The official manufacturing gauge fell to 49.3 in October from 50.1, and the statistics bureau put the holiday calendar and the international environment in the account. Inside the average, construction, consumer goods and small firms are contracting while high technology and equipment expand, a split that does not fit the overcapacity charge signed in Atlanta the same weekend.
F-35 fighter jet parts sent from Australia to the United States for repair ended up in Hong Kong, with a radar-absorbent canopy inside the shipment. A 2023 audit had already flagged more than 1 million missing spare parts across the programme in five years.
Western dependency sits in the few plants that separate the elements, and China holds 91% of that refining.
Construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway is advancing on 28 of the 29 planned tunnels and 47 of the 50 bridges along the roughly 305-kilometer Kyrgyz section, according to Kyrgyz Railways, a partner in the project, in a report by OilPrice drawn from Eurasianet. About 22% of total construction work is expected to be completed by the end of 2026, with tunnel excavation at 21.5%, earthworks at 67% and bridge foundations at 95%, according to the project's deputy director general; operations are officially scheduled for 2031. Once complete, the roughly 530-kilometer line will give China a shorter, faster and cheaper rail route into Central Asia and onward markets. Kyrgyzstan announced the start of construction of a new cargo airport at Manas, through which the railway will pass, envisioned as a key cog in an air, rail and road freight network.
A spate of cyber-attacks hit supermarket chains across at least 10 European countries on Monday, prompting European Union (EU) officials to warn of a deliberate attempt to disrupt the food supply chain. Supermarkets reported problems in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany and Sweden, and the rise in freezer temperatures, reportedly as high as 50°C, forced retailers to discard food. The EU’s food and agriculture commissioner, Christophe Hansen, said the bloc was taking the incidents very seriously and warned of further disruption in the future. In Belgium, dozens of stores reported refrigeration failures and federal prosecutors opened an investigation.
Italy’s government held emergency talks with intelligence chiefs on Tuesday after cyberattacks on supermarket freezer systems in at least nine European countries, according to AFP, in a report published by RFI. Supermarkets in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden reported refrigeration problems that forced some retailers to discard food after temperatures rose. In Italy, cabinet undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano called the meeting with intelligence officials and the National Cybersecurity Agency, which also issued technical advice for retailers. European Commissioner for Food and Agriculture Christophe Hansen said the bloc takes the incidents “very seriously” and described them as a deliberate attempt to disrupt the food supply chain and undermine consumers’ confidence in it. Carlos Cancinos, a spokesperson for the Coop chain in Sweden, said there had been no further attacks overnight and that the affected shops had resumed “normal functioning”. The refrigeration equipment affected was connected to “old 4G networks”, he said.
A suspected cyberattack hit grocery stores in at least nine European countries on Monday, and the European Union (EU) warned of a deliberate attempt to disrupt the bloc's food supply chain. European Agriculture and Food Commissioner Christophe Hansen said the incidents are “a deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain and undermine consumers' confidence.” The Paris prosecutor's office counted around 700 victims in October's attack on French supermarkets, and around 40 Delhaize supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected, along with a smaller number of shops in Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland.
Grocery stores in at least nine European countries suffered refrigeration failures on Monday in a suspected cyberattack, and the EU warned of a deliberate attempt to disrupt the bloc’s food supply chain, according to AFP. Security researchers said the cause was internet-connected refrigerators made by Danish company Danfoss, which was no longer providing security updates.
Fertilizer shipments from West Asia fell to 994,000 tons in September from 3.41 million tons in the same month a year earlier, according to a senior manager of agriculture data at Kpler, cited by Press TV. J.P. Morgan says the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has upended fertilizer supply chains during planting seasons for staple crops such as corn, soybeans, rice, wheat and vegetables. The World Trade Organization (WTO) reports that fertilizer shipments through the strait have reached a standstill.
In a statement on the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in the United States, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it delivered an assessment of destructive actions undermining international trade, including the interception of commercial fleets, sanctions, asset freezes and other unscrupulous methods, according to Sputnik. Lavrov laid out Russia’s view of the sources of global tension, “particularly in areas critical to the global economy: energy and food security, and the stable functioning of supply chains and shipping routes on an open and non-discriminatory basis.” The ministry also said Russia remains committed to being a reliable trading partner and a leading supplier of energy, food and fertilizers to a wide range of countries that need them, according to TASS.
Quad foreign ministers expressed “grave concerns” over economic coercion, including through arbitrary export restrictions and non-market policies and practices that result in overcapacity and disrupt global supply chains in critical industries, in the joint statement issued after Saturday’s meeting in Atlanta, according to Reuters. The text also emphasized the “absolute necessity to protect and preserve navigational rights and freedoms in the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait”.
Top diplomats from the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) met in Atlanta on Saturday to finalize preparations for next month’s summit in the Philippines, the first in two years, according to the South China Morning Post. Without naming China, the ministers expressed “grave concerns” about overcapacity disrupting global supply chains in critical industries.
China's Ministry of Commerce rejected the US Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) decision to bar device testing in China until 2028, the South China Morning Post reported. In a statement on Friday night, the ministry said the measure seriously harmed the interests of China and other trading partners, undermined the stability of China-US economic and trade relations and disrupted global industrial and supply chains. The FCC on Thursday banned all Chinese laboratories from testing electronic devices such as smartphones and computers destined for the US market.
Cursor said a tampered version of the Anthropic.claude-code 2.1.313 extension was available in its extension marketplace between about 2:27 a.m. and 1:35 p.m. Pacific Time on October 29, affecting at most 5,000 users. According to the company, the extension runs malicious code that collects data from the host computer and attempts to install a persistent SSH backdoor, with an attacker-controlled key, the local SSH service enabled and a reverse tunnel. Cursor said it removed the malicious version and blocked its distribution, and shut down the marketplace as a precaution, adding that the attacker's server is offline and there is no evidence other versions of the extension were affected. Reuters reported the removal and the blocking of distribution.
Russia is discussing the creation of a port and logistics hub on Africa's east coast as part of the International North-South Transport Corridor, Ryabkov said, according to TASS. “In particular, we are discussing establishment of a Russian port transport and logistics hub on the east coast of Africa as part of the International North-South Transport Corridor,” he said.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that supply chains for many of the technologies shaping the emerging Age of Electricity remain highly concentrated in a small number of countries. Electricity demand in ASEAN countries is rising at twice the pace of overall energy consumption, driven by industrial electrification, air-conditioning needs, electric vehicles and data centres, according to ET EnergyWorld.
Japan and Bangladesh agreed to expand cooperation on supply chains and energy, with projected Japanese private investment of up to one trillion yen in Bangladesh over the next five years expected to create 200,000 jobs, according to The Business Standard. The two prime ministers agreed the initiative integrates the development of power, energy, a deep-sea port, and industrial and information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, the newspaper reported.
The Kadena air base in Okinawa has banned BYD vehicles, including privately owned cars, taxis and delivery vehicles, according to The Guardian. A spokesperson for US forces in Japan said the vehicles present “an unacceptable and unmitigable risk to our personnel and our mission”. In June the Pentagon added BYD to a list of 188 Chinese firms it believes have ties to the military, drawing a protest from Beijing.
The computing capacity available to Chinese entities for artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to double in 2027, from about 4.6 million to 8.8 million H100-equivalents, a metric benchmarked against Nvidia's data-center graphics processing units, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP). US-designed chips will account for about 65 per cent of that capacity. Remote access through offshore clouds is expected to swell from roughly 1 million this year to 2.8 million H100-equivalents by the end of 2027.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that Energy Secretary Chris Wright has designated helium as a critical material under the Energy Act of 2020, stating that its unique properties make it indispensable to semiconductor production, with no viable substitutes in many critical applications. According to US News, the designation means more federal financing will be available for helium producers and the government will monitor it more closely.
Chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is exploring alternatives to rare-earth components in factory equipment, according to three people familiar with the matter cited by Reuters, in a text republished by WHBL, aiming to reduce the risk that Beijing's export controls could disrupt operations at plants that make the world's most advanced chips. The discussions remain at an early stage and have not yet resulted in a broad rollout of rare-earth-free equipment, according to two of those people.
Before the war with Iran, 24 percent of the world’s sulfur supply passed through the Strait of Hormuz, and the author of the OilPrice piece says he can find no reliable information on whether the material is still being shipped, suspecting the volume is near zero. Sulfur from the Middle East went from about $500 a tonne at the start of the conflict to more than $800, and some customers paid more than $1,000 for Canadian sulfur in June, according to OilPrice.
China announced export controls on tunnel-boring machines and related items, plus an adjustment of export-control measures for certain dredgers, The Hindu reported. India depends on imports of those machines, and difficulties importing them from China started in 2024.
The Kilwa Masoko fishing port passed its completion inspection and is described as Tanzania’s first large-scale modern fishing harbour, according to China’s ambassador to the country, Chen Mingjian. Designed to land 60,000 tonnes of fish a year, the port is expected to create about 30,000 direct and indirect jobs, according to Tanzanian Labour Minister Deus Sangu.
The squeeze in ship fuel persists despite accelerating crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz, according to TASS, which cites trading house Vitol. According to Bloomberg, a top Vitol executive said that accelerating crude exports through Hormuz are not translating into higher output of the shipping fuel, with tight supply and soaring prices.
China proposed restricting exports of 40 key technologies in artificial intelligence, biomedicine and solar power, 14 of them with a complete export ban and 26 more with restrictions, according to The Hindu. Those facing a total ban include perovskite and tandem solar-cell module manufacturing, artificial intelligence tools that can generate and mutate malicious code, and platforms related to cell and gene therapy.
Railway officials from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan signed on October 11, in Tashkent, a protocol to enhance the cost competitiveness of the CASCA+ corridor, according to Eurasianet, in a text republished by OilPrice. The protocol also calls on the participating states to simplify tariff regimes and improve customs clearance procedures.
Construction of the TRIPP corridor has yet to start, leaving the broader Middle Corridor project incomplete, according to Eurasianet, in a text published by OilPrice. The approximately 40-kilometer route would be the shortest segment of the Middle Corridor and, according to the text, would offer Armenia and Azerbaijan an opportunity to strengthen their integration into the corridor, which connects Central Asia with Europe via the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus and Turkey.
French supermarket chains, including Intermarché and Coopérative U, were hit on Monday (12) by a cyberattack against the refrigeration control systems of the Danish manufacturer Danfoss. According to BFMTV, the attackers reportedly hijacked that function overnight, imposing a forced and continuous defrost with the temperature set at 50 degrees. AFP reported that French supermarket chains say the cyberattack forced the shutdown of refrigerators.
Russian presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev said in Beijing that expanding natural resource extraction requires Russia and China to jointly safeguard maritime shipping, according to TASS. Patrushev said the two countries can reshape the global geo-economic map and better protect maritime trade against external risks, including military escalation, piracy and sanctions. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday that strategic mutual trust between the two countries has become even stronger, cooperation in all areas is more stable and multilateral cooperation is closer.
Freight rates for supertankers topped $1.4 million per day on the Gulf-to-East Asia route, a 40% jump in the first week of October alone, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and cited by OilPrice. Ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman tie up the tankers for weeks waiting outside the Strait of Hormuz, tightening the supply of Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) vessels and also pressuring Suezmax and Aframax ships, according to OilPrice.
The Port of Los Angeles, the largest container port in the United States and the country's leading gateway for imports from China and other Asian countries, had its busiest quarter on record from July through September, according to the South China Morning Post. According to port director Gene Seroka, the period totaled almost 3 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), and, including June, almost 4 million container units were moved, the strongest four-month stretch ever recorded.
Eleven crew members, nationals of Azerbaijan and India, have been rescued after an attack on a vessel carrying corn in the Black Sea, according to the BBC. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the “horrific” Russian attack on the ship, also according to the BBC. Romania's interior ministry said the ship sank about 30 nautical miles south of its port of Sfantu Gheorghe.
A military expert cited by the Russian state news agency TASS, Andrey Marochko, said Ukraine has lost more than 80% of exports shipped through the port of Odessa after Russian strikes on the port of Izmail. According to him, container ships can no longer sail without fear of repercussions, making it impossible to deliver supplies on the scale previously provided by the West.
The US Department of Justice accused the chief executive of Earthmade Computer, 38-year-old Greg Lui, of using false paperwork to mask shipments of servers worth more than $300 million that he knew were destined for China, and of conspiring with freight-forwarding firms in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore to divert chip shipments into China, including Nvidia's A100 and H100 graphics processors, according to Ars Technica. He faces charges of conspiracy to violate US export controls, outbound smuggling and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to Bloomberg, in a text republished by Yahoo.
Chinese refiners suspended oil product exports planned for October, four people briefed on the matter told Reuters, to preserve domestic stocks. China canceled some October exports, including diesel and gasoline, to ensure domestic demand, according to Sputnik Globe, citing Bloomberg.
Group of 20 (G20) trade ministers failed to agree on excess industrial capacity and eliminating forced labour from supply chains, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Thursday. The meeting took place in Milwaukee, with the US holding the group’s rotating presidency this year. Greer said there are US investigations into 16 economies on overcapacity, targeting China, the EU, Japan, India and others.
The US Commerce Department has slowed licensing for airplane parts to China and considered new limits on COMAC shipments, using aerospace supply chains to gain leverage in trade talks, according to Reuters. The effort to slow vital goods is part of Washington’s push to loosen Beijing’s grip on rare earth minerals needed by a wide range of US industries, including vehicle manufacturing, chipmaking and aerospace.
India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar warned of a “major food crisis” in the coming months, on top of the fertiliser shortages the world is already seeing because of the Ukraine and Iran conflicts, according to The Hindu. He said some of the major grain exporters will not be able to send out their shipments, particularly via the Black Sea. He spoke on September 28, in a conversation at the Asia Society in New York.
The US Department of War announced a five-year contract, with two option years, worth up to $20.7 billion with Raytheon to produce Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM), nearly doubling production compared to previous levels. RTX said the contract supports the annual production of at least 1,900 AMRAAM missiles.
The UN under-secretary-general and head of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), Jorge Moreira da Silva, told Japanese broadcaster NHK that at least 45 million people in developing countries may face food shortages because of disruptions in fertilizer supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, according to TASS. He said the humanitarian crisis can be avoided if five to seven ships carrying fertilizer cross the strait each day.
The United States and Australia are investigating how components of F-35 fighter jets shipped from Australia to the United States for repair ended up diverted to Hong Kong as they crossed the Pacific, with some of the material still unaccounted for. The F-35 Joint Program Office at the US Department of Defense said it was “aware of a shipment issue of unserviceable F-35 Lightning II components” and that it was working with US authorities and industry partners “to retrieve these components, investigate the incident, and place safeguards to avoid a future occurrence,” according to the South China Morning Post and Defense News. The case surfaced in a Politico report on September 19, 2026; the shipment included a cockpit canopy, which carries a thin radar-absorbent layer, and the components were carried by a third-party company hired by Lockheed Martin, which manages the programme’s international spare-parts pool. On September 22, 2026, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles confirmed that Canberra is helping with the investigation: “We are examining very much everything that has occurred at the Australian end,” he said, according to ABC News. Marles played down the episode: “my understanding is that there is a sense of comfort, that we’re not talking about sensitive equipment here, or sensitive parts.” The US House Armed Services Committee is aware of the case and has received several briefings on it, committee spokesperson Heather Vaughan told Bloomberg. There is no public evidence that China obtained or inspected the material, and the Department of Defense has not said what exactly went missing. Australia operates 72 F-35s and has no facility able to repair the canopies. Hong Kong’s government said it does not comment on individual cases.
Russia’s government has zeroed out grain export duties through 31 December 2026, according to a decree published on the country’s official legal information portal and cited by TASS. The floating tariff on wheat, barley and corn is suspended, and duties on sunflower oil and meal are capped at August levels — 7,748 roubles ($92.13) per tonne for oil and 312 roubles ($3.71) for meal. The Agriculture Ministry says the measure cuts costs and gives exporters predictability amid the restructuring of export logistics.
Volkswagen cut its 2026 operating margin forecast from 4–5.5 percent to 1 percent at most, citing a weak Chinese market, higher provisions for retirements and the situation at Porsche, where it booked a €6 billion goodwill impairment, according to the company’s own statement and Reuters. Special effects total about €10 billion for the year, including the planned sale of the Osnabrück plant. Volkswagen brand chief Thomas Schaefer told workers in Wolfsburg on Monday that the company will “significantly step up” its performance programme, on the day IG Metall took protests to several German cities.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Xi Jinping will pay a state visit to the United States from September 23 to 25 at the invitation of Donald Trump. The Associated Press (AP) reported that Trump will greet Xi at Joint Base Andrews when he arrives on Wednesday and that the state dinner is set for Thursday; according to the agency, the first state visit by a Chinese leader in more than a decade has trade, rare earths and artificial intelligence on the agenda, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent meets Vice Premier He Lifeng over the weekend.
SoftBank launched $10 billion of dollar-denominated notes and €1 billion of euro notes to fund the $10 billion third instalment of its investment in OpenAI, with the transaction expected to close on 1 October, according to Reuters. The issuance replaces the bridge loan the Japanese group had secured for the same purpose.
German auto workers staged nationwide protests on Monday called by the IG Metall union, three days after Volkswagen cut its 2026 operating margin forecast to at most 1%, according to Reuters; the union is pressing the government to lower energy costs and shield domestic production from Chinese imports.
China confirmed that Xi Jinping will visit the United States between 23 and 25 September for talks with Donald Trump, according to The Hindu, the Hindustan Times and Reuters. Negotiators from both countries are holding the final preparatory rounds, The Hindu reports.
Newly unredacted documents in The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, made public on Sept. 17, show that Microsoft’s director of applied science, Brent Hecht, called the scraping of news to train language models “the largest theft of labor in human history” in a January 2023 internal memo and said the practice made “a complete mockery of the idea of ‘fair use’”, according to TechCrunch and Ars Technica. Microsoft said the comments reflected his individual views, not the company’s position. In the same filings, then ChatGPT head Nick Turley described news publishers as facing an “existential threat”, and a Microsoft document warned of a “doom loop” that would hurt both its models and the wider web.
The AI coding tool ZCode, from China’s Zhipu, was caught silently uploading users’ full Git history, according to the outlet OSCHINA. The practice was flagged by researchers, and the company did not respond in the available material.
A Reuters analysis warned that the oil shock raises the risk of a metals shock, as accelerating electric vehicle sales push demand for raw materials.
The yuan hit a fresh multi-year peak after China’s central bank eased restrictions, on the eve of the summit with Washington, according to Reuters.
Seoul and Tokyo resume supply-chain panel