Ian Hutchinson

A world map visualization of 68 battery factories with Chinese company involvement. The headline of the map is China's Global Battery Empire.

NEW: I tracked all Chinese lithium battery factories announced or built in the past decade 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 China's borders. The truth is, companies like CATL & BYD are so technologically advanced that there's little international competition. European and Asian countries are welcoming them with open arms.

Really neat feature from Rest of World, based in part on data featured in our new cleantech dashboard from the China Cross-Border Monitor!

The Global Investments Powering China’s EV Push In 2024, Chinese ZEV firms invested more abroad than at home, a historic shift after years of directing around 80% of investment to the domestic market.

Very neat piece of research from my colleagues that looks at how Chinese investments in the EV supply chain compare domestically vs. abroad. Last year, for the first time, China's companies invested more in EV stuff abroad than at home. cbm.rhg.com/research-not...

That's interesting, I'll have to make a little detour the next time I visit family in Grand Rapids!

When Chinese manufacturing met Small Town, USA : Planet Money Over the past decade, politicians from both parties have courted American voters with an enticing economic prospect – the dream of bringing manufacturing and manufacturing jobs back to America. They'v...

If you haven't heard it, Planet Money did a radio version of this piece, it's even wilder to hear some of these things than it is to read them.

Things are shit, but here are some mushrooms I found in the woods.

@travisview.bsky.social sounds like some movie night episodes in the offing

I wish I lived closer to this, it sounds like such a fun event honestly. :)

China’s Harsh Fiscal Winter China’s fiscal constraints will become a central issue for Beijing as fiscal revenue growth has flatlined for several years, and will likely decline outright in the future in the absence of structural...

Buried in the the reports from the “two sessions” earlier this month was an astonishing data point: China’s anticipated full-year fiscal revenue growth in 2025 was only 0.1% compared to 2024.

In other words, even if China's GDP grows at 5%, Beijing is expecting fiscal revenue to remain the same:

AI Search Has A Citation Problem We Compared Eight AI Search Engines. They’re All Bad at Citing News.

Interesting work from CJR. Chatbots might feel like useful replacements for search engines, but even with the addition of sourcing notes in their results, they still get things wrong or plain fabricate results on a very regular basis.

Quelle surprise that Grok is one of the worst offenders, too.

They really did the cover dirty with the image crop though, really ruins the whole message:

Greetings from my neighborhood feathered friends in the recent DC snow.

It's so weird to see what's essentially an 8chan post in the FT

Fantastic article, and I loved your QAA episode on him too. Are there any contemporary versions of Conroy that come to mind for you? Any laborers in the content mines that rise to the level of an everyman's literary movement?

Looks like some editor had a change of heart lol

A chart showing growing clean investments in the US. The value for Q3 2024 is $71 billion.

Some good news! Clean energy and transportation investment in the US continued really strong growth in the third quarter this year, hitting a new record high of $71 billion!

America’s News Influencers This study explores the makeup of the social media news influencer universe, including who they are, what content they create and who their audiences are.

The whole report is well worth a read. The information environment is changing, and not for the better. www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2...

Given those structural conditions, progressive donors should really be shoveling more money into shaping this information environment if we want to turn back the worst impulses of nativism and hate politics that are so pervasive in rightwing politics today.

As legacy media (and the incentive structure to be correct on the facts) gets overtaken in people's media diets by these online pundits (and their incentives to get eyeballs and clicks), the choose-your-own-adventure version of reality we exist in now is probably only going to get worse.

A chart showing that 27% of news influencers identify as right-leaning, 21% identify as left-leaning, 3% other, and 48% no clear orientation.

The report highlights some discrepancies that at least track with my perceptions of social media pundits: in general they're more conservative, they're on The Bad Place, and they're monetized in some way or another.

America’s News Influencers This study explores the makeup of the social media news influencer universe, including who they are, what content they create and who their audiences are.

Pew recently put out a really interesting deep dive into news influencers, and how people get their news more generally.

In short, about a fifth Americans (and even more of younger Americans) get their news from these social media "news influencers."

www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2...

If you live in DC and haven't visited JF Books in Dupont, you owe it to yourself to do so! It's a wonderful little bookstore, with a small selection of English language Chinese works and a large selection in Chinese. :)

I love JF! I just got Wu He and Yan Lianke in translation there last week. :)

A Closing Back Door? China’s Evolving FDI Presence in Mexico Although it represents a relatively small portion of total foreign investment, Chinese FDI in Mexico is significantly higher than shown in official statistics.

My much smarter colleagues wrote a short research note on these trends in Mexico last month, I imagine we'll be doing more work of a similar ilk in the future as trade relationships become more volatile.

cbm.rhg.com/research-not...

If making cars in Mexico for export to the US gets more expensive because of tariffs, it could curb enthusiasm from Chinese companies investing there to supply parts.

Another point of tension will be the ICTS rules, which could kneecap the business rationale for some Chinese companies.

A significant chunk of new Chinese announced investments are in the auto sector, mostly coming from auto parts manufacturers who have followed other carmakers to Mexico. While some demand comes from the local market, ultimately the most important thing is access to the US.

With the impending arrival of more tariffs, China's FDI presence in Mexico seems like an important item to watch.

By using transactions-based accounting instead of BOP, we've tracked significantly more Chinese investment in Mexico than official numbers suggest.

The more the merrier! Thanks. :)

Bless you, I've been looking for one of these. :)

I think there’s a Times cooking editor with a little calendar reminder titled “ragebait recipe” that just recurs every quarter or something haha