Views: 3 From active ingredients to finished pills, the cost gap explained. Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 02/03/2026 Contentious, complicated, controlled A medicine is a chain: feedstocks processed into key starting materials, synthesised into an active ingredient, combined with excipients ...

Views: 22 Vast knowledge but no capacity to learn. Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 23/02/2026 AI’s stupidity exposed. Image generated with ChatGPT5 Some raw, straightforward, ugly and inconvenient facts about the current status of AI systems. The definition What is AI ? There ar ...

Views: 58 From manufacturing to geopolitics: a litany of error. Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 09/02/2026 They were all wrong, very wrong. For years, prominent Western analysts have consistently misjudged China’s trajectory, from its economic resilience to its strategic intentions. T ...

Views: 134 Freedom, democracy and truth. Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  10.12.2025 For the fainthearted: In this article, I will invite you to some self-reflection. I will challenge you with some uncomfortable observations about common patterns in our society. For those who prefer not ...

Views: 97 Lessons from Rome for a modern age. Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波   09/12/2025 As a new day breaks in the East, the pillars of the West begin to falter. The Sun has been rising in what we call the east and setting in what we call the west for as long as there has been a ...

Views: 109 Beyond confrontation: How China unveils the West’s imperative to adapt Gordon Dumoulin 22/07/2025 Puji Temple in Putuo Mountain This article is reproduced with the permission of Gordon Dumoulin, the author(s) of “China21 Journal” The gloves of ...

Views: 103 Beijing, Shenyang, Dandong Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 07/10/2025 Westerners in China Walking along the streets of Beijing, Shenyang, Dandong and Shanghai, compared to 10 years ago, it is remarkable how few young Europeans or Americans are left in China. These days, there are m ...

Views: 48 How Western audiences reveal their programmed biases when confronted with objective analysis of Chinese politics Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  22.07.2025 The whole situation with the awkward questioning after my lectures bears a strong resemblance to what happened to Marco ...

Views: 44 When language becomes a weapon The Frontier Man (Larry Johnson) 08/07/2028 Artwork: Rebellion of the Soul. The Frontier Man August 2024 This article is re-published here with the approval of the author at “Sonar21” On 5 February 2003, U.S. S ...

Views: 61 A comparison with China Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  28.07.2025 Performance of 歌剧魅影 Phantom of the Opera in a shopping mall (Shanghai 20.05.2023, my own photo)  Social cohesion decline in the West and the role of gaslighting by elites The erosion of social cohesion in W ...

Views: 48 China’s long term strategy paid off. The West never saw it coming    Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  08.07.2025 Since the turn of the 21st century, China has not merely participated in global systems shaped by Western powers; it has decisively reconfigured them. From t ...

Views: 33 The devastating influence of having no future.     Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  01.07.2025 Losing faith in the future In many western societies, the erosion of faith in the future has become one of the defining psychological and political crises of the 21st c ...

Views: 42 How truth decays in a world of tribal narrative.     Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  23.06.2025 Trust, but verify, lessons in healthy scepticism When my father-in-law boasted of shooting 23 German soldiers in World War II, I didn’t take his word for it. Digging into ...

Views: 24 Short-term politics, media puppets, and the death of innovation.     Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  07.06.2025 The short term vision Western political and economic systems are collapsing under the weight of short-termism, media dependency, and the marginalisati ...

Views: 933 It was high time to cut the cord and to end a toxic dependency.     Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  02.06.2025 Chinese brands, media, financial institutions and apps The Western grip: an uneasy dependence For more than two decades, I have been acutely aware of t ...