Category: Uncategorized

by B. R. GOWANI

Humaira Asghar Ali Chaudhry (1992 – 2025) was a Pakistani social media influencer, actress, model, reality TV star, and theatre artist who was linked with socially conscious theater groups. She was also into sculpting and painting. She was a graduate of the prestigious National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore with degrees in Fine Arts, TV, and Film. She earned her Masters in Philosophy from Punjab University.

Humaira last accessed her Facebook account on September 11, 2024  and her Instagram account on September 30. The last time she used her phone was on October 7 when she called 14 people but, none of them picked up her call. She left messages. One of them was an Islamabad-based famous director.

That was the last time she used her phone.

Humaira had been living alone in an apartment in Karachi’s Ittehad Commercial area of DHA Phase VI since 2018. According to Humaira’s landlord, the last rent she paid was in May 2024. The landlord complained to the courts of not receiving rent since then, a court-appointed bailiff with police joined him to visit the flat on July 8, 2025. When no one opened the door, it was broken into, and they found Humaira’s decomposed body lying on the floor. Electricity to her apartment had been cut-off since October 2024, for non-payment of bill. Humaira’s greatly decayed unrecognizable body was transported to Lahore to her family. She was buried on July 11. Her funeral was attended by only a few people.

Without being judgemental, actress Durefishan Saleem had a simple heartfelt message:

“Been thinking about life a lot lately. Not in terms of big dreams or loud success, but in the small, quiet moments.”

“I pray, with all my heart, that whenever [death] comes, for me or anyone, it doesn’t come in silence. Not in loneliness. Not in an empty room. But with love in the air. With familiar hands nearby. With someone who truly knew your heart.”

The police report was released on July 18, said chemical examination of her remains found no psychotropic drugs, intoxicants, tranquilizers, or any poisonous substances in her system.

She had three cellphones with over 2,000 saved contacts. With at least 75 people, she was in frequent contact and had had long conversations.

Stylist Danish Maqsood worked with Humaira on two photo-shoots, one in 2023 and the other on October 2, 2024. Maqsood’s request to Humaira for releasing images on social media didn’t receive an approval from her:

“When the request wasn’t approved, we tried calling her several times. After receiving no response, we messaged her on WhatsApp, but there was still no reply.”

He informed some digital publications about Humaira’s disappearance. After great efforts, he succeeded in a couple of them reporting her missing but, Maqsood regrets: it failed to garner attention of most people in the industry.

Humaira had not been in touch with her family for a long time. We don’t know if there were any family problems; speculation would probably be out of line.

But there remain several questions:

• In the nine months of her absence, why did none of the 75 people she often talked to become worried about her whereabouts?
• Did any of the last 14 people she contacted try to call her back? If they did, why didn’t they follow-up?
• In the world of celebrities, parties are as common as regular people going to the dollar store, why did no one notice her disappearance?
• In one of her last calls, she called a director which may have been work related, did that director think about what state she was in, and did he follow up on her missed call?

Entertainment industries worldwide do not have good reputation. Many people attracted to the glamor get exploited. The phrase rising Sun gets worshiped is very applicable to this industry. Once your star is down, you’re not allowed within the vicinity of the movie moguls’ sight; and you’re out of their mind. Then there are those who never find work which could lead to frustration, depression, and rejection that can lead to suicidal tendencies.

On 19 June, the dead body of another actress Ayesha Khan (1941 – 2025) was found as result of the neighbors complaint of a strong odor emanating from her place. She had been dead for a week! It’s tragic that people are lying dead for days and months without anyone knowing about it.

Most people working in the industry, including directors, actors, spot boys, lighting technicians, etc. don’t get paid on time.

Film and TV serial director Mehreen Jabbar:

“In the US, even with all their issues, there’s a fixed schedule for payments. People know when they’ll get paid. Here, you have to chase payments like beggars. Ask anyone and they’ll have horror stories. This is across every channel and production house. They [the crew members] do the hardest labour. But with no union, no rights, and no fair pay, they remain trapped. Working in Pakistan has become more disheartening. Compared to other places, the difference in professionalism and organization is stark.”

Many artists have the same complain including, senior artists who have now started voicing their grievances in the media.

(Renowned Indian singers Sunidhi Chauhan and Sonu Nigam said there are instances where they don’t get paid because Bollywood mafia controls things.)

There is no doubt Humaira was desperately looking for work. One of her two bank accounts had only Rs390,000 or about $1,375. The call to her close friend Dureshehwar revealed she was looking for work:

“I’m so sorry, I was traveling, caught up here and there. I’m so happy you’re in Makkah [on a pilgrimage]. Please pray a lot for me… Pray a lot from your heart for your cute friend/sister. For my career, please remember me in your prayers. You have to pray a lot for me.”

Pakistani society is very conservative and is rough on women, particularly on single women. The Global Gender Gap Index 2025 lists 148 countries of which Pakistan is ranked 148. Only 24% women are part of the labor force.

Sociologist Nida Kirmani gives an example of a woman named Saima who lived in a poor conservative neighborhood but found work in a very posh locality with a multinational department store where she made four times more money than most women, and even many men. She would put on an abaya (a loose overgarment) to cover her uniform but remove it once she reached her work because at work she would have seemed out of place in an abaya. Fortunately, her work company provided pick-and-drop service for their employees, otherwise, she would have faced verbal and or sexual harassment during her commute to work. Nevertheless, she still faced contempt from her neighbors and extended family members.

Coming back to Humaira, the cultural critic Aimun Faisal points out:

“It appears, at least to our moral gatekeepers, that there are no good women left in Pakistan.

“And so, perhaps understandably, people celebrate their deaths, leave their decaying bodies unclaimed, and repurpose their broken corpses as stark reminders — cautionary examples used to sermonize virtue. They preach goodness from behind their monetized YouTube accounts, from behind verified Twitter accounts, from the benches of the superior courts, from their pulpits, and from their news channels, and drawing rooms. And for their guidance, we are eternally grateful.”

Actor Osman Khalid Butt went after morality brigade and money makers:

“Stop turning people’s real trauma into content. Stop projecting your morality onto someone who’s not here to defend herself. Stop the speculation and the judgment, and the deflection. For God’s sake, just stop.”

Actress Mawra Hocane extended a helping hand:

“If you’re in trouble or caught in spiraling thoughts, if I have known you briefly or extensively, if you’re a friend or an acquaintance, if you’re from my fraternity and you feel I will understand your pressures, please reach out!”

Suggestion

What Mawra should do is get some of her fraternity on board to form a hotline service that artists in crisis, depression, and other problems are able to access. Also the service should try to reach artists who have been active but have suddenly vanished, like Humaira.

Humaira in the womb of death

for nine months,

life grows in the womb of a living being

it grows into a fetus

then turns into a human being

where as lifeless Humaira resided

nine months in the womb of death

when she was found,

one could say she was reborn but in a dead state

she was dead …

but became live fodder for news & social medias

many …

gossip-mongers, influencers, reporters, & others, cashed in

voyeuristic vloggers and commercial cameras not far behind

commercialism neither respects life, nor has regard for death

and custodians of morality too …

especially for a single woman from showbiz

why did it happen –

how can we stop more Humairas from happening?

for such questions,

the state has no interest, 

nor any intention to pursue

the state resources are for

the ruling class’ families, friends, and donors …

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

DEMOCRACY NOW

We go to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, where activists are shining a light on Morocco’s brutal occupation of Western Sahara and its Indigenous people, the Sahrawi. The Sahrawi journalist and activist Asria Mohamed speaks with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman about “Jaimitna,” an art installation that evokes the tents of Sahrawi people living in refugee camps. The installation features various melhfas, traditional clothing worn by Sahrawi women, and includes their stories. “These women, they spent years and years in prison. They have been tortured. They have been beaten up. They have been raped,” Mohamed says. We also speak with María Carrión, executive director of FiSahara, the Sahara International Film Festival, who says the story of the Sahrawi must be better known. Morocco has occupied Western Sahara since 1975 in defiance of the United Nations and the international community. The first Trump administration recognized Moroccan sovereignty in 2020 as part of a larger effort to normalize relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh in New York.

AMY GOODMAN: And I’m Amy Goodman in Geneva, Switzerland. We’re broadcasting from the United Nations Human Rights Council, that is behind me right now, in an unusual event. A tent has just been erected at the doorway, the entrance to the U.N. Rights Council, that is made of the melhfas, the dresses of 19 Sahrawi human rights defenders, women who have been subjected to sexual violence, political violence by the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. Yesterday, I had the chance to go into the tent, when it was first erected, and speak to the woman, the creator, the Sahrawi refugee who created it.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! We’re here in Geneva inside a “Jaimitna.” What’s a Jaimitna? Well, we have the woman who created it here to describe. Tell us your name and what we’re standing in. What is this structure?

ASRIA MOHAMED: My name is Asria Mohamed. I am from Western Sahara, but I was born and I grew up in the Sahrawi refugee camps. And “Jaimitna” is actually a mini version of the tent where I grew up in the Sahrawi refugee camps. So, this is very a mini version of it, and this is a storytelling — a human rights storytelling project, which both convey the story of Sahrawis, their identity and their culture. So, from outside, it’s made from the same material. It’s canvas that is typically given by the humanitarian aid. And from inside, and that’s what’s special about it, it has melhfa. And melhfa is Sahrawi traditional clothing. It’s similar to sari. It’s three meters times —

AMY GOODMAN: Women’s dress.

ASRIA MOHAMED: Women’s dress, yes. And what’s special about it, normally, we would use normal, plain fabric, but the new idea is that I asked 19 human rights defenders to send their clothing. Textile could be very powerful. It’s the most authentic way for these women to be here. They are not allowed to be here. They are all from the occupied territories of Western Sahara.

AMY GOODMAN: And it’s their own saris — 

ASRIA MOHAMED: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — their own dresses — 

ASRIA MOHAMED: Their own — 

AMY GOODMAN: — their own melhfas.

ASRIA MOHAMED: Their own melhfas, which they wear. I mean, I don’t know if we could move on the other side, but in that melhfa there, it’s for a human rights defender called Zeinabu. And this woman, she sent me her melhfa, which has actually blood stain on it. I decided to cut away the blood, but I still actually have it here. I can show it to you later. And it was from a demonstration where she was violently beaten up by the Moroccan police.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the QR codes. They look like price tags that are hanging off of each melhfa.

Democracy Now for more

by URTE LAUKAITYTE

A bizarre theory (and a gory surgery) in fin-de-siècle Vienna help us get a grip on how science and medicine actually work

In Vienna, in late February 1895, a 30-year-old woman, Emma Eckstein, is about to undergo an operation. She has recently complained of a few health problems – mostly stomach pain and discomfort, some sadness, especially around her period. Luckily, a young Berlin doctor by the name of Wilhelm Fliess is there to help. He comes highly recommended by a long-time trusted family friend, himself a reputable physician, Sigmund Freud. They agree that Eckstein’s menstrual stomach issues can be addressed through a simple surgery on an altogether different body part – Fliess removes a bit of bone from inside her nose.

The late 19th century saw a flowering of interest in the nasogenital reflex – the idea that there is a strong physiological link between the nose and the genitals. The nasogenital concept could allegedly explain all manner of trouble, not just in the reproductive system but across the board. The nose provided a clinical shortcut of sorts, a kind of map of the body. For mild illness, treatment could involve stimulating the problem areas of the nasal mucosa with cocaine. If the situation was a bit more serious, it may further be necessary to cauterise – with acid or electricity – the implicated ‘genital spots’ in the nose. In the most stubborn cases, however, the only course of action left to the well-meaning healer was to surgically cut out sections of the inferior turbinate bone. Also known as nasal conchae, these are thin shell-shaped structures crucial for warming, humidifying and filtering air – nothing to sneeze at.

The nasogenital reflex strikes most people today as a wacky brainchild of an obvious charlatan – the so-called nose-and-throat specialist Wilhelm Fliess. The famously no-nonsense science writer Martin Gardner christened him as ‘one of the giants of German crackpottery’. Recent scholarly literature on Fliess revolves around his close relationship with and profound influence on Freud. In retrospect, some try to minimise the affinity between them, whereas others use it to stain the reputation of Freud who had, after all, dubbed Fliess ‘the Kepler of biology’. While at the University of Vienna, Freud lectured on Fliess’s ‘enthralling material’, as he called it. In some of the nearly 300 letters he wrote to Fliess, they discussed co-authoring a book to review the two men’s breakthroughs – weaving together anxiety and nasal reflex neuroses. Freud very much hoped the phenomenon would be termed ‘Fliess’s disease’ to honour his friend’s discovery. In the meantime, he intended to name one of his two youngest children after Fliess. ‘Fortunately,’ a biographer of Freud’s remarked, ‘they were both girls.’

Aeon for more

by KSHAMA SAWANT

Most of the time, working people have no political representation under capitalism. Both the Democrats and Republicans serve the interests of the billionaires, and both are warmongering parties down to their bones.

My decade as a socialist on the Seattle City Council was fundamentally different. My fellow socialists and I completely flipped the script on how to use elected office. We rejected any idea that my job was to help administer the capitalist state through behind-the-scenes negotiations with Democrats and the Chamber of Commerce. 

Instead, my socialist city council office went to war for working people to defeat the strenuous opposition from both big business and the Democratic Party. And again and again, we won. 

Winning Historic Victories as a Socialist Councilmember

When I first ran for the Seattle City Council in 2013, I campaigned on a $15 an hour minimum wage (dismissed as “utopian” at the time), on taxing the rich, and on rent control. Unlike the “Squad” and other “progressives,” I kept my promises.

Less than six months after my first election, we won the nation’s first major-city $15 an hour minimum wage, a wage that is now the highest in the country at $20.76 an hour because we also won inflation increases. It was after our victory here that the “Fight for 15” spread around the country.

As Mother Jones noted, “Who thought one lonely Trotskyist could so upend, in so little time, the American consensus on a fair wage? ‘Nobody reckoned with Kshama Sawant,’ the New York Times wrote in 2013.”

In 2020 we won the Amazon Tax, which raises hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the city’s wealthiest businesses to fund affordable housing. So yes, it is possible to defeat Amazon, even on their home turf.

We won a slew of renters’ rights victories, including limits on previously exorbitant move-in fees, a $10 cap on late rent fees, a requirement of six months’ notice for rent increases, economic evictions assistance forcing landlords to pay three months’ rent to tenants forced to leave due to rent increases of 10 percent or more, a ban on evictions in winter months, and a ban on school-year evictions of children and public school workers. 

Kshama Sawant for more

by TIAGO RAMIREZ BAQUERO

In March, 200 workers were dismissed from the Laura Bonaparte Hospital as part of Milei’s drastic cuts to the country’s public budget. Mental health care has deteriorated, having dire effects on patients.

Psychologist María José Conforti finished her workday after 12 intense hours in mental health emergency services. It was a very long day because in the morning she had medical examinations, a requirement every year to be employed at the Laura Bonaparte Mental Health Hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Five minutes after the end of the workday, her employer, the Health Ministry, sent her a letter in her mailbox firing her. The dismissal came without prior notice and the message was “totally depersonalized.”

Conforti worked in the adolescent service and in immediate urgent care, and is one of a large group of 200 employees at the Laura Bonaparte Hospital in Buenos Aires who were laid off at a moment’s notice in March 2025. She is the product of the chainsaw of Javier Milei, the Argentine president who has pushed for drastic budget cuts. In October 2024 there were some signs of the layoffs, when the government said in an official statement that it would initiate a “restructuring plan” at Bonaparte Hospital. According to the government, the hospital has an average annual admission of 19 patients per day, and they considered this number very low for such a large hospital.

The Asociación de Trabajadores del Estado (ATE), one of the oldest trade union associations in Argentina, disapproves of Milei’s layoffs. “So far this year Bonaparte Hospital has provided care to more than 25,000 people,” said Amelia Rebori, a graduate in social work in the hospital’s pediatric division and member of the union, who also condemns the government’s layoffs. “The layoffs represent 47 percent of the total hospital staff. In the children’s area, 106 children were left overnight without comprehensive mental health treatment,” Rebori added.

Milei’s Attacks on Public Health

These layoffs are significant, as Argentina has had a strong law in force since 2013 protecting mental health services. The Comprehensive Mental Health Law, Law 26.657, requires the government to implement a comprehensive mental health system involving psychologists and psychiatrists to work together with music therapists, art therapy graduates, and social workers. There are several specific requirements for the whole country: the patient has the autonomy to decide about their treatment, such as deciding whether or not to use medication and whether to opt for alternative therapy. The law also mandates that hospitalization is only mandatory if the patient poses a risk to their social circle and community, a person cannot be excluded from employment due to their mental health condition, and voluntary hospitalization is the last option—in extreme cases, there is forced hospitalization. “This is because it is critical that patients not only work solely with psychologists, but with a variety of mental health professionals to heal and integrate into society. They fired all the social workers, they fired the occupational therapists, the music therapists,” said Rebori.

NACLA for more

LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE

Jean-Pierre Filiu, a French historian who has traveled to the Gaza Strip many times over the years, spent a month in the Palestinian territory from December to January. He answered questions from Le Monde’s readers about what he saw there.

Between December 19, 2024, and January 21, 2025, French historian Jean-Pierre Filiu, who writes a weekly column on the Middle East in Le Monde, was able to go to the Gaza Strip. The professor at Sciences Po university is publishing his eyewitness account in a book, Un historien à Gaza (“A Historian in Gaza”), set to be released this week in French.

On Monday, May 26, Filiu answered questions from Le Monde‘s readers. Here is a translation of the Q&A originally published in a liveblog in French. Jean-Pierre Filiu’s latest column Subscribers only Israel’s inhumane war in the Gaza Strip

Menton: What event shocked you the most during your time in Gaza?

I was in Gaza from December 19, 2024, to February 21, 2025 – a full month of open hostilities, plus two days of truce. The paradox is that the most violent days were those preceding the truce coming into effect, on January 19. The Israelis intensified the bombings, sometimes very close to where I was staying, while the outside world had been celebrating the announcement of a ceasefire since January 15. The most shocking thing I experienced is the gap between the ordeals experienced in Gaza and the outside world’s perception.

Empathie: How are orphans being cared for in Gaza at the moment? Is there any estimate of their numbers?

The tragedy of Gaza’s orphans is one of the worst disasters unfolding within the broader tragedy of the besieged enclave. The number of orphans is the subject of much debate due to the collapse of the health system and the disappearance of entire families, sometimes with only one surviving child. The society, which I once knew to be so protective within its family structures, has itself collapsed under the weight of widespread slaughter and repeated displacements. Wounded orphans are left abandoned in hospitals with no relatives, not even distant ones, coming to claim them. Bands of street children haunt public dumps, scavenging nylon and wood to resell as fuel.

Le Monde for more

THE CRADLE

The chairman of university heads in Israel noted that air force pilots, senior intelligence officers, and Israeli defense systems are the ‘fruit’ of Israeli universities

Several universities in Israel were heavily damaged by Iran’s ballistic missile strikes during the 12-day war between Tel Aviv and Tehran, Haaretz newspaper confirmed in a report on 30 June. 

The strikes revealed the precision of Iranian missiles, which hit institutes directly associated with the defense and intelligence establishments.

“For the first time, we were really targeted,” Professor Daniel Chamovitz, chairman of the Association of University Heads in Israel, told the newspaper. 

On 14 June, Iran struck the Weizmann Institute of Science in the city of Rehovot, southeast of Tel Aviv, causing unprecedented damage. In the days that followed, Ben Gurion University in the Negev and Tel Aviv University were also damaged by Iranian attacks. 

“You can see that the Iranians put higher education and Israeli research at the center of their launch map,” Chamovitz went on to say. 

Around 45 labs were destroyed at the Weizmann Institute, and an additional 20 sustained damage. Forty buildings throughout the campus were also impacted. 

The Iranian attack on the Weizmann Institute of Science caused around $570 million in losses, with video footage confirming the massive amount of damage to the site.

VIDEO | Footage from RT shows the extent of the destruction caused by Iran’s missile strike at Israel’s Weizmann Institute — a site that is not only one of Israel’s scientific backbones, but deeply linked to Israel’s nuclear and military intelligence infrastructure.

More on the… pic.twitter.com/nrspcn48c6— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) June 19, 2025

Ben Gurion University in the Negev was also severely damaged by the missile that struck near the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba. 

“The entire medical school was damaged; we don’t know how we’ll return to teaching there. Six labs were completely destroyed. The shock waves reached the campus across the street and damaged 30 of the 60 buildings. Forty-two faculty members and students were evacuated from one of the apartment buildings that was hit next to the university,” Chamovitz added. 

The damage is still being assessed in Beersheba. 

According to estimates, up to hundreds of millions of shekels ‘ worth of damage was inflicted on Ben Gurion University. 

Tel Aviv University is giving 2,000 shekels to every student who was evacuated from their home due to the ballistic missile strikes, according to the report. 

The Cradle for more

by WALDEN BELLO

What can replace the global order?

The recent unilateral strikes by the United States on Iran’s nuclear development sites underline the fact that multilateralism is dead, and has been so for some time.

It is not only when it comes to the question of the deployment of military power that multilateralism is shown to be dead or dying. The key institutions of Western-led globalization are no longer functioning or are in sleep mode. This was underlined by the U.S. government’s decision to boycott both the Finance and Development Summit in Seville, Spain, this week, and the Bonn Climate Summit two weeks earlier.

The World Trade Organization has never recovered from the collapse of the Fifth Ministerial in Cancun in 2003, with the United States, in fact, taking the lead in emasculating it by preventing appointments to its decisive unit, the appellate court.

There has been stiff resistance at the IMF and World Bank to change the shares of voting power to give the China, the other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), and other countries in the Global South the weight they deserve in the changing global balance of economic power. For over four years now, since the end of the G-20 debt suspension initiative, even as many countries in the Global South lapse deeper into a debt crisis worse than that of the 1980s, no new effort at addressing the problem has come from the Global North. Instead, the Paris Club has played a blame game, accusing China of not joining a common front vis a vis the indebted countries.

As for climate finance—despite a conciliatory retreat by the Global South like the Bridgetown Initiative spearheaded by Barbados by folding development into climate finance—the $58 billion delivered after years of difficult negotiations is puny compared to the $1 trillion needed annually for the loss and damage inflicted on the Global South by the climate-destructive activities of the main climate polluters. And with a climate denialist administration now in the saddle in Washington, DC, the other leading climate criminals have been provided the excuse not to add to the commitments to the already weak, voluntary ones they have made. The UNFCCC will meet in Belem, Brazil, in November for its annual Climate Summit, but the reality is that negotiations are dead in the water.

Death of a Grand Strategy

The United States has been decisive in this retreat from multilateralism, and this process unfolded long before the advent of Donald Trump. It is Trump, however, who has cut the cant, shed the hypocrisy, and sounded the death knell on the grand strategy of liberal internationalism that served as the guiding U.S. strategy over the last 80 years, when it was committed to engaging threats to U.S. capital and U.S. state power where ever they were threatened globally. As Viktor Orban, the European figure most admired by Trump, has noted, his fellow strongman’s plan is to retrench to the Americas, focusing on reinvigorating the imperial heartland, North America, while strengthening the U.S. grip on Latin America in an aggressive reiteration of the Monroe Doctrine. And Orban adds, “there will be no more export of democracy.”

FPIF for more

by IMRAN KHALID

China has the chance to write the rules that govern the next decade of chips, magnets, and green technology.

The latest Sino-American “handshake”—a 90-day pause on tariffs, semiconductor export bans, and rare-earth chokeholds agreed in Geneva and revived in London this month—was never meant as a love-in. It is a grudging ceasefire, a chance for each superpower to breathe, re-stock, and, above all, rewrite the operating manual of twenty-first-century techno-commerce. The United States plainly hopes the pause will buy time for fresh sanctions should Beijing misbehave. China, if it chooses, can reach for something more ambitious: authorship of the very rules that govern the next decade of chips, magnets, and green technology.

Beijing still supplies more than 90 percent of the world’s rare-earth magnets, the irreplaceable slivers of neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium that make electric vehicles glide and precision missiles swerve. In May, China’s overseas shipments of these magnets plunged to 1,238 tons—down 74 percent year-on-year after export licenses were tightened, reminding Detroit and Düsseldorf who really holds the screwdriver. A nation with that kind of market share does not merely play defense; it can dictate the size and color of the football.

The will to lead is already evident in fiscal muscle. The third phase of the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund—popularly known as the “Big Fund”—injected 344 billion yuan, or roughly $47.5 billion—into domestic chip-making capability. That move, in tandem with a growing roster of state-backed AI hardware ventures, is not a mere survival strategy. It is groundwork for a future in which China plays architect, not just assembler.

Yet money does not by itself bestow regulatory authority. If anything, it demands follow-through: norms, standards, and protocols that ensure that the state-led industrial ascent translates into global rule-making capacity. Markets may be influenced by subsidies, but they are governed by trust—codified, repeatable, enforceable trust. That is the terrain where China must now plant its flag.

The global semiconductor market, projected to grow from $627 billion in 2024 to nearly $697 billion by the end of 2025, offers the perfect proving ground. China currently accounts for about 16 percent of total production—well short of its ambitious Made in China 2025 goal of 70 percent self-sufficiency, but sufficient to make it the world’s third-largest chip producer behind Taiwan and South Korea. Even incremental gains in this space amplify its voice in shaping what kind of semiconductors get built, for whom, and under what terms.

Ironically, it’s U.S. strategy that has sharpened China’s clarity. Export bans on advanced chips and manufacturing equipment, intended to choke Beijing’s AI momentum, may have yielded the opposite result. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has admitted that U.S. export curbs have not halted Chinese innovation but spurred it. His company’s share of China’s AI chip market has already declined from near total dominance to just over 50 percent. When even Silicon Valley’s elite begin admitting the limits of coercive leverage, the time is ripe for Beijing to shift from reactive position to proactive codification.

Foreign Policy In Focus for more