source Foundation, boasts over 2,100 member organizations, 23,000 global contributors, and over 5.5 million users. By the end of 2025, openEuler OS installations are expected to exceed 16 million, making it a leading digital intelligence platform across key Chinese industries such as telecommunications, government, finance, and energy.

Open source technology is recognized as a key driver of technological innovation and high-quality development, particularly in the AI era with large models. China leads in open source large AI models, including Qwen and DeepSeek, while open hardware architectures like RISC-V are rapidly advancing and expected to enable next-generation AI computing power, fueling China’s independent innovation beyond Moore's Law.

Inspur General Software highlights the maturity of the open source ecosystem, with projects like HarmonyOS and openEuler achieving significant scale and wide industry adoption in areas such as finance and aerospace. The recent open sourcing of 360 Group’s FG-CLIP2 model, which outperformed global tech giants in public AI benchmarks, exemplifies China’s competitive progress in AI foundational models.

The UBML open source project under Inspur supports low-code development by lowering barriers for SMEs to create customized applications, promoting efficient innovation circulation across the industry. Beijing Yizhuang has established a national-level open source ecosystem with strong government support through policies and initiatives like the AI open source root community “Moli Ark,” which hosts thousands of models and datasets to enhance innovation impact globally.

The OpenAtom Foundation advances open source through project incubation, talent development, cultural promotion, and community standardization. Experts project open source will continue to fuel China’s collaborative innovation in AI, chip design, and industrial ecosystems, contributing to global digital transformation. The future evolution of open source communities will hinge on integrating large model capabilities to create intelligent development ecosystems emphasizing collaboration, value feedback, and monetization through commercial applications.