Plenty of people still insist China only copies and never invents. That view badly misreads how the modern world actually works.
Europe just got scorched. Britain, France, and Germany logged temperatures unseen in decades, and the region has recorded 1,300 excess deaths linked to the heat since June 21. Videos online show French shoppers storming malls to grab Chinese air conditioners, with physical scuffles breaking out in the rush. A portable unit from China's Midea Group became the hottest item on the continent. Scalpers pushed prices as high as 5,000 euros, and buyers kept lining up anyway.
This is a product that barely sells back home in China. Yet it slips through Europe's tangled web of air-conditioning rules with surgical precision. Spain treats an outdoor unit as a change to a building's facade, which needs approval from three-fifths of the owners' association. Midea simply moved the outdoor unit indoors and rebranded it an "indoor appliance." The same trick works in Britain.
France requires professional inspection for refrigerants exceeding 2 kilograms. Midea's unit uses 1.99 kilograms. Germany caps nighttime noise at 35 decibels, and Midea's silent mode runs at exactly 35 decibels. This is how China perfects a product down to the last detail. Reportedly, this model was developed at Midea's Stuttgart R&D center.
American inventor Willis Carrier created the air conditioner in 1902, earning him the title "father of air conditioning." His original goal had nothing to do with human comfort. He was trying to fix a New York printing factory, where fluctuating temperature and humidity kept warping paper and throwing off ink registration. Carrier's air conditioners, however, are no longer the star of today's market.
China now sits at the absolute center of global air-conditioner production. It accounts for over 80% of global manufacturing capacity. Among the world's top 10 best-selling brands, eight are Chinese companies. The US, by contrast, holds barely any capacity, an estimated 0.3% of the global total, while Europe's share sits at roughly 4%.
Critics who reflexively bash China might argue that Chinese air conditioners are simply copies of American ones. That argument carries little weight. Gunpowder was a Chinese invention, yet no one would seriously claim that Raytheon's American-made M982 Excalibur guided artillery shell is a copy of an ancient Chinese invention. The Excalibur's explosive charge today is 92% HMX, a world apart from the gunpowder China invented centuries ago. The same logic applies to air conditioners. Compare a modern Midea unit to Carrier's original invention, and you find an equally vast gulf between them.
Invention and innovation run through three stages. "0 to 1" is the birth and validation of a concept. "1 to 10" is productization and initial commercialization. "10 to 100" is mass production, refinement, and scaling up.
Over a century ago, China was impoverished and weak, and it produced relatively little scientific research. Few "0 to 1" breakthroughs emerged. Since the reform and opening-up of 1978, though, China has honed its talent for flexibly applying concepts and become a master of "1 to 10." In the past decade, it has pushed "10 to 100" to the extreme, producing world-class enterprises across every industry. Now even "0 to 1" breakthroughs are starting to surge. Just look at the recent wave of patents in pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and even artificial intelligence.
Beyond accusations of copying, the West, led by the US in recent years, has pushed a new narrative: "Chinese overcapacity." Go back to the trade theory of the renowned British political economist David Ricardo, and the logic falls apart. Countries trade precisely because they exchange what they have in surplus. If a country's output of a given good doesn't exceed domestic demand, it isn't "excess," and there is nothing left to export. Trade, by definition, requires surplus capacity. Accusing China of overcapacity is simply an excuse dressed up by the West to justify tariffs and trade barriers, born from the West's own manufacturing shortfalls.
French President Emmanuel Macron said at the G7 summit on June 17 that "China is a key source of global economic imbalance, with problems such as industrial overcapacity." French wine and LV handbags suffer from plenty of overcapacity too. Otherwise, production would match domestic French consumption exactly, with no need to export at all.
The global economy is now shifting toward a trend of "the East rising, the West declining." A century ago, when Western nations enjoyed manufacturing dominance, they sent warships east to force Asian countries into trade. A century later, now that China's manufacturing capacity has caught up and overtaken them, they want to erect trade barriers instead. This double standard does the most damage to their own brands.
Buying an EUV lithography machine from the Netherlands' ASML makes sense because the technology genuinely leads the world. Spending tens of thousands of dollars on a French handbag is a different question. How much advanced technology is really inside it? Is it truly ten times more beautiful, or is it simply hiding extravagant vanity behind a brand name?
Ferrari recently launched its 5-million-yuan pure electric luxury sports car, the Elettrica. Online critics tore it apart, calling the design hideous and its performance inferior to China's own luxury electric sports cars. Strip away the brand's outer shell and look at the real substance, and Western goods often carry far less genuine value than their price tags suggest.
The hypocrisy of Western politicians is steadily dismantling the West's premium image in the eyes of China's younger generation. That shift isn't just political. It's reshaping consumer behavior too.
Fashion-conscious women in China have started buying the domestic luxury brand Songmont. Its handbags, priced at just over 3,000 yuan, are more elegantly designed than French bags costing 50,000 or 100,000 yuan plastered with oversized logos. Why would Chinese consumers keep paying for these hollow foreign luxury brands?
The collapse of Western brands has only just begun.
Lo Wing-hung
Bastille Commentary
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
China's strategy is simple: throw one punch to avoid a hundred.
On Wednesday, August 5, China fired back with five consecutive moves to counter a string of recent US measures that Beijing sees as hostile. A spokesperson for China's Ministry of Commerce called the countermeasures "generally restrained." The message was clear: since the China-US presidential meeting in Busan, the US Federal Communications Commission has ignored China's strong opposition and industry appeals. It keeps stretching the concept of national security to roll out restrictions on China.
Meanwhile, the US has added over 40 Chinese entities to the so-called Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list. China demands the US immediately revoke these measures. And if Washington insists on new restrictions, "China will further retaliate."
China's moves are a direct answer to a series of petty US actions that fall into two main areas.
First, the FCC. Before the government took action, the People's Daily fired a warning shot. Under the byline "Zhong Sheng," it blasted the FCC for hiding behind banners like "non-discrimination" and "national security" to discriminate against and suppress Chinese companies.
The FCC recently added foreign-made power inverters and advanced robotic equipment to its so-called "Covered List." That means new models can't get certification and are locked out of the US market. The paper called the tactic typical unilateral bullying.
This isn't new. Back in 2021, the FCC put telecom and video surveillance gear from five Chinese companies on the list. Since then, it has steadily widened the net. In April, it proposed revoking the qualifications of testing and certification bodies from countries that haven't signed a "Mutual Recognition Agreement" with the US. That artificially raises the compliance bar for Chinese products.
And now, Reuters reports the FCC is drafting a ban on imports of new Chinese-made optical communication transceivers for data centers.
Second, the Xinjiang sanctions. On July 30, the US Department of Homeland Security added over 40 Chinese entities to the entity list under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The move, effective August 3, swells the list from 144 to 187, the biggest expansion since it was created. The new targets span food, clothing, and cotton. They include snack maker Qia Qia melon seeds, frozen food producer Zhengzhou Synear dumplings, and apparel brand Fujian Septwolves.
When the news hit the Chinese internet, netizens erupted in mockery. The joke going around teasing that "eating melon seeds can easily damage US soldiers' teeth."
China didn't waste a second. It fired back with five countermeasures, and the first one hits where it hurts: drones. Beijing is tightening export controls on drones and related technologies to the US. From now on, every shipment of drones, key components, and controlled technologies will face a strict case-by-case review.
And forget about any 'licensing facilitation' exemptions—those are off the table. Think about it: China is the world's drone superpower. The US wanted to block Chinese drones from coming in. Now China is flipping the script—it's restricting what goes out. The message is blunt: just because you want to buy doesn't mean we'll sell. Especially not advanced drones and components with military uses.
The second measure is a highly targeted strike: China has added six US entities to its Countermeasures List, all of which it says assisted US sanctions on Xinjiang-related companies.
Applied DNA Sciences, Inc. is believed to provide DNA-based traceability and verification services for relevant products.
Stratum Reservoir, LLC is believed to conduct stable-isotope testing and related analysis to determine the origin of Xinjiang-linked materials.
Altana Technologies, Inc., which operates a global supply-chain mapping and management platform, is believed to help the US government trace supply chains involving Xinjiang-linked products.
The Responsible Business Alliance, which promotes responsible business conduct in global supply chains and operates assessment programmes for member companies, is believed to help companies exclude Xinjiang-linked products from their supply chains.
Verité Group, Inc., a nonprofit focused on labour rights and human rights, examines alleged forced labour in global supply chains.
Human Rights in China, a New York-based human-rights organization, advocates sanctions related to Xinjiang.
China’s countermeasures against these six entities are therefore highly targeted.
The third measure targets a US compliance testing company that helped the FCC impose China-related sanctions. That company will now be locked out of the compliance testing business in the Chinese market. The ripple effect: it could drive up compliance costs for US products trying to enter China.
The fourth measure hits at the heart of product certification. China is suspending the entrustment of US agencies to conduct factory follow-up inspections for CCC certification. Remember, CCC certification is a must-have for US products to enter the Chinese market. By pulling the plug on US inspectors, China shifts the review work to its own agencies. That spells more time and more uncertainty for American exporters.
The fifth measure, a national security investigation into imported US printing and copying office equipment. On the surface, this one looks like a light tap.
China imported about $2.08 billion worth of such equipment in 2025, mostly from Japan ($1.72 billion). The US slice was small. But this is just the opening move.
The US has banned Chinese software and hardware from connected and autonomous vehicles on American roads—and until now, China held its fire.
Now Beijing is investigating US printers and copiers on national security grounds. The message is unmistakable: if Washington plays the national security card at every turn, Beijing can just as easily slap an 'unsafe' label on American phones and EVs running US software.
But that's not the main battlefield. Artificial intelligence is the real arena. Over the past month, Chinese companies have rolled out one high-performance, low-cost AI model after another, sending US AI giants reeling. When Anthropic released a new model in June, the US government demanded it be kept out of non-American hands. The clash forced Anthropic to pull the model. Trump signed an executive order in June setting up an AI safety framework, including a voluntary program for companies to submit cutting-edge models for government review.
Then Chinese developers like Moonshot AI and DeepSeek unleashed open-source systems that rival top-tier US models, fueling a fierce debate in Washington over how to regulate open-weight models. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pushed for mandatory government safety reviews for both open and proprietary models, taking direct aim at Chinese open-source systems. He won backing from Treasury Secretary Bessent and others, but ran into a wall of opposition from US tech giants, including Nvidia.
On August 4, the Trump administration delivered its verdict. In a meeting led by the Office of the National Cyber Director, top US AI companies were told that under the new AI safety framework, open-source models from Chinese rivals would not face US government safety testing.
For Anthropic, it was a crushing defeat. US National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross later spelled out the thinking at a cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas: the US government wants to back the American open-source AI ecosystem. He called such models 'tremendously valuable' and insisted the regulatory framework must stay 'flexible.'
Otherwise, he warned, 'it would not only stifle growth, development, and innovation, but the regulatory regime would become obsolete within 48 hours of completing its process.'
The bottom line: Washington keeps chipping away at China with petty moves. But when the pile gets high enough, Beijing punches back hard—and signals it has heavier blows ready.
President Xi is due to visit the US in September, and Trump will be in Shenzhen in mid-November for the APEC summit. Trump doesn't want things to spiral out of control; at crunch time, he'll yank the leash on his officials.
The real battlefield is artificial intelligence. It was almost certain that the White House's decision to leave Chinese open-source models alone came after fierce pushback from China.
Lo Wing-hung
