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The European Commission unveiled on Wednesday a legislative proposal allowing EU public authorities to favour European companies in public procurement for key public services such as energy, water, railways, ports, airports and postal services.
The move comes as European policymakers seek to shield the bloc’s market from China amid heated trade negotiations, as the EU grapples with a trade deficit with Beijing of roughly €1 billion a day.
Public procurement markets in Europe represent €2 trillion every year — 15% of Europe’s GDP.
“Public money must serve our collective interests,” Commission Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné said on Wednesday. “A public buyer will be able to organise his European preference and to exclude operators coming from countries with which we do not agree on public markets, both on the basis of the nationality of the company or on the base of the origin of the products.”
Under the Commission’s proposal, EU public authorities will be able to exclude non-European companies from public contracts when they come from countries that do not allow Europeans access to their own public procurement markets.
“A municipality will be very clearly able to exclude a Chinese company or a European company that offers Chinese products,” Séjourné added. “It will also be able to give more points and more visibility in his offer to European offers compared to competition offers.”
The Commission proposes that at least 30% of the evaluation of supplies for public procurement rely on quality criteria and not only on price, which will also hit low-cost Chinese products.
“The new standard is the best quality-price ratio, and not just the price,” Séjourné said. “Our choices must also be able to meet social and environmental demands, but also sovereignty.”
The legislation, which still has to be adopted by the EU co-legislators — the European Parliament and the EU Council — prompted a swift reaction from China. In a statement released after the commission’s announcement, China’s Chamber of Commerce to the EU said that such a European preference could “distort a level playing field” for Chinese companies participating in the European public procurement market.
“Public procurement should not discriminate against suppliers or goods on the basis of the supplier’s nationality or the country of origin of the goods.”
In March, another proposal creating a European preference in EU strategic sectors such as green tech, cars and energy-intensive industries also prompted Chinese ire, with Beijing threatening to retaliate.
EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič will travel to China in early October, hoping to reach a political deal with Beijing to rebalance the trade relationship with the EU.
Chinese state-run shipping company COSCO has been using concealed systems on its vessels to gather signals intelligence around North American, European, and Asian coastlines for decades, it has been alleged. Similar claims have been made in the past, and overlap between nominally civilian enterprises in China and the country’s military and intelligence services is well established at this point.
Reuters first reported on the use of COSCO ships as discrete signals intelligence platforms earlier today, citing two unnamed officials within President Donald Trump’s administration.
“The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. assessment of the Chinese program, said COSCO has a decades-long intelligence-collection partnership with Beijing,” according to the report. “The arrangement allows China to collect communication signals from vessels and aircraft operating across Europe, North America and Asia, they said.”
It is worth noting here that China’s National Intelligence Law, enacted in 2017, includes a specific provision that requires all organizations and citizens within the country to support state intelligence work as required. It also obligates the state to protect entities that do so.
“The advanced equipment aboard the ships is intended to enable China to gather information about ‘military communications technologies and encryption developments,’ one of the officials said,” Reuters‘ story today added. “The officials did not detail the type of equipment COSCO ships were allegedly using, but said they were ‘sophisticated signals intelligence collection’ platforms, not routine communications hardware.”
Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., unsurprisingly denied these assertions, according to that outlet.
Purpose-built signals intelligence suites can range widely in size and shape, as can their capabilities. They can be very small and basic or far more elaborate systems. Even the latter could be concealed as modern commercial ships, which already feature lots of antennas.
What might happen to intelligence collected by the ships is unknown. At the very least, systems onboard could record the data, which could then be batched out when safe to do so, either physically or via transmission. Basic passive signals suites can also run autonomously, or even be controlled from anywhere in the world if the ship is connected via satellite communications (SATCOM). High-bandwidth SATCOM is very common now on ships around the globe.
Personnel on the ship could also operate the systems, and even process receptions of interest. It might be possible to fit the ships with suitable datalinks to then transmit the collected data in near-real-time to other nodes, including ones back in China, for further analysis and exploitation.
Reuters‘ sources said scooping up data on “military communications technologies and encryption developments” was a priority for the commercial vessels turned spy ships. Signals intelligence can take many other forms, from emissions from radars to communications chatter. Depending on what is collected and how, specialists can use that information to glean details about how systems function, as well as insights into standard operating procedures and other details. This is especially true when multiple forms of intelligence are fused together. Generally speaking, signals intelligence is routinely used to help build out so-called ‘electronic orders of battle’ detailing the disposition and capabilities of an opponent’s forces, especially air defense and command and control networks. Fusing multiple forms
As mentioned, this is not the first time claims in this general vein have emerged, either. At least some evidence has been presented in the past, through open-source analysis. Reuters‘ sources directed that outlet to a report published last year by the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College exploring exactly this topic in relation to China’s quasi-military maritime militia. The maritime militia is made up of ostensibly civilian fishing fleets, but has direct ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Chinese Coast Guard. It is routinely used to harass and intimidate foreign vessels in disputed waters, especially in the South China Sea.
“Undergirding these operations is a cadre of maritime militia intelligence specialists called ‘information personnel.’ Information personnel are organized into force contingents that support operational militia forces,” according to that report. “Most have day jobs in the fishing industry, but many hale [sic; hail] from other sectors, including marine shipping and even maritime law enforcement units.”
“It is more likely than not that PRC [People’s Republic of China] vessels operating overseas have already begun embarking information personnel to serve intelligence collection and reporting functions. In the case of China’s fishing fleet, serving this foreign intelligence collection function could be as simple as adding a new duty to the ‘information personnel’ that already embark aboard some distant-water fishing vessels,” that report added. “Aside from their primary responsibilities of tallying and reporting production numbers, serving as experts on international and national fisheries regulations that affect their work, and handling interactions with foreign officials while at sea and in port, they might also be tasked with collecting and reporting military and political intelligence while operating overseas.”
“Similar processes may already be in place in the commercial shipping industry,” it continued. “For instance, Guangxi province’s Beihai city has built up its ranks of maritime intelligence specialists by recruiting from among marine shipping personnel.”
No explicit mention is made in the report about signals intelligence gathering.
In the past year or so, there have been multiple reports that Russia is also using its so-called ‘shadow fleet’ of oil tanker ships in a secondary role as intelligence-gathering platforms. The primary job of those vessels is to help the Kremlin evade sanctions.
There is other tangential evidence that also lends credence to today’s report from Reuters. As mentioned, in the midst of still mysterious drone swarms that harassed U.S. Navy ships off the coast of southern California back in 2019, U.S. authorities at least explored the possibility that a Hong Kong-flagged bulk carrier, the M/V Bass Strait, might have been a launch point. It remains unknown, at least publicly, whether the Bass Strait or another nearby ship might have been the source of the harassment, or if it came from somewhere else, potentially further away. TWZ was the first to report on this detail as part of a deeper investigation into these incidents, which came amid a spike in news about claimed sightings of what are now commonly referred to as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). We have been saying for years now that, while some UAP sightings do remain unexplained, many more are likely to have been drones (as well as balloons), which foreign governments could be using for intelligence gathering and other malign purposes.
It’s also worth noting here that intelligence collection from international waters and airspace is a practice that nation state armed forces and intelligence agencies globally, including those in the United States, engage in regularly with varying degrees of openness. Leveraging nominally civilian ships, as well as aircraft, for these purposes is hardly new.
Despite the official denials to the Reuters piece today, it would be hard to imagine Chinese authorities not making use of commercial ships for this purpose, if possible, given that major deepwater ports worldwide are often dual-purpose civilian/military facilities. Radar sites and other critical facilities are often positioned along or near coastlines. Cargo ships and tankers often pass by major exercises and under major military operating airspace, where they could scoop up critical data.
With commercial ships already plying their routes, this would also just offer the Chinese government ways to readily bolster maritime intelligence-gathering capacity at low cost and low risk. China’s commercial fleets dwarf any other on Earth, making their presence commonplace and providing many opportunities to hide these operations.
Shipyard in Snow
A 2021 report published through the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) Tearline Project also highlighted the possibility of Chinese-owned facilities at ports around the world being used for intelligence gathering or even for launching non-kinetic attacks, including electronic warfare jamming. It specifically noted how COSCO’s facility in Belgium’s Port of Zeebrugge is “in close proximity to a Belgian Naval Base and thus could fulfill additional militarized requirements.”
Concerns about land owned by Chinese companies and nationals being used to collect intelligence or for other purposes have become an increasingly hot topic of discussion in the United States in recent years.
Reuters‘ piece does not say what, if any, steps U.S. authorities have taken or may be planning to take now to monitor for or take more active countermeasures against Chinese-flagged ships being used for intelligence gathering, despite this being said to be a decades-old practice. The report does note that “the Pentagon put COSCO on its list of companies linked to China’s military in January 2025, a designation that carries serious reputational costs for companies as well as U.S. government procurement bans, but does not entail formal sanctions.”
Though no hard evidence has yet been provided, Chinese authorities using cargo ships as additional discreet signals intelligence-gathering assets is very plausible, and would certainly seem to be an issue that should be taken seriously, if it is not already being addressed.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
Rescuers raced to clear roads leading to the mudslide-hit border port of Gyirong in southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, so more personnel can reach the core disaster zone. Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu reports from Beijing.
Published On 29 Aug 202629 Aug 2026
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Richard Drury
The U.S. has cracked down on a Chinese state-sponsored hacking operation that targeted the Department of Justice, Federal Reserve, NASA, Senate and other government agencies.
The DOJ and FBI seized domains used by hacking platforms known as “QScan” and “QTRouter” that were part of
BANGKOK — Chinese artist Gao Zhen was sentenced to three years in prison on Tuesday for “infringing upon the reputation of heroes” over his satirical works of art, including statues of China’s former leader Mao Zedong.
U.S.-based Gao, who was part of an artistic duo known internationally as the Gao Brothers, was arrested while visiting family in China in August 2024. He has been in official custody since then.
He was sentenced by the Sanhei People’s Court court in northern Hebei province, according to his wife, Zhao Yaliang.
The charges against Gao relate to artistic works that China’s authorities claim insulted revolutionary figures, including a 2009 statue called Mao’s Guilt, which shows the former leader and founder of modern China as kneeling in repentance. Others include as series called Miss Mao, which shows a caricatured version of Mao with breasts and an engorged nose.
Shane Yi, a researcher at Chinese Human Rights Defenders, who has been advocating for the case, described the sentence as “a very clear case of a violation of a person’s freedom of expression.”
Yi noted that the artworks in question were created before the law Gao was sentenced with had been passed and said the artist plans to appeal the sentence.
The court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Amnesty International criticized the court sentence which it described as a deterrent against artistic expression.
“The lengthy pre-trial detention and, ultimately, decision to convict Gao Zhen and sentence him to the maximum three-year prison term under this offense illustrate the authorities’ determination to deter others from engaging in independent artistic expression,” said Amnesty’s China Director Sarah Brooks.
“No artist should face criminal punishment for creating work that challenges official narratives or encourages critical reflection on history,” she said.
Zhao said she hopes to be reunited with her husband and be able to return to the U.S., where the family had immigrated to.
“I felt two years was my limit, and I was really disappointed and sad. I haven’t been able to catch my breath,” she said. She had prepared clothes for her husband hoping that he would be released. Chinese courts often count the time of a sentencing from the date a prisoner is taken.
The Gao Brothers, whose works addressed themes of authoritarianism and censorship, became famous in a time of relative openness in China and were exhibited both inside the country and abroad.
However, in recent years, the state’s increased its controlling grip on certain aspects of expression, especially in regards to political figures with the passage of law in 2018 that bans criticism of the nation’s heroes.
Wu writes for the Associated Press.
Robert Way
LIghtning, a Chinese humanoid robot, ran a 100-meter sprint in 9.32 seconds at the Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, surpassing the world record set by Jamaican legend Usain Bolt. Photo by Wu Hao/EPA
Aug. 22 (UPI) — A Chinese humanoid robot on Saturday ran a 100-meter sprint in 9.32 seconds, surpassing the world record set by Jamaican legend Usain Bolt.
The robot, named Lightning and produced by robotics company Honor, reached a peak speed of 14.5 meters per second during a test run.
Lightning is one of 2,000 robots participating in the second World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing.
The robot’s sprint on Saturday was .26 seconds faster than Bolt’s world record of 9.58 seconds, set 17 years ago at Berlin’s World Athletics Championships.
Another robot cleared 2.88 meters at the standing high jump, higher than the 2.45-meter world record set by Cuban athlete Javier Sotomayor in 1993.
The Beijing games also include competitions in tablet tennis, long jump and weightlifting.
China remains the world’s largest producer of humanoid robots.
The Trump administration in July banned imports of humanoid robots into the United States, citing “unacceptable risks” to national security.
“China firmly opposes the U.S. overstretching the concept of national security and going after Chinese companies,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters.
“Protectionism does not make the U.S. more competitive and will only hurt the interests of U.S. companies and consumers,”
SlavkoSereda/iStock via Getty Images
The amount of Iranian oil offered to Chinese buyers has declined sharply and is rapidly running out, while prices have jumped, Reuters reported Friday, showing the effectiveness of the U.S. blockade of Iran’s ports in preventing new supply from leaving the Persian Gulf.
The government has announced investments of about 2.3 billion reais ($444.2m) to bolster its artificial intelligence ecosystem.
Published On 21 Aug 202621 Aug 2026
Brazil will invest about 2.3bn reais ($444.2m) to bolster its artificial intelligence ecosystem, splitting projects between United States and Chinese tech firms in a strategic move that underscores its efforts to balance ties with both superpowers.
Just more than half the total, 1.3bn reais ($251m), will fund a supercomputing infrastructure project in Rio de Janeiro developed in partnership with China’s Huawei Technologies and iFlytek, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva‘s government said on Thursday.
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The infrastructure will be used primarily to develop large language models for general and sector-specific applications, it said.
Separately, about 1 billion reais ($193.1m) will be allocated through a tender for a supercomputer that Brazil expects to rank among the world’s 10 most powerful AI processing machines.
The machine will be installed in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, chosen for its energy potential. Lula attended an announcement ceremony in the state on Thursday.
The Reuters news agency quoted unnamed government officials as saying they expect US chipmaker Nvidia to win the tender. Science and Technology Minister Luciana Santos told the Folha de S Paulo newspaper last week that she anticipated the company would be the supplier.
“The strategy is not to depend on a single company, technology or country,” Lula’s administration said in a statement, adding that the investments are aimed at strengthening national sovereignty over data.
China, a leading player in AI, has expanded its role as Brazil’s largest trading partner. The US, meanwhile, remains the biggest source of foreign direct investment in Latin America’s largest economy despite losing market share in trade and recently imposing additional tariffs on Brazilian goods.
The investments will be funded by the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FNDCT) through phased disbursements. The government expects the supercomputer to begin operating by the end of next year, while the cooperation agreement with the Chinese companies is scheduled to start in July 2027.