Chinese publishing thrives in Tokyo as Hong Kong freedom narrows
KENJI KAWASE
TOKYO -- Hong Hong's relative freedom once made it a center for publishing and selling books that were considered "sensitive" or banned in mainland China. But with dissent severely curtailed under the national security law imposed exactly five years ago Monday, another hub of Chinese-language publication is emerging: Tokyo.
While democratic and Mandarin-speaking Taiwan remains a natural alternative, a rapid increase in immigrants and visitors is turning Tokyo into a new hub for Chinese-language literature and scholarship.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Asahi Shimbun
2 hours ago
- Asahi Shimbun
China summons Nvidia over ‘backdoor safety risks' in H20 chips
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang talks with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, left, before President Donald Trump speaks during an AI summit at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, July 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo) WASHINGTON--China's cyberspace regulators on Thursday summoned Nvidia over security concerns that its H20 chips can be tracked and turned off remotely, the Cyberspace Administration of China said on its website. In the meeting, Chinese regulators demanded that the U.S. chip company provide explanations on 'backdoor safety risks' of its H20 chips to be sold in China and submit relevant materials, the office said. 'Cybersecurity is critically important to us. NVIDIA does not have 'backdoors' in our chips that would give anyone a remote way to access or control them,' an Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement to AP. It came just about two weeks after the Trump administration lifted the block on the computing chips and allowed Nvidia to resume sales of H20 chips to the Chinese market. Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, made the announcement with fanfare when he was in Beijing earlier this month. The latest episode appears to be another turbulence in the tech rivalry between the United States and China, which have left businesses in both countries tussling with governments over market access and national security concerns. Any safety concern by Beijing could jeopardize the sale of H20 chips in China. Citing unnamed U.S. AI experts, the Chinese regulators said Nvidia has developed mature technology to track, locate and remotely disable its computing chips. The regulators summoned Nvidia to 'safeguard the cybersecurity and data security of Chinese users,' in accordance with Chinese laws, the statement said. The statement also referred to a call by U.S. lawmakers to require tracking and locating capabilities on U.S. advanced chips sold overseas. In May, Rep. Bill Huizenga, R.-Michigan, and Rep. Bill Foster, D.-Illinois, introduced the Chip Security Act that would require high-end chips to be equipped with 'security mechanisms' to detect 'smuggling or exploitation.' The bill has not moved through Congress since its introduction. Foster, a trained physicist, then said, 'I know that we have the technical tools to prevent powerful AI technology from getting into the wrong hands.' The U.S. still bans the sale to China of the most advanced chips, which are necessary for developing artificial intelligence. Both countries aim to lead in the artificial intelligence race. The Trump administration in April blocked the sales of H20 chips, which Nvidia developed to specifically comply with U.S. restrictions for exports of AI chips to China. After the ban was lifted, Nvidia expected to sell hundreds of thousands more H20 chips in the Chinese market. But the easing of the ban has raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill. On Monday, a group of top Democratic senators, including Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, wrote to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to express their 'grave concerns.' While chips like the H20 have differing capabilities than the most advanced chips such as Nvidia's H100, 'they give (China) capabilities that its domestically-developed chipsets cannot,' the senators wrote. Shortly after the ban was lifted, Rep. John Moolenaar, R.-Michigan, who chairs the House Select Committee on China, objected. 'The Commerce Department made the right call in banning the H20. Now it must hold the line,' Moolenaar wrote in a letter to Lutnick. 'We can't let the CCP use American chips to train AI models that will power its military, censor its people, and undercut American innovation,' Moolenaar wrote, referring to the Chinese Communist Party by its acronym.
Asahi Shimbun
2 hours ago
- Asahi Shimbun
Chinese researchers suggest lasers and sabotage to counter Musk's Starlink satellites
In this long exposure photo, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a payload of Starlink V2 Mini internet satellites lifts off from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., lJuly 23, 2023. (AP Photo) ROME--Stealth submarines fitted with space-shooting lasers, supply-chain sabotage and custom-built attack satellites armed with ion thrusters. Those are just some of the strategies Chinese scientists have been developing to counter what Beijing sees as a potent threat: Elon Musk' s armada of Starlink communications satellites. Chinese government and military scientists, concerned about Starlink's potential use by adversaries in a military confrontation and for spying, have published dozens of papers in public journals that explore ways to hunt and destroy Musk's satellites, an Associated Press review found. Chinese researchers believe that Starlink — a vast constellation of low-orbit satellites that deliver cheap, fast and ubiquitous connectivity even in remote areas — poses a high risk to the Chinese government and its strategic interests. That fear has mostly been driven by the company's close ties to the U.S. intelligence and defense establishment, as well as its growing global footprint. 'As the United States integrates Starlink technology into military space assets to gain a strategic advantage over its adversaries, other countries increasingly perceive Starlink as a security threat in nuclear, space, and cyber domains,' wrote professors from China's National University of Defense Technology in a 2023 paper. Chinese researchers are not the only ones concerned about Starlink, which has a stranglehold on certain space-based communications. Some traditional U.S. allies are also questioning the wisdom of handing over core communications infrastructure — and a potential trove of data — to a company run by an unpredictable foreign businessman whose allegiances are not always clear. Apprehensions deepened after Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine made clear the battlefield advantages Starlink satellites could convey and have been exacerbated by Musk's proliferating political interests. Musk pumped tens of millions of dollars into President Donald Trump's reelection effort and emerged, temporarily, as a key adviser and government official. As Musk toys with the idea of starting his own political party, he has also taken an increasing interest in European politics, using his influence to promote an array of hard-right and insurgent figures often at odds with establishment politicians. Musk left the Trump administration in May and within days his relationship with Trump publicly imploded in a feud on social media. SpaceX, the rocket launch and space-based communications company that Musk founded and that operates Starlink, remains inextricably linked with core U.S. government functions. It has won billions in contracts to provide launch services for NASA missions and military satellites, recuperate astronauts stranded at the International Space Station and build a network of spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. Starlink's space dominance has sparked a global scramble to come up with viable alternatives. But its crushing first-mover advantage has given SpaceX near monopoly power, further complicating the currents of business, politics and national security that converge on Musk and his companies. Since its first launches in 2019, Starlink has come to account for about two-thirds of all active satellites, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who writes a newsletter tracking satellite launches. SpaceX operates more than 8,000 active satellites and eventually aims to deploy tens of thousands more. Beijing's tendency to view Starlink as tool of U.S. military power has sharpened its efforts to develop countermeasures — which, if deployed, could increase the risk of collateral damage to other customers as SpaceX expands its global footprint. The same satellites that pass over China also potentially serve Europe, Ukraine, the United States and other geographies as they continue their path around the earth. Starlink says it operates in more than 140 countries, and recently made inroads in Vietnam, Niger, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan. In June, Starlink also obtained a license to operate in India, overcoming national security concerns and powerful domestic telecom interests to crack open a tech-savvy market of nearly 1.5 billion people. On the company's own map of coverage, it has very few dead zones beyond those in North Korea, Iran and China. No other country or company is close to catching up with Starlink. Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos has taken aim at rival Musk with Project Kuiper, which launched its first batch of internet satellites into orbit in April. So far Amazon has just 78 satellites in orbit, with 3,232 planned, according to McDowell, and London-based Eutelstat OneWeb has around 650 satellites in orbit, a fraction of the fleet it had initially planned. The European Union is spending billions to develop its own satellite array — called the IRIS2 initiative — but remains woefully behind. EU officials have had to lobby their own member states not to sign contracts with Starlink while it gets up and running. 'We are allies with the United States of America, but we need to have our strategic autonomy,' said Christophe Grudler, a French member of the European Parliament who led legislative work on IRIS2. 'The risk is not having our destiny in our own hands.' China has been public about its ambition to build its own version of Starlink to meet both domestic national security needs and compete with Starlink in foreign markets. In 2021, Beijing established the state-owned China SatNet company and tasked it with launching a mega-constellation with military capabilities, known as Guowang. In December, the company launched its first operational satellites and now has 60 of a planned 13,000 in orbit, according to McDowell. Qianfan, a company backed by the Shanghai government, has launched 90 satellites out of some 15,000 planned. The Brazilian government in November announced a deal with Qianfan, after Musk had a scorching public fight with a Brazilian judge investigating X, who also froze Space X's bank accounts in the country. Qianfan is also targeting customers in Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan and Uzbekistan and has ambitions to expand across the African continent, according to a slide presented at a space industry conference last year and published by the China Space Monitor. Concerns about Starlink's supremacy were supercharged by Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war was a turning point in strategic thinking about Starlink and similar systems. Ukraine used the Starlink network to facilitate battlefield communications and power fighter and reconnaissance drones, providing a decisive ground-game advantage. At the same time, access to the satellites was initially controlled by a single man, Musk, who can — and did — interrupt critical services, refusing, for example, to extend coverage to support a Ukrainian counterattack in Russia-occupied Crimea. U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow after the full-scale invasion also curtailed the availability of Western technology in Russia, underscoring the geopolitical risks inherent in relying on foreign actors for access to critical infrastructure. 'Ukraine was a warning shot for the rest of us,' said Nitin Pai, co-founder and director of the Takshashila Institution, a public policy research center based in Bangalore, India. 'For the last 20 years, we were quite aware of the fact that giving important government contracts to Chinese companies is risky because Chinese companies operate as appendages of the Chinese Communist Party. Therefore, it's a risk because the Chinese Communist Party can use technology as a lever against you. Now it's no different with the Americans.' Nearly all of the 64 papers about Starlink reviewed by AP in Chinese journals were published after the conflict started. Starlink's omnipresence and potential military applications have unnerved Beijing and spurred the nation's scientists to action. In paper after paper, researchers painstakingly assessed the capabilities and vulnerabilities of a network that they clearly perceive as menacing and strove to understand what China might learn — and emulate — from Musk's company as Beijing works to develop a similar satellite system. Though Starlink does not operate in China, Musk's satellites nonetheless can sweep over Chinese territory. Researchers from China's National Defense University in 2023 simulated Starlink's coverage of key geographies, including Beijing, Taiwan, and the polar regions, and determined that Starlink can achieve round-the-clock coverage of Beijing. 'The Starlink constellation coverage capacity of all regions in the world is improving steadily and in high speed,' they concluded. In another paper — this one published by the government-backed China Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team — researchers mapped out vulnerabilities in Starlink's supply chain. 'The company has more than 140 first-tier suppliers and a large number of second-tier and third-tier suppliers downstream,' they wrote in a 2023 paper. 'The supervision for cybersecurity is limited.' Engineers from the People's Liberation Army, in another 2023 paper, suggested creating a fleet of satellites to tail Starlink satellites, collecting signals and potentially using corrosive materials to damage their batteries or ion thrusters to interfere with their solar panels. Other Chinese academics have encouraged Beijing to use global regulations and diplomacy to contain Musk, even as the nation's engineers have continued to elaborate active countermeasures: Deploy small optical telescopes already in commercial production to monitor Starlink arrays. Concoct deep fakes to create fictitious targets. Shoot powerful lasers to burn Musk's equipment. Some U.S. analysts say Beijing's fears may be overblown, but such assessments appear to have done little to cool domestic debate. One Chinese paper was titled, simply: 'Watch out for that Starlink.'
The Mainichi
5 hours ago
- The Mainichi
Trump's country-specific tariffs to kick in after monthslong pause
WASHINGTON (Kyodo) -- U.S. President Donald Trump is due to impose a broad set of country-specific higher tariffs on Friday after pausing them for nearly four months to negotiate individual deals with some key trading partners, including Japan, South Korea and the European Union. "Tomorrow, August 1, the reciprocal rates will be going into effect," White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said at a press conference, confirming that the pause will not be extended further. Leavitt said countries that have not struck a trade agreement with the United States or have not received a letter with a new tariff rate will be informed by the deadline. Trump announced sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs on April 2, targeting dozens of countries with which the United States runs trade deficits, before pausing them for 90 days to create time for negotiations. The Trump administration later extended the pause to Aug. 1 amid little progress in its talks with major trading partners. But it managed to clinch trade deals with some of them in the last couple weeks. Last week, the administration reached a trade deal with Japan under which Trump's so-called reciprocal tariff rate for the country was lowered to 15 percent from 25 percent in return for Tokyo committing to massive investment in the United States in the coming years. As Japan promised to buy more energy and farm products from the United States, the agreement also resulted in Japanese autos being subject to a 15 percent tariff, down from the whopping 27.5 percent rate that took effect in April. After Japan, the United States struck similar deals with the European Union and South Korea, with each securing tariff rates of 15 percent for the reciprocal and auto tariffs. Although there will be no further delay in implementing country-specific tariffs, the administration has decided to grant several exceptions. On Thursday, Trump said he will continue with the current 25 percent tariff on some Mexican goods imported to the United States for 90 days, avoiding the higher 30 percent tariff that he has threatened while the two countries negotiate during the period. With China, the United States has a different 90-day tariff truce that is set to expire Aug. 12. In May, the two countries suspended most of the hefty tariffs levied on each other's goods for that duration. Trump could extend the pause as early as this week following trade talks between senior U.S. and Chinese officials in Stockholm.
