Welcome to China Currents. In this episode:
The United States has officially approved Nvidia’s export of high-end artificial intelligence chips to China — but under strict conditions.
China’s breakthrough at a glass bottle is quietly reshaping the semiconductor game between China and Japan.
Despite growing rhetoric around decoupling and containment, China’s total imports and exports hit a record high in 2025.
China’s year-end statistics reveal 5% GDP growth, while a diminishing population raises concerns.
Chinese netizens collectively mourn the passing of a Xinjiang official.
Now, let’s begin today’s China Currents.
On January 13 local time, the Trump administration officially approved Nvidia’s export of its H200 artificial intelligence chip to China.
This chip is six times more powerful than the H20 — the downgraded AI chip that Nvidia has so far been allowed to sell to China. This decision marks a rare easing of export restrictions on this specific product, following years of continuous tightening of chip controls on China from the Biden administration through the Trump administration.
That said, judging from the conditions issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Nvidia still faces a high threshold to export the H200.
For example, export volumes must not exceed roughly 50% of Nvidia’s domestic U.S. sales;
Chinese buyers must pledge not to use the chips for military purposes;
and Nvidia must ensure priority supply for U.S. customers.
In addition, Bloomberg reports that based on President Trump’s previous statements, the U.S. government may demand a 25% revenue share from sales of advanced AI chips to China.
But the reality is, if export restrictions are not relaxed in time, China may not need Nvidia’s products at all in the future.
David Sacks, the White House’s AI and crypto policy lead, previously admitted to Bloomberg that China, in its pursuit of semiconductor self-reliance, had already declined U.S. H200 chips. Chinese companies are now actively pushing forward domestically produced AI chips that could replace Nvidia’s products.
For example, Huawei unveiled a three-year roadmap for its Ascend AI chips last September. Meanwhile, internet giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and ByteDance have significantly increased investment in chip R&D and design, aiming to gain greater autonomy and control over their supply chains.
Next, we turn to an industrial contest between China and Japan — centered on a seemingly insignificant glass bottle.
On January 12, Li Lecheng, Party Secretary and Minister of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, revealed in an interview that China can now independently manufacture specialized glass containers for photoresists, explicitly stating that this is one of the country’s major national science and technology breakthroughs. More importantly, the product has already completed production-line trials, with positive feedback.
Photoresist is often referred to as the “blood of the semiconductor industry.” However, its storage, transportation, and use are inseparable from a viable container. As manufacturing processes advance to 7 nm, 5 nm, and more advanced nodes, even nanometer-level particle contamination or trace amounts of metal ions leaching from glass containers can cause catastrophic yield losses across an entire wafer.
For a long time, the technology for manufacturing photoresist containers has been firmly controlled by Japanese companies. Over decades, Japan leveraged its dominance in photoresist formulations to build a highly closed and deeply bundled supply system.
In practice, Japanese suppliers often required customers to purchase photoresists together with designated containers. When Chinese photoresist manufacturers attempted to purchase compliant containers separately, Japanese suppliers repeatedly refused.
The result was that even when China succeeded in developing its own photoresists, the lack of qualified containers prevented them from leaving the laboratory, from being tested on production equipment, and from gaining recognition from wafer fabs. For foundries such as SMIC or TSMC, no one is willing to risk pouring materials stored in unverified containers into lithography equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Now, China’s successful development of photoresist glass containers means a significant reduction in Japan’s bargaining power in this field — one of the few areas where Japan has long maintained near-absolute monopoly advantages over China.
Next, China has released its 2025 trade figures, which are truly striking.
China’s General Administration of Customs recently announced that in 2025, China’s total goods trade exceeded 45 trillion yuan. China not only retained its position as the world’s largest trading nation in goods, but also reached a historic high in scale.
Looking at the breakdown, trade with Belt and Road partner countries reached 23.6 trillion yuan, growing 6.3% and accounting for 51.9% of total trade. Trade with ASEAN, Latin America, and Africa reached 7.55 trillion yuan, 3.93 trillion yuan, and 2.49 trillion yuan respectively, growing by 8%, 6.5%, and 18.4%.
Lu Zhe, chief economist at Soochow Securities, noted that data from November 2025 shows China’s trade surplus with the U.S. and Europe had fallen to 23.9%, while the share accounted for by Belt and Road countries rose to 43.6% — roughly double that of the U.S. and Europe combined.
This serves as a confidence boost for China amid tariff retaliation and disputes such as TikTok’s ownership.
From the perspective of export composition, China’s high-tech product exports reached 5.25 trillion yuan, up 13.2%. Exports of electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar products surged by 27.1%, while green products such as wind turbines saw growth as high as 48.7%.
Experts note that China’s export structure has undergone a significant shift from labor-intensive to technology-intensive products. In 2018, processing trade accounted for as much as 93% of China’s exports. By October 2025, this figure had fallen sharply to 23.7%, significantly reducing the impact of U.S.–China tariffs on employment and corporate profits.
Beyond these geopolitically charged figures, another set of recent statistics offers a clearer view of China’s domestic situation.
First is GDP. According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, China’s GDP reached 140 trillion yuan in 2025, growing 5.0% year-on-year at constant prices. This figure was later affirmed by the IMF, which also raised its forecast for China’s economic growth in 2026.
The second figure is electricity consumption. On January 17, China’s National Energy Administration reported that total electricity consumption in 2025 reached 10.3682 trillion kilowatt-hours, up 5.0% year-on-year.
This marks the first time any single country has surpassed 10 trillion kilowatt-hours. Notably, industrial electricity accounted for about two-thirds of total usage, while electricity consumption for EV charging and battery swapping surged by 48.8%.
However, alongside these strong growth indicators, China’s population data shows a clear decline. By the end of 2025, China’s population stood at 1.40489 billion, down 3.39 million from the previous year. Births totaled 7.92 million, while deaths reached 11.31 million, resulting in a natural population growth rate of –2.41‰.
It is generally believed that when the natural population growth rate falls below –2‰, a society has entered a clear stage of demographic contraction, with mounting structural pressure.
Next, let’s learn the story of a widely mourned figure in China, He Jiaolong, who recently passed away unexpectedly.
He Jiaolong, an official from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, passed away last week after falling from a horse while filming her hometown to showcase its local appeal. She had over 6 million followers on China’s TikTok-equivalent platform Douyin. Her death prompted many Chinese netizens — even those unfamiliar with her — to leave messages of condolence.
Only 47 years old, He Jiaolong had long worked in Zhaosu County in Ili, Xinjiang — a region known for horses.
In 2017, she became deputy head of Zhaosu County. She gained popularity after releasing a video of herself riding through snow-covered landscapes to promote local tourism. Over time, she became a symbol of Xinjiang’s winter charm.
She later devoted herself fully to social media content creation, leveraging short videos and livestreaming to promote Xinjiang’s agricultural products and tourism. She helped more than 400 agricultural enterprises complete e-commerce upgrades, hosted over 500 livestream sales events, and generated more than 600 million yuan in sales. The public brand she helped build, “Taste of Xinjiang,” established eight livestreaming bases across the region. After three years, total direct and indirect sales driven by the brand exceeded 20 billion yuan.
After news of her death confirmed, netizens returned to the horseback video that first made her famous, leaving messages of mourning. The video has now received over 1.08 million likes, with comments filled with virtual flowers and calls for the platform not to remove her account. Many also pledged to continue purchasing Xinjiang products in her memory.
Editor: Zhiyu Wang
