ExclusiveJapan to Deploy Missiles Near Taiwan, Countering China

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story. Japan is moving to fortify its frontline near Taiwan. A medium-range missile system is headed to the southern island of Unaguni, tightening defenses to deter China's growing military threats. President Trump said Monday that China's Xi Jinping has invited him to visit Beijing in April and that he will return the favor by welcoming China's leader for a state visit. American nuclear-powered aircraft carriers deployed in waters near China. It's signaling Washington's growing commitment to the stability in the South China Sea. The fight over AI dominance is heating up and NVIDIA's advanced chips are at the center of it. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick hints at what President Trump may decide. Britain is announcing a new initiative to secure critical mineral supplies to reduce reliance on China. Japan has confirmed plans to deploy medium-range surface-to-air missiles on Unaguni, an island about 70 miles east of Taiwan. This comes after Japan's prime minister raised the possibility of military action if China attacks Taiwan. China has escalated the dispute with economic reprisals, nationalist barbs and a diplomatic offensive against Japan. Japan's defense minister said on Sunday that missile deployment plans to the post will move forward during his first visit to the Unaguni military base in southern Japan. Analysts say that Japan is about to deploy its Type 03 Chusum missiles, a domestically developed mobile medium-range surface-to-air missile platform. We believe its deployment will reduce the very possibility of armed attacks against our nation and do not consider the argument that it will heighten regional tensions to be accurate. Japan is strengthening its southwestern islands, a key part of the so-called first island chain near the Taiwan Strait and East China Sea. These islands are strategically crucial, since China could target them in a conflict over Taiwan. This could isolate Okinawa, the main body of the southwestern islands, and home to more than 30 U.S. military bases and facilities. And the island of Unaguni, set to receive Japan's missile system, marks the western edge of the southwestern islands. In recent weeks, U.S. forces have practiced moving supplies from Okinawa to Unaguni and setting up temporary forward bases. Earlier this month, Japan's Prime Minister Takaichi raised the possibility that Japan could respond with military actions if China attacked Taiwan. Ballistic missiles fired by China during past exercises have already landed Unaguni. This underlines how any Taiwan contingency would almost automatically involve Japanese territory. China says Japan's missile deployment is a deliberate move to create regional tension and provoke military confrontation. Taiwan's deputy foreign minister says that as a sovereign nation, Japan has the right to take steps to protect its territory. He adds that Japan's new move helps maintain security in the Taiwan Strait. According to China state-run media, Chinese leader Xi Jinping held a phone call with President Trump on Monday after their meeting last month in South Korea. Xi emphasized that the return of Taiwan to China is a key part of the post-World War II international order. The comments come despite the fact that the Chinese communist regime has never ruled Taiwan. Analysts say that China is trying to set the tone on Taiwan amid escalating tensions with Japan. Trump confirmed the call took place and touched on certain topics, including Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine, fentanyl, soybeans and other farm products. Notably, he didn't mention Taiwan. American nuclear-powered aircraft carriers deployed in near China. The U.S. is signaling a stronger commitment to the stability in the South China Sea through a new military partnership with the Philippines. The USS George Washington is now in the South China Sea. It entered through the Luzon Strait last week, taking over as the Nimitz carrier strike group wrapped up operations. Both carriers are nuclear-powered. On Friday, the George Washington group positioned near the site where two Navy aircrafts crashed last month. Before leaving the region, the Nimitz strike group joined Japan and the Philippines for a trilateral patrol near the Scarborough Shoal, a region heavily contested by both Manila and Beijing. China protested the joint patrol and even sent bombers to fly over the area. The Philippines Coast Guard also reported multiple Chinese Navy and Coast Guard vessels surrounding the shoal. At the same time, Washington and Manila are taking a new step to counter Beijing's pressure. U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth and his Philippine counterpart announced a new joint task force aimed at deterring Chinese coercion. The task force will help U.S. and Philippine forces react more quickly to Chinese ships in contested waters and improve coordination during any future crisis. Tensions have remained high for months, with repeated close encounters around disputed shoals. The Chinese military announced over the weekend that the U.S. and China held their second security meeting earlier last week. The talk took place in Hawaii from Tuesday to Thursday. NTD's Flora Hua has more. The Chinese Navy posted on social media that the two sides had so-called frank and constructive exchanges regarding the current maritime and air security situation. But it also lodged a protest over U.S. military transits through and over the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. China considers these areas its own territory, a claim rejected by the U.S. and many other countries. Last month, U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth raised concerns over Chinese military aggression in these areas. Flora Hua, NTD News. President Trump is weighing whether to let Nvidia sell its advanced H200 AI chips to China. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says the move could influence the AI race with China and impact national security. Here's what he told Bloomberg Television on Monday. That kind of decision sits right on the desk of Donald Trump. He is going to weigh those decisions. He understands President Xi the best. He will decide whether we go forward with that or not. That's on his desk with lots of different advisers. The H200 chips are roughly twice as powerful as the H20 chips that are currently allowed in China, but it will still perform well below Nvidia's cutting-edge Blackwall chips. Lutnick says the debate comes down to competing priorities, boosting economic growth while protecting U.S. national security. He described it as a choice between keeping China on U.S. technology or holding back America's advanced chips to stay ahead in the AI race. Allowing H200 sales would be a major shift from restrictions put in place in 2022 to keep Beijing's military away from cutting-edge U.S. technology. It would also lead to major pushback from national security lawmakers. Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is pushing to regain access to China's market. Beijing previously told domestic companies not to buy Nvidia's low-end H20 chips, even after President Trump lifted export curbs. Automakers once promised to strengthen their supply chains after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted semiconductor production, but a crisis at Dutch chipmaker Nexperia revealed an industry blind spot. No one anticipated that low-tech chips would become China's leverage over the West. Here's a look at why. The auto industry thought it had learned from past chip shortages. Then a diplomatic fight over Dutch chipmaker Nexperia's factory in southern China revealed a new risk. Nexperia's plant in Dongguan makes low-tech semiconductors used in things like car They sell for pennies, but when Beijing halted exports, automakers from Nissan to Honda were forced to cut production. The move came after the Dutch government seized Nexperia's headquarters, citing concerns its technology could be passed to Chinese parent firm Wing Tech. China hit back, stopping shipments and demanding payments in Yuan. Professor Li Xing from the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies says Europe, and particularly Nexperia host country the Netherlands, underestimated China's leverage. They thought they controlled Nexperia, but what they actually control is just one administrative building, the management building. In reality, 70% of the chip assembly and packaging is located in Dongguan, which is very close to me, not far at all, very close to Guangzhou. So after they seized that, the Chinese government decided that Dongguan would no longer enforce Nexperia orders and stop exporting. And once exports stop, the German auto industry and the French auto industry are in trouble. Following talks between the two governments, the Dutch government took a step back from the intervention, a move welcomed by China, which said it saw it as a, quote, first step in the right direction to easing chip supply shortages. Although the Nexperia issue has deepened alarm about relying on China, pivoting away isn't easy either, according to Jörg Muttke, an expert on European trade with China. So China is just very, very difficult to replace as a supplier. But again, the rare earth case and the Nexperia case makes people reconsider what to do in the future, and that might be having a second option elsewhere. Most cars rely on older semiconductors, while advanced chips power new technologies like self-driving systems. The West is racing to secure critical mineral supplies and cut reliance on China. On Saturday, Britain rolled out a rare earth initiative. The plan includes a $60 million investment to ensure the UK isn't sourcing more than 60% of any key mineral from a single country, China, by 2035. The UK currently produces 6% of critical minerals needed at home. Under the new initiative, it plans to boost lithium, nickel and rare earth production. The move comes as the US and European countries race to secure rare earth supplies. After China slapped expert controls on rare earth in April, several companies in the European Union were forced to close production lines. The EU also plans to set up a central agency to coordinate critical mineral stockpiles. Over in the US, Washington has signed deals with Australia to increase rare earth and critical mineral supplies. It also reached a deal to develop a rare earth refinery in Saudi Arabia. In an effort to counter US rare earth initiatives, China announced a global mining plan with friendly nations at the G20 summit on Sunday. The 19 countries include Cambodia, Nigeria, Myanmar and Zimbabwe, which are rich in rare earth reserves. Grant Newsham, senior fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, said that China's stranglehold on rare earth has sparked a race to find other solutions. That is something that we just might see. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says the administration plans to take up more control of strategic sectors like rare earths to counter China's export restrictions. Coming up, there's an emerging field of biocomputing, or human neurons powering the next generation of computers. Co-CEO of Swiss startup FinalSpark joins us to unpack how this differs from AI, its energy efficiency and where China is in this new field. More on that after the break here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. The US and the European Union will be working to diversify their trade relations. Here's Europe's Trade Commissioner on Monday after meeting with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in Brussels. There are 12 countries, mostly in the Pacific, who would like to work much closer with us. And this is, I think, an extremely important signal because we are talking about 30% of GDP and 40% of trade. Then I provided the detailed information about ongoing negotiations with India, with the UAE, and the interest of other Gulf countries to join the track and to start working again on the region to region agreement. And I expressed my hope that by 2027, we would be in a position to complete the free trade negotiations with the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. So we are clearly diversifying as much as possible, opening new market access for our entrepreneurs. The EU will be working to lower tariffs on the US following a trade deal from August. But the union does not expect a deal to ease US steel tariffs to come out of the talks this week. The two sides will also work together to tackle challenges in rare earth minerals. This comes after China, the world's dominant player in rare earth, announced export controls. Amid the technological race between the US and China, there's an emerging field of biocomputing in other parts of the world, or human neurons powering the next generation of computers. How is this different from AI? What's the energy efficiency with this? And where is China in this new field? Joining us to unpack all this is co-CEO of Swiss startup Final Spark, Fred Jordan. Fred Jordan, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you on the show. Thanks for inviting me. So over at Final Spark, you guys are doing something pretty special. You're making thinking machines. So first, what is a thinking machine? Break this down for us. So we are not yet at the point of thinking machine. But what we are trying to make indeed is the first living processor. That means a processor where instead of having transistors, you have living human neurons. So where are you getting this from? Stem cells? Or how are you producing the neurons? Yes, actually, we are getting those neurons from stem cells. And those stem cells obtained using skin, human skin. So from human skin, it's possible to get pluripotent stem cells that you can differentiate into neurons. And so what is the ultimate goal with this? Because right now, there's a lot of talk about AI. How is this maybe different to make a comparison here? Well, there are some commonalities, you're right. Ultimately, what we envision is to be able to create a biocomputing server. That means a server, big server, that could run some functionality similar to AI today. But that would be living servers, actually. And that would be way more efficient from an energy perspective. I want to dive into that because you mentioned biocomputing, right? Right now, we talk about servers with the actual computers, you have a silicon hardware. And with AI, especially, there's been a lot of talk about the energy consumption. Some people are saying they're seeing energy prices go up in their areas, right? So how would, where would the energy come from for biocomputing? So, you know, the energy is still going to, it comes from the medium, okay? You have living organisms, okay? So there is water with nutrients that make them live. But you have to consider that the neurons, for instance, those that we have in our head, are the results of hundreds of millions of years of evolution. And one of the big criterion that nature had was power efficiency. So at the end of the day today, when we use living neurons, we benefit from this optimization, which has been done through years of evolutions. And this is why actually, if you consider a living neuron compared to a simulation of the neuron, we have energy efficiency, which is maybe one million times higher. Super interesting. So jumping ahead, right, say this is super accessible, how do you envision this playing a role in society or in universities? What are these biocomputers helping with? So right now they are helping with the research, okay? Fundamental research in order to master the way the neurons interact and how we can change their reaction. This is the point right now. But the vision ultimately is to replace some of the silicon-based servers. If you take, for instance, Amazon Web Services, okay, they have very big factories running thousands of CPUs. This could be potentially entirely replaced with those living processors. And the end result for the consumer would be maybe similar, okay? They could access also to some assistance, a bit like CGPT, but for a very small fraction of the cost. I mean, that part sounds great. I want to delve into the thinking part, if you will, because right now with generative AI or the chatbots, you're seeing cases of hallucination where it's creating things that aren't there or giving falsehoods or doubling down even on parts that aren't true, or depending on what you ask, you'll say yes to two different things that are very different. How will you ensure that the biocomputers maybe don't go down that route? First, I'm not sure that human beings are always very coherent in their answers, okay? So I'm not sure I can expect systems using real neurons to be much different. They won't be perfect, okay, in any case. Would that be better or worse or probably different from the AI that we have today? That's for sure. Interesting. It's all very fascinating. I want to zoom out a bit here because as you mentioned, you're using stem cells, right? Is there any concerns in terms of ethics or morals that the stem cells are being used here instead of, I don't know, in the medical community? No, there are not at this point. So if you think about ethics, the first thing is how do you get those stem cells, okay? Since we are using stem cells which are obtained indirectly from a few cells of the skin, okay, there is no ethical consideration here. But there are ethical considerations at a totally different level. Right now, our brain organoids have about 10,000 of these neurons, okay? But that means that we are considering neurons as small machines, and this is new, right? Right now, we have few thousands of neurons, but tomorrow, we could have billions or hundreds of billions or actually even way more neurons than we have in our own brain. This opens new perspectives, and I don't know how to answer to this. So we started to actually discuss with academics in the ethics and philosophy field so that they start thinking about what we are doing and what is the future of this. Right now, is there a, I don't know, lifespan for the neurons and the organoids, the mini machines? Yes. Well, when we started about five years ago, the lifespan was about a few hours, okay? But we just broke our record last week, and we are about eight months now with the one that we have online. So you have to consider that our own neurons live typically about 100 years. Basically, schematically, we live all our life with the same neurons. I want to look in terms of geopolitics, because right now, at least in the US, there's a lot of focus on the technological race between the US and China, and whoever wins that, very different models, if you will. How do you see biocomputing fitting into that? Is there competition from China? No. As far as I know, China is totally absent from this field right now, okay? I would say, surprisingly. The US is active, instead of Australia and Europe. But this is really, really new. This is the next big thing after AI. So this is what we're talking about the future here, an alternative to Nvidia chips, actually. And lastly, since you did mention you would like to see more competitors, if you will, in the field, are there any training programs that you would recommend people who are interested in this? Yes, absolutely. Well, first, we have our Discord network, where people can connect and ask questions. We take questions from everywhere from the world, students, child. Here we are in Switzerland. There is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which is very close to us. And there is a master called NeuroX, where we take internships. So every six months, we have a new intern coming in. We also give free access to universities who want to use remotely, by the internet, our brain organoids. So there is also a repository of source code so that people can use to interact with those neurons and make experiments. So there have been already some publications done around this. So these are the different ways to know about this new field. And I think it's going to be a new industry. Very fascinating for sure. Fred Jordan, thank you so much for your time. Thanks. It was a pleasure. That's all for today's China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. If you have any feedback on the show or have something you'd like to see us cover, send us an email at ChinaInFocus and NTD.com. We'd love to hear from you. For on the clock original news coverage, visit us at NTD.com or download our NTD app. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.