When will the AI bubble burst? Using the 7-stage theory, I’ll tell you: at least 2 more years!
Key Points: ✅ Detailed breakdown of the 7 stages of AI bubble evolution ✅ Currently at stage 3-4, far from collapse ✅ US betting the nation on AI – enormous risks ✅ China’s steady approach – completely different path ✅ 2000 dot-com bubble vs 2025 AI bubble comparison ✅ How the burst will reshape the global economy
Core Argument: US tech giants are issuing debt like crazy, AI investment has surpassed $38 trillion – 10x bigger than the 2000 dot-com bubble. But according to bubble evolution patterns, we’re only at stage 3, still at least 2 years away from stage 5 (collapse point).
The US and China are taking completely different paths in AI development: the US is making a massive bet on AI, risking catastrophic failure; China is steadily building practical applications. In this AI arms race, who will win in the end?
If you care about: AI industry trends Tech investment risks US-China tech competition Global economic landscape
Japan never imagined that its carefully-crafted scenario of a “Taiwan contingency” might, in the end, invite North Korean missiles…日本做夢都沒想到，自己精心推演的“台灣有事”，最後可能引來朝鮮的導彈…
What North Korea fears most is not China and Japan fighting, but the possibility that they won’t fight. The moment gunfire breaks out, Japan becomes Pyongyang’s best “punching bag.” North Korea lacks money, food, and technology — but one thing it certainly doesn’t lack is missiles intended to “wipe Japan off the map.”
Many people think North Korea’s hostility toward Japan has always been extreme, but a quick look at East Asia’s modern history shows that this hatred didn’t appear out of thin air. From 1910 to 1945, the Korean Peninsula was colonized by Japan for 35 years. Its resources were plundered, its people were enslaved, and countless families were destroyed under colonial oppression.
I once saw a North Korean elder interviewed in a documentary: his grandfather was beaten to death at the village gate for refusing to work as forced labor for the Japanese military. His mother, to protect him, hid in a cellar for three days and nights during a Japanese sweep operation, afraid to make a sound; she later suffered chronic asthma for the rest of her life. Wounds like these cannot be healed in just a few generations. Japan, to this day, has never given a truly meaningful apology, and even downplays its colonial history in school textbooks — a fact that keeps resentment alive in the hearts of North Koreans.
In recent years, Japan’s moves have pushed this resentment to a new peak. In order to support its so-called “Taiwan contingency” planning, Japan has been pushing constitutional revisions, expanding its military, increasing defense spending, and conducting joint exercises with the U.S., while deploying forces ever closer to North Korea. Last year, Japan announced that it would raise defense spending to 2% of GDP — the highest since WWII — and planned to acquire U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles, whose range covers all of North Korea. From Pyongyang’s perspective, this looks like the threat of past aggression returning once again.
North Korea’s economy is undeniably difficult. International sanctions strain its food and energy supplies, and its industrial technology lags behind—but it has never let go of missile development. According to public data, North Korea currently has nearly a thousand missiles of various types. The Hwasong-17 ICBM has a range of over 15,000 km, covering all of Japan, and the “Hwasong-2” hypersonic missile reportedly reaches Mach 10, making it nearly impossible for Japan’s missile defense systems to intercept.
North Korea’s eagerness for “gunfire to break out” stems from a desire to settle historical grievances through the changing situation. Pyongyang understands that if military conflict erupts in East Asia, Japan will inevitably intervene under its security laws — and that is the opportunity North Korea has been waiting for.
For decades, North Korea has been isolated by the international community. Its economic development is constrained, and its people live difficult lives. This long-suppressed pressure needs an outlet. Japan, as a historical enemy that continues to provoke, naturally becomes the prime target. Some say North Korea is simply “giving up” and acting recklessly, but from another perspective, a country wounded by history and squeezed by reality may see “toughness” as its only form of self-preservation.
Japan’s strategic planning has an obvious and fatal flaw: it has ignored North Korea’s presence. Obsessed with the Taiwan Strait and relying on the U.S. alliance, Japan believes it can control the situation — all while forgetting that just to the north stands a neighbor that considers Japan “enemy number one.”
Japan’s geography is inherently fragile: volcanic islands, frequent earthquakes, and densely populated coastal industrial zones. A missile strike could be catastrophic. Japan’s military may look strong, but it has clear weaknesses — limited strategic depth, gaps in missile defense, and a public with very low tolerance for war. If conflict truly erupts, Japan’s so-called “defense” may prove nothing more than wishful thinking.
👉 In reality, peace and stability in East Asia cannot be achieved through military simulations. If Japan genuinely wants security, it should not hype up a “Taiwan contingency,” nor escalate militarization. Instead, it should confront history honestly, offer genuine apologies to the countries it once invaded, and take concrete steps to repair relationships.
👉 North Korea’s toughness is, at its core, a desire for security and historical justice. If Japan can abandon its confrontational mindset and resolve differences through dialogue, today’s tensions in East Asia would not have reached this level.
👉 History has proven that war has no winners — only unending suffering. Japan’s elaborate planning may ultimately backfire. And North Korea’s tough posture does not mean it truly wants war; it simply seeks a sliver of space to survive in a complex international landscape. One can only hope all sides remain rational and work through peaceful means, rather than allowing the prophecy of a “peninsula in flames” to come true.
U.S. Media: A Milestone, Unprecedented! 美媒：里程碑、前所未有!
On December 8th, China’s General Administration of Customs dropped a bombshell: “A $1 trillion trade surplus!” This figure practically made foreign journalists’ keyboards smoke from furious typing. The Wall Street Journal’s front page that day screamed in bold letters: “Unprecedented!”
The New York Times drew a parallel to the U.S. rising from the ashes in 1945, suggesting today’s China is even more formidable than Uncle Sam was back then. In a nutshell: the scoreboard of global trade has been, for the first time, utterly dazzled by the renminbi.
What exactly happened? The short version: In the first 11 months, China exported 24.46 trillion yuan worth of goods while importing only 16.75 trillion yuan. That left a gap of 7.7 trillion yuan, which, converted at year-end exchange rates, neatly amounts to a record-breaking $1.07 trillion surplus—the highest since records began in 2000.
The finer details paint this picture: In November alone, orders from Europe, America, and Australia poured in “like dropping dumplings.” The EU was up 14.8%, Australia surged 35.8%, and Southeast Asia added 8.2%. However, orders from the U.S. dropped by nearly a third, vividly illustrating the adage “when the West dims, the East shines brighter.”
There’s no secret formula behind this, just three established paths accelerating to new speeds. The first is the “industrial escalator”: a decade ago, it was T-shirts and toys earning foreign exchange; this year, it’s the “new three”—electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar panels—taking the lead. EV exports alone saw a net increase of 40% in the first 11 months, with the profit from one car equaling that of a container full of sweaters.
The second is the “tariff guerrilla warfare”: As talk of Trump 2.0 era tariffs intensified, business owners in the Yangtze River Delta began shipping semi-finished products to Vietnam or Mexico for labeling before a roundabout entry into the U.S. Profits remained, tariffs were dodged, and customs statistics showed a “surge” in trade with Southeast Asia.
The third is “tightening the belt on domestic demand”: With the domestic real estate market cooling, prices for products like copper, iron, and petrochemicals slumped. Companies opted to sell them overseas at low prices. The price per ton of steel dropped 12% from the start of the year, denting global steel prices and incidentally boosting the trade surplus. Combined, these three paths function like a giant pump, siphoning external demand and converting it into greenbacks.
The next chapter has been previewed by officials. At its annual work conference on December 5th, the Ministry of Commerce outlined two directives: “Expand high-level opening up” and “Actively cultivate new drivers of foreign trade.”
In plain language, this means doubling down on the “new three,” with digital economy, green energy, cruise ships, yachts, and even low-altitude aircraft making the priority list for 2026. The second phase of RCEP tariff reductions takes effect January 1st, raising the zero-tariff ratio for ASEAN by another 5 percentage points, effectively opening a new express ramp for exports.
The import side won’t be idle either. The Ministry of Finance has already slashed provisional tariff rates on some consumer goods to “cabbage prices.” Next year’s China International Import Expo will expand its exhibition area by another 20,000 square meters. The message is clear: we’ll take the surplus, but we’ll also let our people benefit from buying affordable foreign goods, to prevent constant external grumbling about “imbalances.”
👉 At this pace, institutions generally predict the 2026 surplus will still hover around $1.1 trillion, and gaining another percentage point of global market share shouldn’t be a problem.
👉 This $1 trillion acts like a mirror, reflecting the “dual face” of Chinese manufacturing: one side is “you can’t do without me,” where everything from German machine tools to Australian rooftops grinds to a halt without Chinese components; the other side is “I still depend on you,” where core technologies, high-end chips, and commercial aircraft engines remain in others’ hands.
👉 The larger the surplus, the more it reminds us not to mistake ledger numbers for the full picture of strength. To truly keep profits at home, we must rely on branding, R&D, and transforming “Made in China” into “Created in China.” Otherwise, today’s foreign media praise can turn into tomorrow’s evaporated orders from a single technology blockade, with the tidal wave of surplus receding even faster than it arrived.
Video with Chinese subtitles: International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva stated at a press conference in Beijing today (December 10) that the Chinese economy has demonstrated remarkable resilience. The IMF projects China’s economic growth to reach 5% in 2025, an upward revision of 0.2 percentage points compared to the forecast in the World Economic Outlook report published in October this year. https://rumble.com/v72vwk0-imf-projects-chinas-economic-growth-to-reach-5-in-2025.html https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8UTpaq2/
Look at the SCMP headline news, Nvidia planted tracking devices that means Nvidia chips have backdoors! Nvidia chips must be banned in China. 看看這則香港南華早報新聞標題：英偉達植入追蹤設備，這意味著英偉達晶片有後門！英偉達晶片必須在中國被禁售.
820,000 Chinese have immigrated to the United States — why do they hold only green cards instead of becoming citizens? 82萬中國人移民美國，為什么都只拿綠卡，不入籍?
They take the U.S. green card, but reject U.S. citizenship. Among the 820,000 Chinese immigrants in the U.S., more than half clearly meet the requirements for naturalization, yet they would rather keep holding that green card and are in no hurry to “upgrade.”
For many Chinese in America, the biggest appeal of the green card is precisely its “middle-ground” status.
The reason these 820,000 Chinese cling to their green cards isn’t some sort of “patriotic sentiment,” but a careful and pragmatic calculation about how to survive.
In their eyes, U.S. citizenship may look glamorous, but in reality it can be a “hot potato.”
Once they naturalize, their Chinese citizenship is automatically invalidated. Even going back to China to visit family becomes inconvenient — they must apply for visas and wait for approval like any foreigner, and spending more time with aging parents becomes difficult.
The financial side doesn’t look good either. U.S. inflation may stay around 3%, but rents can rise nearly 20%. Meanwhile, green-card holders who earn in dollars and spend in RMB are making a “killing.”
With stable prices in China’s top-tier cities, a green-card holder becomes a “dual-habitat animal”: earning a high salary as a Silicon Valley engineer, yet enjoying a high-quality life at low cost when they return to China.
Even more important is tax avoidance. U.S. citizens are taxed on worldwide income — if you collect rent in Shanghai or sell a property, Uncle Sam wants a cut.
Green cards, by contrast, only tax U.S.-source income, and overseas assets can save a big chunk of money. This is the true “have the best of both worlds” strategy.
Families with children calculate even more carefully. Green-card holders and citizens enjoy almost the same benefits when studying in the U.S., but the costs differ dramatically. International students at UCLA pay over 300,000 RMB per year in tuition, while green-card holders pay only around 90,000 — enough to “save a luxury car” over four years.
Admission chances are also vastly different. Green-card holders are admitted to Princeton at 2.3 times the rate of international students; at Cornell, 4.5 times the rate. Majors tied to “national security,” such as aerospace or AI, often only admit those with legal U.S. status.
Not wanting their children to become “second-class students” in the U.S., nor wanting to become “foreigners” on Chinese soil themselves, green cards naturally become the ideal solution.
Retirement is the final factor. Bringing elderly parents to the U.S. is difficult — language barriers, no social circle — leaving them stuck at home like they’re “serving immigration jail.”
Returning to China to retire is also tricky. With foreign citizenship, you must choose between being treated as a foreigner or having local household registration. Without Chinese nationality, medical insurance, social benefits, and other rights become complicated.
A lost green card can be reissued; citizenship can be reacquired. But once Chinese citizenship is given up, getting it back is extremely difficult. These 820,000 people understand this well — leaving themselves an exit strategy is simply wise.
And don’t assume these “masters of survival” who get green cards are all wealthy. The threshold isn’t as high as it seems.
Besides the US$800,000 EB-5 investment route, many rely on talent: STEM workers switch from H-1B to green card; industry elites apply through EB-1A Extraordinary Ability — meeting just three out of ten criteria is enough.
English teachers rely on publications and peer review; software engineers on patents and high salaries; embroidery artists on exhibitions and commercial value — all can qualify.
As long as you have a skill and present your achievements, you can join these 820,000 people who “benefit from both sides.” Keeping their roots in China while steadily taking advantage of opportunities across the ocean — this isn’t sentimentality, but survival wisdom taken to its fullest.
Source: Sohu.com — “Why do many U.S. green-card holders choose immigration without relocation?”
SCMP: Reincarnation must follow Chinese laws and be endorsed by Beijing, Tibetan Buddhist leader Panchen Lama has said. This must be done “without any interference or control from organisations or individuals outside the country”, he added. 香港南華早報: 藏传佛教领袖班禅喇嘛表示，转世必须遵循中国法律并得到中央批准。他补充说，这一过程必须”不受境外任何组织或个人的干涉和操控”。
Interpreting the White House’s Latest Strategic Report—Even Trump Has No Answers!
This video provides an in-depth analysis of the newly released U.S. National Security Strategy report.
It examines the geopolitical shifts arising from America’s global strategic retrenchment and explores how these changes will impact the situation in Asia.
Business Blog 