It is important to note that Gigaset is a German company, but since 2024 it is owned by V-Tech based in Hong Kong.

This is good, of course, I just hope that sovereign cloud spending doesn’t include thd so-called “European Sovereign Cloud” by firms like AWS and the like as it was the case in the past.

The subsidies in China for its companies go well beyond everything we do (or have done ) in the West.

A good way to observe this is, for example, when we compare Chinese and Western car manufacturers which are producing within China. Even in the country, Chinese car firms receive a lot more direct state aid by all comparative standards. Between 2019 and 2002, Tesla’s reported state aid was 2% of net income, and no grants since 2023 (European car markers’ grants were even lower than Tesla’s), while BYD’s subsidy income were 265 of net income in 2024 and 35% in 2025.

The gap between Western and Chinese producers is much larger if Western firms produce at home.

Another way Chinese carmakers lower costs: they ‘outsource’ costs to their suppliers. BYD has even created its own proprietary supply chain finance system called the “D-chain,” through which it issues “e-debt certificates" which means the company stands outside the law (there is a Negotiable Instruments Law in China in principle, but it doesn’t matter to all companies). According to company reports for the years 2023 and 2024, BYD took an average of 155 days to pay suppliers, Geely 149 days, and Leapmotor even 225 days.

Western carmakers paid their suppliers much sooner - Tesla withing 60 days, Volkswagen in 43 days, and 41 for Toyota in 41 days.

Chinese companies also benefit from below-market borowings (below the China Prime Loan Rate), and they receive preferential access to cheap land to build their factories (especially if and when there are good connections to the party).

And this is a TINY sample of what happens. Comparing Western and Chinese subsidies doesn’t make sense. It must clearly be said that under Western subsidy schemes, Chinese carmakers would have long been bankrupt.

Edit: I didn’t mention that whenever you buy a China-made car (from a Chinese or non-Chinese brand), you risk to buy a car made by forced labour. We must not forget this.

Maybe, but this is a very good article.

No, but your comment is whataboutism.

No matter what your opinion is on that matter, Cloudflare is a curse rather than a merit imo.

As we know, Cloudflare’s roots go back to 2004 when Matthew Prince and Cloudflare co-founder Lee Holloway were working on a computer industry project they called Honey Pot. They wanted to close-down the project already, but then, as the BBC reported in 2016,

[Mr. Prince] got an unexpected phone call from the US Department of Homeland Security asking him about the information he had gathered on attacks.

Mr Prince recalls: "They said ‘do you have any idea how valuable the data you have is? Is there any way you would sell us that data?’.

"I added up the cost of running it, multiplied it by ten, and said ‘how about $20,000 (£15,000)?’.

“It felt like a lot of money. That cheque showed up so fast.”

Mr Prince, who has a degree in computer science, adds: “I was telling the story to Michelle Zatlyn, one of my classmates, and she said, ‘if they’ll pay for it, other people will pay for it’.” …

In 2017, Cloudflare also provided services to neo-Nazi sites like The Daily Stormer, including giving them personal information on people who complain about their content.

There are more similar stories about this company than these.