by Yereth Jansen
It took less than three minutes before the phones were out. Our bus had just pulled away from Pudong Airport when a stream of gleaming SUVs and sedans slid past the windows: BYD, Zeekr, Nio, XPeng, Aito, Li Auto, Feifan, Hongqi. A parade of brands many people have never even heard of, all bearing green license plates—signifying fully electric or plug-in hybrid, the new standard in China’s automotive future.
“I didn’t know everything is already electric here in China,” whispered a Dutch investor next to me, only an hour on Chinese soil. He looked as if he’d stumbled into a time warp. I remember feeling the exact same way when I moved to Shanghai fifteen years ago, except back then there were no charging stations and taxis still ran on gas. That mix of amazement and curiosity is what powers China Insights, the newsletter I send out every Monday.
A gap filled with misconceptions
Back in the Netherlands, I still leaf through headlines full of trade wars, espionage stories, and geopolitical muscle-flexing. Meanwhile, here in Shanghai, we’re publishing about quantum supremacy: China’s photonic computer Jiuzhang 3 solves a complex problem in four minutes, something the world’s fastest classical supercomputer would need 2.6 billion years to complete. We write about brain implants that enable a paralyzed patient to move their arm again. About Su Hai No. 1, a 250-meter-long salmon farming vessel that will soon produce up to 8,000 tons of fish per year, and simply changes course when storms roll in. And about an ecosystem of super-apps that enables a population of nearly 1.5 billion to manage everything from lunch delivery to mortgage applications with a single fingerprint.
Two worlds that rarely align. It’s in this gap that the most persistent misconceptions take root.
China Insights tries to close that gap, week by week. Not as a mouthpiece for Beijing, but as a reality check. Each edition brings ten stories about capital, patents, or consumer behavior that rarely make it into Western media. We cover a non-binary AI chip developed in Beijing and explain what it means for Nvidia’s earnings. We flag a virus that disguises tumors as pig tissue, and place that breakthrough alongside European trials still stuck in Phase I. Not to keep score, but to measure – and narrow – the distance.
Into the engine room
Journalistic curiosity is valuable. Tangible proof is better. That’s why we organized two Innovation Tech Inspiration Trips this spring. The second took thirteen Dutch entrepreneurs and investors through Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in five days. No sightseeing with waving flags: this was a deep dive into the engine room of China’s innovation economy.
At SenseTime, a researcher guided us past a wall of live camera feeds. Artificial intelligence automatically tagged every face and license plate. Here, privacy concerns are hardly raised. In China, you can safely walk the streets in the middle of the night just about anywhere. Most people are happy to accept the cameras and an extra bag check at the metro entrance in return.
In Meituan’s showroom – China’s answer to Uber Eats and the archetype of the Chinese super-app – tiny pulses of light moved across a giant LED map of China. Over sixty million daily orders flowed in real time through a network of couriers, autonomous bots, and drones. Outside, a drone landed gently and delivered our latte without even disturbing the milk foam. In Amsterdam, we’re debating minimum wages for bike couriers. Here, the focus is on how one super-app – which also handles shared bikes, power banks, movie tickets, hotel bookings, and delivery – eliminates every last bit of friction in the chain.
At Huawei’s campus in Dongguan, we walked through a leafy mini-Europe filled with cobbled streets and baroque replicas. The showroom, the size of a convention center, showcased the newest Ascend 910C chip, electric cars, triple-folding phones, and cloud solutions. We traveled between the different “districts”, each modeled after European architecture, on an internal train normally reserved for employees, disembarking at the stop labeled “Paris”.
A bridge under construction
These moments of mental dislocation are the heart of China Insights. They show that this is no longer a copycat factory, but a laboratory that keeps rewriting the rules of scale and speed. And they remind me why I co-founded the newsletter with Tomas Kucera: to give readers ten weekly signals that the map of the global economy is being redrawn, right now, and in real time.
These moments of mental dislocation are the heart of China Insights. They show that this is no longer a copycat factory, but a laboratory that keeps rewriting the rules of scale and speed. And they remind me why I co-founded the newsletter with Tomas Kucera: to give readers ten weekly signals that the map of the global economy is being redrawn, right now, and in real time.
The change is tangible. According to the World Bank, China now contributes over 18 percent to the global GDP. In digital payments, it sets the tone: Alipay and WeChat Pay process more transactions than all U.S. bank cards combined. In patent statistics, China is moving to the front of the pack. Data from the World Intellectual Property Organization shows that in 2024, around 60 percent of global battery patents and more than half of all computer vision and other AI-related patents were filed by Chinese companies. In quantum technology, it’s in a neck-and-neck race with the United States. Ignore these signals, and you’re simply looking in the wrong direction.
Why it matters
China Insights follows three simple rules: No political slogans. All numbers must be verifiable. Context before opinion. That last one is crucial. Yes, we live and work in China and breathe this dynamic. That gives us proximity ánd blind spots. But curiosity weighs heavier than indignation. Those who view the world solely through a moral lens often miss the finer grains of change.
A weekly newsletter won’t solve geopolitics. But it can shift the reference point that executives, researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors use to orient themselves. Each
Monday dispatch is an invitation: take a look, this is what’s happening now. Readers respond in three ways. Some click away and stick with their familiar narrative. Others file it away and wait. The most interesting group starts asking questions, books a ticket, or rewrites their plans. If even one CFO decides to send their R&D team to Shenzhen for a quarter, or a policymaker grasps why ASEAN countries are adding the yuan to their currency mix, then China Insights has moved something.
I write because curiosity is contagious. If we want to bridge the gap between two often-misunderstood worlds, we need to keep telling stories. Sometimes it’s about a latte delivered by drone. Sometimes a graph about non-binary chips. Sometimes a collective gasp of wonder in a tour bus full of investors. But always, it’s the same bridge I’m trying to build. Every Monday, another plank.
If you want to explore how your organization can move with this shifting landscape, you can find me on LinkedIn. On Mondays we send out ten new stories. On Tuesdays, we can talk strategy. And on Wednesdays, I’ll gladly join you on a factory floor in Guangzhou. The bridge is already there. The crossing is yours to make.
About the Author
Yereth Jansen is an entrepreneur and strategic advisor based in Shanghai. As co-founder of China Insights Weekly, he provides weekly analysis of the latest trends in China’s tech and business landscape. He is also CEO of Darling Advertising + Design in Shanghai and advises international companies on branding, digital transformation, and market strategy in China. With over 15 years of experience in cross-cultural business development and a strong focus on AI and platform economies, he helps organizations around the world learn from China’s technological advances. As our regular contributor, he keeps ChinaNu+ readers informed on these developments.
