New Virginia Tech/University of Vermont study reveals what crop advisors really want from AI tools

Findings highlight trust, transparency, and human-centered design as key to Artificial Intelligence adoption in agriculture

University of Vermont

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Young Farmer working with a Crop Advisor as part of the UVM Farmer Training Program

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Credit: UVM College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Burlington, Vt. — Feb 25, 2026 — A new peer-reviewed study co-authored by Virginia Tech and University of Vermont researchers offers one of the first, large-scale empirical looks at how Certified Crop Advisors (CCAs) across North America evaluate the next generation of artificial intelligence–enabled decision support systems (AI‑DSS) for agriculture. Published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change (Elsevier), the study identifies the specific design features that most influence whether trusted agricultural advisors will choose AI tools—and what might hold them back.

The research that was conducted in collaboration with the American Society of Agronomy was led by Maaz Gardezi an Associate Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech, with co-authors from UVM: Professor Asim Zia, Professor Donna M. Rizzo, Research Associate Professor Scott C. Merril, UVM graduate students Benjamin E.K. Ryan and Halimeh Abuayyash, and Virgina Tech Graduate Students Indunil Dharmasiri, Pablo Carcamo, Bhavna Joshi. Additional collaborators were David Clay Distinguished Professor at South Dakota State University and John McMaine Extension Associate Professor at University of Kentucky.  The research team used a discrete-choice experiment to analyze how crop advisors weigh trade-offs among cost, accuracy, spatial precision, and data ownership when evaluating AI-based systems.

Key Findings

• Simplicity and usability matter most. Advisors consistently favored systems that were easy to use and incorporated satellite data over more complex, ultra-accurate tools requiring intensive data inputs.
• Trust depends on transparency and data governance. Cost and data ownership emerged as major determinants of adoption, with advisors preferring systems that allow users to retain full or shared control over their data.
• AI shouldn’t replace professional judgment. Crop advisors favored AI-DSS tools that augment rather than automate their work, valuing editable recommendations, local calibration, and field-verification options.
• Tech attitudes shape adoption. Advisors with more optimistic views of AI were more open to data-intensive systems, while those with privacy concerns were less likely to adopt tools that require extensive farmer data.

Maaz Gardezi the study’s PI summarizes the important insight of the research in this way, “Technical performance of AI tools matters in agriculture, but cost and data ownership—especially shared or open models—are pivotal to selection. Crop advisors prefer systems that augment rather than replace professional judgment.”

A Turning Point for Agricultural AI

The study arrives at a time when AI-generated predictions, classifications, and recommendations are increasingly used to guide decisions involving fertilizer application, pest and disease management, irrigation scheduling, and carbon and nutrient accounting. Yet adoption has lagged, especially among mid-sized and smaller farms, due partly to concerns about privacy, affordability, transparency, and trust.

“Certified crop advisors are among the most trusted technical experts that farmers in the US turn to,” said Asim Zia, Professor of Public Policy and Computer Science at UVM. “Designing AI decision tools that enhance, not replace, their expertise is essential for building agricultural systems that are productive, equitable, and climate‑resilient.”

A Socio-Technical Framework for Trustworthy AI

The authors argue that AI developers and policymakers must take a socio-technical approach that aligns algorithms with the real-world values and constraints of the people expected to use these tools. Their findings recommend:

• Co-creation with crop advisors and farmers during development
• Transparent cost structures and clear communication of trade-offs
• User-controlled data governance models
• Human-in-the-loop designs that preserve advisor autonomy

“These insights help move AI for agriculture beyond performance metrics,” said study co-author Donna Rizzo, Dorothean Chair and Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UVM. “The goal is trustworthy, context-sensitive tools that work for diverse farms and advisory systems.”

About the Study

The article, “A socio-technical framework for analyzing crop advisors’ preferences for AI-based decision support systems,” appears in the May 2026 issue of Technological Forecasting and Social Change. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 2202706 and 2026431) and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (Award No. 2023‑67023‑40216).

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Journal

Technological Forecasting

DOI

10.1016/j.techfore.2026.124601 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

A socio-technical framework for analyzing crop advisors' preferences for AI-based decision support systems

Article Publication Date

24-Feb-2026

Sustainability, community, and… food

Singapore Management University

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SMU Associate Professor Michelle Lim is helping to shape project to do more with edible native plants in the areas of food sustainability and community.

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Credit: Singapore Management University

By Vince Chong

SMU Office of Research Governance & Administration – Well-planned urban spaces. Edible flora that already flourish in Singapore’s tropical clime and cultures. A community to bring them together.

That in a nutshell is the key objective of SMU’s Nature-Food Futures Learning Precinct project, which involves setting up the eponymous precinct within the university for “hands-on learning and research about native edible plants”. Through this, SMU aims to link together not just its own community of staff and students, but that of neighbouring areas as well. The project thus mobilises the new impact agenda of SMU’s 2030 Strategic Plan especially by “shaping public policy, strengthening social resilience and improving the quality of life in communities”. 

The two-year initiative will also analyse how laws and policies can be shaped to promote such integration, and scale up the growth and use of edible plants. This includes, in the private law space, reviewing green supplier contracts – agreements with gardeners, nurseries, fertiliser vendors, etc. – to see if they might in the future cover the growing and harvesting of native edibles. It will also evaluate laws that govern the use of urban space – for example, rooftops and kerbsides – for growing food.

Nurtured with Singapore’s multi-agency Green Plan 2030 in mind, Nature-Food Futures will be driven by SMU’s Yong Pung How School of Law alongside its Office of Campus Infrastructure and Services (OCIS), and Office of Dean of Students (ODOS). It is also supported by the SG Eco Fund, which is administered by the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment, as the country pursues a sustainable future in the face of climate change.

SMU Associate Professor Michelle Lim, whose work focuses on sustainability law, has been tasked with the project’s legal research but the “really cool thing” about Natures-Futures Learning, she said, is the high level of community engagement over food security that it aims to inspire. Joining her in the project are environment and sustainability experts Ms Pam Wan and Dr Patrick Shi, respectively from ODOS and OCIS.

“The law is one part of it, but what I really like is its city-in-nature approach in wanting to engage communities inside and outside of SMU,” Professor Lim told the Office of Research Governance & Administration (ORGA). SMU’s location in the middle of a concrete jungle like Singapore, she noted, makes it well placed to discover how urban space best facilitates sustainable food growth.

“This is a research project but not one in the traditional sense… the key emphasis is how we bring the community on board, how do we bring faculty and students on board, while addressing this very crucial area of food security alongside Singapore’s Green Plan.”

Planting, learning, discussing

Nature-Food Futures will kick off with small-scale planting on rooftops to “assess the aesthetic and functional impact” of native edibles, its proposal sets out. It will then expand to locations such as road verges and planter boxes in common area and corridors. These will ideally support the planting of roughly 15 types of native edibles such as daun kaduk, gotu kola, sayur manis, lemongrass, pandan, and bamboo orchid, some of which could also replace existing landscaping plants on campus where locations are suitable for growth.

The project aims to attract at least 100 participants including SMU students, staff, and faculty, as well as members of the public who live or work in the vicinity. It hopes to target “30 consistent participants” out of these over two years, and convince at least five F&B tenants on university grounds to adopt the on-campus edibles into their menus.

The tendency for many city planners and researchers is to engineer and force an outcome, Professor Lim said. Nature-Futures Learning takes the simpler approach of letting nature take its own course.

“A lot of plans regarding food security in urban centres involve indoor, multi-storey, energy-intensive environments with ultraviolet lights and humidity controls,” Professor Lim said. 

“For us, we recognise first that it is easy to grow plants here (in tropical Singapore). So, if we grow edible plants that are native and already flourishing here, and we grow them well in the city centre with the community’s help, we have the chance to set a great example that can be replicated across all urbanised parts of the country.”

In fact, she added, plants like daun kaduk are already used widely in Singapore for ornamental purposes. She learnt later from a student that it is also used in Indian cuisine, an exchange that she said underlines the project’s aim “to strengthen and preserve the cultural heritage that is all around us.”

Impact: Integration across levels necessary

Going forward, Nature-Food Futures plans to engage the global research community by publishing at least two journal articles in leading academic publications, and organising no less than five discussions with legal academics and practitioners.

Combining infrastructure development and community engagement with legal research, the proposal states, will help with the development of “grounded and futures-focused sustainability law and policy.”

It also aims to produce course material that can be used in seminars and talks, and facilitate discussions with the industries such as the property sector. For example, Professor Lim said, a mall owner might well be interested in setting up a food garden in the shopping centre.

“This person would want to know what is allowed, what works, how should I draft my contracts with vendors and suppliers,” she explained.

Nature-Food Futures is expected to culminate in a food festival to be held at the relatively new SMU Connexion, a green complex built to bring communities together. It is expected, naturally, to feature food made from the planted edible plants. For such projects to succeed, Professor Lim continued, it is similarly necessary for different parts of the government, as well as industries, to come together. For example, there might be regulations concerning fertilisers and pesticides that clash with the planting of edible plants.  

“We see this across many jurisdictions, not just Singapore, where different sectors and departments are just trying to solve different parts of the same problem,” she said, adding that there “needs to be more of a systems approach where there is not just an understanding of what others are doing but importantly an embrace of the interconnectedness across society and nature.” 

“Our project will hopefully shed more light on how this can work while cementing SMU’s role as a University dedicated to making a positive impact on sustainability and society.” 

US tech enabled China’s surveillance empire. Now Tibetan refugees in Nepal are paying the price

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — This technology is now a key part of China’s push for global influence, as it provides cash-strapped governments cost-effective, if invasive, forms of policing — turning algorithms and data into a force multiplier for control.

Aniruddha Ghosal and Dake Kang
December 22, 2025


KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — The white dome of Boudhanath rises like a silent guardian over the chaotic sprawl of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, crowned by a golden spire that pierces the sky. Painted on each of the spire’s four sides are the benevolent eyes of the Buddha — wide, calm, and unblinking — said to see all that unfolds below.

Those eyes have served as a symbol of sanctuary for generations of Tibetans fleeing the Chinese crackdown in their homeland. But today, Tibetan refugees are also watched by far more malevolent eyes: Thousands of CCTV cameras from China, perched on street corners and rooftops to monitor every movement below. This intense surveillance has stifled the once-vibrant Free Tibet movement that had resonated around the world.

Nepal is just one of at least 150 countries to which Chinese companies are supplying surveillance technology, from cameras in Vietnam to censorship firewalls in Pakistan to citywide monitoring systems in Kenya. This technology is now a key part of China’s push for global influence, as it provides cash-strapped governments cost-effective, if invasive, forms of policing — turning algorithms and data into a force multiplier for control.

The irony at the heart of this digital authoritarianism is that the surveillance tools China exports are based on technology developed in its greatest rival, the United States, despite warnings that Chinese firms would buy, copy or outright steal American designs, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.

For decades, Silicon Valley firms often yielded to Beijing’s demands: Give us your technology and we will give you access to our market. Although tensions fester between Washington and Beijing, the links between American tech and Chinese surveillance continue today.

For example, Amazon Web Services offers cloud services to Chinese tech giants like Hikvision and Dahua, assisting them in their overseas push. Both are on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List for national security and human-rights concerns, which means transactions with them are not illegal but subject to strict restrictions.

AWS told AP it adheres to ethical codes of conduct, complies with U.S. law, and does not itself offer surveillance infrastructure. Dahua said they conduct due diligence to prevent abuse of their products. Hikvision said the same, and that they “categorically reject any suggestion that the company is involved in or complicit in repression.”

Chinese technology firms now offer a complete suite of telecommunications, surveillance, and digital infrastructure, with few restrictions on who they sell to or how they’re used.

China pitches itself as a global security model with low crime rates, contrasting its record with the United States, said Sheena Greitens, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin.

“It’s got a set of solutions that it’s happy to share with the world that nobody else can offer,” she said. “(But) they’re certainly exporting the tools and techniques that are very important to authoritarian rule.”

The AP investigation was based on thousands of Nepali government procurement documents, corporate marketing material, leaked government and corporate documents, and interviews with more than 40 people, including Tibetan refugees and Nepali, American and Chinese engineers, executives, experts and officials.

While thousands of Tibetans once fled to Nepal every year, the number is now down to the single digits, according to Tibetan officials in Nepal. In a statement to AP, the Tibetan government in exile cited tight border controls, Nepal’s warming ties with China and “unprecedented surveillance” as reasons for the drastic plunge.

A 2021 internal Nepali government report, obtained by AP, revealed that China has even built surveillance systems within Nepal and in some areas of the border buffer zone where construction is banned by bilateral agreements. In a statement to AP, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied coercing Western companies to hand over technology or working with Nepal to surveil Tibetans, calling it a “sheer fabrication driven by ulterior motives.”

“Attempts to use Tibet-related issues to interfere in China’s internal affairs, smear China’s image, and poison the atmosphere of China-Nepal cooperation will never succeed,” the statement said.

The Nepali government and the Chinese-controlled Tibetan authorities did not respond to requests for comment.



Under pressure, many Tibetans are responding the only way they can: Leaving. The Tibetan population in Nepal has plunged from over 20,000 to half that or less today.

Former activist Sonam Tashi gave up protesting years ago. Now 49, today he’s just a father trying to get his 10-year-old son out — before the net pulls tighter. The boy was born in Nepal but has no document proving he is either a refugee or a citizen, a result of Chinese pressure.

Tashi described how those considered likely to protest are picked up in advance around key dates — like March 10, which marks the 1959 Tibetan uprising, or July 6, the Dalai Lama’s birthday. In 2018, Nepal’s police magazine confirmed that it was building predictive policing, which allows officers to watch people’s movements, identify in advance who they think will protest and arrest them preemptively.

“There are cameras everywhere,” Tashi said, sitting on a bus winding toward the Indian border. “There is no future.”

‘They gave us all the hardware’

After China crushed a Tibetan uprising in 1959, thousands fled across the Himalayas to Nepal, carrying only what they could: Religious paintings, prayer wheels and the weight of families left behind.

Their exodus, led by the charismatic Dalai Lama, captured the American imagination, with Hollywood films and actor Richard Gere’s congressional appeals putting Tibet in the spotlight. Washington trod a careful line, defending the rights and religious freedom of Tibetans without recognizing independence.



Today, the future of the Free Tibet movement is in question. Without refugee cards that grant basic rights, Tibetans in Nepal can no longer open bank accounts, work legally or leave the country.

Cameras are now everywhere in Kathmandu, perched on traffic lights and swiveling from temple eaves. Most link back to a four-story brick building just a few blocks down from the Chinese embassy, where officers watch the country in real time.

The building hums with the low breath of cooling fans. Inside, a wall of monitors blinks with feeds from border towns, busy markets and clogged traffic crossings.

Officers in crisp blue uniforms and red caps sit in the glow, scanning scenes. Beneath the screens, a photo published in a Nepali daily shows, a sign in English and Chinese reads: “With the compliments of the Ministry of Public Security of China.”

Their reach is vast.

Operators can track a motorbike weaving through the capital, follow a protest as it forms, or patch an alert directly to patrol radios. Many cameras are equipped with night vision facial recognition and AI tracking — able to pick a single face out of a festival crowd or lock onto a figure until it disappears indoors. The system not only sees but is learning to remember, storing patterns of movement, building a record of lives lived under its gaze.

A 34-year-old Tibetan cafe owner in the city watched the city change in quiet horror. “Now you can only be Tibetan in private,” he said. He and other Tibetans in Nepal spoke to AP anonymously, fearing retaliation.



The first cameras in Boudhanath were installed in 2012, officially to deter crime. But after a Tibetan monk doused himself in petrol and set himself ablaze in front of the stupa in 2013, police added 35 night vision cameras around it.

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The Chinese embassy in Kathmandu worked closely with the police, said Rupak Shrestha, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada who studied surveillance in Nepal. He said the police received special training to use the new cameras, identify potential symbols associated with the Free Tibet movement and anticipate dissent.

In 2013, a team of Nepal Police officers crossed the northern border into Tibet for a seemingly straightforward mission: Collect police radios from Chinese authorities in Zhangmu, a remote border town, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Kathmandu. A truck was loaded with equipment and a few handshakes later, they were driving back to Kathmandu.

The radios — made by the partly state-owned Chinese firm Hytera — looked like walkie-talkies but ran on a digital trunking system, a scaled-down mobile network for police use. Officers could talk privately, coordinate across districts, even patch into public phone lines. The entire system — radios, relay towers, software — was a $5.5 million gift from China.

“They didn’t give us the money,” recalled a retired Nepali officer who made the trip. “They gave all the hardware. All Chinese.”

He remembered not the border guards but the tech — sleek, reliable, and far ahead of anything they’d used before. He spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions.



He said Nepal had initially considered buying the technology from the U.S. and only wanted to deploy the system in its two biggest cities. Hytera was a fraction of the cost and performed comparably, but China also wanted coverage near the border with Tibet. Nepal acquiesced.

They installed the technology in Sindhupalchowk, a border district with a key road to China used by Tibetan refugees. “We understood their mindset,” the retired officer said. “A secure border.”

A police envoy from the Chinese embassy began making regular visits to the Nepal Police headquarters. He’d chat over coffee, flip through brochures from Chinese companies. “He’d say, ‘You want anything?’” the retired officer recalled.

China began donating tens of millions in police aid and surveillance equipment, including a new school for Nepal’s Armed Police Force. Hundreds of Nepali police traveled to China for training on policing and border control, according to Chinese government posts.

Ahead of a summit of South Asian leaders in 2014, among the goods on offer were ones from Uniview, China’s pitch for an all-seeing eye.

The company was the Chinese surveillance business of what was then Hewlett Packard, or HP, before it was spun off in a 2011 deal. Since 2012, Uniview has been selling mass surveillance solutions to the Tibetan police, such as a command center, and developed cameras that track ethnicities such as Uyghurs and Tibetans.



Uniview installed cameras in Kathmandu for Nepal’s first “safe city” project in 2016. It started with the city’s roads, then went up across the capital — in tourist areas, religious sites, high-security zones like Parliament and the prime minister’s home.

The cameras didn’t just record. Some could follow people automatically as they moved. Others were designed to use less data, making it easier to store and review footage.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, a successor company to HP that sells security solutions, has no ownership in Uniview and declined to comment. Hytera and Uniview did not respond to requests for comment.

Nearly all the cameras installed in Nepal are now made by Chinese companies like Hikvision, Dahua and Uniview, and many come bundled with facial recognition and AI tracking software.

Hikvision’s website and marketing materials advertise camera systems in Nepal linked via Hik-Connect and HikCentral Connect, cloud products that rely on Amazon Web Services. Hikvision sells to the Nepali police and government, and a template for Nepali tenders indicates CCTV cameras procured for the government are required to support Hik-Connect.

In return for Beijing’s support, top Nepali officials have thanked China repeatedly over the years, promising never to allow “anti-China activities” on Nepali territory.



The Nepali police head offices aren’t far from the now-forlorn Tibetan reception center, which used to shelter tired, hungry Tibetans fleeing across the border.

The building is nearly empty. The gates are locked. Those who do escape, like Namkyi, arrested at 15 for protesting Chinese rule, often have to wait for weeks confined indoors until they’re smuggled out again to the Tibetan capital in exile in India.

Silence has become survival.

“They know they are being watched,” she said. “Even though we are free, the surveillance cameras mean we’re actually living in a big prison.”

From clients to competitors

From the start, U.S. companies eager for China’s vast markets exchanged technology for entry.

Many were required to start joint ventures and research operations in China as a precondition for being allowed in. Dozens, if not hundreds, complied, transferring valuable know-how and expertise — even in sensitive areas like encryption or policing.

Little by little, Chinese companies chipped away at the lead of American tech companies by luring talent, obtaining research, and sometimes plain copying their hardware and software. The flow of technology continued, even as U.S. officials openly accused China of economic espionage and pressuring American companies for their technology.

“China is by far the most egregious actor when it comes to forced technology transfer,” Robert D. Atkinson, then-president of a think tank focused on innovation, warned Congress in a 2012 hearing.



American tech resistance came to a final, definitive end later that year with Edward Snowden’s revelations that U.S. intelligence was exploiting American technology to spy on Beijing. Spooked, the Chinese government told Western firms they risked being kicked out unless they handed over their technology and provided security guarantees.

After companies like HP and IBM agreed, their former partners became their fiercest global competitors — and unlike American firms, they faced few questions about the way their technology was being used. Companies like Huawei, Hikvision and Dahua have now become global behemoths that sell surveillance systems and gear all over the world.

American technology was key to this:

– Uniview, the Chinese AI-powered CCTV camera supplier, supplied the first phase of Nepal’s safe city project in 2016, installing cameras in Kathmandu. Uniview was carved out of California-based HP’s China surveillance video business.

– Hytera provided data infrastructure for the Nepali police, such as walkie-talkies and digital trunking technology, which enables real-time communication. Earlier this year, Hytera acknowledged stealing technology from U.S. company Motorola in a plea agreement, and had acquired German, British, Spanish, and American tech businesses in their growth phase.

– Hikvision and Dahua, China’s two largest surveillance camera suppliers, sell many of the cameras now in Nepal. They partnered with Intel and Nvidia to add AI capabilities to surveillance cameras. Those ties ended after U.S. sanctions in 2019, but AWS continues to sell cloud services to both companies, which remains legal under what some lawmakers call a loophole. AWS has advertised to Chinese companies expanding overseas, including at a policing expo in 2023.

– Chinese tech giant Huawei has become one of the world’s leading sellers of surveillance systems, wiring more than 200 cities with sensors. In Nepal, they supplied telecom gear and high-capacity servers at an international airport. Over the years, the company benefited from partnerships with American companies like IBM, and has been dogged by allegations of theft — including copying code from Cisco routers wholesale, a case which Huawei settled out of court in 2004.



Huawei said it provides “general-purpose” products “based on recognized industry standards.” Intel has said it adheres to all laws and regulations where it operates, and cannot control end use of its products. Nvidia has said it does not make surveillance systems or work with police in China at present.

IBM and Cisco declined comment. Policing gear maker Motorola Solutions, a successor company to Motorola after it split, did not respond to requests for comment.

U.S. technology transfer to Chinese firms has mostly stopped after growing controversy and a slew of sanctions in the past decade. But industry insiders say it’s too late: China, once a tech backwater, is now among the biggest exporters of surveillance technologies on earth.

Few realized “the U.S. shouldn’t be selling the software to China because they might copy it, they might use it for these types of surveillance and bad stuff,” said Charles Mok, a Hong Kong IT entrepreneur and former lawmaker now living in exile as a research scholar at Stanford. “Nobody was quick enough to realize this could happen.”

‘The great big eye in the sky’

Inside a 15th-century monastery in Lo Manthang in Nepal’s Mustang district, light slants through wooden slats, catching motes of dust and the faded faces of bodhisattvas.

Crumpled notes of Chinese currency lie at the feet of deities in the walled city along the Tibetan border. Here, shops stock Chinese instant noodles and cars with Chinese plates rumble down mountain roads.



A gleaming white observation dome just inside Chinese territory looms over the city. Visible from 15 kilometers (9 miles) away, it’s trained on the district that has long been a refuge for Tibetans, including a guerrilla base in the 1960s.

The dome is just one node in China’s vast 1,389-kilometer (863-mile) border network with Nepal — a “Great Wall of Steel” of fences, sensors and AI-powered drones.

Chinese forces have barred ethnic Tibetans from accessing traditional pastures and performing sacred rites. They have pressured residents of Lo Manthang to remove photos of the Dalai Lama from shops. And a “China-Nepal joint command mechanism” meets several times a month on border patrols and repatriations, according to a post by the Chinese-run Tibetan government.

The result is that the once-porous frontier is now effectively sealed, and China’s digital dragnet reaches deep into the lives of those who live near it.

In April 2024, Rapke Lama was chatting with a friend across the border on WeChat when he received an invitation to meet. He set out from his village and crossed into Tibet — only to be arrested almost immediately.

Lama believes his WeChat exchange was monitored; Chinese police appeared with unsettling precision, as if they knew where to look. After accusing him — wrongly, he maintains — of helping Tibetans flee into Nepal, the police seized his phone, which had photos of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan music. Then came months in a Lhasa prison, where isolation and inadequate medical care hollowed him out.



Lama did not return to Nepal until May 2025, gaunt and shaken. He later said he entered Tibet to harvest caterpillar fungus, valued in traditional Chinese medicine. Another friend who crossed the border remains in custody.

“Even now, I’m scared,” Lama says. He wears masks when wandering the streets, he says, “because of that lingering fear.”

The Chinese observation dome is a giant symbol of the same fear, towering over the border.

“It’s the great big eye in the sky,” said a 73-year-old Tibetan hotel owner in Nepal, who spotted the installation during a trip near the border last year. “For Tibetan refugees, Nepal has become a second China.”

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Associated Press journalists Niranjan Shrestha and Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu, Manish Swarup and Rishi Lekhi in New Delhi, Ashwini Bhatia in Dharamshala, India, and David Goldman in Washington contributed to this report.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.

 

 

Christmas in East Asia: monetised, aestheticised but largely devoid of meaning

/ Kenny Eliason - Unsplash

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By Mark Buckton - Taipei December 17, 2025

Christmas in East Asia is that rare thing: a global festival successfully imported, enthusiastically monetised, meticulously aestheticised - and almost entirely stripped of its original point. It is Christmas as a lifestyle accessory or an Instagram backdrop. But it is Christmas without Jesus Christ, sans family obligations, and in many places without a day off.

For hundreds of millions across Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and elsewhere December 25 arrives not with the gentle hush of a public holiday, but with the familiar alarm clock signalling the need to get up and head to work or school.

Business carried on as usual, and the only tangible sign that anything unusual is happening is a Santa Claus inflatable wedged between a bubble tea shop and a real estate agent advertising “luxury micro-apartments”.

This is not to say Christmas is ignored entirely. In fact, quite the opposite is the case.

East Asia has embraced Christmas with the zeal of a shopping mall on commission. Streets and apartment complexes are draped in fairy lights of such wattage that passing satellites and astronauts stuck in the International Space Station over the festive period can probably see them. Department stores install towering trees as soon as US-themed Thanksgiving decorations are packed away in late November and are often decorated in themes that change annually - Nordic Minimalist Christmas, Pastel K-Pop Christmas and Luxury Champagne Christmas - none of which has much to do with Bethlehem, Nazareth or, indeed the true meaning of the Christian celebrations observed half a world away.

In Tokyo, Christmas is widely understood to be a romantic event for couples, ideally involving a hotel booking, a view of illuminated landmarks and a cake that costs more than a modest weekly grocery shop. In Seoul, it is similar, though with greater emphasis on social media documentation and the faint competitive undertone that accompanies all major Korean leisure activities. In Taipei, it is an excuse for shopping centres to play “Last Christmas” by Wham on a loop from early November until morale finally collapses around the Lunar New Year in January or February.

The religious content, meanwhile, is treated with polite indifference. Christianity exists in East Asia, of course, sometimes in large numbers, particularly in South Korea. But the public Christmas remains resolutely secular, in the way only a hyper-commercial society can manage.

Nativity scenes are rare; Santa Claus is ubiquitous. Angels may appear, but only if they can be rendered cute, cartoonish or holding a promotional placard advertising real estate or teen hangouts.

What Christmas means is therefore refreshingly clear: consumption.

Christmas in East Asia is about the wallet and buying things, preferably wrapped in red and gold, and preferably promoted with just enough Western imagery to make the locals feel“international” without requiring any understanding of its origins.

It is capitalism in a Santa hat.

Japan’s contribution to this global phenomenon remains the undisputed masterpiece: Kentucky Fried Chicken as Christmas dinner. Through a marketing campaign launched in the 1970s and never allowed to die, millions of Japanese families dutifully pre-order buckets of fried chicken weeks in advance. This is not parody. This is logistics in action. Miss your booking and Christmas is ruined, or at least reduced to a less festive bento box with a leg or a wing at best.

Elsewhere, Christmas food traditions are similarly inventive. There are strawberry sponge cakes, “Christmas lattes” that taste suspiciously identical to normal lattes, and chocolates presented in boxes so elaborate one assumes the contents must be priceless, only to discover they are exactly the same chocolates available year-round, merely rebranded and slightly more expensive.

The soundtrack, too, is resolutely globalised. Mariah Carey dominates malls from Shanghai to Sapporo with the kind of cultural imperialism usually associated with aircraft carriers. Local pop stars release Christmas singles that sound festive largely because they contain bells and the word “snow”, regardless of whether snow is actually a thing where the song is being played - in Taiwan it never is. Indeed, in tropical parts of East Asia, Taiwan again, artificial snow machines have been known to pump foam into 20+degree heat, just in case anyone forgets this is meant to be winter.

And yet, for all the lights, music and promotional tie-ins, there is an unmistakable hollowness to the day itself.

Christmas Eve may be busy. Christmas Day is often just… Thursday. Children go to school. Office workers attend meetings. Trains run on normal schedules. The great annual Western ritual of pretending not to check emails is largely absent.

For expats across East Asia, this can be disorientating. One moment you are standing beneath a massive Christmas tree while a choir of recorded children sings about peace on earth; the next you are answering emails about quarterly targets. The disconnect is almost impressive. East Asia has perfected the art of festive simulation without inconvenience to the school schedule or corporate calendar.

This, perhaps, is the key to Christmas’s success in the region. It is all sparkle, not substance. No awkward conversations at the dinner table. No arguments about politics. No compulsory goodwill beyond what can be expressed through a gift receipt.

It also avoids the deeper, messier questions that Christmas traditionally raises: charity, inequality, faith, forgiveness. These are quietly ignored in favour of LED reindeer and promotional discounts. The poor are not so much remembered as forgotten, unless they can be integrated into a corporate social responsibility campaign with suitable branding.

Even the language reflects this selective adoption. “Merry Christmas” is widely used, often enthusiastically, but as a seasonal greeting rather than a statement of belief. Christmas in East Asia is a temporary vibe, not a value system.

And when the day itself passes, it vanishes quickly. On 26 December, decorations begin to disappear with remarkable speed, replaced by banners advertising year-end sales or, in Chinese-speaking regions, Lunar New Year preparations which can still be as distant as six-weeks away.

Christmas, having served its purpose, is efficiently packed away until next November.