🚨 Is the CCP’s military command system breaking down? Insiders claim major PLA positions remain vacant and some important military documents are going unsigned because officers fear taking responsibility. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping is promoting discipline officials instead of filling key operational command posts. Watch the full report to learn what sources say is happening inside China’s military leadership.

An absurd scene in CCP China: Tibetan lamas are arranged to visit Mao Zedong’s former residence for “ideological re-education.” Let me tell you, what CCP China practices is not communism or socialism, but a gang of thugs plus an evil cult.

What Would Happen If Elon Musk Had Been Born in China? This is China’s version of Elon Musk @elonmusk. How strong do you think the resemblance is? This is Mr. Ma, a barbecue chef at a restaurant in Tongchuan, Shaanxi Province. Because he looks strikingly like Elon Musk, a customer took his photo and uploaded it online, unexpectedly making him famous. He said that over the past two days, more than a dozen people have asked to take photos with him, while several others have approached him about possible collaborations. In fact, there have long been many discussions on the Chinese internet about what would have happened if Elon Musk had been born in China. One fairly representative article argued: "Let us suppose that, in 1971, twenty people with the same potential as Elon Musk were also born into ordinary Chinese families. "If they were fascinated by science and technology, the most they could probably do would be to join an extracurricular hobby group at a children’s activity center and build model airplanes. "In 1981, a computer cost tens of thousands of yuan. There was absolutely no way an ordinary Chinese family could afford one. "It would not be until the 1990s that they might finally get access to computers in a school computer lab, where one hour of use could cost about as much as an entire meal. "But students had to attend morning reading sessions every day and evening self-study classes at night. Where would they find the time to learn programming? "Besides, what if they spent all their time messing around with these 'useless' things and then failed to get into a good university? 'A mild-tempered father might patiently lecture them: 'Focus on your studies. Stop wasting your time on improper pursuits,' until they finally gave up on their own. "A bad-tempered father would simply confiscate everything. If they dared to argue, he would grab something and beat them. "From the first grade onward, they would have to devote all their energy to exam scores. Otherwise, they might not even make it into university. "By the time they finally entered college, all their sharp edges would have been worn away. They would have been molded into conformity and would have had almost no chance of becoming another Elon Musk. "If Musk had been placed in China, his life would probably have followed a path like this: "No one would have paid for software like Zip2, an online city-guide and business-directory platform. Lenovo would not have acquired it. It would have ended up like Zhang Xiaolong’s Foxmail: users would simply use pirated copies. "Have you ever seen Lenovo pay a huge amount of money to acquire independently developed personal-computer software? "So Musk would probably have starved to death at the age of 28 and gone to meet Karl Marx. "Suppose he somehow survived until the age of 31 and developed a payment platform like PayPal. The major Chinese internet giants—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent—could simply copy it. Why would anyone pay to acquire his company? "Have you ever seen BAT pay an enormous price to acquire an internet application developed by an individual entrepreneur? Investors would know that his product would be copied, so they would refuse to fund him from the very beginning. This time, he would definitely be finished. "Even if BAT did not copy him, could Musk manage the necessary connections? Could he obtain the required licenses? "Those are not things an ordinary person can easily secure, as everyone understands. "Operating such a business without a license would be illegal. In the best-case scenario, the authorities would order him to shut down. In a more serious case, they might accuse him of illegal fundraising, and Musk could end up spending the rest of his life in prison. "Even if he successfully built PayPal and had more than a billion yuan in his hands, could he establish a company like SpaceX? "That is the domain of the state-owned aerospace corporations. "Even if he somehow obtained permission to enter the industry, no one would provide him with the necessary components or support. "If one private individual were allowed to accomplish all that, where would it leave the millions of people working within China’s state aerospace system? "I guess that, had Musk been born in China, the best possible outcome for him would have resembled Zhang Xiaolong’s career path: working for someone who had the connections and qualifications needed to obtain the necessary licenses."

🚨 Among the hot AI race between the US and the CCP, DeepSeek just halted its second fundraising round. Why? Seems its founder has said something that exposes China’s real AI computing gap, Huawei’s disadvantage against Nvidia, and DeepSeek’s alleged access to restricted chips.👇

🚨 DeepSeek just slammed the brakes on its second funding round. Founder Liang Wenfeng’s leaked speech spilled the real Chinese AI gap and how firms get around US chip bans. Full story👇

Today I saw @EnesFreedom in person for the first time! I actually recorded his entire speech as one of the audience members on site! Will share it later. “Keep inspiring people.” In the face of 27 years of persecution, @enesfreedom feels inspired by the nonviolent and peaceful resistance of the Falun Gong community. - July 23, 2026 at the Lincoln Memorial. #FreeFalunGong#

Ethereum is for shipping. Here are some of the things the Ethereum ecosystem launched, upgraded, and announced over the past month. 0/ @RobinhoodApp launched Robinhood Chain (@RobinhoodCrypto) on mainnet, an Ethereum Layer 2 built on the @arbitrum stack, enabling 24/7 trading of tokenized stocks and ETFs for users in over 120 countries through Robinhood Wallet. The network surpassed $1B in DEX volume in just over a week. 1/ @aztecnetwork achieved Stage 2 rollup decentralization under @l2beat's framework, removing governance control over its core protocol and taking another step toward trust-minimized infrastructure. 2/ @VitalikButerin shared updates to Ethereum's evolving technical roadmap, outlining the next phase of Lean Ethereum and the protocol's long-term direction. 3/ @ethlabs_org launched as a non-profit R&D lab for Ethereum and ETH. Their mission is to make Ethereum the settlement layer of the global economy. 4/ @ethereuminsti launched as an independent non-profit dedicated to accelerating the institutional adoption of Ethereum, its L2s, applications and overall ecosystem. 5/ @aave introduced Stable Vaults, fixed-rate stablecoin yield vaults designed for seamless integration into consumer applications. 6/ @zama launched the First DeFi Yield Venue for Confidential USDC (cUSDC) in partnership with @Morpho and @SteakhouseFi, bringing private stablecoin lending to Ethereum. 7/ @swissknifexyz launched a new Privacy Protocol Tracker, making it easier to compare fees, wait times, supported chains, and other metrics across Ethereum privacy protocols. 8/ Global tickets for @EFDevcon 8 went live, alongside speaker applications for this year’s conference in Mumbai, India. 9/ @Optimism and @toss__official signed an agreement to explore bringing the Korean Won onchain, expanding blockchain-based financial infrastructure for one of South Korea's largest fintech platforms. 10/ @OctantApp completed Epoch 12, its first full quadratic funding round using a zero-knowledge vote coprocessor and new voting application, distributing 88.1 WETH to Ethereum public goods projects. 11/ @0xprivacypools launched the trusted setup ceremony for Privacy Pools V2 ahead of its next protocol deployment. 12/ Gwei Name Service launched an ownerless, immutable Ethereum naming system built without administrative ownership. 13/ @ammalgam launched on Ethereum mainnet, introducing oracle-free lending without impermanent loss. 14/ @lodestar_eth added support for Fast Confirmations, allowing Ethereum node operators to confirm transactions in a single slot using validator attestations. 15/ @PrivacyBoost introduced preconfirmations for private transfers, allowing transfers to be treated as usable in around one second before final settlement. 16/ The @ethereumfndn published Ethereum Basics for Governments and Institutions, a new primer introducing Ethereum as a credibly neutral digital public utility for policymakers and enterprise leaders. 17/ @OndoFinance launched @OndoPerps, enabling tokenized stocks to be used as collateral for perpetual futures across equities, commodities, and indices. 18/ @base introduced Base Privacy, giving enterprises infrastructure to trade, pay, and settle onchain with built-in confidentiality and compliance features. 19/ @BGDA_UK launched BAGEY, a natively tokenized UK regulated fund on Ethereum where the blockchain serves as the legal register of record. 20/ @sparkfinance launched the Stablecoin FX Layer on @Uniswap v4, introducing shared liquidity infrastructure that lets stablecoins access a common liquidity layer. 21/ @Trueo_ launched user-created prediction markets, allowing anyone to create a market by asking a question and letting participants trade on the outcome through a fully onchain prediction market. 22/ @kpk_io integrated @OpenCover Covered Vaults, allowing depositors to add opt-in onchain insurance to curated vaults, with coverage underwritten by @NexusMutual. 23/ @PropellerSwap launched Turbine on Ethereum mainnet, enabling large trades to settle with lower slippage by sourcing liquidity across onchain, offchain, and peer-to-peer markets. 24/ Hosted by @web3privacy, the Neocypherpunk Summit brought together around 1,000 builders and researchers in Berlin to advance privacy, open-source infrastructure, and human rights. 25/ @eth_systems launched as a company building modular privacy infrastructure for institutional Ethereum.

The Chinese Communist Party’s state television @CCTV really has a "remarkable" talent for staging reality. A netizen in Sichuan noticed that the river near his home had turned muddy yellow after heavy rain. But on the live broadcast from CCTV, the same river appeared crystal clear and even bluish. Do you know how they managed to do that?

👀 As soon as Trump left, the CCP started playing the "balancing" game again. Xinhua News Agency hurriedly pinned a top headline on its front page: “Xi Jinping and Russian President Putin Send Congratulatory Messages to the 10th China-Russia Expo Respectively.” When you click in, there’s only one sentence: “Xinhua Flash: On May 17, President Xi Jinping and Russian President Putin sent congratulatory messages to the 10th China-Russia Expo respectively.” When the spokesperson for the CCP’s Ministry of Commerce answered questions about the outcomes of the China-U.S. economic and trade consultations, he listed five results: 1. Both sides will continue to implement the outcomes of previous consultations and have reached a positive consensus on relevant tariff arrangements. *(My two cents: This is basically meaningless boilerplate.) 2. Both sides agreed to establish a Trade Council and an Investment Council to discuss each side’s respective concerns in the fields of trade and investment. Through the Trade Council, they will discuss issues such as tariff reductions on certain products and have in principle agreed to reduce tariffs on products of equivalent scale that each side is concerned about. (Comment: Too vague, too general, lacks details.) 3. Both sides will resolve or substantially promote the resolution of certain non-tariff barriers and market access issues for agricultural products. The U.S. side will actively promote the resolution of China’s long-standing concerns regarding automatic detention of dairy and aquatic products, medium-sized potted landscape plants exported to the U.S., and the recognition of Shandong as a poultry influenza-free zone, etc. The Chinese side will also actively promote the resolution of U.S. concerns such as beef facility registration and poultry meat exports from certain states to China. (Comment: Still lacks details. Basically, it means China is going to buy more U.S. beef and poultry?) 4. Both sides agreed to promote the expansion of two-way trade in areas including agricultural products through mutual tariff reductions on a certain range of products and other arrangements. (Too vague, too general, lacks details, and overlaps with the previous two points.) 5. Both sides have reached arrangements regarding China’s purchase of aircraft from the U.S. and the U.S. ensuring the supply of aircraft engines and parts to China, and agreed to continue advancing cooperation in related fields. (China will purchase aircraft from the U.S.) So overall, it boils down to this: China will buy some American planes, and that’s about it. Nothing else of substance. Also: When Xi Jinping accompanied President Trump in reviewing the CCP’s military honor guard, Trump solemnly returned the military salute, while Xi showed no reaction at all. Some people joked: “If you didn’t know better, you’d think Trump was the commander-in-chief of the PLA.” And honestly, it really did look that way. On one hand, it reflects Xi Jinping’s arrogance toward his own military. He simply does not show the kind of respect for service members that Trump does. On the other hand, perhaps after previously embarrassing himself by saluting troops with his left hand during an inspection, he no longer dares—or no longer wants—to give military salutes.

The New York Post @nypost says that Melania @FLOTUS did not accompany Trump to China because she wanted to focus on promoting children’s charity projects in the United States. Do you believe that? I don’t. During Trump’s visit to China this time, both sides appeared very friendly on the surface, but secretly they were wary of and competing with each other. Xi Jinping’s wife, Peng Liyuan, did not appear even once. In contrast, when Belarusian President Lukashenko visited China in June 2025, although he also did not bring his wife, Xi Jinping not only had Peng Liyuan come out to receive him, but even had his daughter Xi Mingze appear to accompany them. Therefore, this Trump-Xi meeting was mostly about surface-level pomp and show; there wasn’t much substantive content. To Xi Jinping, he gained a little more legitimacy, and that is it.