China has ramped up audits involving online influencers and high-wage earners, reports the South China Morning Post. The move looks to recover billions in unpaid levies amid slumping land sales and value-added tax revenue decline.

As China’s digital infrastructure matures, top-tier influencers are leveraging massive audience engagement to generate premium earnings. Consequently, they have become a focal point of Beijing’s intensified tax scrutiny as regulators seek to broaden the national tax base amid fiscal pressures.

The taxation administration said that in the first 11 months of 2025 it had investigated 1,818 “high-income, high-net-worth individuals”–including online influencers and celebrities–recovering RMB 1.52 billion in unpaid taxes.

There is a view of world history that it moves in century-long cycles, with the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the 19th century marking the beginning of one cycle, World War I the beginning of another and the current geopolitical uncertainties the beginning of yet another cycle which will see significant changes to the geopolitical map. Another view is that the organization of the world today into sovereign states as created by the Peace of Westphalia in 1864 is now in the process of breaking down with no clarity as yet as to what will replace it. it’s certainly true that so many issues in the world today—the environment, the internet, space etc etc—are global and that global management is needed rather than a piecemeal sovereign state arrangement. And one last commonly expressed view—that fundamentally the United States is in decline and China is rising. So, taking all these factors into account, how is the world doing and what of China’s position?

Trump as US president has provided an opportunity for China to expand its influence because of the contrast between the perceived chaos of Trump and the perceived stability of China’s position. But China’s buddies around the world are not in great shape right now. Russia is bogged down with a war, Venezuela is suddenly now sort of under US control, Cuba is under huge pressure, and Iran may or may not be about to undergo a major shift. Both Venezuela and Iran have been major suppliers of oil to China over the past couple of decades, and this is not an ideal situation for Those in Command.

In terms of overall perceptions, BRICS and BRI feel solid and the Trumpian interest in Greenland looks ridiculous. But on the other hand, power politics is about who controls what and about the big pieces and major trends and it’s possible to argue that things are not necessarily moving in the right direction from the perspective of Those in Command. On the other hand again (the world is so complicated), we have a line of Western leaders visiting Beijing over the next few months, as different countries try to figure out the shape of the future.

China’s trade figures for 2025 show a big increase in both exports and surplus, which is a short term positive but a longer-term negative in terms of both global stability and domestic economic and systemic strength. At the heart of the great geopolitical standoff between the US and China is the health of their respective systems and economies, and while the US system is under threat from Trump, it could still hold out and the US economy still seems to be doing okay—the Dow is just a smidgen away from 50,000. Meanwhile, the China system is swathed in opacity and the economy is clearly not in good shape.

There are no conclusions here, just a review of the landscape, which is complicated and volatile. The bottom line is that never has there been a greater need to keep up with the news.

Have a great weekend.

China on Wednesday reported a record trade surplus of nearly $1.2 trillion in 2025, reports Reuters. This was due to booming exports to non-US markets as producers ​looked to diversify away from the pressures of the Trump administration.

A push by policymakers for Chinese firms to diversify beyond the world’s top consumer market by shifting ‌focus to Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America paid dividends, cushioning the economy against US tariffs and intensifying trade, technology and geopolitical frictions since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year.

China’s full-year trade surplus came in at $1.189 trillion—a figure on par with the GDP of a top-20 economy globally like Saudi Arabia—customs data showed on Wednesday, having broken the trillion-dollar ceiling for the first time in November.

Chinese customs authorities told customs agents this week that H200 artificial intelligence chips are not permitted to enter China, reports Reuters, citing three people briefed on the matter.

Chinese government officials also summoned domestic technology companies to meetings on Tuesday where they were explicitly instructed not to purchase the chips unless necessary, Reuters said, quoting the sources.

“The wording from the officials is so severe that it is basically a ban for now, though this might change in the future should things evolve,” one of the people told Reuters.

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill aimed at tightening restrictions on foreign access to advanced American AI chips via cloud computing services, reports Caixin. The bill was passed with a focus on preventing Chinese entities from circumventing export controls.

The legislation, known as the Remote Access Security Act, was approved on January 12 with strong bipartisan support, passing 369-22 after clearing the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a unanimous 51-0 vote. The bill redefines what constitutes a violation of export control rules to include remote access to sensitive technologies via the internet or cloud-based platforms.

Currently, US export controls focus on the physical shipment or sale of restricted hardware and software. This bill would broaden those controls to include access to such items regardless of the user’s physical location, subjecting them to licensing requirements.