Joanna Chiu

🚨 Freelancers! I'm the China editor at @restofworld and I'm looking for pitches on Chinese tech and its global impact — AI, EVs, robotics, space race, geopolitics, startups, you name it. We pay competitively. 📧 [email protected] 📌 Guidelines: docs.google.com/document/d/1pQ…

Exciting personal news: I've just signed a book contract with Princeton University Press. My book will be about China's industrial policy, from EVs and batteries to AI and robotics. It's aimed at both general readers and researchers, in the style of my High Capacity newsletter.

Sharing my interview with ⁦@restofworld⁩ in which I argue that the future of AI will not be shaped by who builds the bigger model but by small systems designed to resolve real-world problems. restofworld.org/2025/nandan-ni…

Went to the Richmond night market and got told off for taking a photo of these Labubu (拉布布) toys. Then a 20-year-old asked if I had no internet because I didn’t know what they were. 🥹 theconversation.com/labubu-plushie…

Across China, tens of thousands of students are navigating a crackdown that has ironically triggered a surge in the use of AI: Many students are turning to AI tools to outsmart the tests meant to detect AI-generated essays. restofworld.org/2025/ai-detect… @restofworld

There are growing concerns that China’s EV price war is forcing smaller brands to expand abroad before they’re financially stable restofworld.org/2025/chinese-e…

Does ChatGPT speak your language? restofworld.org/2025/chatgpt-l…

As TikTok looks to change course to comply with U.S. laws, a similar experiment in its second-largest market is unraveling restofworld.org/2025/tiktok-in…

Last year, I wrote a 100+ page thesis on China's AI industrial policy. It covers Beijing's spending across: (1) basic R&D, (2) chips, (3) B2G partnerships, and (4) traditional subsidies. Over the next few days, I'll break down the paper's findings, starting today with R&D.🧵

“We’re not going to sell in China because the price war is incredible in China” Struggling Chinese EV brands are going global to flee brutal price war at home. What could go wrong? restofworld.org/2025/chinese-e… @kinlinglo for @restofworld

China rolls out ‘voluntary’ cyber ID amid concerns over privacy, censorship sc.mp/tlbyv?utm_sour… via @scmpnews

Big report from Brookings out today on the geography of AI in the US. Beyond Silicon Valley, there are regional AI hubs emerging in places like Princeton, Austin, and Chapel Hill. Universities play a powerful role, but so do local industries. Read here: brookings.edu/articles/mappi…

Seeing this couple makes me so nostalgic about hiking in China. Quite common for women to wear dresses and heels. 👠 I also miss Chinese guy friends insisting on holding anything for me, even an empty water bottle. 😂

Two Chinese government ships have entered Japan's territorial waters off the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture in the East China Sea. www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ne…

Tencent has launched legal action to take down our FreeWeChat.com project, using trademark infringement claims to mask what is clearly a politically motivated act of censorship. en.greatfire.org/blog/2025/jul/…

New research also highlights a sobering truth: if we don’t build in the right guardrails, the tools we create to help us could just as easily work against us. Here’s why and how: link.jotform.com/ZYZMYFhuMa

A powerful story of Zimbabwe’s lithium boom and its human cost: Darlington Vivito was shot dead while illegally mining at the Chinese-owned Bikita mine. The rush for EV minerals leaves locals poor and desperate. — By Tawanda Karombo and Kimberly Mutandiro restofworld.org/2025/zimbabwe-…

One drizzly night in March 2023, Darlington Vivito said bye to his parents and snuck into Zimbabwe's largest lithium mine. He never made it back home. Read our new feature by @tawakarombo and @KimberlyMutandi: A death at the bottom of the EV supply chain restofworld.org/2025/zimbabwe-…

“These numbers show a behavioural shift in how members are spending their money this year." globalnews.ca/news/11278215/…