Some of the most powerful tech leaders got together in Seattle to greet Chinese President Xi Jinping on his visit to the US Wednesday.

And based on the group photo tweeted out by Seattle Times reporter Matt Day, it was a star-studded event:

Here's a blown-up version of the photo:

Xi is in the center of the front row, wearing the purple tie.

In the front row, from left to right, here are the tech execs we could identify:

• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
• JD.com CEO Qiangdong Liu
• Former Cisco CEO John Chambers
• Alibaba founder Jack Ma
• IBM CEO Ginni Rometty
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
• Apple CEO Tim Cook
• Tencent CEO Huateng Ma
• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

Second row:

• Sohu CEO Chaoyang Zhang
• Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang
• Microsoft executive VP Harry Shum
• Qualcomm CEO Steven Mollenkopf 
• Intel CEO Brian Krzanich
• LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman

Third row:

• Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang (middle, glasses)
• Nantworks founder (and the world's richest doctor, according to Forbes) Patrick Soon-Shiong 
• Airbnb cofounder Brian Chesky
• Baidu cofounder Robin Li 

Thanks to all the commenters so far. Let us know in comments who else we missed.

Xi attended several events during the day. This picture was taken at an event hosted by Microsoft, which included China's internet czar Lu Wei, who oversees Chinese restrictions on foreign tech companies. After the meeting, Xi is reported to be having a private dinner with Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates.

Here's a video of Cook leaving the meeting:

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China’s economy has been slowing since 2007 and is expected to slow further. But we believe that it’s now possible to identify the beginning of trends that, in time, could ease China’s decline and help its growth to stabilize.

One of the interesting aspects of the correction in China’s A Shares market in June and July was that it refocused concerns on the country’s economic health, even though the rally (driven mainly by retail buying, margin loans and optimism about government reforms) and subsequent slump bore little relationship to economic fundamentals.

This lack of a connection was underlined by the economic data for August, which showed little change from the three months prior, when the A Shares market had been surging. On this evidence alone, we think that investor concern about China is out of proportion to the actual state of the economy.

The data showed a continuation in the sluggish growth environment. Amid the gloom, however, there was a welcome ray of light. It came from the property market, one of the sectors that has been of most concern to investors and policymakers.

Hopes Rise for Infrastructure

Housing investment and new project starts fell further in August; importantly, though, transactions stayed strong (up 15.6% year over year) and mortgage lending rose sharply (up 50% year over year, for the third consecutive month). Sales of household appliances and furniture improved, too.

These trends are particularly encouraging because they point to a true market-based correction brought about by rising demand and a relative scarcity of supply. They reflect a fall in housing inventory and the fact that property developers—still nervous after the equities crash and last month’s currency devaluation—are not rushing to build. In our view, however, the market is ignoring these signals and underestimating the potential for a spillover effect from the housing sector into the rest of the economy.

There is anecdotal as well as statistical evidence to suggest that momentum for an uptick in activity is starting to build. Earlier this year, the central government introduced a budgetary law that forced provincial and municipal governments to reduce their dependence on bank finance and raise capital in the domestic bond market. This gave rise to the municipal bond sector, which raised RMB1.7 trillion (US$267 billion) in its first three months of operation.

Once the central government announces its 13th Five-Year Plan next month, we expect this pool of liquidity to be channeled into infrastructure and other activities, which will provide a boost to the economy late this year and into 2016.

Warnings Are Misplaced

The switch by local governments from bank finance to bonds is a welcome development in its own right, as it reduces concentration risk in the banking system and contributes to overall financial stability. The growth of the shadow banking market, which until recently was another headache for regulators, has also become much less of a concern.

In light of this, the warnings in recent media and sell-side broker reports about the increasing downside risks to China’s economy—and the consequent negative implications for the global outlook—seem misplaced.

Instead, we expect that, by the middle of next year, China’s growth may well have steadied and formed enough of a base for a rebound. That, in turn, suggests that the current pricing of risk in China’s markets is far too conservative.

The views expressed herein do not constitute research, investment advice or trade recommendations and do not necessarily represent the views of all AB portfolio-management teams.

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Six months ago, we reported on a power struggle within Microsoft between the team that makes Windows and the team that oversees Bing and other online services.

At the time, we reported that Terry Myerson — the Windows chief — had won.

The MSN group, which used to be part of Qi Lu's online services team, is now part of the Windows team.

That's important because there's a years-long battle within Microsoft over the default home page in Microsoft's web browser — the entryway to the internet for hundreds of millions of people.

That spot had always gone to MSN. With Myerson in charge, there was a chance that the default spot would go to other things, like deals that promoted Windows 10 in some way.

Today, we got more evidence that Windows has taken the reins. This afternoon, Microsoft announced a big deal with Chinese internet company Baidu, where Baidu will provide an easy way for customers to download a legal, licensed version of Windows 10.

This is vital to Microsoft, which wants Windows on 1 billion computers by 2018. It's also important because, historically, a lot of computers in China were sold with pirated or phony versions of Windows. But this will be the genuine artifact, and Microsoft will make money from it.

What does Baidu get in return?

These Windows computers will have Baidu as their default search engine instead of Microsoft's Bing, and Baidu.com as their default home page on the Edge browser — which has replaced Internet Explorer as the default browser — instead of MSN.

This isn't completely unprecedented. PC makers are generally free to set their own default home pages, search engines, and other software, depending on which third parties pay them the most.

But this is the first time we can recall where Microsoft itself agreed to give the spot to somebody else.

This is more evidence of Satya Nadella's common-sense approach, where Microsoft is willing to throw out the old way of doing things. Instead of stubbornly clinging to an all-Microsoft-products-all-the-time approach, Microsoft will partner where it makes sense to promote the products that are most strategically important.

This doesn't mean that Bing has lost importance at the company, however. Bing still powers the internal Windows search function — including in China — and Cortana, Microsoft's virtual-assistant software.

But when it comes down to selling ads on MSN and Bing versus selling Windows, there's really no decision at all.

SEE ALSO: Apple just admitted Microsoft is right

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Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi is taking yet another leaf out of Apple's book — by launching a laptop.

After previous rumours suggested as much, Taipei Times reports that the chairman of Taiwan hardware company Inventec has confirmed that it is building Xiaomi's first foray into notebooks.

Richard Lee said that the device is due to start shipping "in the first or second quarter of next year."

Xiaomi's growth has been meteoric

In just five years, Xiaomi has come from nowhere to become one of China's biggest smartphone manufacturers, and one of the most valuable startups in the world. It's worth $45 billion (£29.4 billion). It sells cheap Android devices with impressive specs in developing countries, along with a fitness trackers and a number of other products.

But along the way it has been criticised in some quarters for its products' similarities to Apple's own: Apple design chief Jony Ive once hit out at the company's designs, labelling them "theft."

Xiaomi, for its part, denies the claim. But one way the Chinese startup is indisputably similar to Apple is in its astonishing fanbase. It has been referred to as the "Apple of China," and almost uniquely for an Android device manufacturer, has been able to develop a level of customer loyalty to rival Apple's own.

They are key to the startup's rapid growth. The company spends almost nothing on marketing but has enjoyed a meteoric rise through careful cultivation of its following. The company holds flash sales for "Mi-fans," holds "festivals," and even throws parties in expensive nightclubs and holds giveaways for its most devoted fans. Immediate sell-outs of new products only add to the excitement.

According to data published in August, Xiaomi was China's top smartphone firm in China in Q2 2015.

It's about building an ecosystem

Xiaomi's smartphones can also be understood as a kind of Trojan horse for its other products. Its customer base, as well as passionate, is also young. The company is selling water purifiers, televisions, and other products that it hopes its customers will come to buy as they "grow up."Ben Thompson outlined this in a post on Statechery in January:

What is more interesting, though, is what will happen when [Xiaomi customer] Han and his peers finally do get places of their own. They will need to buy TVs, and air purifiers, and all kinds of (relatively) high [cost] goods. And which brand do you think they will choose? If Apple can sell a battery charger to my coworker, I'm pretty certain Xiaomi can sell an air purifier to Mr. Han, and, sooner rather than later, just about everything he needs for his new house.

Xiaomi's smartphones are currently priced far below the iPhone price point (in fact, they're cheaper even than the average price for Androids). Its phones and Apple's iPhones aren't necessarily in direct competition right now. But Xiaomi is attempting (and succeeding) to install strong brand loyalty into its young customer base with growing purchasing power — exactly the kind of people who Apple would seek to target in markets like China.

A laptop is another piece of the puzzle

The forthcoming laptop, then, is another attempt to tie users into the Xiaomi ecosystem. The report from Taipei Times is light on details about the device itself. But a Bloomberg report published earlier in the month said it might be targeting the premium end of the market, citing "people with direct knowledge of the matter." This puts it on a collision course with Apple: the MacBook Air (as well as Lenovo's ThinkPad) are cited as potential competitors.

(It's also worth noting that earlier this week, Xiaomi launched an MVNO— a mobile network. This lets users buy phone contracts directly from the company, again reinforcing the ecosystem and reducing reliance on external companies.)

Xiaomi isn't in the West — yet

Right now, Apple is in the midst of an aggressive expansion in China. The Chinese smartphone market may be shrinking, but it's still the largest on the planet. That makes it vital for Apple (and for all its products, not just iPhones). As such, Xiaomi's new laptop, if Bloomberg's sources are right about its "premium" status, puts it in direct competition with the American tech giant.

Xiaomi currently operates in China, India, Brazil, and a number of other developing markets. It says it doesn't intend to launch in markets like the US for "a few years" at least. Questions have also been raised about the company's growth after its sales started to flatline this summer— despite launching in new regions. It now looks unlikely to hit its target of 100 million smartphone sales a year.

If and when its products finally land on Western soil, there will be a huge question to be answered: Can it manage to cultivate the same kind of customer following in the West as it has managed back home? If it can — and that's a big if — that's when things will get really interesting for Apple.

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For Chinese President Xi Jinping, the principal achievement of a summit meeting with President Obama may be the 21-gun salute he is due to receive on the White House lawn Friday.

A greeting with full honors by the U.S. president is particularly important to the Chinese ruler at a time when he is still struggling to consolidate power in Beijing and show that he is capable of mastering a corruption-ridden bureaucracy and faltering economy.

Having conceded that rare honor — China is the only non-democracy whose leaders have been treated to a state visit by his administration — Mr. Obama has a more difficult task.

He must try to induce Mr. Xi to reconsider the aggressive policies he has embraced, ranging from unrelenting cyberespionage against U.S. agencies and companies to the construction of military airstrips in the South China Sea. For two years, U.S. protests on those issues have been ignored by the Chinese leadership.

If this summit meeting does not change that, it's easy to foresee a downward spiral in relations.

When the two leaders met in California two years ago, Mr. Obama made cyberespionage a focus. But since then, China's attacks have only escalated, including the stealing of millions of federal employee disclosure statements and the hacking of major technology companies.

Like Vladi­mir Putin in Ukraine, Mr. Xi takes the brazen approach of denying his regime is responsible for the operations despite abundant proof to the contrary.

To avoid disrupting the summit, Mr. Obama put on hold retaliatory measures against the Chinese entities involved. But he should make clear that they will go forward once Mr. Xi leaves town, even if the two governments agree on some cybersecurity steps.

The situation in the South China Sea is cause for even greater concern. In proceeding with the construction of airstrips on islets it claims, Beijing is literally paving the way for the use of force to advance its indefensible claim to waters considered territorial by numerous other countries, including Japan and the Philippines.

Because U.S. verbal protests and calls for negotiation have failed to arrest China's behavior, other measures, including sanctions, must be considered. Mr. Obama must puncture Mr. Xi's apparent conviction that his project will prompt nothing beyond rhetoric from the United States.

Much else in Mr. Xi's policies is troubling, including his crackdown on domestic dissent, his persecution of lawyers and Christian activists, and a new law that would apply onerous controls to civil society groups, including U.S. universities operating in China.

Mr. Obama has had little to say about Beijing's human rights violations in the past; this would be a good time to reverse that record.

White House officials have been promising that Mr. Obama will have a "robust discussion" about his differences with Mr. Xi, even as they defend the decision to receive the Chinese leader with full honors. They are right that high-level U.S.-Chinese engagement must continue, even at the price of providing Mr. Xi the treatment he demands. But resistance to his policies must move beyond rhetoric.

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Jerome A. Cohen is professor and co-director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at New York University School of Law and adjunct senior fellow for Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's visit to Seattle, the District and New York by Xi Jinping, widely viewed as China's strongest dictator since Mao Zedong, will give Americans another occasion to take his measure and ponder the many dilemmas of Sino-American relations.

Xi arrives fresh from Beijing's extraordinary Sept. 3 military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II . It was an extravaganza designed to demonstrate to his country and the world not only China's power but also Xi's.

In the United States, the pomp and circumstance accompanying Xi's state visit to the White House, the media attention to be given speeches by him and his glamorous wife at the United Nations, and the banquet toasts of business and civic organizations are all likely to enhance his prestige.

Yet, if the truth be known — and China's pervasive censorship and propaganda make it hard to come by — Xi is an insecure leader. To be sure, the dramatic drop of China's stock markets and the more significant slowdown of its formidable economic development are not secrets to the many countries that have quickly felt their impact and to those in China who have lost nest eggs or jobs.

The world is also increasingly aware of the Chinese people's dissatisfaction with Xi's inadequate efforts to curb massive pollution and other threats to health and safety.

Less obvious is the lack of support for Xi's daring struggle to curb endemic corruption. Although this persistent campaign remains popular with the masses, influential entrepreneurs and the officials on whom they depend live in uncertainty, even fear that they will become the campaign's next casualties, and remain stubbornly passive.

Even more worrisome to the regime are the enduring obstacles to transforming the export-led economy into the consumer and services one required by China's more advanced stage of development. Cautious bureaucrats are reluctant to implement essential initiatives opposed by powerful vested interests. If the economy continues to go south and unemployment rises, so too will the risk of political instability.

There are increasing, if dimly perceived, signs that internal political struggles are again occurring within the Communist Party elite, despite Xi's assumption of virtually all the formal levers of authority in a fashion reminiscent of Stalin as well as Mao.

Given recent purges of important leaders and their supporters, it would be surprising if the situation were otherwise. Even Xi faced significant repercussions after he and his allies removed two top generals of the People's Liberation Army, plus Zhou Yongkang (the much-feared former chief of the nation's internal security system), Bo Xilai (formerly the principal rival to Xi's ambitions) and Ling Jihua (former President Hu Jintao's chief of staff).

Back-door intrigues and the covert interference of retired leaders may become even more troublesome if Xi's anti-corruption campaign moves beyond terminating the business operations of previous leaders' families to actually prosecuting them.

In these circumstances, Xi is extremely concerned about his personal security. Although foreign commentators analyzed the Sept. 3 parade ad nauseam, they generally overlooked one of its most striking features: the unbelievably strict measures devised to hold that pageant within a televised cocoon. The 40,000 invited guests were each carefully inspected and transported to their seats, while no other spectators were allowed to line the streets. Apartment residents were not even permitted to view the parade from their windows.

Xi evidently believes that, if he is to succeed in his plans to purify China's physical and moral environment, transform its economy, pacify widespread unrest and achieve his vaunted "Chinese dream," he cannot permit the slightest amount of public disagreement, pluralism and autonomy.

That is why repression and manipulation of the Internet and social media have become more severe than ever, and why he has been crushing nongovernmental organizations and their personnel and persecuting human rights activists and those few hundred lawyers willing to defend them. That is also why increasingly popular Christian churches are being desecrated and minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang cruelly suppressed.

While he has preached the importance of the rule of law and fostered some technical improvements in legislation regarding judicial procedures, in practice Xi has tightened party controls over the courts, allowed secret police and their hired thugs to distort legal restraints and sought to silence the legal profession. He is turning China into a state dominated by the internal security forces backed by the military, but this only further alienates intellectuals and professionals.

Although today the world's focus is understandably on China's economy, the party's Leninist legal system presents a crucial challenge to the country's future. Xi's core problem is ideology. How to justify the party's continuing monopolization of state power when Marxism, Lenin's animating philosophy, has lost its broad appeal and the Soviet model has long since collapsed?

Xi has sought to fill the gap with a brand of nationalism that, despite his predecessors' commitment of their Communist government to some 25 international human rights documents, explicitly rejects "Western, universal values" such as constitutionalism and judicial independence.

To bolster his claim to legitimacy, Xi has seized upon the party's recent rehabilitation of Confucianism, formerly condemned as the symbol of benighted feudalism, and gone further by resurrecting China's competing ancient philosophy of legalism, which preached the virtues of a harsh government's use of law as an instrument of dictatorship. Xi's emerging rationalization of his unrestricted power might be termed "legalist Leninism."

After dealing with this week's challenging U.S. agenda, which is set to cover cyberespionage and intellectual property theft, the South China Sea, Taiwan and international law, currency valuation and bilateral investment negotiations, human rights and repatriation of Chinese both wanted and unwanted by Beijing, Xi will return to yet another domestic celebration — the Oct. 1 holiday marking the 66th anniversary of the People's Republic.

Yet, when all the hoopla has ended, he will have to ask himself, as the insecure dictators of Taiwan and South Korea asked themselves 30 years ago: How long can any modernizing authoritarian regime rely on repression to cope with the mounting problems magnified by the very economic and social progress it has promoted?

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NOW WATCH: China has been upgrading its military and is now stronger than ever

China is preparing to launch a new ballistic missile submarine that could potentially target any part of the United States by the end of 2015, Anthony Capaccio and David Tweed report for Bloomberg Business.

The deployment of the new Jin-class ballistic missile submarine will mark a substantial increase in China's potential nuclear ability. The Jin-class submarines will be armed with the new JL-2 ballistic missile. This missile has a range of 4,000 nautical miles, which would allow the submarine to target Hawaii, Alaska, and portions of the west coast of the US from the waters off of East Asia.

Should the Jin-class submarine be capable of positioning itself to the east of Hawaii, it would be able to target the any part of the continental United States for a hypothetical ballistic missile strike, Bloomberg notes.

The Department of Defense's 2015 report on the Chinese military notes that the JL-2 missile will function as an extremely capable nuclear deterrent against potential nuclear first strikes or invasions against the Chinese mainland. China has commissioned four JIN-class submarines, with a fifth one under construction.

Beijing is well aware of the capabilities of its new submarine and is eager to play up the Jin's abilities. The submarine, armed with the JL-2, is "a trump card that makes our motherland proud and our adversaries terrified," Bloomberg reports Admiral Wu Shengli, commander of the Chinese navy, as having said.

China's deployment of the Jin and JL-2 combination comes as the country radically overhauls its ballistic missile capabilities. Beijing's longest-range missile, the CSS-4, has the potential to target any part of the US except for southern Florida.

The missile is nuclear-capable, according to the DoD report, and is housed in silos across the Chinese countryside. Beijing is estimated to have 50 to 60 silo-based ICBMs.

Beijing also has a road-mobile nuclear-capable ballistic missile that is capable of hitting most of the western coast of the US and parts of the Midwest from China. As the missile is road-mobile, China can move it throughout the country to better target various locations and avoid possible incoming strikes.

China's development of intercontinental ballistic missiles reflects the country's attempts to position itself as a respected international power that is not content with merely being a regional player.

SEE ALSO: These are the Chinese military advancements that could shift the balance of power in Asia

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Apple on Thursday released a list of the 25 most popular apps that were infected with malware in the recent hack of its App Store. 

The hack was the result of developers in China using a tainted version of Xcode, the toolset used to build apps for iOS, Apple's mobile operating system, so the apps are all from the Chinese App Store.

According to Palo Alto Networks, an online security company that posted about the hack last week, the malware can create fake alerts that pop up on your phone and request sensitive information, like passwords and login credentials.

But Apple refutes that information, saying in a post on its website in both English and Chinese, that it has "no information to suggest that the malware has been used to do anything malicious or that this exploit would have delivered any personally identifiable information had it been used."

The messaging app WeChat, which has more than a half billion users, as well as the music app Baidu Music, and Didi Taxi, a popular ride-hailing app, are among the most popular affected apps.

Apple says it has removed the infected apps from the App Store, and WeChat said in a blog post over the weekend that it had fixed the issue in its app. 

Here is the list from Apple:

Even though more apps were hacked — the app security firm Appthority security research puts the number at 476 — Apple says that "After the top 25 impacted apps, the number of impacted users drops significantly."

Apple, along with security experts who spoke to Tech Insider, advises that people who are worried they may have been affected by the hack make sure that all of their apps are up to date. Experts also advise that people remain vigilant about which apps ask them for sensitive information.

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A controversial Macau businessman with top-level connections to both Beijing and Washington has been accused by the United States authorities of engaging in a two-year scheme to move more than US $4.5 million into the US under false pretences.

News of the arrest of Ng Lap Seng - a property developer from the former Portuguese enclave who was caught up in a political funding scandal involving former US president Bill Clinton in the 1990s – comes just hours before President Xi Jinping touches down in Seattle to begin a landmark US visit.

It also follows the high-profile repatriation to the mainland three days ago of one of Beijing’s most wanted fugitives, Yang Jinjun.

Yang, 57, who is suspected of bribery and corruption and fled to the U.S. in 2001, was listed as a wanted person by the Chinese government as part of their Skynet operation earlier this year. He was charged on his return to the mainland.

Ng and Jeff Yin, his assistant, were accused in a criminal complaint made public on Monday in federal court in Manhattan of engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct and make false statements to US customs officials.

Both men were arrested on Saturday, according to a spokesman for Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara. Prosecutors in Bharara’s public corruption unit are handling the case following an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A lawyer for Ng, 68, did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Yin, 29, provided no comment on the charges.

Ng was part of the 100-strong Beijing-appointed committee – chaired by then Vice-Premier Qian Qichen - which oversaw the Macau handover to Chinese rule in December 1999. A year earlier, while chairman of the Sun Kian Ip Group, his name was last year linked to the scandal surrounding Asian funding for US President Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party.

In an interview with the South China Morning Post at the time, Ng, who has met President Clinton, denied any part in the scandal and reports in the US media that he has links to organised crime.

According to the complaint lodged in the Manhattan court, Ng, who heads a major real estate development company in Macau, with Yin’s help brought more than US$4.5 million in U.S. cash into the United States from China from July 2013 to September 2015.

The complaint said that Ng and Yin concealed the true purpose of the money, repeatedly falsely telling U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials that it was for buying art, antiques or real estate or to be used for gambling.

The complaint did not specify what the purpose was in reality.

But it cites a June 2014 meeting in the New York City borough of Queens with an unnamed business associate in which Ng brought a suitcase with about US$400,000 in cash that he had falsely claimed was meant for buying paintings and gambling.

In July 2014, the complaint says an FBI agent served a federal subpoena on Ng in connection with an unrelated investigation.

While the subpoena required Ng to personally appear that September, Ng failed to do so or respond to it, the complaint said.

It is unclear why the case is being handled by prosecutors in Bharara’s public corruption unit.

In 1998 White House videotapes showed Ng, also known as Mr Wu, being introduced to president Clinton at a forum in Georgetown, Washington, on November 8, 1995.

During the brief meeting the President was told by a fellow Democrat that Ng had been "very helpful" in organising a reception for the late US Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown in Hong Kong.

The introduction was unearthed by Republican investigators among 60 cassettes turned over by the Clinton administration.

The New York Times reported that, in the two years since the meeting, Mr Ng has been linked to organised crime in Asia.

"I am very upset," Mr Ng told the South China Morning Post at the time, "especially about this allegation that I am linked to organised crime. It is absolutely untrue and has no basis in fact.

"I don’t like to talk a lot because when you find yourself caught up in something like this, it is very difficult to talk your way out.

"This is political. There is a purpose to all this and the target is President Clinton," he said.

The tycoon is alleged to have passed US$7 million into Democratic Party coffers using a complex series of bank accounts, through Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie.

Ng previously figured into a Congressional probe into how foreign money was funnelled into to the Democratic National Committee before the 1996 presidential election during the Clinton administration. He was never charged.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Chinese seems to be getting better by the day.

In fact, it's getting so good, he spoke entirely in Chinese during his meeting with President Xi Jinping of China on Wednesday.

"Today I met President Xi Jinping of China at the 8th annual US-China Internet Industry Forum in Seattle,"Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook wall.

"On a personal note, this was the first time I’ve ever spoken with a world leader entirely in a foreign language. I consider that a meaningful personal milestone. It was an honor to meet President Xi and other leaders."

This isn't the first time Zuckerberg showed off his Chinese fluency in public. Last year, he conducted his entire 30-minute Q&Aat Tsinghua University in China in Mandarin. On the Chinese Lunar New Year, he also shared a video in which he speaks in Chinese.

There's a few reasons for Zuckerberg putting so much effort into learning Chinese. His wife's family speaks Chinese, and it also helps him understand Chinese culture, a market Facebook may eventually want to get into. Facebook is currently blocked in China, as are other popular websites such as Google and YouTube.

The meeting on Wednesday was put together as part of President Xi's visit to the US. Some of the most powerful tech leaders, including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella were all in attendance to meet the Chinese head of state.

Here's a group photo of the meeting:

SEE ALSO: Here's Why Mark Zuckerberg Studies Chinese Every Day

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The consensus on Wall Street is that looking at China's gross domestic product to understand its growth rate doesn't work.

That's because investors have noticed that no matter what happens, the government's projections on the first day of the year always seem to come true.

Exports can tank (as they did in July), the property market can slow (as it has all year), manufacturing output can look dismal (also a recent theme), but no matter what, the government insists the country is still growing at 7% GDP.

So what do China investors look at to figure out how the country is doing?

Jim Chanos, founder of the short hedge fund Kynikos Associates, has been bearish on China for years. At a China Institute discussion in New York City, he explained what he looked at while investing.

"China is still a debt-driven, some say addicted, society," he told the crowd.

In other words, Chanos believes this is a story about an explosion in credit.

So he and his associates look at China's banking system for direction. They look at loan growth, capital adequacy, and credit expansion and/or contraction.

By his estimation, in 2001 China's GDP was roughly $1 trillion. Bank loans were also $1 trillion, with $400 million of those loans nonperforming.

Now China is an $11 trillion economy with $30 trillion in loans with 1% to 2% of those loans nonperforming, he said. Dangerous stuff.

Loan growth is continuing, even during this time of economic duress. The percentage of nonperforming loans has been growing as a result.

If you are looking at what he is looking at, it is ugly.

Track it

Back in 2011, China came up with a data point to wrap up a lot of what Chanos looks at. It's called total social financing (TSF). The measure is supposed to calculate the fundraising going on all over the country, including banks and corporations.

China's central bank describes it as "a money-added concept, indicating total funds the real economy obtained from the financial system over a certain period of time."

Chanos describes it as "the most underappreciated number in global finance."

It includes Chinese bank loans in yuan, foreign-currency loans, bank-acceptance bills, corporate bonds and non-financial-institution equity sales. It's basically the debt everyone is racking up including, ideally, what's going on in the world of shadow banking.

Here's what that looks like:

In June and July, total social financing expanded faster than Wall Street analysts expected. Part of that was due to the government's coming to the rescue of the stock market. New loans surged, almost hitting the level they were at when China flooded the economy with cash during the 2009 financial crisis.

In August, new loan issuance slowed as the stock market rescue came to an end, but TSF still grew to 1.08 trillion yuan($169 billion) for the month from 718.8 billion yuanin July.

Depending how you look at it, this is good (because it keeps money flowing through the economy during a slowdown) or bad (because it's adding debt to the economy during a slowdown).

Take your pick.

How this gets ugly

China's "new normal" plan to move the economy from one based on investment to one based on domestic consumption has not been going as planned. The economy is slowing down faster than anyone expected.

Part of that is because of debt. State-owned enterprises are so busy paying it back and keeping people employed that they're not focusing on productivity. This is how you get zombie companies.

So part of the new-normal plan is to restructure these companies, but the government didn't want to do that through loans because there was already so much debt on the books. That's why it encouraged Chinese people to get into the stock market — so companies could be capitalized during their transition.

Of course, that didn't work. The stock market crashed in both June and August.

So China will have to find another way. One that most likely means more debt issuance and more easing to keep money flowing through the economy. We've already seen some of that, as China's central bank, the People's Bank of China, has cut rates four times this year already.

The question, though, is whether these loans will be productive. An economic slowdown doesn't help — it means people will have trouble paying back loans. Banks are already starting to feel that.

Plus, as Societe Generale analyst Wei Yao points out, Augusts' TSF data doesn't really give you the whole picture of how much debt is being taken on, because it didn't include a bond swap with local governments to the tune of 415 billion yuan (around $65 billion).

That swap still didn't spur productive economic growth. August was an ugly month for data across the board.

"The unpleasant implication is that even the most effective growth stabilizer of loan-backed infrastructure stimulus has not yet gained enough traction," Yao said in a recent note. "The only solution is to do more infrastructure investment, which we expect."

These infrastructure projects could be productive. China, however, has a history of building things it doesn't need.

"They'll put a smoke belching factory in the middle of a city," Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said in an interview last week. "In China, when they want to pump up their economy ... they build 82 airports."

Of course, he added, 30 of those airports would be in the wrong place.

And that means the country is just adding to its massive pile of debt with loans that may never be paid back.

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From Hungary to Angola to Korea, the Kremlin is no stranger to military interventions abroad. How do Moscow's current military deployments in Syria and Ukraine compare to past ventures?

1945-1965

1966-1991

1992-2000

2000-present

SEE ALSO: Geolocating Russian military aircraft in Syria

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Fast fashion behemoth H&M is expanding swiftly and rapidly into China, according to The Wall Street Journal.

H&M will reportedly open up 240 stores across the board (primarily in China and the United States) in the fourth quarter  — potentially three a day.

"We have a positive long-term view on China, our position there is strong, as is our profitability. As far as the overall Chinese market goes in the third quarter we have heard that there has been a slight slowdown from very a strong sales pace increase to somewhat calmer levels," CEO Karl-Johan Persson said to the newspaper.

It's a good place to be for H&M; the retail giant's sales increased by 11% in China in the third quarter. The company already has 299 stores in the nation, as of the end of August. This is largely attributable the fact that stores in China have yet to master fast fashion, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Still, betting on China's consumers isn't the sure thing it once was. The country's employment market has shown strains and economists are quickly ratcheting down expectations for economic growth. In July, Dalian Wanda, a real-estate conglomerate, announced that it would close 40 department stores in the country — that's almost half of the 99 it owns. It also announced that it would close 80 karaoke dens.

SEE ALSO: H&M is launching a new brand 'completely different' from anything the company has done before

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China's president Xi Jinping will announce an ambitious plan to reign in harmful greenhouse gas emissions, The New York Times reports.

The plan — which is meant to encourage the use of clean energy sources by putting annual limits on the amount of carbon pollution that can be emitted — represents a significant step for the world's second-largest economy.

The agreement, expected to begin in 2017, could help set the tone for global action on climate change, particularly in the US where it has largely been reduced to a partisan issue.

China's plan, to be announced by President Xi Jinping Friday, features some of the hallmarks of the cap-and-trade program US economists have developed, including:

• Yearly caps on carbon emissions
• Permission for companies to buy and sell rights to pollute

Additionally, China's plan is expected to feature a so-called "green dispatch" strategy that would incentivize the use of green energy.

Such measures are meant to "drive industry to cleaner forms of energy," The Times notes, while making the dirtiest forms of pollution — particularly from industries that produce electricity and steel — more expensive.

Officials from China met in Los Angeles last week, reportedly to discuss collaborating with California's existing cap-and-trade program, according to people who attended the meeting, as cited by The Times.

A national cap-and-trade measure touted by the Obama Administration failed to make it through Congress during Obama's first term, but the White House has continued to push for new ways to advance the climate change narrative.

President Obama last month unveiled a major new plan to cut emissions from US power plants. Obama called it "the single most important step" America has ever taken to fight climate change.

Iterations of the proposed national cap-and-trade program already exist in some states, including California and several areas in the Northeast.

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Hong Kong (AFP) - A labour rights group marked the launch of Apple's latest iPhone Friday with a report accusing one of the smartphone giant's Chinese suppliers of exploiting factory workers.

Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) say Lens Technology, which makes touchscreen glass, used forced overtime, withheld wages and risked workers' health after a months-long investigation into three of its factories. 

Company founder Zhou Qunfei, herself a former factory worker, became China's richest woman after Lens Technology's debut on the Shenzhen stock exchange in March.

As the iPhone 6s went on sale in markets including Hong Kong, Japan and mainland China on Friday, SACOM called for Apple to "apply immediate measures to rectify exploitations in its supply chain".

"We urge Apple Inc. to fulfil its corporate responsibility... to give workers a workplace with dignity and respect," it said in a statement.

The rights group's allegations include workers going for a month without a day off, wages being withheld for weeks and that the company failed to pay social security.

"Dust, noise, polluted water and chemical substances are common problems on the shop floor," it added, with management "ignoring if workers were well-protected".

It sent undercover workers into factories, as well as interviewing workers off-site.

SACOM was due to deliver its new report on Friday to Apple and Lens Technology, based in the southern Chinese province of Hunan.

Around 10 protesters gathered outside one of Apple's largest stores in Hong Kong Friday morning, holding giant phones with the slogan "Throw Away The Bad Apple".

But the hundreds of customers who had pre-ordered one of the new phones were largely oblivious. 

"I think bad conditions happen to all brands," said James Leung, 30, who was waiting to pick up a rose-gold phone for his wife, which he said cost him HK$5,000 ($645).

"For me, I need a phone, so I'll get a new phone."

Lens Technology also supplies Samsung and other leading tech firms. It primarily makes touch-sensitive glass covers for mobile phones, computers and cameras.

SACOM spokeswoman Liang Pui-kwan said the group was not only targeting Apple.

"But Apple is the richest and has the biggest ability to make change and bring the industry forward," she said.

"We're trying to bring the facts in front of people and let them know what they are choosing."

Lens Technology and Apple were not immediately available for comment.

Earlier this year a SACOM investigation prompted Japanese clothing giant Uniqlo to promise to improve working conditions at its Chinese suppliers after claims the firms were putting employees at risk.

The report accused Uniqlo of buying from two suppliers in China's southern Guangdong province that made employees work long hours for low pay in unsafe conditions.

The iPhone 6S features a new "3D Touch" feature that allows users to differentiate between a light touch and a harder tap, with the phone reacting differently to each.

It also includes high-resolution 4K video shooting.

In Asia-Pacific, the phone was launched in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore on Friday. 

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On Thursday evening, President Obama had dinner with one of the most powerful, mysterious men in the world: Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Xi, who took power in 2013, is known for being an incredibly private man of few words. What little we do know about him and how he grew up, though, is terrifying stuff.

The New York Times painted a harrowing picture of those days in a profile of Xi's teen years.

Xi's father was a high-ranking Communist Party propaganda minister back in the days of Mao Zedong, the founder of modern China. At the beginning of his life this afforded Xi a bunch of luxuries — a fancy school, for example.

But everything changed during China's Cultural Revolution, when Mao decided to do away with party elites. Xi's father was accused of supporting a book Mao hated in 1962 and sent to work at a factory. 

Five years later, Xi's father was accused of staring at the Berlin Wall with a pair of binoculars during a visit to East Germany years before, according to The New Yorker, and things got worse.

It was around this time that the world turned on Xi Jinping as well. He was considered the child of a "black gang" because his father had been purged. The fancy school he attended became a target for those who believed in the Cultural Revolution. 

A classmate said he and Xi were the "blackest" in the class, and the bullying and torment was terrible. Xi's older sister was eventually "persecuted to death." According to The Times, experts think that means she committed suicide.

The revolutionary guards chased Xi, threatened to shoot him, and publicly shamed him.

From The Times:

At one point, militants paraded Mr. Xi and five adults on a stage before a rally, according to an associate of Mr. Xi's father, Yang Ping, citing conversations with the father and family. Mr. Xi had to use both hands to hold up the cone-shaped metal hat he was made to wear.

"The mother had no choice but to go to the struggle session and sat below the stage," Mr. Yang wrote. "When they yelled, 'Down with Xi Jinping!' on the stage, his mother was forced to raise her arm and shout the slogan along with everyone."

When father and son were finally reunited in 1972, Xi's father had been tortured so badly he didn't even recognize his son. They found that they had something in common though — cigarettes.

More from The Times:

The father, battered and disoriented after years of isolation and interrogation, "looked at his two grown boys, and totally failed to recognize them," according to his father's biography, citing an interview with Mr. Xi. The older man wept, and Mr. Xi offered him a cigarette.

"He asked me, 'How come you also smoke?'" Mr. Xi said. "I said: 'I'm depressed. We've also made it through tough times over these years.'

"He went quiet for a moment and said, 'I grant you approval to smoke.'"

All of that is why, when Xi was interviewed by the Chinese Times in 2000, he said he had a firm understanding of politics.

"People who have little experience with power, those who have been far away from it, tend to regard these things as mysterious and novel," Xi said.

"But I look past the superficial things: the power and the flowers and the glory and the applause. I see the detention houses, the fickleness of human relationships. I understand politics on a deeper level.”

SEE ALSO: China's president has been going to funerals lately — it's a sign of trouble

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Satellite imagery shows that China has finished construction of a major runway on a dredged reef in the South China Sea, IHS Jane's Defense Weekly reports. 

The images show that China has recently finished constructing a military length runway on the Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands, an island chain primarily claimed by both the Philippines and China. Jane's estimates that the runway will soon become operational, granting Beijing a wealth of benefits and further operational advantages in the disputed region. 

"The completion of the runway, which previous imagery suggests only occurred in recent weeks, will allow China to accelerate construction of infrastructure and potentially start air patrols over the Spratly Islands, which are claimed and occupied by a number of countries," Jane's notes. 

The 3,125 meter-long runway is sufficiently lengthy for military operations. In addition, the runway is complete with helipads. 

The runway on Fiery Cross is merely the first of many completed runways that China is building throughout the South China Sea. 

Citing the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), The Washington Post reports that China is planning large-scale construction on the recently dredged Subi Reef and Mischief Reef, including a new airfield. The new airfield, when operational, would allow China to establish interlocking zones of air control over the region. 

These developments, Green told the paper, would establish “overlapping air control over the South China Sea, and not just from one airfield but from three. ... [I]t won’t stop the U.S. policy of asserting freedom of navigation, but it makes it a lot more complicated operation.”

The Fiery Cross Reef runway appears to have been completed within the preceding few weeks. This comes amid promises from Beijing in August that it would cease reclaiming land within the disputed sea. 

The expansion of Chinese construction in the South China Sea is kicking off a series of territorial disputes with Beijing's neighbors in the south, all of whom also have competing maritime claims to the reefs and islands.

Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines all have military bases within the South China Sea on islands that those countries control.

As of June 2015, China has reclaimed more than 2,900 acres of land since December 2013. View the details of the power struggle below:

SEE ALSO: China is launching a 'trump card' nuclear submarine that could target the US

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Robert Kaplan, one of the foremost experts on China, stated “The South China Sea will be the 21st Century’s defining battleground.”

Unlike the Persian Gulf, which has widespread recognition due to its significance to oil, the South China Sea is shrouded in obscurity and rarely discussed.

Despite its crucial importance to geopolitics, little is known about this marginal sea surrounded by littoral nations vying for supremacy over it.

What is it?

The South China Sea is adjacent to the Pacific Ocean and encompasses an area of 1.4 million square miles (3.5 million square kilometers).

The sea is a semi-closed area and extends from the Singapore Strait to the Taiwan Strait. China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan encircle the sea.

This large swathe of sea is considered to be a great economic source of wealth (Fishery stocks and potential hydrocarbon reserves beneath the seabed) as well as vital to geopolitical strategy.

Why is it important?

With eight nations disputing about and vying for control of the maritime features and ultimately the entire sea, tensions are starting to spill over into potential conflict. The significance of the South China Sea is its potential for wealth as well as the strategic advantage it will bequest upon whomever controls it.

Unlike other seas, the South China Sea has three factors that make it one of the most important, if not the most, sea to watch and guaranteeing a major conflict to ensue in the next few decades.

The South China Sea has a wealth of resources from “fishery stocks that comprise the livelihood and diet of so many in the region.” It is believed to be “one of the most lucrative fishing areas in the world”. Whoever establishes sovereignty over the sea will control one of the largest fishery stocks in the world.

The vitality of such a source is important based on the staple diet of the region. With burgeoning populations in many of these nations, ensuring a constant food source is vital to stability and longevity for the countries of the region.

The discovery of large sources of oil and gas reserves under the seabed has only further enticed the surrounding littoral nations to intensify their claims for control of the sea. Chinese officials have estimated the oil reserves at one trillion US dollars. The Chinese Department of Geology claims that the amount of reserves in and around the island will exceed those of the OPEC nations such as Kuwait or even Iraq.

The potential for gas is even larger. If any nations manages to wrest control of the zone, energy independence as well as large revenue stream is guaranteed, which is a national security imperative for many nations in the area including China.

The control of the South China Sea is vital in projecting power to the Eurasian rimlands and eventually to the vast interiors. The sea also serves as a natural link/interface between the Indian and Pacific Oceans only furthering its appeal. This natural passageway between the two oceans creates what is known as “Malacca Dilemma”.

The Malacca Dilemma refers to the dependence of China and the other nations in the region on the Strait of Malacca both economically and geopolitically. The Strait of Malacca is analogous in importance to the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. One-third of all global trade transits through the strait as well as more than overwhelming majority of raw materials and energy needs for the economies of China and the region.

Due to the increased traffic over the years it has become a critical chokepoint. The inability of these nations to exert its influence on the waterway gives its military planners the ultimate apprehension.

Even though ISIS and the Middle East continue to be important, the world should start paying more attention and getting familiar with the South China Sea before the tensions and skirmishes turn into an all-out regional war.

SEE ALSO: The South China Sea will be the battleground of the future

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Chinese president Xi Jinping is heading to the White House for a state dinner tonight, and the guest list is packed with tech execs.

Here's who's on the list, according to the Washington Post:

• Tim Cook, Apple CEO
• Lisa Jackson, Apple's VP of Environment, Policy and Social Issues
• Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, with his wife Lynne
• Marc Cuban, entrepreneur and sports owner, with his wife Tiffany
• Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO
• Ted Sarandos, Netflix Chief Content Officer
• Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Executive Chairman, and his wife Michelle Yee
• Steve Mollenkopf, Qualcomm CEO, and his wife Susan
• Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, and his wife Anupama
• Shervin Pishevar, director of Sherpa Ventures, and Ms Keyu Jin
• Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO, and her husband Mark
• Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, and his wife Priscilla Chan

A lot of these folks were also at an event for President Xi in Seattle yesterday. It looks like the dinner will have well over 100 guests, and will also include media execs and at least one popular singer — Ne-Yo.

On Facebook, Zuckerberg posted a picture of the lucky couple getting ready for the event:

SEE ALSO: Check out all the big-shot tech execs who met the Chinese president in Seattle

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"I don't have any secrets," Rose Tang says, defiantly.

Tang survived the Tiananmen Square massacre as a 20-year-old college student, and she continues to be outspoken against the Chinese government.

But she still found it unnerving when Google contacted her recently to say someone else had tried to access her Gmail account.

"It's psychological warfare," says Tang, who now lives in New York City, and blames elements within the Chinese government for attempting to hack her email. "It's a very uneasy feeling, that you do not know if and when Big Brother is watching you and when and how he is going to punish you."

Cybersecurity has been a major focus during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit this week to the US. Indeed, the Chinese government, military, and business entities have been the chief suspects in a string of recent hacks, including the massive US Office of Personnel Management breach.

On Friday at the White House, US President Barack Obama and Xi jointly announced that they've come to an agreement that neither country would intentionally back cyber espionage for the purpose of stealing trade secrets.

But even though China's suspected hacks on US businesses have received the most attention, many US-based organizations that focus on Chinese issues, such as human rights, also say that they're under near-constant digital assault.

And while the attacks can be difficult to trace with certainty, they say all signs point to the Chinese government.

"There's always something, all the time," Nathan Freitas explains.

Freitas founded the Guardian Project, which creates secure mobile-phone applications for journalists and activists working in high-risk situations — including many organizations focused on human rights in China.

The Guardian Project is under regular attack, according to Freitas — everything from "spear phishing" emails that purport to be from a legitimate source but contain malware to Distributed Denial of Service attacks that attempt to overload web servers with malicious traffic.

Large DDoS attacks usually only happen around major events, such as a software update, Freitas says.

But the most damaging attacks come in phony emails.

These so-called spear phishing emails can be incredibly sophisticated, but they're based on decades-old social engineering techniques.

The goal is to get a target to trust an email and its contents so they click on a link or open an attachment. Once they do, the email installs software on the target system that can give hackers near total control. From there, an attacker can alter files, delete information, or surveil passively.

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