People's Daily - August 22, 2026

Guizhou actively integrates into the comprehensive opening-up landscape

By: 本报记者 马跃峰 苏 滨

On one side, industrial wastewater enters; on the other, clear water flows out in a steady stream. Between them lies only a thin diamond conductive membrane. In mid-August, relying on self-developed technology that achieves chemical-additive-free treatment of organic wastewater, Guizhou Siyu Environmental Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (贵州丝域环能科技有限公司) successively reached deep cooperation with two companies in Beijing and Guangdong, using their channels to open the Southeast Asian market. "Our advantageous technology is accelerating its overseas application," said Liu Li (刘丽), the company's general manager.

In March 2025, during his inspection of Guizhou, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Guizhou must make good use of the opportunities in building the Western Land-Sea New Corridor (西部陆海新通道), actively align with the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone, and proactively integrate into the comprehensive opening-up pattern featuring coordinated linkage between land and sea at home and abroad and mutual reinforcement between east and west."

These earnest instructions point the way forward. Guizhou is leveraging its advantages, making good use of the opportunities in building the Western Land-Sea New Corridor, focusing on cultivating a distinctive open industrial system, proactively integrating into the comprehensive opening-up pattern featuring coordinated linkage between land and sea at home and abroad and mutual reinforcement between east and west, and promoting reform and development through opening up.

Regional coordination expands the space for opening up.

"Our company holds more than 300 patents and is a supplier of high-voltage connection system solutions for new energy vehicles," said Qu Shuiping (屈水平), general manager of Guizhou Zunyi Basba Technology Development Co., Ltd. (贵州遵义巴斯巴科技发展有限公司). In 2015, the company settled in Zunyi City and set up a factory for production, attracted by Guizhou's geographical location and development momentum.

Integrated linkage and coordinated development.

Connecting northward to the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone, Guizhou is strengthening cooperation in new energy battery materials and automobiles, aerospace, low-altitude economy, and other fields, supporting Zunyi in becoming a "bridgehead" for connecting with the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone; adjacent southward to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Guizhou is using models such as "headquarters + base" and "R&D + manufacturing" to open up industrial collaboration channels and better promote the cross-regional flow of factors.

According to reports, in the first half of this year, Guizhou introduced 29 major projects from the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone with a total investment of 7.533 billion yuan, and introduced 36 major projects from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area with a total investment of 21.396 billion yuan.

Upgrading capacity and smoothing opening-up channels.

With a resounding whistle, a sea-rail intermodal train fully loaded with bauxite and ammonium sulfate departs from Guiyang International Land Port (贵阳国际陆港), transporting the goods via Guangxi's Beibu Gulf Port to Southeast Asian countries.

"In the past, for goods shipped overseas from Guiyang International Land Port via Guangxi's Beibu Gulf Port, enterprises needed to go through customs declaration twice, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive. Now, thanks to the 'combined port' (组合港) policy, goods can be exported with a single customs declaration," explained Xiao Hongjun (肖红俊), deputy general manager of Guiyang International Land Port Co., Ltd. This saves 3 to 5 days compared with before, reduces transportation costs, and improves cross-border transportation efficiency.

As an important part of the Western Land-Sea New Corridor construction, Guiyang International Land Port opened in August 2022. Constrained by shortcomings such as insufficient cargo sources and scattered port-adjacent industries, its development once faced obstacles.

Establishing "combined ports" with Guangzhou Port, Shenzhen Port, Beibu Gulf Port, and others, jointly promoting the new logistics model of "parallel port + Western Land-Sea New Corridor" with Zhanjiang Port and others, and developing the "one document" and "one container" systems for multimodal transport... Through comprehensive measures, in the first half of this year, Guiyang International Land Port's throughput reached 28,000 TEUs, up 18% year on year; four types of trains including the Western Land-Sea New Corridor were operated, carrying 15,000 TEUs, up 392% year on year. "Moving beyond its traditional positioning, this place will become a hub platform integrating logistics, industry, trade, finance, and data in the future," Xiao Hongjun said. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, Guizhou will also build an important international trade transit center and logistics hub in the southwestern region, accelerating the construction of a new pattern of opening up featuring "corridor + hub + trade + industry."

Highlighting distinctive features to build opening-up advantages.

Entering the "World Matcha Super Factory" in Jiangkou County, Tongren City (铜仁市江口县), the tencha refining production line and matcha production line are running at full speed, with bags of finished matcha products sold overseas through Guiyang International Land Port. In the first half of this year, Tongren's matcha sales reached 2,000 tons, up 62% year on year, of which 480 tons were exported, up 108% year on year, selling well in 54 countries and regions.

"Fanjing Mountain's unique mountain climate nurtures distinctive flavors, and selenium-rich soil creates differentiated quality. Ecological advantages are transformed into distinctive advantages, forming opening-up advantages," said Meng Zude (蒙祖德), chairman of Guizhou Guicha (Group) Co., Ltd. (贵州贵茶（集团）有限公司). At present, the company's signed overseas orders exceed 6,000 tons, and the road of export is growing ever wider.

Taking advantage of the opportunities in building the Western Land-Sea New Corridor, more and more Guizhou products are going global. From matcha to sturgeon, from chili peppers to guitars, Guizhou, based on its own advantages, continues to implement the "rural foreign trade" (乡村外贸) strategy, promoting distinctive agricultural products and handicrafts to enter the international market, and continuously expanding new space for foreign trade in digital trade, tourism, health and wellness, and other fields.

To thoroughly implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions, Guizhou will pay greater attention to coordinating both domestic and international markets and both types of resources, strengthen the construction of opening-up channels and platforms, and intensify efforts to expand high-level opening up.

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Jilin builds modern industrial system with local characteristics

By: 本报记者 汪志球 刘以晴

In early August, in the production workshop of Carbon Valley Company (碳谷公司) under Jilin Chemical Fiber Group (吉林化纤集团), bundles of carbon fiber precursor were undergoing the oxidation process. "A single 35K carbon fiber filament is finer than a human hair, yet its strength is 7 to 9 times that of steel," said Chen Hao (陈浩), deputy director of the high-performance workshop of Carbon Valley Company. In 2025, Jilin Chemical Fiber Group's carbon fiber production and sales both ranked first globally, and in the first half of this year, total sales volume increased 10 percent year on year.

In February 2025, when General Secretary Xi Jinping heard the work report of the Jilin Provincial Party Committee and the Jilin Provincial People's Government, he emphasized: "We must firmly guard the foundation of the real economy, coordinate the promotion of traditional industry transformation, the expansion of advantageous industries, and the cultivation of new quality productive forces, and build a modern industrial system that reflects Jilin's characteristics."

Deeply implementing General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions, Jilin is accelerating the construction of a modern industrial system with advanced manufacturing as the backbone, developing new quality productive forces 因地制宜 (yīn dì zhì yí - "adapt measures to local conditions," to act according to actual circumstances), and injecting surging momentum into high-quality development.

Renew the existing stock, release new advantages of traditional industries.

At the Fanrong plant area of the Hongqi Manufacturing Center of China FAW, industrial robot arms move swiftly as they weld vehicle body frames, and on average, a complete vehicle rolls off the production line in less than one minute. "The workshop's welding automation rate reaches 100 percent, and 20,000 pieces of equipment are fully networked, enabling real-time collection, analysis, and early warning of production data," introduced Zhang Guolong (张国龙), senior director of assembly technology at China FAW's Engineering Technology Department.

Borrowing strength from "intelligence." In recent years, Jilin has focused on traditional advantageous industries such as automobiles, petrochemicals, and equipment, driving equipment renewal through "intelligent transformation and digital upgrading" (智改数转), formulating transformation plans with "one policy per industry" (一业一策), while guiding universities, research institutes, and other forces to directly participate in enterprise technological breakthroughs, shortening the cycle of achievement transformation.

In 2025, the growth rate of added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Jilin Province ranked among the forefront nationally; the added value of advantageous industries such as food and petrochemicals increased 7.5 percent and 11.5 percent year on year, respectively; and China FAW's total vehicle sales exceeded 3.302 million units, up 3.2 percent year on year. Jilin will continue to increase innovation support, carry out key core technology breakthroughs, expand applications in fields such as automotive lightweighting and new energy, and promote the transition from "selling raw materials" to "selling manufactured products."

Expand the increment, build growth poles for emerging industries.

On June 15, the 14th Lijian-1 launch vehicle sent eight satellites, including the "Jixing" Gaofen-07C04 satellite, into predetermined orbits, and the "Jilin-1" (吉林一号) satellite project completed its 30th successful launch.

Entering Changguang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd. (长光卫星技术股份有限公司), robots are processing important optical components for satellites. Today, the domestic localization rate of "Jilin-1" satellite components and assemblies has reached 100 percent, and the company has the capacity to produce 200 remote sensing satellites and 200 communication satellites annually.

Jilin has listed the optoelectronic information industry as its "Number One Project" (一号工程), building national key laboratories such as integrated optoelectronics, integrating research resources from the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (长春光机所) and Changchun University of Science and Technology (长春理工大学) to establish provincial laboratories, and carrying out whole-industry-chain technological breakthroughs.

Treating emerging industries as key growth poles, Jilin is making systematic arrangements, focusing on tracks such as new energy, new equipment, new materials, and optoelectronic information, and promoting industries from cultivation to expansion and maturation. In the new energy field, Jilin has in recent years focused on difficulties such as cold-region applications of new energy, continuously deepening efforts in frontier areas such as intelligent energy dispatch, high-end green equipment, and multi-energy integrated applications. As of the end of 2025, Jilin's installed capacity of new energy and renewable energy reached 33.8867 million kilowatts.

Cultivate variables, lay out new tracks for future industries.

In 2025, Changchun Jieyi Automotive Technology Co., Ltd. (长春捷翼汽车科技股份有限公司) took the lead, jointly with six institutions including the Jilin Provincial Industrial Technology Research Institute (吉林省工业技术研究院), to co-fund the establishment of Jiyi Embodied Intelligence Robot Co., Ltd. (吉翼具身智能机器人有限公司). This year, the company's "Quality Inspector" (质检家) industrial inspection robot, competing alongside senior inspectors in automotive wiring harness inspection, achieved 100 percent accuracy for both.

To lay out future industries, since 2025, Jilin has invested a cumulative total of 422 million yuan and launched 9 focused tackling projects. Earlier this year, the Jilin Provincial Embodied Intelligence Robot Industry Science and Technology Innovation Consortium was established, with the first batch of 33 member units covering key enterprises, universities, and research institutes including Changchun Jieyi Automotive Technology Co., Ltd. and the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (中国科学院长春应用化学研究所), forming whole-chain collaboration.

Focusing on developing embodied intelligence, Jilin is building a complete humanoid robot industry chain from materials and core components to complete machine products. In the first half of this year, Jilin's sales revenue from industrial robot manufacturing increased 27.81 percent year on year; sales revenue from wearable smart device manufacturing increased 27.27 percent year on year; and sales revenue from information transmission, software, and information technology services increased 14.75 percent year on year.

Bearing in mind General Secretary Xi Jinping's earnest instructions, Jilin will firmly guard the foundation of the real economy, coordinate the promotion of traditional industry transformation, the expansion of advantageous industries, and the cultivation of new quality productive forces, and accelerate the construction of a modern industrial system with Jilin's distinctive advantages.

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Effectively expand domestic demand

By: 本报记者 王 珂 王云杉 王东辉

On July 30, General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. The meeting emphasized that domestic demand should be effectively expanded, that quality supply should be expanded to suit the consumption needs of different groups, and that the potential of service consumption should be tapped.

Domestic demand is the primary driver and stabilizing anchor of economic growth. In the first half of the year, the consumer market expanded in scale and improved in quality, with final consumption expenditure driving GDP growth by 2.1 percentage points; the investment structure continued to optimize, with gross capital formation driving GDP growth by 1.7 percentage points.

At present, China's advantage of a super-large-scale market is solid, the domestic demand structure continues to optimize, new growth drivers are gaining strong momentum, and the policy toolbox is well stocked. Expanding domestic demand has a solid foundation, unique advantages, and ample policy space, providing strong support for the steady recovery, quality improvement, and scale expansion of demand.

In the second half of the year, to effectively expand domestic demand with greater intensity and more concrete measures, it is necessary to build on favorable conditions and implement targeted policies. On the one hand, we must closely combine benefiting people's livelihoods with promoting consumption and vigorously boost consumption; on the other hand, we must closely combine investment in things with investment in people, stimulate the internal driving force of investment, and continuously unleash the greater potential of domestic demand.

The transformation and upgrading of the domestic demand structure, moving toward the new and the excellent, is the major trend

In Yangzhou, Jiangsu, as the streetlights come on, the night tours of Slender West Lake, Geyuan Garden, and Heyuan Garden begin, using light and shadow as the brush and culture as the soul, sketching out a charming nightscape;

In Deqing, Zhejiang, the firefly-viewing season on Mogan Mountain is in full swing, with flocks of fireflies dancing in the night, and the unique ecological landscape attracting large numbers of citizens and tourists to check in...

During the peak summer tourism season, from the continued warming of the nighttime economy to the rising popularity of "travel following performances," and to the renewal and upgrading of parent-child tours and summer retreats, cultural tourism consumption is "fully fired up," with quality experiences stimulating stronger consumption vitality.

"To comprehensively and dialectically analyze the domestic demand situation, we must look not only at scale, but also at structure, and even more at trends," said Zhou Hongwei (周宏伟), deputy director of the Department of Comprehensive National Economic Affairs of the National Development and Reform Commission (国家发展改革委国民经济综合司). In the first half of the year, two highlights in domestic demand were very prominent:

In terms of investment, the structure continued to optimize, with investment in emerging sectors showing good growth. Investment in high-tech industries increased by 4.6% year on year, of which investment in the information services industry increased by 15.5%; national investment in intellectual property products increased by 9.4% year on year, with its share of total investment rising to 13.8%; investment in equipment and tool purchases increased by 8.1% year on year.

In terms of consumption, the market scale continued to expand, new consumption drivers developed rapidly, and new scenarios for service consumption emerged at an accelerated pace. In the first half of the year, service retail sales increased by 5.3% year on year. At the same time, consumption of upgraded goods also grew rapidly, with retail sales of wearable smart devices such as smart glasses growing by more than 100%, and retail sales of high-energy-efficiency household appliances growing by more than 30%.

In terms of trends, the transformation and upgrading of the domestic demand structure, moving toward the new and the excellent, is the major trend. With China's economic growth and the improvement of people's living standards, goods consumption will continue to improve in quality and upgrade, and service consumption also has significant growth potential; adapting to the needs of the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, there is broad space for investment in new-type infrastructure and industry.

"From the perspective of development prospects, the role of consumption as the primary driving force of economic development will continue to be consolidated," said Yang Mu (杨沐), director of the Department of Market Operation and Consumption Promotion of the Ministry of Commerce (商务部市场运行和消费促进司). In the first half of the year, service consumption showed good growth momentum. Although the growth rate of goods consumption has relatively slowed, there is still considerable room and potential for incremental growth.

New products such as smart homes and smart robots entering the market bring new consumption increments while meeting people's needs for a better life. County-level markets, as well as the silver-haired, youth, and infant and toddler groups, are large in size, with obvious trends in consumption demand upgrading, and have broad prospects for consumption growth.

As the series of policies to expand domestic demand and promote consumption continue to take effect, the supply of goods and services is continuously optimized, new consumption growth points and scenarios are emerging at an accelerated pace, China's advantage of a super-large-scale market will be further highlighted, the consumer market will continue to develop and grow, and the role of consumption as the "main engine" of economic growth will become increasingly strong.

Closely combining benefiting people's livelihoods with promoting consumption

"Booking door-to-door care services with a subsidy — that's really good." Recently, Aunt Dong (董阿姨), a resident of Xicheng District, Beijing, booked door-to-door home care services for her elderly husband online and received and used an elderly care service consumption subsidy.

According to reports, the Ministry of Civil Affairs (民政部) has implemented a project to issue elderly care service consumption subsidies to elderly people with moderate or above disability. As of the end of July, a cumulative total of 10.7992 million consumption vouchers had been redeemed nationwide, with a redemption amount of 6.512 billion yuan, driving elderly care service consumption of 29.093 billion yuan, and more than 1.9986 million disabled elderly people had benefited from the project.

In response to prominent problems such as insufficient service supply, low fit with the needs of segmented groups, and the need to improve residents' consumption capacity, the second half of the year's consumption promotion work should adhere to driving consumption upgrading through livelihood improvement and activating potential demand through precise supply, promoting the quality improvement and people-benefiting of service consumption.

In the first half of the year, total retail sales of consumer goods and services increased by 2.7% year on year, of which service retail sales increased by 5.3%, with a growth rate 4.2 percentage points higher than that of goods retail sales. Zhang Jianping (张建平), a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce (商务部国际贸易经济合作研究院), said that in terms of the overall structure, the consumer market has entered a development stage where "goods + services" are equally important. "To further stimulate consumption vitality, we must both better promote the expansion and upgrading of goods consumption and better promote the quality improvement and people-benefiting of service consumption."

Not long ago, the State Council approved the "15th Five-Year Plan" for Expanding Consumption (《扩大消费"十五五"规划》), the first national-level special plan in the consumption field, clarifying the "task book" and "roadmap" for China's continued expansion of domestic demand and vigorous boosting of consumption over the next five years.

At a store of the Leqi smart glasses brand in a shopping mall in Yuecheng District, Shaoxing, Zhejiang, Mr. Wang, a hearing-impaired person, came with his family to experience the products. "We have specially developed a hearing assistance mode for hearing-impaired users, adding a 'subtitle' function that converts the speech of conversation partners into subtitles," said the relevant person in charge of the Leqi brand.

Quality supply of products and services must adapt to different scenarios and consider the needs of different groups. Making payments more convenient, adapting to the needs of myopic users, solving light leakage problems... smart glasses are continuously optimizing product functions according to market needs, adapting to more life scenarios while creating new sales growth points.

The relevant person in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission (国家发展改革委) stated that to vigorously boost consumption, first, consumption capacity should be enhanced by deeply implementing the employment-first strategy, continuing to carry out large-scale vocational skills upgrading training, and increasing residents' income through multiple channels; second, the potential of service consumption should be tapped by expanding quality supply to suit the consumption needs of different groups and improving life service consumption; third, consumption of smart products should be promoted by increasing the effective supply of new-generation smart terminal products such as AI phones and computers, smart wearables, and smart robots, and expanding intelligent agent services.

Enhancing supply-demand fit and stabilizing the basic foundation of goods consumption

Goods consumption is an important area for promoting consumption and benefiting people's livelihoods. Zhang Jianping said that relevant policies and measures should be introduced at a faster pace to promote the expansion of scale and upgrading of structure of goods consumption, better conforming to and meeting the diversified and multi-level consumption needs of the people.

From promoting customized services in the home furnishing consumption field, to promoting the quality improvement of food and beverage, textile and clothing consumption; from supporting the consumption of special goods such as domestic "trendy products" and quality foreign trade products, to cultivating and expanding the consumption of upgraded goods such as green, healthy, and smart products; from creating offline experiences for new products such as smart homes and smart robots, to creating consumption scenarios with Chinese characteristics and cultural appeal... a series of policies and measures are taking effect, activating offline consumption and promoting the expansion and upgrading of goods consumption.

Meeting new demand with new supply and consolidating the good momentum of service consumption

Service consumption is both the "ballast stone" for the current boosting of consumption and the "main engine" for future consumption growth. As residents' consumption demand shifts from "whether one has it" to "whether it is good," it is necessary to further optimize the supply of services in cultural tourism, sports, leisure and other fields, and promote the continued release of personalized and high-quality service demand.

The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Commerce (商务部) stated that around segmented fields such as transportation, performances, and events, innovative support measures will be further introduced, and local governments will be encouraged to actively explore effective paths for cultivating new growth points in service consumption. Efforts will be intensified to advance pilot projects for new business forms, new models, and new scenarios of consumption, promote the integration of service consumption business forms, scenario innovation, and industrial agglomeration, and create a number of new consumption scenarios with broad reach and high visibility, creating new demand with new supply and activating new consumption with new scenarios.

Closely combining investment in things with investment in people

The meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held on July 30 emphasized: "Solidly advance the planning and construction of the 'six networks' (六张网)."

Not long ago, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration (国家能源局) issued the "15th Five-Year Plan" for the Construction of a New-Type Power System, clarifying the overall thinking for China's power development over the next five years, proposing the strategic goal of initially building a new-type power system by 2030, and deploying the main goals, major projects, and key tasks for the development of the power industry.

"China has basically formed a clean power supply system with diversified development of coal, gas, nuclear, and renewable energy," said Yang Kun (杨昆), executive vice chairman of the China Electricity Council (中国电力企业联合会). During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the dominant position of non-fossil energy power generation installed capacity will be further consolidated, and the dominant position of electricity in the end-use energy structure will be further strengthened, providing strong support for economic and social development and the green and low-carbon transition.

Relying on favorable conditions such as sufficient policy funds, sufficient project reserves, and sufficient construction window periods, the second half of the year's investment stabilization work should focus on filling shortcomings, optimizing structure, and improving efficiency, solidly advancing the construction of the "six networks," and continuously expanding high-quality effective investment.

Since the beginning of this year, the construction of the "six networks" has been accelerated, helping to stabilize investment and expand domestic demand. It is understood that this year, the investment scale of the "six networks" and related key areas is expected to exceed 7 trillion yuan, with policy dividends continuing to be released.

The water network is denser — the Yangtze-to-Han River water diversion project is in full swing, and upon completion will greatly enhance the water supply guarantee capacity of the middle route of the South-to-North Water Diversion;

The power grid is better — the construction of the Aba-Chengdu East 1000 kV UHV AC project is accelerating, and in the future will effectively meet the grid connection needs of 20 million kilowatts of new energy in western Sichuan;

The computing network is stronger — at the national supercomputing internet core node in Zhengzhou, Henan, tens of thousands of domestic AI chips are running at high speed, providing advanced and efficient computing power support for frontier innovation such as large model research and development...

"Looking ahead to the second half of the year, with the accelerated allocation and use of central budget investment and ultra-long-term special treasury bond funds, the accelerated use of local special bonds, and the accelerated implementation of new-type policy financial instruments, stabilizing investment has a foundation, has conditions, and has leverage," said Wang Yubo (王昱博), assistant researcher at the Investment Research Institute of the Academy of Macroeconomic Research of the National Development and Reform Commission (国家发展改革委宏观经济研究院投资研究所).

Zhu Dongjian (朱东剑), the relevant person in charge of the investment department of China Construction Second Engineering Bureau (中建二局), believes that in the second half of the year, with the concentrated commencement of major projects of the "six networks" and the deepening advancement of urban renewal actions, there are still many structural opportunities for stabilizing investment. China Construction Second Engineering Bureau will focus on the renovation of old residential communities, complete community construction, old neighborhoods, factory area renovation, underground pipeline network renewal and other fields, and strive to enhance urban capacity.

To expand investment with returns, it is necessary to closely combine investment in things with investment in people, providing support for the comprehensive development of people through high-quality accumulation of physical capital, injecting momentum into the iterative upgrading of physical capital through the steady improvement of human capital, and promoting the sustained growth of total factor productivity and the improvement of people's quality of life.

The relevant person in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission stated that to stimulate the internal driving force of investment, first, policies for expanding effective investment should be implemented and refined at a faster pace, the construction of the "two major" initiatives (两重) should be coordinated, the construction peak season of the third quarter should be seized, the allocation and use of 800 billion yuan of new-type policy financial instrument funds should be accelerated, and the issuance and use of special bonds should be accelerated; second, major engineering projects with mature conditions should be promoted to start construction at an accelerated pace; third, the vitality of private investment should be continuously stimulated, the long-term mechanism for private enterprises to participate in major national project construction should be improved, the role of special funds for fiscal-financial coordination to promote domestic demand should be fully leveraged, and support for expanding private investment should be provided.

The market is the scarcest resource, and the super-large-scale market is China's advantage. Firmly implementing the strategy of expanding domestic demand, intensifying efforts to build a strong domestic market, stimulating consumption with potential, expanding investment with returns, and forming a virtuous cycle in which consumption and investment promote each other will inject more surging momentum into high-quality economic development.

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Li Qiang presides over State Council executive meeting

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 21 — On August 21, Premier Li Qiang of the State Council presided over an executive meeting of the State Council, which heard a report on the construction of new-generation communication networks, made arrangements for further clearing overdue payments owed to enterprises, studied work related to continuously improving air quality, and deliberated and approved the Regulations on Emergency Response to and Investigation and Handling of Electric Power Safety Accidents (Draft Revision) and the Regulations on Market Supervision and Administration Offices (Draft).

The meeting pointed out that it is necessary to actively respond to the trends of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, firmly grasp the opportunities presented by the construction of new-generation communication networks, adhere to application-driven and appropriately forward-looking development, coordinate the advancement of basic networks, space networks, international networks, and integrated networks, and consolidate and enhance the competitive advantages of China's information and communication industry. It is necessary to strengthen innovation-driven and intelligence-led development, popularize and promote new-generation intelligent terminals, actively cultivate high-value scenarios such as smart cities and intelligent manufacturing, and continuously expand the industrial ecosystem. It is necessary to strengthen the protection of key network infrastructure and data security, enhance emergency support communication capabilities, and ensure network and information security. It is necessary to improve the construction mechanism featuring government guidance, enterprise leadership, and social participation, ensure the provision of factors such as land, electricity, and spectrum, and stimulate the initiative of all types of entities.

The meeting pointed out that it is necessary to implement well the action to accelerate and intensify the clearing of overdue payments owed to enterprises, consolidate primary responsibilities, supervise and guide local governments to make good use of policies such as special bonds and special relending, unblock the "chain clearing" (连环清) linkage, effectively improve the quality of arrears clearing, and strictly prevent the emergence of new arrears. It is necessary to vigorously rectify the problem of large enterprises owing payments to small and medium-sized enterprises, improve industry payment rules, clarify reasonable payment periods and payment conditions by industry, and refine the standards for determining dishonest conduct in arrears owed to enterprises. It is necessary to strengthen supervision over the payment behavior of large enterprises, intensify anti-unfair competition law enforcement, strictly enforce requirements for disclosure of payment information, and standardize the management of non-cash payment instruments.

The meeting pointed out that it is necessary to continue to fight the battle to protect blue skies (蓝天保卫战) in depth, strengthen goal-oriented leadership, strengthen governance and joint prevention and control in key regions, improve supporting policies in fiscal, financial, and pricing areas, promote the optimization of industrial structure, energy structure, and transportation structure, and persistently improve air quality. It is necessary to extensively mobilize the strength of all parties and promote the formation of green production and lifestyle.

The meeting pointed out that it is necessary to strengthen prevention in advance and source control, do a good job in the operation, maintenance, inspection, and hidden danger investigation of electric power equipment and facilities, strictly grasp the quality of all links in the design, construction, and acceptance of new projects, and ensure the safe and stable operation of the electric power system. It is necessary to enhance the emergency response and handling capabilities for electric power safety accidents, continuously promote the iterative upgrading of technical equipment, and improve the work pattern in which all departments work together to manage related matters.

The meeting pointed out that it is necessary to consolidate the grassroots foundation of market supervision, promote the sinking of resources and strength to the front line, strengthen empowerment through science and technology, improve the quality and efficiency of supervision and services, and effectively maintain a fair and competitive market order.

The meeting also studied other matters.

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Zhao Leji meets with Jordan's King Abdullah II

Beijing, August 21 (Xinhua) — Zhao Leji, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, met with King Abdullah II of Jordan in Beijing on the morning of August 21.

Zhao Leji stated that in recent years, under the strategic guidance of President Xi Jinping and His Majesty the King, China-Jordan relations have continued to deepen and solidify, with fruitful results in cooperation across various fields. China is willing to work with Jordan, taking the important consensus of the two heads of state as the fundamental guideline, to carry forward the traditional friendship, strengthen practical cooperation, and promote the sustained, healthy, and stable development of China-Jordan relations. The National People's Congress of China is willing to deepen friendly exchanges with the Jordanian National Assembly, make good use of platforms such as the seminar for legislators from developing countries, strengthen exchanges and mutual learning in areas such as democracy, the rule of law, and improvement of people's livelihoods, and contribute to the promotion of the China-Jordan strategic partnership.

Abdullah II stated that Jordan highly appreciates the important leadership China has demonstrated in global governance. Jordan is willing to deepen political mutual trust with China, strengthen cooperation in trade, investment, and other fields, promote exchanges between the legislative bodies of the two countries, and work toward shared prosperity and development.

Losang Jamcan attended the meeting.

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China’s early rice output stable above 56 billion jin for six consecutive years

Beijing, August 21 (Reporter Liu Zhiqiang) — Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics shows: according to projections from actual harvest measurement sampling surveys of early rice in 10 provinces (autonomous regions), the national early rice planting area in 2026 increased slightly, with early rice output reaching 56.58 billion jin, remaining stable above 56 billion jin for 6 consecutive years, and overall maintaining stability.

In 2026, the national early rice planting area was 71.164 million mu, an increase of 22,000 mu over the previous year. By region, planting areas in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hainan, and Guangxi increased by 120,000 mu, 65,000 mu, 34,000 mu, and 21,000 mu respectively, with year-on-year growth of 6.3%, 0.4%, 2.0%, and 0.2% respectively. This year, the state has continued to increase support for grain production, implementing multiple policies to strengthen agriculture, benefit farmers, and enrich farmers, stabilizing the minimum purchase price of early indica rice and cultivated land fertility protection subsidies, increasing crop rotation subsidies, and stabilizing farmers' planting expectations. All localities have tightened grain production responsibilities layer by layer, coordinating funds from rewards for major grain-producing counties, the green, high-quality, and high-efficiency action, and other sources to support early rice production, effectively mobilizing farmers' enthusiasm for planting.

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Summer travel season hits return peak

As summer vacation draws to a close, student passenger flows, family-visit passenger flows, and tourist passenger flows converge, and railway summer transport has entered its return-travel passenger peak. The photo shows passengers hurrying to board trains at a railway station in Nanjing, Jiangsu, on August 21.
　　Photo by Xu Qi (People's Vision)

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Guangzhou deepens integration of technological and industrial innovation

By: 本报记者 吴齐强 贺林平 洪秋婷

Among the clouds and peaks of the mountains and the Pearl River, surging with the vitality of scientific and technological innovation. At the Guangzhou Laboratory in Guangdong, researchers are concentrating on joint攻关 (key research) to push multiple drugs and vaccines to market; on August 21, at the 10th China (Guangzhou) International Elderly Care and Health Industry Expo, the "5G Brain-Heart Vehicle" brought by Guangzhou Jixin Zhiyuan Life Sciences Co., Ltd. (广州极芯智元生命科学有限公司) integrated flexible brain-computer interfaces with a mobile medical platform…

As an important carrier of the international science and technology innovation center of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Guangzhou has gathered major scientific and technological innovation platforms including national laboratories, comprehensive national technology innovation centers, major scientific installations, and international big-science programs, and its ranking on the "Nature Index — Research Cities" list has risen to sixth globally.

In November 2025, during his inspection tour in Guangdong, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Focus on developing new quality productive forces, strengthen the deep integration of scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation, and build a modern industrial system with international competitiveness."

Following the direction charted by General Secretary Xi Jinping, Guangzhou has implemented the innovation-driven development strategy, promoted the deep integration of the innovation chain, industrial chain, capital chain, and talent chain, and striven to transform the key variable of scientific and technological innovation into the greatest increment of high-quality development. In the first half of this year, Guangzhou achieved a regional GDP of 1,604.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.8%.

Let enterprises "play the leading role," and innovation releases new momentum for industry.

At Guangzhou Panyu Automobile City, in the GAC Aion intelligent ecological factory, intelligent connected new-energy vehicles are rolling off the production line one after another.

A relevant person in charge of GAC Group introduced that as of the end of 2025, the enterprise's cumulative independent R&D investment has exceeded 62 billion yuan, with more than 24,900 patents applied for, achieving independent controllability in key core technology areas such as magazine batteries and intelligent driving assistance systems. In the first seven months of this year, GAC Group's energy-saving and new-energy vehicle sales accounted for 63.96% of total sales, and cumulative independent brand exports reached 145,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 130%.

Innovation factors are gathering toward enterprises; GAC is a microcosm of Guangzhou's efforts to strengthen the principal role of enterprises in innovation.

Guangzhou continues to implement the doubling plan for leading science and technology enterprises, supports leading science and technology enterprises in taking the lead in forming innovation consortia, and carries out research on key common technologies of industry. At present, Guangzhou has achieved breakthroughs in 18 key technologies including mobile phone radio-frequency devices, photoresist, and vacuum evaporation coating machines, and the number of high-tech enterprises in the city has exceeded 13,700.

Clear the blockages and pain points, and promote the deep integration of the industrial chain and innovation chain.

"Our newly developed new-generation AI companion robot can interact with people in local dialects such as Cantonese," said Li Junwei (李俊伟), a doctoral student who is already the founder of Echo Resonance (Guangzhou) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (同频回响（广州）智能科技有限公司). "Since being selected for Guangzhou's key entrepreneurship projects, we completed iteration in two months, and are now open to users for practical validation."

Guangzhou clears the blockages and pain points in the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, carrying out pilot projects for achievement transformation at the Guangzhou Disruptive Technology Innovation Center, the Guangzhou Laboratory, and the Guangzhou-Hong Kong-Macao Collaborative Innovation Center (穗港澳协同创新中心); innovating methods to promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, optimizing the way fiscal funds are invested, and guiding diversified social capital to coordinate and follow up.

Build innovation platforms, and lead new tracks in frontier science and technology.

The Guangzhou Laboratory, located on Guangzhou International Bio Island, has gathered multiple academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering as well as national-level leading talents, linked with 30 national key laboratories, more than 920 network hospitals, and more than 110 science and technology enterprises, and has achieved a series of breakthrough original results in the etiology of major respiratory infectious diseases, pathogenic mechanisms, and vaccine and antibody drug development.

"The entire process of R&D, design, testing, and production of brain-computer interface products can be efficiently completed collaboratively within the Greater Bay Area, giving us key support," said Li Yuanqing (李远清), head of South China Brain Control (Guangdong) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (华南脑控（广东）智能科技有限公司).

As early as around 2020, Guangzhou established a special program with key support for brain-computer interface R&D, and many of South China Brain Control's key technology research efforts were accelerated precisely by relying on this special program. Subsequently, Guangzhou incorporated brain-computer interfaces into its future industry cultivation system, providing policy support for enterprises' sustained investment and R&D iteration.

At present, Guangzhou has established more than 40 national-level innovation platforms and built a number of concept validation centers, pilot-scale maturation platforms, and public technology service carriers. Guangzhou has issued a plan for accelerating the construction of a strong advanced manufacturing city, clarifying that in industries such as embodied intelligence, intelligent unmanned systems, and frontier new materials, it will create a number of first-trial, first-use demonstration application scenarios.

Keeping the instructions firmly in mind, Guangzhou anchors on innovation leadership and promotes mutual reinforcement and dual strengthening of industry and technology.

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July全社会用电量创历史新高

Beijing, August 21 (Xinhua) — (Reporter Wang Yunshan) The reporter learned from the National Energy Administration (国家能源局): In the first seven months, total social electricity consumption accumulated to 6,139.9 billion kilowatt-hours, a year-on-year increase of 4.7%.

In July, total social electricity consumption was 1.04 trillion kilowatt-hours, a year-on-year increase of 1.7%, setting a new historical high. This is also the second time that monthly electricity consumption has exceeded 1 trillion kilowatt-hours.

In July, viewed by industry in terms of electricity consumption, primary industry electricity consumption was 16.7 billion kilowatt-hours, a year-on-year decrease of 2.0%. Secondary industry electricity consumption was 611.6 billion kilowatt-hours, a year-on-year increase of 3.0%; among which, industrial electricity consumption was 605.5 billion kilowatt-hours, a year-on-year increase of 3.3%, and electricity consumption of high-tech and equipment manufacturing industries was 122.0 billion kilowatt-hours, a year-on-year increase of 8.9%. Tertiary industry electricity consumption was 218.3 billion kilowatt-hours, a year-on-year increase of 4.8%; among which, electricity consumption of the charging and battery-swapping service industry and internet data service industry was 16.4 billion and 9.9 billion kilowatt-hours respectively, with growth rates reaching 50.3% and 40.1% respectively.

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Solidly carry out agricultural disaster prevention and mitigation work, go all out to secure a bumper grain harvest for the year.

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 21 — Liu Guozhong, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council, went to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs on August 21 to convene a video scheduling meeting to make arrangements for autumn grain production and agricultural disaster prevention and reduction work. He stressed that it is necessary to conscientiously implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions and directives, and in accordance with the deployments of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, keep a close watch on key links, implement key measures in detail, do solid work in agricultural disaster prevention and reduction, firmly grasp the initiative in autumn grain production, and make every effort to achieve a full-year bumper grain harvest.

Liu Guozhong stressed that autumn grain is the major part of the year's grain production, and the current period is a critical stage for yield formation. It is necessary to closely monitor rainfall conditions, flood conditions, soil moisture, seedling growth, and pest and disease situations, promptly issue forecasts and warnings, and carry out precise technical guidance. It is necessary to advance autumn grain field management by region and by category, implement various measures for stabilizing and increasing production, and promptly organize "one spray, multiple promotions" operations. It is necessary to highlight moving the threshold forward, prevent and respond to various meteorological disasters and pests and diseases in the later period, improve grain drying capacity, and minimize disaster losses. Farming households facing risks of falling back into poverty or returning to poverty due to disasters should be provided with timely assistance. It is necessary to continue carrying out the repair and renovation of farmland irrigation ditches and the management of waterlogged areas in plains, make appropriate arrangements for post-disaster production recovery in light of local conditions, and promote the construction of high-standard farmland with high quality.

Liu Guozhong stressed that autumn grain production is a key task in the current work concerning agriculture, rural areas, and farmers. All localities must implement the requirement that both Party and government leadership share responsibility for food security, ensuring that work is in place, policies are implemented, and measures are carried out. Relevant departments must each perform their own duties and cooperate closely, implementing the target tasks for grain production in a down-to-earth manner.

On August 20, Liu Guozhong also went to Hebei to investigate the growth of autumn grain, the construction of high-standard farmland, the guarantee of agricultural materials supply, and meteorological services for agriculture.

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The Resilience and Vitality of China's Economy

By: 钟才文

Since the beginning of this year, under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, all regions and departments have acted proactively, faced difficulties head-on, effectively responded to various external shocks and internal difficulties, and solidly promoted high-quality development. China's economic operation has shown a development trend of new momentum and improved structure, with commendable achievements. In the first half of the year, macro indicators were generally stable, with gross domestic product (GDP) growing 4.7%, continuing to rank among the forefront of major global economies; prices rebounded reasonably; employment was generally stable; and the balance of payments was basically balanced. At the same time, profits of industrial enterprises above designated size grew 18.7%, and national general public budget revenue grew 4.7%, with improvements in the economic efficiency of some business entities.
At present, China's economy is in a critical period of accelerating the replacement of old growth drivers with new ones and transforming its development model. To observe China's economy, one should not look only at speed, nor should one dwell on the rise and fall of indicator data in individual quarters or months. Rather, greater attention should be paid to the quality of economic operation, to the quality of scientific and technological innovation, to industrial capability and the sustainability of economic development, and to whether enterprises, as business entities, are vibrant. In fact, observed from the perspective of quality and efficiency, and from a longer-term perspective, China's economic development is undergoing profound changes, demonstrating strong resilience and vitality.
China's scientific and technological innovation is continuously being transformed into industrial competitiveness. Since the beginning of this year, scientific and technological innovation has achieved many notable results, such as new breakthroughs in tackling key core technologies in integrated circuits, innovative drug research and development ranking among the world's forefront, and the successful recovery of Chinese rockets on both sea and land, among others. The supporting and leading role of new growth drivers has strengthened, with the added value of the equipment manufacturing industry and the high-tech manufacturing industry growing 9.3% and 13.3% respectively in the first half of the year, maintaining a sound development trend and expected to expand new development space through technology empowerment. Research, development, and application of robots and artificial intelligence are showing strong momentum, with industrial robots, surgical robots, cleaning robots, and bionic robots becoming representative products of "intelligent manufacturing in China." Artificial intelligence technology is promoting the orderly transformation of manufacturing toward intelligence, digitalization, and green development, with the pace of transformation and upgrading of traditional industries accelerating.
China's pivotal position in the global production and supply chain continues to strengthen. China deploys innovation chains around industrial chains and strengthens industrial chains through innovation chains. For a new energy vehicle, a vehicle manufacturer in the Yangtze River Delta can assemble more than 10,000 parts within four hours; for a humanoid robot, through efficient collaboration among various enterprises in the Pearl River Delta, a "one-hour industrial ecosystem" can be formed. China's exports of intermediate goods are growing rapidly, providing key component supplies for the global production and supply chain and effectively ensuring its stable operation. China's complete production and supply chain not only improves global production efficiency, including that of China itself, but also provides certainty for the stable growth of the global economy.
Chinese enterprises are achieving a brilliant transformation of digital and intelligent renewal amid their transformation. Some enterprises use big data to judge market demand, optimize production scheduling with artificial intelligence algorithms, and precisely meet small-batch, personalized market demand through flexible production and customized services. Some enterprises use digital production systems to seamlessly connect production lines, logistics centers, and consumer orders, achieving full-process "zero-contact" integrated fulfillment, greatly shortening delivery times and making products consumers receive "fresher." Some construction enterprises, through industrialized standards, digital precision, and automated efficiency, are turning "good houses" from "site construction" into "factory manufacturing." Changes such as these greatly expand enterprises' business fields, break through geographical limitations, and demonstrate strong vitality.
Risks and hidden dangers in China's economic operation are being resolved and contained in an orderly manner. Since the beginning of this year, the trend of the real estate market stabilizing and bottoming out has strengthened. In some first- and second-tier cities, the growth in second-hand home transaction volume has been relatively large, exceeding new home transaction volume, with prices stabilizing and inventory pressure easing. Local government hidden debt from existing stock is being replaced in an orderly manner, and the number of financing platforms continues to be reduced. Reform to resolve risks, reduce quantity, and improve quality in small and medium-sized financial institutions is steadily advancing, with a decline in the number of high-risk small and medium-sized financial institutions in local areas. Overall, we adhere to strictly controlling new increments, properly handling existing stock, and strictly preventing "explosions," preventing and defusing major risks in the economic field, and holding the bottom line of preventing systemic risks.
Recently, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade organized enterprise delegations to visit the United States, reflecting the aspirations and voices of the business communities of both countries. In face-to-face exchanges, the U.S. business community highly affirmed China's development advantages in emerging fields such as advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, clean energy, quantum computing, and life sciences, and called for expanding practical cooperation while maintaining necessary competition. At the same time, heads of multiple U.S. enterprises investing in China believe that the Chinese government's efforts in boosting domestic demand, safeguarding and improving people's livelihoods, strengthening public services, and enhancing local research and development capabilities will bring bright prospects to China's economy and will also provide new scenarios and new space for multinational enterprises to deepen their presence in China. They expressed their intention to increase investment and business expansion in China, casting a "vote of confidence" in China through concrete actions.
China's economy is a vast ocean, capable of withstanding storms. China's economy has a solid "foundation" accumulated over more than 40 years of reform and opening up, a huge consumer market, a deep manufacturing base, complete infrastructure, a strong talent pool, and a complete production and supply chain system. The supporting conditions and basic trend of China's long-term economic improvement have not changed. To observe China's economy, only by fully understanding China's various advantages and enormous potential can one "not be afraid of floating clouds obscuring one's view." In the second half of the year, as major projects identified in the central and local "15th Five-Year Plan" and national special plans begin construction one after another, and macro policies take effect and improve in a timely manner, China's economic operation will certainly remain within a reasonable range and smoothly achieve the year's goals and tasks.

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Accelerate the development of a youth football training system to improve the cultivation of reserve talent for competitive sports.

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 21 — State Councilor Shen Yiqin on the 20th went to Beijing to inspect the construction of the football youth training system. She emphasized that it is necessary to thoroughly study and implement General Secretary Xi Jinping's important expositions on sports work, conscientiously implement the spirit of the National Football Work Conference, accelerate the construction of the football youth training system, and raise the level of competitive sports reserve talent cultivation.

Shen Yiqin entered the Beijing Football Youth Training Center, observed the Beijing youth football "Hundred Teams Cup" competition, and learned about the construction of Beijing's football youth training system. She pointed out that it is necessary to establish and practice a correct view of political achievements, make sustained efforts over the long term to firmly grasp youth training, and consolidate the foundation for the revitalization and development of Chinese football. It is necessary to combine an effective government with an efficient market, base ourselves on China's actual conditions, learn from advanced experience, and accelerate the construction of youth training centers at all levels. It is necessary to make comprehensive efforts around "study, training, and competition," strengthen the construction of the coaching team, firmly grasp campus football, optimize and improve the competition system, strictly enforce competition conduct and discipline, and accelerate the cultivation of high-quality football talent.

Shen Yiqin also inspected the construction of Xiannongtan Sports School. She emphasized that sports schools are an important position for cultivating competitive sports reserve talent in our country. It is necessary to take fostering virtue through education as the fundamental task, respect the laws of youth growth, improve systems and mechanisms, deepen the integration of sports and education, promote the coordinated development of cultural learning and sports training, and cultivate more competitive sports reserve talent with comprehensive development in moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, and labor education.

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True Investment Delivered with Greater Substance, Policies Implemented with Greater Precision (Authoritative Release · A Strong Start to the 15th Five-Year Plan)

By: 本报记者 王 观

“This year, fiscal expenditure budget arrangements will for the first time exceed 30 trillion yuan. New government bond issuance will reach 11.89 trillion yuan, the largest scale in recent years. Central government transfer payments to local governments will exceed 10 trillion yuan for the fourth consecutive year, reaching 10.42 trillion yuan.” On August 21, the State Council Information Office held a series of press conferences on “Making a Good Start in the ‘15th Five-Year Plan’ Period,” where Vice Minister of Finance Liao Min introduced the situation regarding leveraging proactive fiscal policy to promote high-quality economic and social development.

Since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Finance has firmly implemented a more proactive fiscal policy, adhering to front-loaded efforts and targeted measures, focusing on maintaining necessary fiscal expenditure intensity, focusing on closely integrating investment in physical assets with investment in people, and focusing on leveraging the “four ounces moving a thousand pounds” leveraging effect of fiscal funds, providing strong support for promoting the economy to continue moving toward innovation, optimization, and improvement.

In the second half of the year, timely planning and introduction of pragmatic and effective incremental policies

“During the ‘15th Five-Year Plan’ period, we will accelerate the establishment and improvement of a modern fiscal macro-control mechanism featuring precise policies, diverse tools, strong guidance, and coordinated efficiency.” Liao Min stated that we will focus on grasping the general principle of pursuing progress while ensuring stability, maintaining the continuity and stability of macro policies, and conducting actuarial calculation and allocation of fiscal resources over a longer cycle; proactively identifying, responding to, and seeking change, and in the second half of the year, based on the operation of the macro economy, timely plan and introduce pragmatic and effective incremental policies, better leveraging the integrated effect of existing and incremental policies, exchanging time for space.

“We will also improve the efficiency of fiscal resource allocation and the effectiveness of fund utilization, better safeguard growth and promote transformation, achieving a virtuous cycle between high-quality economic development and fiscal sustainability.” Liao Min said.

This year, the national general public budget has arranged 12.4 trillion yuan for education, social security, health, housing, and other areas, an increase of 5.4 percent over the previous year, 1 percentage point higher than the growth rate of national general public budget expenditure.

Real money is being invested more substantively, and policy measures are being implemented more precisely. Focusing on genuinely improving people’s livelihood and well-being, fiscal funds continue to do “addition” in the livelihood sector this year: continuing to implement phased policies such as job retention subsidies and expanding the scope of social security subsidies, and focusing on stabilizing employment for key groups. Precise efforts are being made targeting the “elderly and young” — the two key groups that most affect families — continuously raising the level of livelihood security such as elderly care and medical care, issuing elderly care service consumption subsidies nationwide to moderately and severely disabled elderly people; allocating 24.1 billion yuan in subsidy funds to support local implementation of the policy of waiving childcare and education fees for the final year of preschool education, and allocating approximately 100 billion yuan in subsidy funds for the issuance of childcare subsidies.

“In the second half of the year, there are still more than 2 trillion yuan of local government special bonds and ultra-long-term special treasury bonds to be issued and utilized. On a comparable basis, this scale is also relatively large in recent years and can continue to maintain policy intensity. We will promptly guide local governments to organize bond issuance, strengthen pre-project preparation, promote the commencement and construction of projects as soon as possible, and generate more tangible results.” Liao Min stated.

Fiscal-financial coordination policies to boost domestic demand have benefited 113 million person-times of residents and 6.22 million enterprises

One of the highlights of this year’s more proactive fiscal policy is the innovative establishment of six policy tools for fiscal-financial coordination to boost domestic demand. In the seven months since the policies were introduced, implementation progress has generally met expectations, and policy effectiveness is gradually emerging, benefiting 113 million person-times of residents and 6.22 million enterprises, the vast majority being small, medium, and micro enterprises.

Guiding financial resources toward the real economy. From January to July, through four investment-promoting policies — interest subsidies on loans to small, medium, and micro enterprises, interest subsidies on equipment renewal loans, a special guarantee plan for private investment, and a risk-sharing mechanism for private enterprise bonds — and two consumption-promoting policies — interest subsidies on loans to service industry business entities and interest subsidies on personal consumption loans — the six policies cumulatively supported new credit issuance of over 20 trillion yuan in related fields, an increase of more than 880 billion yuan over the same period last year, a growth rate of 4.5 percent.

Reducing financing costs to stimulate enterprise vitality and help the people share in policy dividends. From January to July, the four investment-promoting policies cumulatively supported approximately 1.51 trillion yuan of private investment, and the two consumption-promoting policies cumulatively supported approximately 1.88 trillion yuan of resident consumption.

The meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held on July 30 pointed out the need to optimize the implementation of fiscal-financial coordination policies to boost domestic demand. The Ministry of Finance has optimized and improved the relevant policies, with implementation beginning from August 1, mainly featuring three new measures:

Expanding the scope of interest subsidies. On the basis of the previous fixed asset loans, newly issued working capital loans will be included in the scope of the interest subsidy policy for small, medium, and micro enterprise loans; to better align with popular consumption habits, newly incurred credit card installment consumption in various categories, including car purchases and home renovation, will be included in the scope of policy support.

Increasing the number of handling institutions. Further expanding the scope of handling institutions for interest subsidies on small, medium, and micro enterprise loans and interest subsidies on service industry business entity loans, from approximately 100 previously to approximately 400, broadly covering urban and rural business entities.

Further raising the upper limits. Raising the loan scale ceiling for small, medium, and micro enterprises enjoying the interest subsidy policy from 50 million yuan to 75 million yuan, raising the loan scale ceiling for service industry business entities enjoying the interest subsidy policy from 10 million yuan to 20 million yuan, and raising the upper limit for personal consumption loan interest subsidies enjoying the policy from 3,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan, to better meet the investment and consumption needs of business entities.

“We are continuing to research and formulate new fiscal-financial coordination policies and measures, and will introduce them in the second half of this year.” Liao Min said.

Coordinated use of various funds to promote optimization and adjustment of industrial, energy, and transportation structures

In recent years, the central government has continuously increased investment in the field of science and technology and strengthened policy supply. During the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, national general public budget science and technology expenditure increased by 33 percent compared with the “13th Five-Year Plan” period.

Li Xianzhong, Director General of the Comprehensive Department of the Ministry of Finance, stated that during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period, the central government will further focus on basic research, applied basic research, and national strategic science and technology tasks, continue to increase investment, and at the same time guide local governments and social forces to increase R&D investment. Improve the mechanism for the allocation, management, and use of fiscal science and technology funds, work with relevant departments to improve institutional mechanisms, and improve management measures. Leverage the driving role of government investment funds, implement well the special policy for small and medium-sized enterprise development funds, and support the development of “little giant” enterprises, the tiered cultivation of high-quality enterprises, and the digital and intelligent transformation of small, medium, and micro enterprises.

During the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, the central government cumulatively allocated over 2.3 trillion yuan in funds related to pollution prevention and ecological civilization construction.

Wang Xinxiang, Director General of the Budget Department of the Ministry of Finance, introduced that during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period, fiscal departments will coordinate the use of various funds to promote the optimization and adjustment of industrial, energy, and transportation structures. Support the healthy and orderly development of the renewable energy industry and promote cleaner and more efficient energy supply; launch comprehensive hydrogen energy application pilot projects to promote the extension of hydrogen energy application scenarios from the transportation sector to more fields; support the stable development of the new energy vehicle industry, continue to carry out pilot projects to address shortcomings in county-level charging and battery-swapping facilities, and promote the green transformation of the transportation sector.

This year, the Ministry of Finance has adopted multiple measures to support high-level opening up to the outside world.

Cheng Zhijun, Director General of the Department of International Economic Relations of the Ministry of Finance, stated that during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period, fiscal departments will accelerate the establishment of a scientific and efficient modern tariff system and support the building of a new system for a higher-level open economy. Dynamically adjust provisional import tariff rates based on domestic high-quality development needs and changes in the international economic and trade situation. Adapt to the needs of technological progress and industrial development, independently optimize and improve tariff headings, and support import and export trade.

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National general public budget revenue sees steady and rapid growth in first seven months

Report from this newspaper, Beijing, August 21 (Reporter Qu Zhehan (曲哲涵)): The reporter learned from the Ministry of Finance (财政部): In the first seven months, national general public budget revenue reached 14.37 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.8%, with the growth rate 1.1 percentage points higher than that of the first half of the year, achieving steady and relatively rapid growth. The growth rate of tax revenue continued to rise; national tax revenue reached 11.84 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.7%, with the growth rate 1.4 percentage points higher than that of the first half of the year. By tax type, domestic value-added tax grew 6.1%, mainly driven by sustained growth in industry and services; value-added tax and consumption tax on imported goods grew 12.3%, mainly due to relatively rapid growth in foreign trade imports; corporate income tax grew 7.2%, mainly due to relatively rapid growth in corporate profits; export goods value-added tax and consumption tax rebates totaled 1.48 trillion yuan, an increase of 73.5 billion yuan year-on-year, supporting the growth of foreign trade exports.

National general public budget expenditure maintained necessary intensity, and expenditure in key areas was well guaranteed. In the first seven months, national general public budget expenditure reached 16.29 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.3%. Among this, health expenditure grew 9.8%, mainly due to increases in child-rearing subsidies and fiscal subsidies to the basic medical insurance fund; social security and employment expenditure grew 7%; science and technology expenditure grew 1.5%; housing security expenditure grew 4%.

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Photo Report

On August 21, children from the Communist Youth League "Sunshine Balang" Youth Home of Yangmaohu Community, Shengli Road Subdistrict, Tianshan District, Urumqi City, Xinjiang, visited an enterprise for a science popularization study tour, learning about the production mysteries of dairy industry technology. In the photo, children are observing milk fat particles under a microscope.
　　Photo by Sun Zhensong (Image China)

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Guizhou actively integrates into the comprehensive opening-up landscape

By: 本报记者 马跃峰 苏 滨

On one side, industrial wastewater enters; on the other side, clear water flows out in a steady stream, with only a thin layer of diamond conductive film in between. In mid-August, relying on self-developed technology to achieve chemical-free treatment of organic wastewater, Guizhou Siyu Huanneng Technology Co., Ltd. (贵州丝域环能科技有限公司) successively reached in-depth cooperation with two companies in Beijing and Guangdong, using their channels to open up the Southeast Asian market. "Our advantageous technology is accelerating its overseas application," said Liu Li (刘丽), the company's general manager.

In March 2025, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized during an inspection tour in Guizhou: "Guizhou must make good use of the opportunities in the construction of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor, actively align with the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle, and proactively integrate into the comprehensive opening-up pattern of land-sea and domestic-foreign coordinated linkage and east-west two-way mutual reinforcement."

The earnest instructions point the way forward. Guizhou leverages its advantages, makes good use of the opportunities in the construction of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor, focuses on cultivating a distinctive open industrial system, proactively integrates into the comprehensive opening-up pattern of land-sea and domestic-foreign coordinated linkage and east-west two-way mutual reinforcement, and promotes reform and development through opening up.

Regional coordination expands the space for opening up.

"Our company holds more than 300 patents and is a supplier of high-voltage connection system solutions for new energy vehicles," said Qu Shuiping (屈水平), general manager of Guizhou Zunyi Basiba Technology Development Co., Ltd. (贵州遵义巴斯巴科技发展有限公司). In 2015, the company settled in Zunyi and set up a factory for production, attracted by Guizhou's geographical location and development momentum.

Linked integration and coordinated development.

To the north, connecting with the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle, Guizhou strengthens cooperation in new energy battery materials, automobiles, aerospace, and the low-altitude economy, supporting Zunyi in becoming a "bridgehead" for linking with the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle; to the south, near the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Guizhou uses models such as "headquarters + base" and "R&D + manufacturing" to open up industrial collaboration channels and better promote the cross-regional flow of production factors.

According to reports, in the first half of this year, Guizhou introduced 29 major projects from the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle, with total investment of 7.533 billion yuan; and introduced 36 major projects from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, with total investment of 21.396 billion yuan.

Elevating capacity and smoothing the opening-up corridors.

With the roar of the whistle, a sea-rail intermodal train fully loaded with bauxite and ammonium sulfate departed from Guiyang International Land Port, transporting the goods to Southeast Asian countries via Guangxi's Beibu Gulf Port.

"In the past, goods shipped overseas from Guiyang International Land Port via Guangxi's Beibu Gulf Port required enterprises to go through customs declaration twice, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive. Now, thanks to the 'combined port' (组合港) policy, goods can be exported with a single customs declaration," said Xiao Hongjun (肖红俊), deputy general manager of Guiyang International Land Port Co., Ltd. (贵阳国际陆港有限公司). This saves 3 to 5 days compared with before, reduces transportation costs, and improves cross-border transport efficiency.

As an important part of the construction of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor, Guiyang International Land Port opened in August 2022. Constrained by shortcomings such as insufficient cargo sources and scattered port-adjacent industries, its development once faced obstacles.

Establishing "combined ports" with Guangzhou Port, Shenzhen Port, and Beibu Gulf Port; jointly promoting the new logistics model of "parallel port (并行港) + New Western Land-Sea Corridor" with Zhanjiang Port and others; developing the "one document system" (一单制) and "one container system" (一箱制) for multimodal transport... Through comprehensive policy measures, in the first half of this year, Guiyang International Land Port's throughput reached 28,000 TEUs, a year-on-year increase of 18%; and 15,000 TEUs were shipped on four types of trains including the New Western Land-Sea Corridor, a year-on-year increase of 392%. "Breaking away from the traditional positioning, this place will become a hub platform integrating logistics, industry, trade, finance, and data in the future," Xiao Hongjun said. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, Guizhou will also build an important international trade transit center and logistics hub in the southwestern region, accelerating the construction of a new pattern of opening up featuring "corridor + hub + trade + industry."

Highlighting distinctive features to build opening-up advantages.

Entering the "World Matcha Super Factory" in Jiangkou County (江口县), Tongren, the refined tencha production line and the matcha production line are running at full speed, with bags of finished matcha products sold overseas through Guiyang International Land Port. In the first half of this year, Tongren's matcha sales reached 2,000 tons, a year-on-year increase of 62%, of which 480 tons were exported, a year-on-year increase of 108%, selling well in 54 countries and regions.

"The unique mountain climate of Fanjing Mountain nurtures distinctive flavors, and the selenium-rich soil creates differentiated quality. Ecological advantages are transformed into distinctive advantages, which in turn form opening-up advantages," said Meng Zude (蒙祖德), chairman of Guizhou Guicha (Group) Co., Ltd. (贵州贵茶（集团）有限公司). Currently, the company's overseas contracted orders exceed 6,000 tons, and the road of export is growing wider and wider.

Taking advantage of the opportunities in the construction of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor, more and more Guizhou products are going global. From matcha to sturgeon, from chili peppers to guitars, Guizhou, based on its own advantages, continues to implement the "rural foreign trade" (乡村外贸) strategy, promoting distinctive agricultural products and handicrafts to the international market, and continuously expanding new spaces for foreign trade in digital trade, tourism, health and wellness, and other areas.

Thoroughly implementing the important instructions of General Secretary Xi Jinping, Guizhou will pay greater attention to coordinating both domestic and international markets and both types of resources, strengthen the construction of opening-up corridors and platforms, and intensify efforts to expand high-level opening up.

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Measures for the Administration of Outbound Investment (Revised Draft for Comments) Released

Our newspaper Beijing, August 21 (reporters Liu Zhiqiang (刘志强), Wang Donghui (王东辉)) — This June, the Regulations of the State Council on Outbound Investment (hereinafter "the Regulations") were issued. The National Development and Reform Commission revised the Measures for the Administration of Overseas Investment by Enterprises (hereinafter "the Measures") issued in December 2017, drafted the Measures for the Administration of Outbound Investment (Revised Draft for Comments) (hereinafter "the Draft for Comments"), and released it to the public on the 21st.

According to the relevant head of the National Development and Reform Commission, the Draft for Comments has several features.

Better aligning with the actual development of outbound investment. The Measures mainly target outbound investment by domestic enterprises and non-enterprise organizations. In recent years, outbound investment entities have become more diverse and forms more varied. Given that the Regulations define the connotation and extension of outbound investment and keep pace with the times by clarifying that investors include domestic enterprises, other organizations, and individual residents, the Draft for Comments correspondingly reaffirms that investors include domestic enterprises, other organizations, and individual residents, further implementing the status of various investors as outbound investment entities, improving service and protection measures, and supporting investors in carrying out outbound investment activities in accordance with market principles. At the same time, the Draft for Comments connects with the current system; investors may continue to invest in overseas financial markets through channels such as Qualified Domestic Institutional Investors (合格境内机构投资者), Stock Connect (港股通), and Cross-boundary Wealth Management Connect (跨境理财通).

Better protecting outbound investment rights and interests. In recent years, a small number of countries (regions) have adopted discriminatory measures, some requiring the Chinese side to provide technology or data, or to dispose of equity or assets, harming China's rights and interests. In response to such problems, the Draft for Comments implements the series of provisions of the Regulations on outbound investment protection, improves the reporting system for major adverse circumstances, and establishes an annual reporting system for outbound investment information, covering the above situations. Investors informing the management authorities of the above circumstances helps joint efforts to protect outbound investment rights and interests.

Better preventing and responding to overseas risks. The Draft for Comments implements the series of provisions of the Regulations on outbound investment monitoring, early warning, and risk prevention, improves systems such as reporting on overseas reinvestment, and at the same time establishes a reporting system for preliminary work status for a small number of projects with large amounts that concern the diplomatic relations between China and relevant countries. Investors informing the management authorities of the above circumstances helps joint efforts to prevent and respond to overseas risks.

On the basis of public comments, the National Development and Reform Commission will further revise and improve the Draft for Comments, and simultaneously draft supporting documents and frequently asked questions, in order to better safeguard outbound investment development and security institutionally.

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Jilin builds modern industrial system with local characteristics

By: 本报记者 汪志球 刘以晴

In early August, within a production workshop of the Carbon Valley Company (碳谷公司) of the Jilin Chemical Fiber Group, bundles of carbon fiber precursor are undergoing the oxidation process. "A single strand of 35K carbon fiber is even thinner than a human hair, yet its strength is 7 to 9 times that of steel," introduced Chen Hao, deputy director of the high-performance workshop of Carbon Valley Company. In 2025, both the production and sales volumes of carbon fiber for Jilin Chemical Fiber Group ranked first in the world, and total sales volume in the first half of this year increased by 10% year-on-year.

In February 2025, while listening to work reports from the Jilin Provincial Committee and the Provincial Government, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "We must 守牢 (shǒu láo - "guard firmly," to hold fast to) the foundation of the real economy, coordinate the promotion of traditional industry transformation, the expansion of advantageous industries, and the cultivation of new quality productive forces, and construct a modern industrial system that reflects the characteristics of Jilin."

Deeply implementing the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions, Jilin is accelerating the construction of a modern industrial system with advanced manufacturing as the backbone, developing new quality productive forces in accordance with local conditions, and injecting surging momentum into high-quality development.

Renewing existing stock to release new advantages for traditional industries.

In the prosperous plant area of the FAW Group Hongqi Manufacturing Center, industrial robot arms are flying about, welding vehicle body frames, and on average, one complete vehicle rolls off the production line in less than one minute.

"The workshop's welding automation rate has reached 100%, with 20,000 pieces of equipment fully networked, achieving real-time collection, analysis, and early warning of production data," introduced Zhang Guolong, senior technical director of final assembly in the Engineering Technology Department of FAW Group.

Borrowing strength from "intelligence." In recent years, Jilin has focused on traditional advantageous industries such as automobiles, petrochemicals, and equipment, using "intelligent transformation and digital transition" to drive equipment updates, formulating transformation plans through "one industry, one policy," and simultaneously guiding forces such as universities and scientific research institutes to participate directly in enterprise technical breakthroughs, thereby shortening the cycle of achievement transformation.

In 2025, the growth rate of the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Jilin Province ranked among the top in the country; the added value of advantageous industries such as food and petrochemicals increased by 7.5% and 11.5% respectively year-on-year; the vehicle sales volume of FAW Group exceeded 3.302 million units, an increase of 3.2% year-on-year. Jilin will continue to increase its support for innovation, carry out breakthroughs in key core technologies, and expand applications in fields such as automobile lightweighting and new energy, promoting a shift from "selling raw materials" to "selling manufactured products."

Expanding incremental stock to create growth poles for emerging industries.

On June 15, the Litian-1 Yao-14 launch vehicle delivered eight satellites, including the "Jixing" Gaofen 07C04 satellite, into their predetermined orbits, marking the completion of the thirtieth successful launch of the "Jilin-1" satellite project.

Entering Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd., robots are processing important optical components for satellites. Today, the localization rate of "Jilin-1" satellite parts and components has reached 100%, and the site possesses the capacity to produce 200 remote sensing satellites and 200 communication satellites annually.

Jilin has listed the optoelectronic information industry as a "Number One Project," constructing national key laboratories for integrated optoelectronics and other fields, and integrating scientific research resources from the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Changchun University of Science and Technology, and others to establish provincial laboratories and carry out full-industry-chain technical breakthroughs.

Treating emerging industries as key growth poles, Jilin has made systematic layouts, focusing on tracks such as new energy, new equipment, new materials, and optoelectronic information, promoting the development of industries from cultivation toward the formation of momentum. In the field of new energy, Jilin has closely monitored difficulties such as the application of new energy in cold regions in recent years, and has continuously delved into frontier fields such as intelligent energy regulation, high-end green equipment, and multi-energy integrated applications; as of the end of 2025, Jilin's installed capacity for new energy and renewable energy reached 33.8967 million kilowatts.

Cultivating variables to layout new tracks for future industries.

In 2025, led by Changchun Jieyi Automotive Technology Co., Ltd. and in conjunction with six other institutions including the Jilin Provincial Academy of Industrial Technology, Jiyi Embodied Intelligence Robot Co., Ltd. was jointly established with capital investment. This year, the "Quality Inspection Expert" industrial inspection robot developed by the company conducted automotive wiring harness inspections on the same stage as senior inspectors, with both achieving an accuracy rate of 100%.

To layout future industries, since 2025, Jilin has cumulatively invested 422 million yuan and launched nine concentrated breakthrough projects. At the beginning of this year, the Jilin Provincial Embodied Intelligence Robot Industry Scientific and Technological Innovation Consortium was established; the first batch of 33 member units covers key enterprises, universities, and scientific research institutes such as Changchun Jieyi Automotive Technology Co., Ltd. and the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, forming full-chain synergy.

Focusing on the development of embodied intelligence, Jilin is constructing a full industrial chain for humanoid robots ranging from materials and core components to complete machine products. In the first half of this year, the sales revenue of Jilin's industrial robot manufacturing increased by 27.81% year-on-year, the sales revenue of wearable intelligent device manufacturing increased by 27.27% year-on-year, and the sales revenue of the information transmission, software, and information technology services industry increased by 14.75% year-on-year.

Keeping in mind the earnest exhortations of General Secretary Xi Jinping, Jilin will guard the foundation of the real economy firmly, coordinate the promotion of traditional industry transformation, the expansion of advantageous industries, and the cultivation of new quality productive forces, and accelerate the construction of a modern industrial system with Jilin's characteristic advantages.

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Chinese enterprises help Latin American countries develop new internet business forms

By: 本报记者 时元皓

From high-efficiency on-demand ride-hailing services, to one-touch global direct purchasing, to finely operated food delivery and express services... In recent years, as China–Latin America cooperation has continued to deepen, Chinese enterprises have actively promoted cross-border e-commerce, instant delivery, and other new Internet business forms into the Latin American market, helping to transform local consumption models and contributing to the development of the digital economy industry and the construction of digital infrastructure in various countries.

Enriching the digital platform ecosystem

During the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, large numbers of international tourists will come to Mexico. How can the rapidly growing tourist demand for ride-hailing be met while ensuring passengers' safe travel? Didi Chuxing, which has operated in Mexico for a long time, has on the one hand cooperated with Mexico's National Center for the Evaluation of Higher Education (Centro Nacional de Evaluación para la Educación Superior) to provide English training and certification for local ride-hailing drivers; on the other hand, it uses artificial intelligence to review real-time orders and enhance the safety experience.

With the spread of mobile Internet in Latin America, online demand for local life services has expanded rapidly, and Chinese digital platform enterprises have continuously extended their business into life services and other fields. Since acquiring "99 Platform" in Brazil in 2018, Didi Chuxing has entered 10 Latin American countries including Mexico, Chile, and Colombia. In addition to deploying mobile travel services, it has also expanded into food delivery, digital banking, and other fields.

Keeta, the international food delivery brand under Meituan, has launched in multiple cities in Brazil. Paulo Solmucci, chief executive of the Brazilian Association of Bars and Restaurants, said that Chinese enterprises' international experience, logistics expertise, and ability to adapt to local culture are important guarantees for the development of their related businesses locally. "The development of these platform enterprises will bring tangible benefits to merchants and consumers."

Huolala, which provides "Internet + freight" services to small and medium-sized enterprises and ordinary users, has gained a firm foothold in Latin America. In 2019, Huolala successively entered Brazil and Mexico, providing consumers with a variety of freight options ranging from motorcycles to large trucks, covering multiple major cities in the region.

"Building digital platforms has become an important lever for developing the digital economy." A relevant person in charge of the Mexican Digital Mobility and Delivery Platform Alliance said that more Chinese digital platform enterprises entering Mexico has improved the service quality of local travel, food delivery, and same-city delivery industries. "We believe that relevant platforms, relying on their coverage capabilities and infrastructure advantages, will produce increasingly positive economic and social impacts in Latin American countries."

Rapid development of the e-commerce market

In recent years, China's e-commerce livestreaming wave has arrived in Latin America. In October last year, Granado, a Brazilian beauty brand founded in 1870, participated in the TikTok Shop Super Brand Day event under ByteDance. In a livestream of nearly 10 hours, it achieved more than 16 million exposures and 300,000 views, attracted nearly 3,000 content creators to participate in the event, and directly drove the brand to sell more than 18,000 products within three days.

In 2025, TikTok successively launched e-commerce functions in the Mexican and Brazilian markets. Humberto Maciel, who has long been engaged in e-commerce promotion work in Mexico, said that e-commerce livestreaming helps consumers understand product manufacturing processes, usage methods, and so on — it is a completely different experience.

The "Latin America E-commerce Market Research Report" released by market research institution Market Data Forecast shows that the Latin American e-commerce market is developing rapidly. In 2025, the value of the all-category e-commerce market in the region was US$1.61 trillion, and it is expected to maintain an average annual compound growth rate of more than 10 percent over the next 10 years. The huge growth potential is attracting more Chinese digital platform enterprises to accelerate their layout in the Latin American market.

AliExpress has established overseas warehouse networks or regional nodes in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and other Latin American countries, building a full-chain service capability integrating logistics, warehousing, payment, and settlement. In October last year, Temu, the cross-border e-commerce platform under Pinduoduo, announced that it would open its entry channel to all Brazilian sellers, transitioning toward localized operations.

"The rapid development of Chinese e-commerce platforms in the Latin American market not only provides abundant products to the local market, but also brings important formal innovations, promoting the modernization of content dissemination strategies." Marcela Vera, an economist at the University of Santiago, Chile, told this newspaper's reporter.

Upgrading digital infrastructure

In recent years, Chinese logistics enterprises such as Cainiao, J&T Express, and Anjun Logistics have entered the Latin American market, deploying digital logistics and further improving the operational efficiency of the local logistics industry. In Mexico, J&T Express has achieved round-the-clock real-time parcel tracking; in Brazil, Anjun Logistics has established a modern warehousing center equipped with automated three-dimensional shelves and intelligent sorting systems.

Some Chinese technology companies are also supporting Latin American countries in upgrading digital infrastructure and facilitating local digital transformation by building data centers and providing cloud computing services. In Chile, Huawei has successively launched three data center projects; Tencent Cloud deployed its first cloud computing data center in South America in São Paulo, Brazil; last year, Alibaba Cloud's Mexico data center officially began operations; at the end of last year, TikTok announced that it would build a large data center in Ceará State in northeastern Brazil... Chinese enterprises' investment in local digital infrastructure provides more efficient solutions for regional finance, manufacturing, retail, and other industries, and provides technological momentum for local enterprises' digital innovation and growth.

"Latin America has become one of the regions with the richest content and most fruitful results in 'Digital Silk Road' cooperation." An article on the Spanish website China Policy Observatory said that through the "Digital Silk Road," China has promoted the accelerated implementation of emerging technologies such as cloud computing, 5G communications, smart agriculture, and e-commerce in Latin America, becoming an important force for bridging the digital divide and promoting local sustainable development.

Vera said that digital technology concerns the better life of the Latin American people and the future of sustainable development. "Latin America–China digital cooperation will help Latin American countries improve digital infrastructure, achieve connectivity, and strengthen digital capacity building."

(Intern Hou Tianze also contributed to this article.)

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Nurturing Green Hope in the Sahara Desert (International Forum)

By: 马哈茂德·阿卜杜拉赫曼

The green cooperation between Mauritania and China has fully proven that as long as cooperation consensus is consolidated, local needs are met, and technology sharing is promoted, vast deserts can nurture green hope, and ecological shortcomings can be transformed into development advantages.

Desertification is a global ecological challenge constraining the sustainable development of human society, and African countries around the Sahara Desert bear the brunt of it. Mauritania is located in northwest Africa, with approximately three-quarters of its territory covered by the Sahara Desert, and has long faced problems such as desert expansion and land degradation. To curb the southward expansion of the Sahara Desert, in 2007 Mauritania and 10 other African countries jointly launched the "Great Green Wall" initiative, joining forces to build a forest protection belt 15 kilometers wide and approximately 8,000 kilometers in total length. China has given strong support to this initiative, actively carrying out ecological and environmental cooperation with Mauritania and deepening desertification control efforts. This cooperative practice is not only a highlight of bilateral practical cooperation between Mauritania and China, but also provides useful reference for developing countries to coordinate ecological protection with livelihood development and improve ecological governance.

The China-Africa Green Technology Park jointly built by Mauritania and China is an important demonstration project of China's support for the "Great Green Wall" initiative. The Chinese side, drawing on decades of accumulated experience in sand fixation, afforestation, and desert control from the "Three-North" Shelterbelt Program (三北防护林工程), has innovatively applied aerial seeding afforestation technology and built supporting solar-powered irrigation systems. The survival rate of seedlings in the park has exceeded 90 percent, effectively solving the problems of severe water shortage, high costs, and low seedling survival rates in desert afforestation. Compared with traditional manual afforestation, this approach is more efficient, lower in cost, and more adaptable, providing replicable and scalable practical experience for desertification control on the African continent.

Strengthening ecological and environmental governance is, in the final analysis, aimed at improving people's livelihoods and well-being. China has always upheld the development philosophy that clear waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets (绿水青山就是金山银山), adhered to the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature, and organically integrated ecological and environmental protection with economic development and livelihood improvement. This scientific philosophy highly aligns with Mauritania's development needs in advancing green transformation and enhancing people's well-being. Since the construction of the China-Africa Green Technology Park began, it has directly created 120 jobs for local communities in Mauritania, covering multiple fields such as seedling cultivation, forest land management and protection, and technical operation and maintenance, helping surrounding villagers achieve local employment and stable income growth. The once barren and desolate desert edge now shows growing greenery and vitality, fully demonstrating that ecological governance and livelihood development can empower each other and advance in tandem.

In recent years, from small-scale technical exploration to large-scale ecological and environmental construction, Mauritania-China green cooperation has continued to upgrade in quality. In December 2024, the two sides signed a memorandum of understanding on jointly building 10,000 hectares of carbon sink forests, marking that Mauritania-China ecological and environmental cooperation has entered a new stage of scaled-up, industrialized, and long-term development from the experimental demonstration phase. In the future, the two sides will use the experience of the China-Africa Green Technology Park as a blueprint to create standardized, replicable, and highly adaptable regional governance models. By deepening cooperation in technology sharing, talent cultivation, clean energy application, and land improvement, the two sides will further amplify the radiating and driving effects of China's desertification control experience, help more African countries solve the problem of desertification governance, and blaze a sustainable development path where ecological protection and economic growth advance in tandem.

Curbing the spread of desertification and addressing global climate change has never been a "one-man show" of any single country, but rather a common cause of all humanity. The green cooperation between Mauritania and China has fully proven that as long as cooperation consensus is consolidated, local needs are met, and technology sharing is promoted, vast deserts can nurture green hope, and ecological shortcomings can be transformed into development advantages. Mauritania is willing to continue deepening green development cooperation with China, support the construction of the "Great Green Wall" with more solid ecological governance results, and write more chapters of practical and win-win cooperation in deepening Africa-China desertification control cooperation and promoting Africa's sustainable development.

(The author is Deputy Director of the National Agency of the Great Green Wall of Mauritania)

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China-Indonesia Joint Commission on Bilateral Cooperation Holds First Meeting

This newspaper Jakarta, August 21 (Reporter Cao Shiyun) — Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi co-chaired the first meeting of the China-Indonesia Comprehensive Strategic Dialogue mechanism in Jakarta on the 21st with Indonesian Foreign Minister Sugiono. The two sides conducted in-depth exchanges of views on promoting the building of a China-Indonesia community with a shared future and reached broad consensus.

Wang Yi stated that the establishment of the comprehensive strategic dialogue mechanism is an important measure by both sides to implement the consensus of the two heads of state and to advance the building of a China-Indonesia community with a shared future that has regional and global influence, and will provide important institutional support for deepening the "five pillars" of cooperation between the two countries. The current international situation is interwoven with change and turbulence, and unilateralism and hegemonic acts have dealt a serious blow to global security and development. Indonesia is steadily advancing toward "Golden Indonesia 2045," and China is accelerating Chinese-style modernization through high-quality development. It is timely for China and Indonesia, as major developing countries, to strengthen strategic communication and deepen strategic cooperation, which has important and far-reaching significance beyond the bilateral scope. China has always placed Indonesia in an important position in its diplomacy, especially neighborhood diplomacy, and is willing to work with Indonesia, guided by the strategic consensus reached by President Xi Jinping and President Prabowo, to enhance mutual understanding and mutual support, hold a successful first meeting of the comprehensive strategic dialogue mechanism, strengthen and expand all-round China-Indonesia cooperation, pool greater development momentum, jointly resist risks and challenges, help the two countries advance their modernization processes, set an example of Global South countries seeking strength through unity and mutual benefit, inject new contemporary meaning into China-Indonesia bilateral relations, and play a positive role in peace and prosperity in the region and the world.

Sugiono stated that the first meeting of the Indonesia-China Comprehensive Strategic Dialogue mechanism is an important milestone in bilateral relations. China's development provides enormous opportunities for the world, especially for neighboring countries such as Indonesia. Indonesia and China share weal and woe and are bound by common interests. The two countries' strengthening of coordination and interaction in advancing their respective development strategies, clarifying key priorities, and achieving mutual benefit and win-win results is of great significance to promoting national prosperity and the well-being of the people. Indonesia firmly adheres to the One-China policy and supports China's cause of reunification. Indonesia looks forward to close exchanges with China, promoting exchanges and cooperation in various fields, and realizing more vibrant, more resilient, and higher-level common development and prosperity.

The two sides comprehensively reviewed and took stock of cooperation progress in various fields, agreed to uphold strategic autonomy, firmly support each other's core interests, better coordinate the two major tasks of development and security, provide strong guarantees for the modernization processes of both countries, and decided to initiate the formulation of a China-Indonesia Five-Year Action Plan (2027–2031) to comprehensively advance the "five pillars" of cooperation.

The two sides highly evaluated the achievements of bilateral economic, trade, and investment cooperation, agreed to deepen the alignment of development strategies, support balanced and sustainable trade development, vigorously expand cooperation in new quality productive forces such as artificial intelligence, and jointly run the newly established World AI Cooperation and Organization well. China's intelligent meteorological early warning solution has been initially piloted in Indonesia, and it is believed that it will play a role in helping Indonesia cope with extreme climate.

Both sides believe that deepening energy and mineral cooperation serves the common interests of both parties, and are willing to keep pace with the times, jointly build a comprehensive, open, and green energy and mineral resource partnership, fully leverage complementary advantages, deepen the pattern of mutual benefit and win-win outcomes, better help Indonesia transform its resource advantages into development momentum, benefit the Indonesian people, and accelerate Indonesia's industrialization process. Indonesia positively evaluated the contributions made by Chinese enterprises to local development in Indonesia; the success of Chinese enterprises is also Indonesia's success, and Indonesia is willing to provide a fair, transparent, and friendly business environment for Chinese enterprises.

The two sides agreed to deepen agricultural and food technology cooperation, conduct exchanges of experience in poverty reduction and alleviation, jointly safeguard food security, strengthen cooperation in health, culture and education, youth, and local exchanges, and continuously enhance the well-being of the peoples of both countries.

The two sides reached agreement on resuming fisheries cooperation, and will accelerate the pace of maritime cooperation and advance joint development. The two sides are committed to the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, strive to conclude a "Code of Conduct in the South China Sea" as soon as possible, and jointly shape a new narrative of a peaceful, cooperative South China Sea.

Indonesia supports China in hosting the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting well, and jointly advancing the building of an Asia-Pacific community. The two sides agreed to carry out more cooperation under the framework of the four global initiatives, strengthen policy coordination in multilateral platforms such as the United Nations and BRICS, oppose unilateral bullying and power politics, and safeguard international fairness and justice and the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries.

The two sides agreed to make full and good use of the important mechanism platform of the comprehensive strategic dialogue, step up alignment among various departments, focus on implementation work, achieve more visible results as soon as possible, consolidate and improve the pattern of the "five pillars" of cooperation, and promote more practical results in the building of the China-Indonesia community with a shared future. The two sides agreed to hold the second meeting of the dialogue mechanism in China next year.

After the meeting, Wang Yi and Sugiono jointly met with the press.

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China-Indonesia Foreign and Defense Ministerial "2+2" Dialogue Mechanism Holds Second Ministerial Meeting

Our newspaper Jakarta, August 21 (Reporter Cao Shiyun (曹师韵)) The second ministerial meeting of the China-Indonesia Foreign and Defense Ministerial "2+2" Dialogue Mechanism was held in Jakarta on the 21st. Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Defense Minister Dong Jun co-chaired the meeting with Indonesian Foreign Minister Sugiono and Defense Minister Sjafrie. The two sides conducted in-depth strategic communication and reached a series of important consensuses.

Wang Yi stated that the China-Indonesia "2+2" mechanism is the first ministerial-level "2+2" mechanism established by China globally, building a new platform for China-Indonesia strategic communication. The first meeting effectively promoted political security and defense cooperation and jointly safeguarded the legitimate interests of both countries. Over the past year or more, the international situation has undergone major changes again, the once-in-a-century transformation has accelerated, and international challenges have emerged one after another. As major developing countries and important members of the Global South, China and Indonesia's timely enhancement of unity and cooperation has significance far beyond the bilateral scope and will play a demonstrative and leading role in the region and globally. China is willing to work with Indonesia to implement the strategic consensus reached by the two heads of state so far, jointly consolidate the foundation of political security cooperation, advance the building of a community with a shared future at a high level, better benefit the two peoples, and play a greater role in promoting regional and world stability and prosperity.

Wang Yi said that the world is currently at a crossroads between unity or division, cooperation or confrontation. More than 70 years ago, China and Indonesia joined hands to make historic contributions to the success of the Bandung Conference, promoting unity and cooperation among Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Under the new conditions of the times, China and Indonesia should continue to carry forward the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and the Bandung Spirit, unite the strength of developing countries, and jointly advance Global South cooperation. China is willing to strengthen strategic coordination with Indonesia in multilateral platforms such as the United Nations, APEC, and BRICS, advocate an equal and orderly multipolar world and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, and promote the building of a more just and reasonable global governance system.

Dong Jun stated that in recent years, under the strategic guidance of the two heads of state, defense cooperation between the two sides has improved in quality and efficiency, providing an example for the Global South and major developing countries to carry out new-type defense cooperation. At present, the world transformation has entered a new cycle of intensifying overall crises, and the region faces multiple security challenges. China is willing to work with Indonesia to adhere to advancing defense and military building cooperation with strategic vision, continuously tap the potential of defense cooperation, create more cooperation highlights, build a solid security shield for each other's development, play a backbone role for regional stability, and inject more stability, certainty, and constructiveness into a world interwoven with change and turmoil.

Sugiono stated that under the current challenging international situation, the holding of the second ministerial meeting of the Indonesia-China "2+2" Dialogue Mechanism is of great significance, fully reflecting the two countries' high degree of strategic mutual trust and strong willingness to cooperate. Indonesia thanks China for its firm support on issues involving the safeguarding of national sovereignty, reiterates its firm adherence to the One-China policy, opposes any external interference, and is willing to expand cooperation with China in counter-terrorism, law enforcement, combating online fraud, strengthen intelligence sharing and capacity building, deepen communication and coordination under multilateral frameworks such as ASEAN-China, and jointly safeguard regional peace and tranquility.

Sjafrie stated that since the first ministerial meeting of the dialogue mechanism, the good momentum of cooperation between the two militaries has been further consolidated. Indonesia is willing to strengthen strategic communication with China, intensify exchanges between the two militaries, continuously strengthen cooperation in defense, maritime security, cybersecurity, combating online gambling, telecom fraud, and transnational crimes, firmly safeguard regional peace and stability, and jointly address global challenges. As long as the two countries maintain brotherly friendship, the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries can continue to achieve new development.

The two sides conducted in-depth exchange of views on international and regional security issues of common concern and agreed that they should coordinate development and security as two major matters and unite to respond to various external challenges. The two sides will establish a sense of security partnership, support each other's core interests, jointly oppose external interference, hold the future and destiny of their countries and nations in their own hands, provide better guarantees for the modernization process of both countries, and make greater contributions to promoting world peace and development.

The two sides highly evaluated the role of the "2+2" mechanism and will continue to rely on this important strategic communication platform to deepen unity and cooperation and promote positive progress in political security and defense cooperation.

The two sides agreed to strengthen law enforcement and security cooperation in combating transnational crimes, fugitive repatriation, and asset recovery, and support participation in international efforts to combat telecom and online fraud. Implement maritime security cooperation documents and maintain the safety and smooth flow of key shipping lanes.

The two sides will deepen defense cooperation, promote the normalization and institutionalization of practical cooperation in equipment and technology, joint exercises and training, personnel training, and maritime security, and continuously improve quality and efficiency.

The two sides jointly advocate an Asian security model of sharing weal and woe, 求同存异 (qiú tóng cún yì - "seek common ground, preserve differences"), and dialogue and consultation, and effectively safeguard the mainstream of regional cooperation and peace and stability in the South China Sea.

The two sides are willing to carry out more cooperation under the framework of the four global initiatives (四大全球倡议) and jointly safeguard the multilateral trading system. Strengthen coordination on the Middle East issue and actively promote peace and cessation of hostilities.

The two sides agreed to effectively translate consensus into results, set an example for the unity and self-reliance of developing countries, and make efforts to safeguard peace and promote development.

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Photo Report

On August 19, the 2026 World Robot Conference opened in Beijing, with more than 300 domestic and foreign enterprises presenting over 3,000 innovative products in a splendid display. The photo shows foreign visitors interacting with a humanoid robot at the conference.
Photo by Chen Xiaogen (陈晓根) (Image China (影像中国))

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Jordan's King Abdullah II lays wreath at the Monument to the People's Heroes

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 21 — On the morning of August 21, King Abdullah II of Jordan went to Tiananmen Square and laid a wreath at the Monument to the People's Heroes.

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Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Abdullah Ali Al-Yahya to Visit China

This newspaper, Beijing, August 21 (Reporter Li Xinyi) — A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on the 21st: At the invitation of Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Jarrah will pay an official visit to China from August 23 to 24.

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China proposes initiative to deepen Asia-Pacific food security cooperation

Our newspaper Dalian, August 21 (Reporter Ouyang Jie) — On August 20, the APEC High-Level Policy Dialogue on Food Security was held in Dalian, Liaoning Province. Liu Huanxin (刘焕鑫), Director of the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration (国家粮食和物资储备局), put forward three proposals for deepening Asia-Pacific food security cooperation.

The proposals include: Empowering through digital intelligence, promoting the large-scale application of innovative achievements in the food industry chain, strengthening the promotion and application of artificial intelligence, digital technology, and intelligent processing throughout the entire food industry chain, promoting trusted data sharing, and providing a scientific basis for risk assessment, policy formulation, and emergency response; Practicing inclusive and shared benefits, focusing on the actual needs of different economies, continuously carrying out policy discussions, technical training, and experience exchanges, helping small-scale producers, small and medium-sized enterprises, and start-ups better access information, technology, financing, and market opportunities, so that the dividends of innovative development benefit the Asia-Pacific economies and the broad masses of the people more extensively and more fairly; Upholding openness and win-win cooperation, deepening public-private partnerships with the participation of multiple actors, promoting coordinated efforts among government departments, enterprises, scientific research institutions, and international organizations, creating a market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized business environment, and achieving mutual benefit, win-win cooperation, and common development.

Liu Huanxin stated that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (十五五), China will adhere to grasping output and capacity, production and ecology, and increased production and increased income together, continuously enhance comprehensive food production capacity, effectively stabilize food prices and ensure supply, strive to promote the modernization of food storage and logistics, lead industrial transformation and upgrading with scientific and technological innovation, improve and perfect the food security governance system, and continuously strengthen the national food security guarantee capability.

This dialogue, themed "Innovation-Led, Win-Win Cooperation — Jointly Building a More Resilient, More Efficient, and Higher-Quality Asia-Pacific Food System," held a thematic forum on "High-Quality Development of the Food Industry and New Opportunities for Asia-Pacific Regional Food Security Cooperation," and conducted discussions on the two themes of "Industrial Chain Resilience and Fiscal-Financial Coordination" and "Digitalization and Scientific and Technological Innovation Driving the Transformation and Upgrading of the Food Industry."

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UN Global Dialogue on AI and Human Development Held in Xi'an

This newspaper Xi'an, August 21 (Reporter Gao Bing) From August 20 to 21, the third event of the United Nations Global Dialogue Series on Artificial Intelligence and Human Development was held in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province. This dialogue brought together policymakers, technical experts, academics, and representatives of the cultural community, focusing on how artificial intelligence is reshaping the course of human civilization and development.
This event was convened by UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed and organized in cooperation with the Chinese government and the UN Secretariat. Two previous sessions of this dialogue series had been held in Cairo and Mexico City.
This Xi'an dialogue focused on the frontiers of embodied artificial intelligence and robotics, with key discussions on how intelligent systems increasingly prevalent in the real world will affect education, employment, culture, and sustainable development, exploring how the fruits of AI development can contribute to comprehensive human development while safeguarding human autonomy of choice, social trust, and social cohesion.

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"Asia-Pacific Youth Energy Innovation for the Future" Event Held in Shenzhen

Shenzhen, August 21 (Reporter Zhang Mengxu (张梦旭)) — On August 21, the "Asia-Pacific Youth Gathering · Energy Creates the Future" event was held in Shenzhen, Guangdong. More than 60 experts, scholars, youth representatives, and media journalists from 13 countries and regions including China, Cambodia, Thailand, and Chile conducted story sharing and roundtable dialogues around topics such as green and low-carbon transition, regional connectivity, and coordinated development of computing power and electricity, jointly exploring practical pathways for Asia-Pacific youth to participate in regional sustainable development.

During the event, participating delegates conducted on-site visits to the country's first zero-carbon smart science-education substation — the 110 kV Chunhui Substation (110千伏春晖变电站). The event was jointly hosted by the China Foreign Languages Publishing and Distribution Center (中国对外书刊出版发行中心), China Southern Power Grid Shenzhen Power Supply Bureau Co., Ltd. (南方电网深圳供电局有限公司), and China Southern Power Grid Digital Media Technology Co., Ltd. (南方电网数字传媒科技有限公司).

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Chinese Society for Human Rights Studies delegation visits Nepal

Our Correspondent Kathmandu, August 21 (Reporter Li Mo) — From August 18 to 21, Jiang Jianguo (蒋建国), member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, deputy director of the Committee on Ethnic and Religious Affairs, and executive vice president of the China Society for Human Rights Studies (中国人权研究会), led a delegation of the China Society for Human Rights Studies to Nepal for human rights exchange activities. During the visit, Jiang Jianguo attended the "Seeing Tibet" story-sharing session and delivered a speech, and met separately with Amrit Bahadur Rai, Foreign Secretary of Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Top Bahadur Magar, Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission of Nepal, and other local figures.

The delegation, taking as its entry point the in-depth dissemination of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important expositions on respecting and protecting human rights, and the in-depth dissemination of General Secretary Xi Jinping's concern for the Tibetan people and his high regard for Tibet's development, systematically explained to the Nepali side the profound connotations of the contemporary Chinese view of human rights, comprehensively introduced China's path of human rights development, and vividly demonstrated the historic achievements Tibet has made under the guidance of the Party's strategy for governing Tibet in the new era. At the same time, the delegation discussed with the Nepali side the conduct of bilateral human rights exchanges, the strengthening of bilateral human rights cooperation, and the joint promotion of global human rights development.

Figures from all sectors of the Nepali side highly praised the achievements of China's human rights development, holding that strengthening bilateral human rights exchange and cooperation is conducive to enhancing the well-being of the peoples of China and Nepal. The new Tibet, which in the process of achieving modernization both respects its own cultural traditions and actively protects the natural environment, holds important inspirational significance for Nepal's development. Amrit Bahadur Rai stated that China has successfully blazed a path of human rights development suited to its own national conditions, providing Nepal with rich experience and inspiration. Sushil Pyakurel, first member of the National Human Rights Commission of Nepal, stated that China's National Human Rights Action Plan (2026–2030) both focuses on domestic implementation, safeguarding the people's right to development, and commits to fulfilling international obligations and promoting the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, and will certainly exert a positive influence on global human rights governance.

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Safeguarding Natural Resources, Building a Beautiful China (Official Release)

By: 本报记者 李晓晴

On August 21, the State Council Information Office held a press conference with Chinese and foreign journalists themed "Strivers on the New Journey," inviting five representatives from the natural resources sector to exchange views around the theme "Safeguarding Natural Resources, Building a Beautiful China." The five representatives measured mountains and rivers with their footsteps, watered green with their sweat, and solved difficult problems with their wisdom, striving to be good "stewards" of natural resources and guardians of a beautiful China.

"Our work is to build BeiDou satellite navigation and positioning reference station networks on the ground, and to rely on this network to construct and maintain stable and reliable surveying and mapping benchmarks," said Ye Fei, deputy chief engineer of the Hunan Institute of Surveying and Mapping Science and Technology (湖南省测绘科技研究所) and head of its platform research and operations department. He led his team to break through the challenge of BeiDou millimeter-level deformation monitoring, completing the monitoring task for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and capturing subtle displacements. "Giving the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge a 'physical examination' is unusually difficult," Ye Fei explained. The team innovatively proposed an algorithm that is equivalent to putting an "intelligent filter" on BeiDou signals, capable of automatically stripping away various interfering signals and restoring true observation values.

Surveying and mapping benchmarks are the core foundation of surveying, mapping, and geographic information work. "Looking to the future, we still have 'hard bones' to gnaw through," Ye Fei said bluntly. "Our team is exploring and advancing multi-technology integration schemes and equipment development such as 'BeiDou plus broadcasting,' so that signals can cross mountains and ridges without leaving blind zones."

"Disaster prevention and enriching the people grow as one body — protecting hillside vegetation and strictly controlling reclamation of steep slopes is precisely how we build a solid geological disaster defense line and safeguard natural resources," said Zhang Juyan, Party branch secretary of Shuitang Village (水塘村) and director of the village committee, Huadan Town, Ningnan County, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. In April this year, while she and her patrol inspectors were inspecting Gujiawanzi in Shuitang Village, they discovered that cracks and deformation on the field road surface were intensifying. Village, town, and county cadres immediately evacuated the masses, successfully protecting the safety of the villagers.

"We often say that disaster prevention does not rely on luck, but on a living, breathing mechanism," Zhang Juyan shared her years of experience in mass monitoring and prevention of geological disasters: the county has established a five-level mass monitoring and prevention system at the county, town, village, group, and point levels, implementing the "three chiefs and two members" (三长两员) mechanism. She and her patrol inspectors are not fighting alone, but have policy and technology supporting them throughout the entire process. The village is also equipped with automated monitoring equipment that watches slope changes 24 hours a day, and national satellites in the sky conduct periodic scans. "Human prevention plus technological prevention — that puts our minds at ease," she said.

Tang Jialing, senior engineer at the Ship and Equipment Management Center of the National Deep Sea Base Management Center (自然资源部国家深海基地管理中心) under the Ministry of Natural Resources, is among the first batch of "Jiaolong" submersible pilots independently selected and trained by China. He has worked in deep-sea operations for 20 years and completed nearly 300 support missions for the "Jiaolong." At the press conference, he brought a polymetallic crust sample obtained by the "Jiaolong" in the deep sea. The sample is rich in cobalt and is also called "cobalt crust." "This is one of the important deep-sea mineral resources," Tang Jialing said.

Tang Jialing and his team of scientists have repeatedly boarded the "Jiaolong" to dive into the deep sea and conduct experiments, deploying in-situ biological culture media and environmental monitoring instruments on the seabed. "The primary purpose is to understand clearly the impact of human activity on the deep-sea environment, especially deep-sea organisms, and to explore how to scientifically protect and restore the ocean," Tang Jialing said.

"The central government and the province have given us good policies, and the masses have given us understanding and support," said Duan Mengyun, Party secretary of Dongting Town, Guangde City, Xuancheng City, Anhui Province. She has always treated farmland protection as a "top leader" project. Through measures such as guiding farmland to concentrate in the hands of large grain-growing households and family farms, repairing canals and roads, installing agricultural power lines, and actively striving for high-standard farmland projects, the town's grain-planting area has grown substantially over the years; through promoting unmanned crop protection drones, developing contract farming, and carrying out soil acidification treatment and fertility cultivation, farmers have gained more income along the industrial chain.

Farmland protection is a protracted battle. Duan Mengyun said: "I will continue to stay rooted on the front line and, together with everyone, safeguard our good fields and fertile soil."

"The harmonious coexistence of humans and nature has never been a simple slogan, but a process of generations holding fast year after year," said Zhong Lin, head of the Minqin Public Welfare Tree Planting Development Center (民勤种林公益发展中心) in Minqin County, Wuwei City, Gansu Province. He is a young person who returned to his hometown to start a business, and also a desertification fighter. Since 2021, he has coordinated students from more than 100 universities and colleges to carry out tree-planting and desertification-control practice and study in Minqin. The public welfare activity "Please Come to Minqin and Plant a Tree," which he co-initiated, has cumulatively organized more than 80,000 person-times of volunteers from across the country, planting more than 2 million saplings in the desert, with public welfare afforestation area exceeding 6,500 mu.

"I grew up watching the wind-blown sand, and I have always had a thought in my heart: as long as there can be a little more green in my hometown, anything is worth doing," Zhong Lin said. Looking to the future, he expressed that he will continue to make good use of new media, using livestreaming, short videos, and online interaction to let more people participate in "cloud desertification control" work.

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NPC Standing Committee Legislative Affairs Commission briefs on draft laws scheduled for review

By: 本报记者 倪 弋

On August 21, the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress held a press conference. Spokesperson Huang Haihua introduced the main circumstances of the draft laws to be deliberated at the 24th session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress and answered reporters' questions.

The 24th session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress will deliberate the draft Medical Security Law, the draft Farmland Protection and Quality Improvement Law, the draft revision of the Agricultural Law, the draft revision of the National Defense Mobilization Law, the draft amendment to the Lawyers Law, the draft revision of the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law, the draft revision of the Banking Supervision and Administration Law, and the draft revision of the Water Law; deliberate the proposal submitted by the State Council regarding the draft revision of the Road Traffic Safety Law; and deliberate the proposal submitted by the National Commission of Supervision regarding the draft Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law.

Huang Haihua introduced that the third reading draft of the Medical Security Law further reflects the health-priority development strategy in its legislative purpose, improves the relevant provisions of the medical security system, enriches the relevant provisions on the management of medical security funds, refines the requirements for settlement of medical expenses for medical treatment in different places, adds relevant provisions on long-term care insurance, and improves the relevant provisions on legal liability.

The third reading draft of the Farmland Protection and Quality Improvement Law encourages universities, scientific research institutes, agricultural technology extension institutions, and enterprises to collaboratively carry out talent cultivation; adds provisions that land within the scope of river and lake management shall, in principle, not serve as a source of supplementary farmland; strengthens supervision and management of funds for high-standard farmland construction, prohibiting any unit or individual from intercepting, misappropriating, or diverting funds for high-standard farmland construction; adds provisions on carrying out comprehensive treatment of farmland affected by desertification, wind erosion, and water erosion, as well as provisions on preventing and controlling soil and water loss; strengthens the protection of black soil, adding provisions to protect the excellent production capacity of black soil; and clarifies that the state shall improve the interest compensation mechanism for major grain-producing areas, improve the fiscal transfer payment system for major grain-producing areas and major grain-producing counties, and improve the inter-provincial horizontal interest compensation mechanism between grain-producing and grain-consuming areas.

The second reading draft of the Agricultural Law revision summarizes the major achievements and experience of the "three rural" work (agriculture, rural areas, and farmers) in the new era, and improves measures to support the development of agriculture and the rural economy; strengthens international exchange and cooperation in the agricultural field, adding provisions that the state adheres to the policy of equality, mutual benefit, and win-win cooperation; strengthens the protection of farmers' rights and interests, requiring people's governments at all levels to establish and improve a long-term mechanism for rectifying formalism and reducing burdens at the grassroots level; clarifies that the state shall strengthen rural governance, advance the construction of safe villages, and build a harmonious and orderly rural society; and further aligns with laws such as the Ecological Environment Code, clarifying that the state adheres to the integrated protection and systematic governance of mountains, waters, forests, farmlands, grasslands, and deserts.

The second reading draft of the National Defense Mobilization Law revision clarifies the concept of "national defense mobilization"; adds provisions on advancing the application of advanced technology and developing national defense mobilization forces in emerging fields; clarifies the obligations of subjects in the statistical investigation of national defense mobilization potential; and adds provisions that special measures for national defense mobilization shall follow the principles of necessity and reasonableness, and shall be adjusted in a timely manner according to changes in circumstances.

The draft amendment to the Lawyers Law clarifies the Constitution as the legislative basis; further improves the relevant provisions on foreign-related legal services; clarifies that when relevant staff of units leave public office or retire and then engage in the legal profession or work in law firms, they shall comply with the relevant provisions on the post-departure management of public officials; and adds provisions aligning with the Legal Aid Law.

The second reading draft of the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law revision clarifies that during the review period of a bankruptcy application, the people's court may decide to temporarily suspend enforcement proceedings against the debtor's property; improves the provisions on the scope of bankruptcy administrators; fully leverages the function of the reorganization system in rescuing distressed enterprises, clarifying the methods and procedures for consultation before reorganization and its connection with the reorganization procedure, and improving the system for voting on and approving draft reorganization plans; adjusts and optimizes the provisions on the order of distribution of bankruptcy property; improves the cross-border bankruptcy system, improving provisions on the jurisdiction of Chinese courts over cross-border bankruptcy cases; and refines and improves the relevant systems for debt clearance of jointly and severally liable individual debtors.

The second reading draft of the Banking Supervision and Administration Law revision improves the legislative purpose, adding the provision "improve the quality and efficiency of financial services to the real economy"; aligns with the draft Financial Law, splitting Chapter IV "Supervision and Administration Measures" into two chapters, "Supervision and Administration Measures" and "Risk Disposal"; adds provisions on implementing classified and graded supervision and administration of banking financial institutions; improves the system for protecting the rights and interests of banking consumers; and improves the relevant provisions on legal liability.

The second reading draft of the Water Law revision clarifies the overall requirements for the national water network construction, adding provisions on accelerating the construction of the national water network and coordinating the governance of water resources, water environment, water ecology, and water disasters; aligns with the Ecological Environment Code, improving provisions such as the system of rigid constraints on water resources; clarifies that local people's governments at or above the county level shall formulate river basin plans "according to actual needs"; and strengthens the protection, conservation, and efficient use of water resources, improving provisions such as the water price formation mechanism.

Recently, the bilingual Chinese-English edition of the Ecological Environment Code was officially published. According to Huang Haihua, the Legislative Affairs Commission has long carried out the translation of legal texts and has published separate English translations of several important laws, including the Constitution, the Civil Code, the Ecological Environment Code, the Criminal Law, and the Foreign Investment Law, as well as Chinese-Russian and Chinese-French bilingual editions of the Constitution. "These efforts facilitate the international community's direct understanding of China's Constitution and laws, and have played a positive role in promoting Sino-foreign rule-of-law exchanges and serving high-level opening up," Huang Haihua said.

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Responding to the Uncertainty of Natural Disasters with the Certainty of Our Work (People's Forum)

By: 刘温馨

A few days ago, the Touching China 2025 Person of the Year awards were announced, and the story of Liu Mingfang (刘名芳), Party branch secretary of Zhonghe Village (中和村), Guizi Town (贵子镇), Xinyi City (信宜市), Maoming, Guangdong, was deeply moving: after Typhoon Butterfly made landfall last year, she braved the rain to patrol in the early morning, discovered a large amount of yellow muddy water surging from the drainage ditch beside the village road, and immediately worked with town and village cadres to transfer all 57 villagers to a shelter. About an hour later, approximately 5,000 cubic meters of earth and rock came pouring down, damaging more than 30 houses to varying degrees, but no one in the village was killed or injured.

This "textbook-level" avoidance of danger relied not on luck or coincidence, but on Liu Mingfang's habit of "taking a few extra looks" day after day, and on the prudence of "rather believe it will come than believe it will not" after every warning received.

Disaster prevention protects the lives and safety of the people and allows not the slightest bit of luck-based thinking. Better to prepare ten times and have nine come to nothing than to fail in defense even once.

Adhere to extreme thinking, prepare for the worst, exert the greatest effort, and strive for the best outcome. Natural disasters are characterized by uncertainty, and responding to them requires a certain "redundancy." Only by "running one step ahead" and "calculating one move more" in work such as monitoring, early warning, and evacuation for safety can we avoid being put on the defensive. Some preparations made in excess may seem unused, but in fact they precisely embody bottom-line thinking: better to estimate difficulties more fully and consider measures more comprehensively than to gamble with the people's lives and safety.

Move the disaster prevention threshold forward, building a solid barrier with one tight line of defense after another. In recent years, China's philosophy of disaster prevention, reduction, and relief has continuously developed, and one important change is a greater emphasis on the role of "prevention." Building urban flood control and drainage systems, improving extreme weather warning mechanisms, evacuating people in mountainous areas in advance, organizing fishing boats to return to port... Adhering to source-level control, eliminating risks in their budding state, and resolving hidden dangers before they become apparent—disaster prevention work can then be more proactive and more effective.

Calibrate the yardstick of political achievements, always putting the people's lives and safety first. Building flood control facilities may mean not encountering a major flood for many years; evacuating people in advance may ultimately result in no disaster occurring; improving emergency plans may mean they are never activated or implemented. If one only values "visible achievements" and measures such work by short-term results, it becomes easy to overlook the "resultless" investments and the important value that "is not seen"—and these investments may be the "last line of defense" protecting lives and safety. To establish and practice a correct view of political achievements, one must unhesitatingly choose to always put the people's lives and safety first. It is not blind prevention, but respecting laws and responding scientifically; it is not increasing burdens, but reducing costs.

In disaster prevention, no effort is wasted. Since this year's flood season began, Typhoons Bavi, Dolphin, and others have made landfall one after another, and one hard battle after another has been fought steadily and solidly. The root reason lies in our years of continuously improving working mechanisms through the practice of "prevention." Every storm improves our response and handling capabilities; every test tempers and further perfects our disaster prevention, reduction, and relief work.

The "15th Five-Year Plan" for the Construction of a Modern Emergency Response System (现代化应急体系建设"十五五"规划), issued not long ago, clearly states that the main thread is to promote the transformation of the governance model toward advance prevention, comprehensively enhancing the capabilities of disaster reduction and prevention, disaster resistance and fortification, and disaster relief and support. Human life is the most precious. Maintain reverence for nature, remain vigilant against risks at all times, respond to the uncertainty of natural disasters with the certainty of work, and with 万全之策 (wàn quán zhī cè - "a plan of ten thousand completeness," a perfectly comprehensive plan) ensure 万无一失 (wàn wú yī shī - "not a single error in ten thousand," to be perfectly safe)—only then can we better safeguard the peace and happiness of the people when storms come.

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China’s new-generation deep-water multifunctional marine engineering vessel completed and delivered

Our newspaper, Beijing, August 21 (Reporters Wang Yunshan (王云杉), Jin Bo (靳博)) — On August 21, the new-generation deep-water multi-functional ocean engineering vessel Offshore Oil 292 (海洋石油292), independently developed by China, was completed and delivered in Qidong City (启东市), Nantong, Jiangsu. The vessel was invested in and built by Offshore Oil Engineering Co., Ltd. (海洋石油工程股份有限公司), a subsidiary of CNOOC, further enhancing China's professional service capabilities in underwater engineering and in-service offshore facilities, and providing key equipment support for accelerating the development of deep-sea energy resources.

The vessel adopts a double-layer structure with a single-hull streamlined design, with an overall length of 126 meters, a molded breadth of 28 meters, and a displacement of over 17,000 tons. It possesses multiple capabilities including deep-water grade ocean engineering development, construction, maintenance, inspection and repair, and emergency response, and is suitable for comprehensive operations across the full process of ocean engineering, including underwater pipeline, cable, and structure installation in multiple sea areas, seabed survey, and transport support. Its digitalization, intelligentization, and green development have reached the advanced level of similar equipment.

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Typhoon No. 19 of this year forms

Meteorological monitoring shows that on the afternoon of August 21, the tropical depression in the Beibu Gulf intensified into this year's 19th typhoon (tropical storm level). At 17:00, its center was located on the sea surface of the Beibu Gulf approximately 120 kilometers southwest of Beihai City, Guangxi, with maximum wind force near the center of level 8 (18 meters per second) and a minimum central pressure of 992 hectopascals.

It is forecast that from the night of the 21st to the daytime of the 23rd, the typhoon center will circle with little movement over the Beibu Gulf sea surface, with intensity slowly strengthening, reaching a maximum of severe tropical storm level (level 10, 25–28 meters per second); from the night of the 23rd onward, it will move slowly in a north-by-east direction at a speed of 5 to 10 kilometers per hour, with intensity gradually weakening, and will approach the west side of the Leizhou Peninsula in Guangdong to the coastal area of southern Guangxi.

Over the next three days, affected by the 19th typhoon and the southwest monsoon, parts of Hainan Island, southern Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Taiwan Island, and Zhejiang will see heavy to torrential rain, with locally extreme torrential rain. In addition, the southern Sichuan Basin, Chongqing, western Hubei, northern Jiangsu, the Shandong Peninsula, western and southern Yunnan, and southeastern Xizang will see multiple instances of scattered intense precipitation.

At 18:00 on the 21st, the Central Meteorological Observatory issued a blue typhoon warning and continued to issue a blue rainstorm warning; the Ministry of Natural Resources and the China Meteorological Administration jointly issued a yellow geological disaster meteorological risk warning; the Ministry of Water Resources and the China Meteorological Administration jointly issued an orange mountain torrent disaster meteorological warning.

On the 21st, the Ministry of Water Resources organized rolling consultations and, based on the 24-hour rainfall forecast, issued "one province, one list" targeted warnings to 9 provinces and regions including Inner Mongolia, Fujian, Shandong, Guangxi, Hainan, Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai, and Xinjiang. The Ministry of Water Resources maintained a Level III emergency response for flood defense targeting Jiangsu and Zhejiang and a Level IV emergency response for flood defense targeting Heilongjiang.

On the 21st, the National Flood Control Office and the Ministry of Emergency Management organized joint consultations among multiple departments and key provinces including Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan to deploy flood prevention and typhoon defense work; the National Flood Control Headquarters and the Ministry of Emergency Management activated a Level IV emergency response for flood prevention and typhoon defense targeting Hainan, Guangxi, and Guangdong at 20:00 on the 21st.

The Guangxi Maritime Safety Administration has activated a Level II emergency response for typhoon defense and has designated 17 grids in the Beibu Gulf for classified and tiered management and control of vessels. As of 13:00 on the 21st, all 78 water construction projects along the Guangxi coast had been suspended, and all personnel scheduled for evacuation from 182 construction vessels had been fully evacuated. The Beihai–Weizhou route, land–island transport routes, and coastal passenger ferry routes have all been suspended.

(Compiled from reports by our correspondents Jiang Xuehong, Deng Jianyang, Liu Wenxin, and Pang Geping)

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Effectively expand domestic demand

By: 本报记者 王 珂 王云杉 王东辉

On July 30, General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. The meeting emphasized that it is necessary to effectively expand domestic demand, expand high-quality supply to meet the consumption needs of different groups, and tap the potential of service consumption.

Domestic demand is the primary driving force and stabilizing anchor of economic growth. In the first half of the year, the consumer market expanded in scale and improved in quality, with final consumption expenditure driving GDP growth by 2.1 percentage points; the investment structure continued to optimize, with gross capital formation driving GDP growth by 1.7 percentage points.

At present, China's advantages of a super-large-scale market are solid, the domestic demand structure continues to optimize, new growth drivers are gaining strong momentum, and the policy toolbox is fully stocked. Expanding domestic demand has a solid foundation, unique advantages, and ample policy space, providing strong support for the steady recovery, quality improvement, and scale expansion of demand.

In the second half of the year, to effectively expand domestic demand with greater intensity and more concrete measures, it is necessary to base ourselves on favorable conditions and implement targeted policies. On the one hand, we must closely combine benefiting people's livelihoods with promoting consumption and vigorously boost consumption; on the other hand, we must closely combine investment in things with investment in people, stimulate the endogenous driving force of investment, and continuously unleash the greater potential of domestic demand.

The transformation and upgrading of the domestic demand structure, moving toward the new and the superior, is the general trend

In Yangzhou, Jiangsu, as the ornate lanterns are first lit (华灯初上, huá dēng chū shàng - "the ornate lanterns are just lit," evening falling and city lights coming on), night tours begin at Slender West Lake, Ge Garden, and He Garden, with light and shadow as the brush and culture as the soul, outlining a charming nightscape;

In Deqing County (德清), Zhejiang, the firefly-viewing season at Mogan Mountain is in full swing, with flocks of fireflies dancing in the night, and the unique ecological landscape attracting large numbers of citizens and tourists to check in...

During the peak summer tourism season, from the continued warming of the nighttime economy to the rising popularity of "travel following performances," and from the renewal and upgrading of parent-child tours and summer resort tours, cultural and tourism consumption is "fully fired up," with high-quality experiences stimulating stronger consumption vitality.

"To comprehensively and dialectically analyze the situation of domestic demand development, we must look not only at scale, but also at structure, and even more at trends," said Zhou Hongwei (周宏伟), deputy director of the Department of Comprehensive Economic Affairs of the National Development and Reform Commission. In the first half of the year, two highlights in domestic demand were very prominent:

In terms of investment, the structure continued to optimize, with relatively good growth momentum in investment in emerging fields. Investment in high-tech industries increased by 4.6% year-on-year, of which investment in the information services industry increased by 15.5%; investment in intellectual property products nationwide increased by 9.4% year-on-year, with its share of total investment rising to 13.8%; investment in equipment and tool purchases increased by 8.1% year-on-year.

In terms of consumption, the market scale continued to expand, new consumption drivers developed relatively rapidly, and new scenarios for service consumption emerged at an accelerated pace. In the first half of the year, service retail sales increased by 5.3% year-on-year. At the same time, consumption of upgraded goods also grew relatively rapidly, with retail sales of wearable smart devices such as smart glasses growing by more than 100%, and retail sales of high-energy-efficiency household appliances growing by more than 30%.

From the perspective of trends, the transformation and upgrading of the domestic demand structure, moving toward the new and the superior, is the general trend. With China's economic growth and the improvement of people's living standards, commodity consumption will continue to improve in quality and upgrade, and service consumption also has considerable growth potential; adapting to the needs of the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, there is broad space for investment in new-type infrastructure and industrial investment.

"From the perspective of development prospects, the role of consumption as the primary driving force of economic development will continue to be consolidated," said Yang Mu (杨沐), director of the Department of Market Operations and Consumption Promotion of the Ministry of Commerce. In the first half of the year, service consumption showed good growth momentum. Although the growth rate of commodity consumption has slowed relatively, there is still considerable room and potential for incremental growth.

New products such as smart homes and intelligent robots entering the market bring new consumption increments while meeting people's needs for a better life. The county-level market, as well as the silver-haired (elderly), youth, and infant and toddler groups, are large in size, with obvious trends of consumption demand upgrading, and have broad prospects for consumption growth.

As a series of policies to expand domestic demand and promote consumption continue to take effect, commodity and service supply are continuously optimized, new consumption growth points and scenarios are emerging at an accelerated pace, China's advantages of a super-large-scale market will be further highlighted, the consumer market will continue to develop and grow, and the role of consumption as the "main engine" of economic growth will become increasingly strong.

Closely combining benefiting people's livelihoods with promoting consumption

"Making an appointment for door-to-door care services and still being able to enjoy subsidies - that's really good." Recently, Aunt Dong, a resident of Xicheng District (西城区), Beijing, made an online appointment for door-to-door home care services for her elderly husband, and received and used a subsidy voucher for elderly care service consumption.

According to reports, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has implemented a project to issue elderly care service consumption subsidy vouchers to elderly people with moderate to severe disabilities. As of the end of July, a cumulative total of 10.7992 million consumption vouchers had been redeemed nationwide, with a redemption amount of 6.512 billion yuan, driving elderly care service consumption of 29.093 billion yuan, and more than 1.9986 million elderly people with disabilities have benefited from the project.

In response to prominent problems such as insufficient service supply, low adaptability to the consumption needs of segmented groups, and the need to improve residents' consumption capacity, the work of promoting consumption in the second half of the year must adhere to driving consumption upgrading through the improvement of people's livelihoods, activating potential demand through precise supply, and promoting the quality improvement and benefit to the people of service consumption.

In the first half of the year, total retail sales of consumer goods and services increased by 2.7% year-on-year, of which service retail sales increased by 5.3%, with a growth rate 4.2 percentage points higher than that of commodity retail sales. Zhang Jianping (张建平), a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, said that from the perspective of the overall structure, the consumer market has entered a development stage where "commodities and services are equally important." "To further stimulate consumption vitality, we must both better promote the expansion and upgrading of commodity consumption and better promote the quality improvement and benefit to the people of service consumption."

Not long ago, the State Council approved the "15th Five-Year Plan for Expanding Consumption," the first national-level special plan in the consumption field, clarifying the "task list" and "roadmap" for China's continued expansion of domestic demand and vigorous boosting of consumption over the next five years.

At a Leqi smart glasses store in a shopping mall in Yuecheng District (越城区), Shaoxing, Zhejiang, Mr. Wang, a hearing-impaired person, came with his family to experience the products. "We have specially developed an auditory assistance mode for hearing-impaired users, with a 'subtitle' function that converts the speech of conversation partners into subtitles," said the relevant person in charge of the Leqi brand.

The high-quality supply of products and services must adapt to different scenarios and consider the needs of different groups. Making payments more convenient, adapting to the needs of myopic users, solving light leakage problems... smart glasses continuously optimize product functions according to market needs, adapting to more life scenarios while creating new sales growth points.

The relevant person in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission stated that to vigorously boost consumption, first, it is necessary to enhance consumption capacity, deeply implement the employment-first strategy, continue to carry out large-scale vocational skills upgrading training, and promote the increase of residents' income through multiple channels; second, it is necessary to tap the potential of service consumption, expand high-quality supply to meet the consumption needs of different groups, and improve life service consumption; third, it is necessary to promote consumption of intelligent products, increase the effective supply of new-generation intelligent terminal products such as AI-enabled mobile phones and computers, smart wearables, and intelligent robots, and expand intelligent agent services.

Enhancing the adaptability of supply and demand to stabilize the fundamentals of commodity consumption -

Commodity consumption is an important area for promoting consumption and benefiting people's livelihoods. Zhang Jianping said that it is necessary to accelerate the introduction of relevant policies and measures, promote the expansion of scale and structural upgrading of commodity consumption, and better conform to and meet the diversified and multi-level consumption needs of the people.

From promoting customized services in the home furnishing consumption field, to promoting the quality improvement of consumer goods such as food and beverages, textiles and clothing; from supporting the consumption of special commodities such as domestic "trendy products" and high-quality foreign trade goods, to cultivating and expanding upgraded commodity consumption such as green, healthy, and intelligent products; from creating offline experiences for new products such as smart homes and intelligent robots, to creating consumption scenarios with Chinese characteristics and cultural appeal... a series of policies and measures are being implemented and taking effect, activating offline consumption and promoting the expansion and upgrading of commodity consumption.

Meeting new demand with new supply to consolidate the good momentum of service consumption -

Service consumption is both the "ballast stone" for currently boosting consumption and the "main engine" for future consumption growth. As residents' consumption demand shifts from "whether it exists" to "whether it is good," it is necessary to further optimize service supply in areas such as culture and tourism, sports, and leisure, and promote the sustained release of personalized and high-quality service demand.

The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Commerce stated that it will focus on segmented fields such as transportation, performances, and events, further innovate support measures, and encourage local governments to actively explore effective paths for cultivating new growth points in service consumption. It will intensify efforts to advance pilot projects for new consumption formats, models, and scenarios, promote the integration of service consumption formats, scenario innovation, and industrial agglomeration, create a number of new consumption scenarios with broad reach and high visibility, create new demand with new supply, and activate new consumption with new scenarios.

Closely combining investment in things with investment in people

The meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held on July 30 emphasized: "Solidly advance the planning and construction of the 'Six Networks' (六张网)."

Not long ago, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration issued the "15th Five-Year Plan for the Construction of a New-Type Power System," clarifying the overall thinking for China's power development over the next five years, proposing the strategic goal of initially building a new-type power system by 2030, and deploying the main objectives, major projects, and key tasks for the development of the power industry.

"China has basically formed a clean power supply system with diversified development of coal, gas, nuclear, and renewable energy," said Yang Kun (杨昆), executive vice chairman of the China Electricity Council. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the dominant position of non-fossil energy power generation installed capacity will be further consolidated, and the dominant position of electricity in the terminal energy consumption pattern will be further strengthened, providing strong support for economic and social development and green and low-carbon transformation.

Relying on favorable conditions such as sufficient policy funds, sufficient project reserves, and sufficient construction window periods, the work of stabilizing investment in the second half of the year should focus on filling shortcomings, optimizing structure, and improving efficiency, solidly advance the construction of the "Six Networks," and continue to expand high-quality effective investment.

Since the beginning of this year, the construction of the "Six Networks" has been accelerated, helping to stabilize investment and expand domestic demand. It is understood that this year, the investment scale of the "Six Networks" and related key areas is expected to exceed 7 trillion yuan, with policy dividends continuing to be released.

The water network is denser - the construction of the Yangtze-to-Han River water diversion project is in full swing, which will greatly enhance the water supply guarantee capacity of the middle route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project after completion;

The power grid is better - the construction of the Aba-Chengdu East 1000 kV ultra-high voltage AC project is accelerating, which will effectively meet the grid connection needs of 20 million kilowatts of new energy in western Sichuan in the future;

The computing network is stronger - at the national supercomputing internet core node in Zhengzhou, Henan, tens of thousands of domestic AI chips are running at high speed, providing advanced and efficient computing power support for frontier innovation such as large model research and development...

"Looking ahead to the second half of the year, with the accelerated allocation and use of central budgetary investment and ultra-long-term special treasury bond funds, the accelerated use of local special bonds, and the accelerated implementation of new policy-based financial instruments, there is a foundation, conditions, and leverage for stabilizing investment," said Wang Yubo (王昱博), assistant researcher at the Investment Research Institute of the Academy of Macroeconomic Research of the National Development and Reform Commission.

Zhu Dongjian (朱东剑), the relevant person in charge of the investment department of China Construction Second Engineering Bureau, believes that in the second half of the year, with the concentrated commencement of major projects of the "Six Networks" and the deepening advancement of urban renewal actions, there will still be many structural opportunities for stabilizing investment. China Construction Second Engineering Bureau will focus on efforts in the renovation of old residential communities, the construction of complete communities, the renovation of old streets and factory areas, and the renewal of underground pipelines, striving to enhance the city's level and quality.

To expand investment with returns, it is necessary to adhere to the close combination of investment in things and investment in people, provide support for the comprehensive development of people through high-quality accumulation of material capital, inject momentum into the iterative upgrading of material capital through the steady improvement of human capital, and promote the sustained growth of total factor productivity and the improvement of people's quality of life.

The relevant person in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission stated that to stimulate the endogenous driving force of investment, first, it is necessary to accelerate the implementation and detailed implementation of policies for expanding effective investment, coordinate the advancement of the "two major" initiatives (两重, referring to the implementation of major national strategies and security capacity building in key areas), seize the third-quarter construction peak season, accelerate the allocation and use of 800 billion yuan of new policy-based financial instrument funds, and accelerate the issuance and use of special bonds; second, it is necessary to promote the commencement of construction of major engineering projects with mature conditions; third, it is necessary to continuously stimulate the vitality of private investment, improve the long-term mechanism for private enterprises to participate in the construction of major national projects, give full play to the role of fiscal and financial coordination special funds for promoting domestic demand, and support the expansion of private investment.

The market is the scarcest resource, and the super-large-scale market is where China's advantages lie. Firmly implementing the strategy of expanding domestic demand, intensifying efforts to build a strong domestic market, stimulating consumption with potential, expanding investment with returns, and forming a virtuous cycle in which consumption and investment promote each other will inject more surging momentum into high-quality economic development.

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一版责编：胡安琪 赵 政 栾心怡 二版责编：吕 莉 张安宇 陈 震 三版责编：韩晓明 姜 波 关皓宇 四版责编：刘 念 韩春瑶 余 璇

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Cities Build Resilience, Homes Become More Livable (Big Data Watch)

By: 本报记者 邵玉姿 李家鼎 王欣悦

“Rainwater accumulation in the rainy season has decreased, and the community environment is even better!” Through sponge-style transformation, Zhang Yanning, a resident of the Fuli City community on Heping West Road in Hengshui, Hebei, praised the new changes in her community.

“Every time there is a sudden heavy rainfall, I am sure to receive a warning call in advance.” Through smart flood prevention, Wang Hongkun, deputy township mayor of Xiaying Town, Jizhou District, Tianjin, has experienced “emergency speed.”

“If a pipeline is displayed in bright yellow, it indicates a risk and requires renovation.” With the operation of the digital platform, Liu Jianwei, director of the Pipeline Center of the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, has a clearer understanding of the status of underground pipelines.

General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized the need to strive to build safe and reliable resilient cities. The "15th Five-Year Plan" outline proposes promoting a transformation in urban development modes and building modern people-centered cities that are innovative, livable, beautiful, resilient, civilized, and smart. Reporters visited multiple locations to see how cities are taking active measures to enhance safety and resilience and improve their ability to respond to risks.

Advancing Sponge City Construction

One storage and one use: purifying rainwater into living water

During the rainy season, “sponge facilities” absorb and purify rainwater; during the dry season, the accumulated rainwater is used for greening irrigation and ecological water replenishment, achieving a virtuous cycle of “one storage and one use.” Although Hengshui contains the character for “water” in its name, it lacks water. Constructing sponge cities has become one of the key focuses of Hengshui's urban planning and construction in recent years.

The Shengtai Jiahexiao community, located on Chongwen West Road in Hengshui, fully considered the collection and utilization of rainwater during its planning and design stages. Li Xiao, the person in charge of the community construction project, introduced that the community landscape area is equipped with many rainwater gardens and sunken green spaces, underneath which are overflow wells filled with pebbles. Every rainy season, rainwater is first retained in the sunken green spaces; once it reaches the wellhead line of the overflow well, the rainwater flows into the overflow well after being naturally purified by the pebbles. “The community also uses permeable paving, and every building is equipped with downspouts to ensure that every drop of rainwater has a place to go as much as possible,” Li Xiao said.

Rainwater has a place to go, and even more, a use. “The collected rainwater will be gathered into two rainwater regulation tanks on the north side of the community, which are equipped with sedimentation and purification facilities, to be used for community greening,” Li Xiao introduced. More than 1,000 cubic meters of rainwater can be collected annually, accounting for 70% of the community's total annual greening water volume.

Similar changes are also occurring in other corners of the city. Starting from 2024, the Fuli City community, Yishui Garden Phase II, and surrounding park green spaces have added permeable road surfaces, rainwater well gratings, runoff channels, and rainwater pipelines, with the collected rainwater flowing directly into the Yishui Lake in the nearby park. “Previously, this was a ‘dead water pool,’ but now there are 16 additional rainwater inlets, and 3,600 square meters of pre-treatment ponds and one pump station have been added,” said Liu Zhigang, deputy director of the Hengshui Drainage Management Center. Rainwater has made the small lake “live.”

At the same time, channels for floodwater such as the Wu Gong Canal and Fengshou Canal are being cleared to improve water quality standards and drainage capacity; natural storage spaces such as the Kong Yingda Cultural Park and the Jizhou Ancient City Ruins Park are being improved to reduce the pressure of external rainwater discharge; the expansion of rainwater pipe networks and the addition of pump stations are resolving the problem of water accumulation on low-lying streets in the urban area... Hengshui is constructing an all-domain flood control pattern that connects community public buildings, park green spaces, and river systems.

“Sponge city construction is not a series of scattered projects, but a systemic upgrade of urban functions,” Liu Zhigang introduced. Since Hengshui was selected as one of the third batch of demonstration cities for the systematic and all-domain promotion of sponge city construction during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, 236 construction projects covering fields such as buildings, communities, roads, squares, park green spaces, and water systems and pipe networks have been fully rolled out. Among them, more than 200 projects have been completed and put into use.

In recent years, Hengshui has added 2.16 million cubic meters of regulation space, and urban waterlogging areas have basically been eliminated; the annual use of unconventional water resources such as rainwater and reclaimed water has exceeded 49.45 million tons, achieving a “green substitution” for more than 14% of urban water consumption.

Developing a “Single Map” Flood Prevention System

Intelligent monitoring makes emergency response more precise

At the Tianjin Emergency Command Center, the flood prevention “single map” system on the large screen is clear at a glance: data such as river water levels and meteorology are clearly displayed; with a light click of the mouse, staff can call up surveillance footage of key areas. When heavy rainfall occurs, the municipal flood control office and departments such as meteorology and water affairs conduct efficient consultations through this system, precisely determining the activation of corresponding levels of emergency response in relevant areas. Duty personnel can use the system to send flood prevention work prompt information to responsible persons at all levels, including districts, streets, towns, and villages/communities, at the first available moment. The system also conducts video patrols of controlled underground passages and waterlogged areas, and after conducting a comprehensive assessment of factors such as rainfall and river water levels, it timely lifts the emergency response.

As the smart flood prevention network becomes increasingly dense, the common people have a direct sense of it.

During a recent heavy rainy day, a citizen of Jizhou District, Tianjin, Mr. Wang, was driving out and was about to enter the Taoyuan Tunnel in Yinliu Town when he discovered the road had been blocked. “Looking closely, the road in front of me had become a ‘small river.’ Under the guidance of the staff on duty nearby, I chose to take a detour,” Mr. Wang said.

Jizhou District has many low-lying areas, and heavy rainfall easily leads to urban waterlogging. Since 2025, Jizhou District has installed intelligent water level monitoring and alarm devices at 56 hazard points, which can precisely measure water accumulation depth and work in conjunction with high-definition cameras to capture the real-time status of surrounding drainage outlets, the extent of road water accumulation, and vehicle traffic conditions. When the water accumulation depth exceeds the limit, it automatically triggers an alarm and pushes disposal instructions to relevant departments, thereby achieving closed-loop management of “water accumulation perception—warning release—emergency response.”

At 3:00 PM, Mr. Wang was driving home. “The rain had not completely stopped, but when passing that low-lying section of the Taoyuan Tunnel again, there was basically no water accumulation. I did not expect the drainage speed to be so fast!”

“After receiving the rain information, we immediately activated the emergency response. Staff opened the pump station to quickly lower the water level of the main road and deployed emergency vehicles and personnel to drain the water in a timely manner, ensuring the water receded and the road was cleared,” said a relevant official from the Jizhou District Emergency Management Bureau. Empowered by intelligent technology, emergency response has become faster and more precise.

Not only that, Jizhou District has also simultaneously woven a dense “three-disruptions” emergency communication network—targeting the potential occurrence of road disruptions, network disruptions, and power disruptions under extreme conditions. This year, 9 new high-point videos were added in high-risk areas such as along the Qu River, equipped with 72-hour uninterrupted backup power and ad-hoc networking equipment, and 115 sets of 370 MHz narrowband communication base stations were deployed. Once the public network is interrupted, this “dedicated line priority, wireless backup” network can still guarantee video transmission and voice dispatching, ensuring that every area and every village in the mountainous regions can “connect and call through” at critical moments.

Launching a Digital Pipeline System Platform

Smart management makes the “underground veins” visible

“Beep! Beep!” An inspector from a gas company received an automatic warning message triggered by the digital pipeline system platform, prompting that a new construction site had appeared on Baihua Street in Da渡kou District, Chongqing, and that there were gas pipelines beneath the construction site. Based on the pushed information, the inspector quickly arrived at the scene and confirmed with the construction personnel that subsequent excavation work would exist, incorporating this site into routine video inspection and protection to avoid pipeline damage caused by construction excavation, thereby avoiding safety accidents such as gas leaks and gas outages caused by blind excavation or irregular pipe breaking at the source.

Underground pipelines are the “capillaries” of a city and the “lifeline” that guarantees the normal operation of the city. Chongqing has launched a digital pipeline system platform, utilizing technologies such as digital twins and artificial intelligence to construct a smart management system for underground pipelines covering the entire city.

Walking into the Chongqing Digital Housing and Urban-Rural Development Command Center, the “underground veins” of the entire city pulse in real-time on the digital pipeline large screen.

“The red markings are gas pipelines, the blue are water supply pipelines, and the yellow are drainage pipelines,” Liu Jianwei said. Chongqing's underground pipelines involve nine categories, including gas, water supply, drainage, and long-distance oil and gas transmission. In the past, data was scattered across more than 600 ownership units, with inconsistent standards and lagging updates. Now, a pipeline data aggregation mechanism has been established, unifying 38 types of attribute standards such as pipeline material, diameter, and pressure. With just a light click of the mouse, the burial depth and elevation of any pipeline can be seen at a glance.

Currently, Chongqing has aggregated data for four types of pipelines—gas, water supply, drainage, and long-distance oil and gas transmission—totaling 120,000 kilometers; among them, 65,000 kilometers of pipelines in the central urban area have all achieved digital twinning, which, when superimposed with road and building information, constitutes a complete “underground map.” Liu Jianwei introduced that the platform presents the underground pipeline layout in a three-dimensional form, clearly marking the pipeline burial depth, spacing, and property rights information of key construction areas, and is accompanied by the contact information of pipeline enterprises, thereby avoiding repeated road excavation from the source.

In the Yuwu Expressway project undertaken by the Southwest Company of China Construction Seventh Engineering Division, Chen Yong, the person in charge of the on-site construction zone, said that the digital pipeline system platform has simplified the coordination and protection of pipeline relocation and modification. In the past, due to multi-headed management of underground pipelines and unclear data, a large amount of manpower had to be invested before construction to conduct investigation work on pipeline categories, ownership, direction, and burial depth, which was inefficient. Now, the construction party can quickly obtain complete pipeline information by submitting a digital report application to the digital pipeline system platform. “We completed the pre-construction investigation and protection measures within one week, ensuring a smooth start to construction,” Chen Yong said.

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Cities must prepare for the storm to stay resilient (Editor's Notebook)

By: 卢 涛

The resilience of a city is reflected in the upgrading of its governance, and even more so in the tangible experiences of its residents. By the end of 2025, China's permanent urban population urbanization rate reached 67.89%, and urban development is transitioning from large-scale incremental expansion to a stage focused on improving quality and efficiency from existing stock. People hope their homes can be "fearless in wind and rain" and yearn for safe and convenient lives; the construction of resilient cities is precisely a response to this beautiful aspiration.

未雨绸缪 (wèi yǔ chóu móu - "repair the roof before it rains," to take precautions in advance), and only then can a city be more "sturdy." From advancing the construction of safety projects for urban infrastructure lifeline systems, to strengthening whole-life-cycle safety management of buildings; from reinforcing urban natural disaster prevention and coordinating urban flood control systems with waterlogging management, to strengthening comprehensive public security prevention and control and safeguarding urban public safety... building in "lead time" and reserving sufficient "safety redundancy," promoting the transformation from disaster management to risk management, enabling cities to withstand pressure when responding to disasters and dangers, continuously raising the level of prevention and response capabilities, and enhancing urban safety resilience.

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High-tech industry accounts for over 40% of actual foreign investment in first seven months

Beijing, August 21 (Our Newspaper) (Reporter Wang Ke) The reporter learned from the Ministry of Commerce on the 21st: From January to July, the number of newly established foreign-invested enterprises nationwide was 37,711, a year-on-year increase of 4.4%; the actual amount of foreign capital utilized was 438.33 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.2%.

By industry, the manufacturing industry actually utilized foreign capital of 109.43 billion yuan, and the service industry actually utilized foreign capital of 319.95 billion yuan. The high-tech industry actually utilized foreign capital of 182.31 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.7%, accounting for 41.6% of the national actual utilization of foreign capital, an increase of 12.2 percentage points compared with the same period last year. Among them, the actual foreign capital utilized in research and development and design services, scientific and technological achievement transformation services, and the manufacturing of electronic and communication equipment increased by 72.1%, 62.2%, and 39.9%, respectively.

By source country, the actual investment in China from Saudi Arabia, France, and South Korea increased by 343.7%, 36.1%, and 15.8%, respectively (including investment data through free ports).

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Action Plan for Promoting High-Quality Development of Cyberspace Enterprises (2026–2030) Issued

Reported from Beijing, August 21 (Reporter Jin Xin (金歆)). The reporter learned from the Central Cyberspace Administration of China (中央网信办) on the 21st that, recently, the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission (中央网络安全和信息化委员会) issued the "Action Plan for Promoting High-Quality Development of Cyberspace Enterprises (2026–2030)," to thoroughly implement the Party Central Committee's relevant deployments on building a strong cyber country and cyberspace work during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, and to promote high-quality development of cyberspace enterprises.

The "Action Plan" proposes that cyberspace enterprises, which take network information technology as their core driving force and network security and informatization as their main business, are an important force in building a strong cyber country and play a key role in cultivating and developing new quality productive forces (新质生产力) and consolidating and enhancing international competitiveness.

The "Action Plan" proposes adhering to the working principles of parallel encouragement and support with standardized development, simultaneous policy guidance and law-based management, and equal emphasis on economic and social benefits, and clarifies 7 actions and 21 measures. First, the enterprise cultivation service action: establish and improve the cultivation service mechanism for high-quality cyberspace enterprises, and carry out classified cultivation services for three types of enterprises — ecology-leading, industry-guiding, and high-growth innovative. Second, the innovation capability enhancement action: strengthen tackling of key core technologies, reinforce the principal position of enterprises in innovation, and promote the transformation and application of scientific and technological achievements. Third, the industry upgrading empowerment action: empower digital transformation of manufacturing, digital village construction, and quality improvement and upgrading of digital consumption, and promote green and low-carbon development of enterprises. Fourth, the overseas market expansion action: support enterprises in going global in an orderly manner, and build a service system for enterprises going overseas. Fifth, the safe and orderly development action: hold firm the bottom line of security, prevent disorderly competition, and strengthen the construction of the rule of law in cyberspace. Sixth, the business environment optimization action: create a fair and competitive market environment, and optimize the business network environment. Seventh, the development factor guarantee action: strengthen financial support, data guarantee, and talent support.

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Three ministries jointly promote financial account inquiry services for deceased individuals

Beijing, August 21 (Reporter Zhao Zhanhui) On the 21st, the National Financial Regulatory Administration, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the Ministry of Justice jointly issued a notice to promote nationwide the pilot experience of Zhejiang Province and Qingdao City in financial account inquiry services for deceased persons, to advance the resolution of difficult and obstructive problems faced in inquiring into the financial asset information of the deceased, and to further optimize the experience of the public in handling affairs.

Relying on their local government service systems, Zhejiang Province and Qingdao City have built and improved the "one-stop handling of matters after one's death" (个人身后一件事) joint service platform. They have already piloted "one-stop" inquiry into financial asset information such as bank and insurance assets of deceased persons, facilitated the convenient withdrawal of eligible small deposits, and effectively resolved the difficult problems the public faced in handling related procedures, including cumbersome processes, excessive documentation, difficult certification, and running to multiple offices.

The notice clearly encourages and supports regions with sound government data-sharing mechanisms and strong cross-departmental coordination capacity to take the lead in replicating and promoting the experience, and puts forward work requirements in such areas as working mechanisms and data security, so as to ensure that the replication and promotion work proceeds smoothly and in an orderly manner and achieves practical results.

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China to build modern climate service system during 15th Five-Year Plan period

Our newspaper Beijing, August 21 (Reporter Li Hongmei) — The "Implementation Plan for High-Quality Development of Climate Operations (2026–2030)" recently issued by the China Meteorological Administration specifies that by 2030, the China Meteorological Administration will build a modern climate operations system that adapts to demand, has a sound structure, advanced functions, and intelligent services; the levels of independent science and technology, digitalized and intelligent operations, scenario-based services, and platform-based consolidation will be markedly improved; and key fields will reach the world's advanced level, enabling it to better meet the demands of economic and social development for climate services.

The plan proposes that meteorological departments will establish an interconnected model for national-level and provincial-level climate data products, improve the climate operations layout of "two-level operations, four-level services," form an operations pattern of "one-point modification, whole-network sharing," and at the same time explore the establishment of a national-provincial collaborative mechanism for climate services, building a smooth transformation chain from national-provincial core technology research and development to municipal and county-level operational application.

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Two departments refine regulatory requirements for RMB buying and selling activities

Beijing, August 21 (Reporter Wu Qiuyu) — To promote the healthy development of currency cultural activities, the People's Bank of China and the State Administration for Market Regulation have issued a notice clarifying the specific circumstances under which RMB may and may not be bought and sold, and refining the regulatory requirements for RMB trading activities.

The notice clarifies that RMB currently in circulation may not be bought or sold. The illegal buying and selling of RMB currently in circulation, the blurring of the boundary between "circulating currency" and ordinary commodities such as "collectibles," and the hoarding and speculative trading of same-number, consecutive-number, or specific-issue RMB disrupt the normal order of RMB circulation and must be strictly prohibited.

The notice clarifies that RMB that has been officially withdrawn from circulation by announcement of the People's Bank of China may be bought and sold. RMB that has been officially withdrawn from circulation by announcement of the People's Bank of China no longer possesses the function of circulating currency, and its face value no longer represents monetary value. Its significance as historical artifact, collectible, and the like is more prominent; it may be collected, may be exchanged at bank branches, and may also be listed for trading on the market.

A relevant department head of the People's Bank of China stated that allowing but not giving free rein to RMB trading, and promoting the healthy and standardized development of the coin and currency market, is the only way to better safeguard the public's legitimate collecting needs and to promote the research and dissemination of coin and currency culture.

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Photo Report

During the summer vacation period, the Chaka Salt Lake scenic area in Ulan County, Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, enjoys cool and pleasant temperatures, drawing tourists from all over. The photo shows tourists enjoying the unique charm of the "Mirror of the Sky" at the Chaka Salt Lake scenic area on August 20.
　　Photo by Liu Baocheng (China Images)

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Guangzhou deepens integration of technological and industrial innovation

By: 本报记者 吴齐强 贺林平 洪秋婷

Amid the cloud-shrouded mountains and the Pearl River's waters, the vitality of scientific and technological innovation surges. Inside the Guangzhou Laboratory (广州实验室) in Guangdong, researchers are concentrating on joint research to push multiple drugs and vaccines to market. On August 21, at the 10th China (Guangzhou) International Elderly Care and Health Industry Expo, the "5G Brain-Heart Mobile Vehicle" brought by Guangzhou Jixin Zhiyuan Life Sciences Co., Ltd. (广州极芯智元生命科学有限公司) integrated flexible brain-computer interfaces with a mobile medical platform……

As an important carrier of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area International Science and Technology Innovation Center, Guangzhou has gathered major scientific and technological innovation platforms including national laboratories, comprehensive national technology innovation centers, major scientific facilities, and international major science programs, and its ranking on the "Nature Index – Research Cities" list has risen to sixth globally.

In November 2025, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized during an inspection tour in Guangdong: "Focus on developing new quality productive forces, strengthen the deep integration of scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation, and build a modern industrial system with international competitiveness."

Following the direction charted by General Secretary Xi Jinping, Guangzhou implements the innovation-driven development strategy, promotes the deep integration of the innovation chain, industrial chain, capital chain, and talent chain, and strives to transform the key variable of scientific and technological innovation into the greatest increment of high-quality development. In the first half of this year, Guangzhou achieved a regional GDP of 1,604.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.8%.

Let enterprises "play the leading role," and innovation releases new momentum for industry.

In Guangzhou's Panyu Automobile City (番禺), at the GAC Aion Intelligent Ecological Factory, intelligent connected new energy vehicles are rolling off the production line one after another.

A relevant person in charge of GAC Group introduced that as of the end of 2025, the enterprise's cumulative independent R&D investment exceeded 62 billion yuan, with more than 24,900 patent applications, achieving independent controllability in key core technology fields such as magazine batteries and intelligent driving assistance systems. In the first seven months of this year, GAC Group's energy-saving and new energy vehicle sales accounted for 63.96%, and cumulative self-owned brand exports reached 145,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 130%.

Innovation factors are gathering toward enterprises; GAC is a microcosm of Guangzhou's strengthening of enterprises' dominant position in innovation.

Guangzhou continues to implement the science and technology leading enterprise doubling plan, supports science and technology leading enterprises in taking the lead to form innovation consortia, and carries out research on key common technologies of industry. At present, Guangzhou has achieved breakthroughs in 18 key technologies including mobile phone radio frequency devices, photoresist, and vacuum evaporation coating machines, and the city's high-tech enterprises have exceeded 13,700.

Clear the blockage points and pain points, and promote the deep integration of the industrial chain and innovation chain.

"The new generation AI companion robot we developed can interact with people in local dialects such as Cantonese." Li Junwei, a doctoral student, is already the founder of Tongpin Huixiang (Guangzhou) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (同频回响（广州）智能科技有限公司). "Since being selected for Guangzhou's key entrepreneurship projects, we completed iteration in two months, and are currently accepting practical verification from users."

Guangzhou clears the blockage points and pain points in the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, carries out achievement transformation pilots at the Guangzhou Disruptive Technology Innovation Center, the Guangzhou Laboratory, and the Guangzhou-Hong Kong-Macao Collaborative Innovation Center; innovates ways to promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, optimizes the way fiscal funds are invested, and guides diversified social capital to follow up in coordination.

Build innovation platforms, and lead new tracks of frontier science and technology.

The Guangzhou Laboratory, located on Guangzhou International Bio Island (广州国际生物岛), gathers multiple academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering as well as national-level leading talents, links 30 national key laboratories, more than 920 network hospitals, and more than 110 science and technology enterprises, and has achieved a series of breakthrough original results in the etiology of major respiratory infectious diseases, pathogenic mechanisms, and the development of vaccines and antibody drugs.

"The entire process of R&D, design, testing, and production of brain-computer interface products can be efficiently coordinated within the Greater Bay Area, giving us key support," said Li Yuanqing, head of Huanan Naokong (Guangdong) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (华南脑控（广东）智能科技有限公司).

As early as around 2020, Guangzhou established a special project to focus on supporting brain-computer interface R&D, and it is precisely by relying on this special project that Huanan Naokong's research on multiple key technologies has been accelerated. Since then, Guangzhou has incorporated brain-computer interfaces into its future industry cultivation system, providing policy support for enterprises' continuous investment and R&D iteration.

At present, Guangzhou has established more than 40 national-level innovation platforms and built a batch of concept verification centers, pilot-scale maturation platforms, and public technical service carriers. Guangzhou has issued a plan to accelerate the construction of a strong city in advanced manufacturing, clarifying the creation of a batch of first-trial, first-use demonstration application scenarios in industries such as embodied intelligence, intelligent unmanned systems, and frontier new materials.

Keeping the instructions in mind, Guangzhou anchors on innovation leadership and promotes mutual reinforcement and dual strengthening of industry and technology.

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Gansu county-level TCM medical institutions coverage reaches 98.8%

Lanzhou, August 21 (Reporter Song Chaojun) — The reporter learned from the press conference "Inherit the Essence, Uphold Integrity and Innovate, Comprehensively Advance the Revitalization and Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine" held in Gansu that: Since the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Gansu Province has taken the comprehensive implementation of the major project for the revitalization and development of traditional Chinese medicine as its key lever, promoting high-quality development of the traditional Chinese medicine undertaking, industry, and culture.

In recent years, Gansu has built nearly 300 national-level and provincial-level advantageous specialty departments, and has achieved full coverage of traditional Chinese medicine services in general hospitals, full coverage of traditional Chinese medicine clinics in primary-level medical and health institutions, and full coverage of the promotion and application of appropriate traditional Chinese medicine techniques. The coverage rate of county-run traditional Chinese medicine medical institutions reached 98.8 percent, and the proportion of primary-level traditional Chinese medicine service volume reached 41.2 percent, meeting the people's livelihood expectation of "convenient access to traditional Chinese medicine consultations and confidence in taking traditional Chinese medicine." In 2025, the scale of Gansu Province's full traditional Chinese medicine industry chain reached 110.9 billion yuan.

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Editor: Ji Yalin, Lu Tao, Zhang Weihao

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The Breakthrough Path of Domestic High-End CNC Machine Tools (Academician Explains Science · National Heavy Equipment)

By: 谭建荣

Industrial mother machines are the "great instruments of the nation" that underpin modern manufacturing, and their technological level marks the height of development of the industrial system. As an important component of industrial mother machines, China's domestically produced high-end CNC machine tools are now moving from "reverse imitation" into a new stage of "independent forward design."

In this installment of "Academicians Explain Science," Tan Jianrong, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, will provide an in-depth interpretation of the strategic value of domestically produced high-end CNC machine tools, break down the technical core of "forward design," and look ahead to the picture of industrial transformation empowered by artificial intelligence. Let us take a close look at the path of innovative breakthroughs in domestic high-end machine tools and feel the strong pulse of China's manufacturing advancing toward high-quality development.

— Editor

What is an industrial mother machine?

An industrial mother machine is the "mother machine" that manufactures industrial equipment. Without machine tools, nothing from mobile phones to aircraft could be made. In practice, machine tools can produce new machine tools of even higher performance, completing the self-iteration of the industrial system. As an important component of industrial mother machines, domestically produced high-end CNC machine tools have achieved considerable development in recent years.

On April 21 this year, during the 14th China CNC Machine Tool Fair, the "Industrial Mother Machine Forward Design Platform" was launched in Shanghai.

The release of this platform not only filled a gap in relevant technology but also marked the official transition of domestic high-end CNC machine tool R&D from "reverse imitation" into a new stage of "independent forward design." The "forward design" technology system for complete high-end CNC machine tool solutions developed by the Zhejiang University team is an important component of this effort.

There is still a gap with the world's leading level

From millimeter-scale precision chip bases and complex optical lenses to aircraft engine blades and core components of aircraft carriers... almost all types of mechanical equipment depend on machine tool processing, among which CNC machine tools are called industrial mother machines and are foundational manufacturing equipment at the national strategic level. The technological level of a country's CNC machine tools is closely related to the ceiling of development in fields such as aerospace, high-speed rail and shipping, and nuclear power facilities.

At present, China's machine tool industry has formed a relatively complete industrial system, the gap with the world's leading level is rapidly narrowing, and China has become the world's largest producer and seller of CNC machine tools. In 2025, the industry's revenue from enterprises above designated size exceeded 1 trillion yuan, and in the same year, China's share of machine tool exports in the global market rose to first place in the world for the first time.

But it must also be recognized that in designing and producing high-end machine tool products, China still has a certain gap with the world's leading level, and the situation of "insufficient high-end capability" has not yet been fundamentally reversed. Taking high-end CNC machine tools as an example, this type of machine tool features high performance, high reliability, and intelligence, with rapid traverse speeds reaching 60–200 meters per minute and machining positioning accuracy of 1 micron. Ultra-precision machine tools, moreover, are required to reach sub-micron or even nanometer levels.

For a considerable period of time, China's high-end CNC machine tools adopted a reverse design approach — inferring the design backward from the physical product. Although CNC machine tools developed with this method can imitate the appearance, structure, and dimensions of high-end CNC machine tools, they have always been "similar in form but not in spirit," falling considerably short in performance. Taking accuracy and stability alone, China's high-end CNC machine tools still lag behind the international top level in ultra-high-precision machining, five-axis simultaneous machining of complex curved surfaces, and accuracy stability during long-duration continuous machining, making it difficult to fully meet the extreme working condition requirements of aerospace, precision medical devices, and other fields. As for core components of high-end CNC machine tools, such as high-precision CNC systems, high-speed motorized spindles, precision ball screws, and linear guides, China's rate of self-sufficiency is not yet high enough.

The reason lies in the fact that in the design process of lower-end products, one "knows what but not why," and also in the lack of the ability to grasp the "essential connotation" of the machine tool product design process. To this end, the Zhejiang University team has proposed a "forward design" technology system for high-end CNC machine tools.

It is expected to break through foreign technical barriers

What is the "forward design" technology system?

The design of industrial mother machines mainly includes key technologies such as geometric feature extraction, process requirement analysis, kinematic scheme design, and complete machine layout configuration design. This technology system takes the processing requirements of complex parts as the design starting point, systematically analyzes and solves geometry, process, kinematics, stiffness, and accuracy layer by layer, and then designs and generates industrial mother machine design schemes precisely adapted to part features. Based on this decoupling design logic, the design of CNC machine tools requires layer-by-layer progression and mutual adaptation, ultimately forming the machine tool's high-performance machining capability.

Among these, several "forward design" technologies are particularly critical. Taking the "forward design" of adaptation to complex curved surface geometry as an example, traditional machine tool design typically only adapts to regular planar and arc structures, while the engine impellers, integral bladed disks, high-end molds, and other complex workpieces processed by high-end machine tools usually have complex geometric shapes such as free-form surfaces or irregular structures, with difficult-to-machine features including large corner angles, strong twisting, curvature jumps, and machining interference. This requires intelligent machine tool design schemes adapted to curved surface geometry.

Another example is the forward design of machining processes and machine tool kinematic chains. High-end machine tools typically have at least 3 linear axes and 2 rotary axes to achieve five-axis simultaneous machining. This "forward design" technology abandons the traditional experience-based kinematic parameter matching model, and through analysis of rotary axis configuration patterns on the machine tool kinematic chain and multi-axis kinematic topology design, ensures smooth motion of the tool under high-speed machining while balancing machining efficiency and forming accuracy.

Based on the above technologies, the Zhejiang University team overcame technical difficulties such as the difficulty of complete machine "forward design" and the difficulty of improving machining accuracy, broke through foreign technical barriers and market monopolies, and independently developed a digital design software toolset for complete high-end CNC machine tools.

Among these, the process requirement intelligent analysis tool, CNC machine tool kinematic chain design tool, CNC machine tool skeleton model layout design tool, and the CNC machine tool design resource library have been widely applied to key machine tool models such as gantry machining centers, high-precision horizontal jig boring machines, and heavy-duty milling-turning composite machine tools, achieving the development of a series of new products and performance breakthroughs. In January 2021, the team's project "Key Technologies and Applications of Complete Machine Design and Manufacturing Processes for High-Performance Gantry Machining Centers" won a second-class National Technology Invention Award.

Seeking a breakthrough point for paradigm change

At present, a new generation of information technology represented by artificial intelligence is profoundly affecting all industries, and the machine tool industry is no exception. High-end CNC machine tools are developing in the direction of high performance, intelligence, compounding, high reliability, and greenness.

If effective breakthroughs can be achieved in fields such as digital twin and virtual commissioning technology for high-end CNC machine tools and spatial-intelligence-based generative intelligent design technology for machine tools, this will provide important support for independent design innovation of China's high-end CNC machine tools.

For example, integrating data-driven technology and improving high-end machine tool design performance through a digital twin framework can effectively break through the limitations of traditional design methods. Promoting AI-empowered intelligent design of high-end CNC machine tools, through semi-physical simulation virtual commissioning technology combining real electricity with virtual machines, can perform high-fidelity commissioning and optimization of deviations between the tool tip point and the workpiece surface, reduce physical prototype trials, and thereby achieve intelligent design optimization of high-end CNC machine tools.

Artificial intelligence large model technology has triggered a global industrial transformation. Spatial-intelligence-based generative intelligent design technology for machine tools is an urgent need for industrial development over the next 10 years and is also a focal point of international technological and industrial competition.

In machine tool design, the complex coupling relationships and hidden patterns among workpiece geometry, machining processes, machine tool spatial structure, and its dynamic and static performance have not yet been clearly revealed and quantitatively expressed. Combining advanced generative design models to overcome the key technologies of generative intelligent design for high-end machine tools based on spatial-intelligence multimodal large models is the key breakthrough point for achieving a fundamental transformation of the high-end machine tool design paradigm.

Innovative design leads "Intelligent Manufacturing in China." In the future, our team will further consider how to extend the innovative design experience of gantry machining centers to the entire machine tool industry, establish Chinese machine tool brands with independent intellectual property rights, drive China's manufacturing toward high-quality development, and continue to contribute to the transformation of "Made in China" into "Created in China," "Chinese speed" into "Chinese quality," and "Chinese products" into "Chinese brands."

(The author is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Qiushi Distinguished Professor at Zhejiang University; compiled from an interview by staff reporter Dou Hanyang)

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What Will Be Mined at the First Mine in Space?

By: 李 扬

Recently, topics such as "a small asteroid worth trillions of dollars" have repeatedly attracted attention. If humanity truly builds the first mine in space in the future, what will be mined first? The answer may be surprising: it will likely not be expensive metals, but water, oxygen, and even soil.

When it comes to space minerals, people typically think: as Earth's resources become increasingly strained, humanity flies to the Moon or asteroids to extract minerals and then transports the resources back to Earth. This notion is not entirely without reason. Some rocks on the lunar surface contain titanium and iron, and rare earths have also been detected; many asteroids contain iron, nickel, and platinum-group metals. However, from "having resources" to "being able to mine them," and then to "being worth transporting back to Earth," there remains a very long distance.

Judging whether a resource is worth developing requires comprehensive consideration of ore body scale, grade, occurrence state, extraction method, energy consumption, processing difficulty, and transportation costs. Especially in space, extraction and transportation costs often determine everything. Since this is the case, why go to space to mine at all? In fact, what humanity truly needs is not necessarily to bring resources back to Earth, but to let resources remain in space and play a role there.

Today, when humanity carries out lunar exploration and deep-space exploration, nearly all supplies come from Earth: the water astronauts drink, the oxygen they breathe, rocket fuel, scientific equipment... If this were merely "check-in style" lunar landings, this approach could still be sustained; but if we are to establish a long-term operating lunar research station and use the Moon as a base for continuing to explore Mars and deep space, relying solely on continuous resupply from Earth will become increasingly difficult. Therefore, space agencies of various countries have in recent years paid increasing attention to a concept: in-situ resource utilization.

The so-called "in-situ resource utilization" means making the greatest possible use of resources already available locally on the Moon, Mars, or asteroids to produce the products humanity needs, rather than transporting everything from Earth. Under this logic, the standard for resource value has changed. On Earth, a ton of water has little economic value; but on the Moon, a ton of water may be more precious than gold. Likewise, lunar soil is not just ordinary dust. Lunar soil contains abundant silicon, iron, aluminum, titanium, and oxygen bound to these elements. In the future, people are expected to use methods such as heating and electrolysis to extract oxygen and metals from lunar soil, and to use the remaining materials to pave roads, build landing sites, and even serve as three-dimensional printing construction materials.

Of course, achieving this goal is not easy. The high vacuum, extreme temperature differences, strong radiation, and low-gravity environment on the lunar surface will all pose enormous challenges to resource prospecting, extraction, and processing. How much water ice is actually stored in the lunar polar regions? How can oxygen be extracted efficiently? How can lunar soil be used to manufacture construction materials? These questions still require long-term research. The most important task in current space resource research is not to rush into putting a price tag on lunar minerals, but to draw a more precise resource map. In recent years, China's Chang'e program has continuously achieved breakthroughs, bringing back precious lunar samples and providing an important basis for understanding the Moon's material composition, resource distribution, and formation history. In the future, as major projects such as the International Lunar Research Station are gradually advanced, the scientific understanding of lunar resources will become an important foundation for deep-space exploration.

From the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, and then to the Industrial Age, humanity has continuously discovered new resources and redefined the meaning of "mineral." Today, as the boundaries of exploration extend from Earth to the Moon and Mars, this ancient concept is also undergoing change. Moving from "Earth resupply" to "obtaining materials locally" (就地取材 (jiù dì qǔ cái - "obtain materials from the local area," to make use of local resources) may appear to be merely a change in mining location, but in reality it signifies a profound transformation in the way humanity explores the universe.

(The author is an associate professor at the School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University)

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Entanglement distance between matter-based quantum bits greatly increased

Hefei, our correspondent Tian Xianjin (田先进) reports: The reporter learned from the University of Science and Technology of China that researchers including Pan Jianwei, Bao Xiaohui (包小辉), and Zhang Qiang (张强) at the university, in collaboration with the Jinan Institute of Quantum Technology (济南量子技术研究院), the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (中国科学院上海微系统与信息技术研究所), and other units, successfully achieved quantum entanglement between two cold atom quantum memories across 420 kilometers of optical fiber, and broke the theoretical limit of relay-free quantum entanglement distribution at distances exceeding 230 kilometers. This achievement greatly increased the entanglement distance between matter-based quantum bits, laying the foundation for the construction of intercity-scale quantum networks.

Long-distance entanglement between quantum memories is the technical foundation for building the quantum internet, and is expected to be applied in directions such as long-distance quantum communication based on quantum relays, distributed quantum computing, and distributed quantum sensing. The key to extending the entanglement distance between quantum memories lies in improving the entanglement success rate. To this end, the research team has for many years continuously carried out research on entanglement connection based on single-photon interference, solving technical difficulties such as long-fiber phase locking, remote phase synchronization of independent lasers, and high-efficiency low-noise quantum frequency conversion. To further extend the entanglement distance to several hundred kilometers, it is also necessary to continue reducing channel transmission loss and improving the long-term stability of single-photon phase locking.

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Webb Telescope Detects Water and Dust Near Black Hole at Center of Milky Way

Xinhua News Agency dispatch (reporter Luo Yu (罗毓)) — The European Space Agency issued a bulletin on its official website on the 11th, stating that an international team of astronomers, through analysis of observation data from the U.S. James Webb Space Telescope in 2025, discovered water and oxygen-rich dust around a star in its late evolutionary stage near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. This discovery indicates that even in intense radiation environments, stars in late evolutionary stages can still continuously release into surrounding space the materials needed for forming stars and planets.

The research team focused its observations this time on the star IRS 3. Using the mid-infrared instrument of the Webb Space Telescope, the researchers analyzed the infrared light emitted by IRS 3, found clear signatures of oxygen-rich dust, and for the first time definitively detected water in the envelope surrounding the star. The research results show that even in the harsh environment near the supermassive black hole, stars in late evolutionary stages such as IRS 3 can still produce dust and other materials, and these materials are of great significance for forming the next generation of new stars and planets in the future.

The related research paper has been published in the international academic journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

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Saving "golden gas" this way (On the front line)

By: 本报记者 董泽扬

“Ignition!” Inside the launch command hall of the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site, the command rang out. At the launch pad not far away, a Long March carrier rocket was heading into space.
Behind the "signature scene" of a rocket launch, neatly arranged gas compartments and crisscrossing pipelines add and supply gas to the rocket through repeated "breaths." Every liftoff depends on the meticulous budgeting of rare resources.
"What is stored here is 'golden gas,' and every launch cannot do without it." Standing before the helium gas source system, He Yan, deputy general manager of Wenchang Space Launch Support Co., Ltd., explained that helium, which is stable in nature and does not react with rocket fuel, serves as both a "cleaner" and a "regulator." Before launch, helium must first "run" through the pipelines to remove impurities and air. In addition, when liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are loaded into the rocket, helium is used to stabilize the pressure in the propellant tanks to prevent the tanks from collapsing.
Therefore, helium is indispensable in the rocket launch process and is truly worthy of the name "golden gas." In China, helium has a high degree of external dependence and is expensive.
"Commercial spaceflight pays particular attention to costs—every penny must be spent where it counts," He Yan said.
"By changing the approach, we saved nearly 1.5 million yuan." Fu Jinglin, head of the helium gas source system, was deeply impressed by the "swap" of helium. The storage tanks and other equipment delivered by the manufacturer had their internal cavities filled with nitrogen; to put them into use, the nitrogen had to be replaced with high-purity helium.
How was the helium "swapped"? At first, it was simple: helium was pumped in, nitrogen was pushed out, and the cycle of purging was repeated until only helium remained inside. This approach carried low risk, but the helium consumption was high, and the cost came to more than 1.8 million yuan.
How could it be made more economical? The evacuation-and-refill method, already used in the chemical industry, came into the team's view. "First discharge the nitrogen, then draw a vacuum, and after the pressure drops to a certain level, fill it with helium," Fu Jinglin explained. Preliminary calculations showed that this method could save more than 25 percent of the helium.
The new method also carried risks, and controlling the speed was crucial. If the vacuum was drawn too quickly, the pressure inside the tank would become too low, and the tank could be "crushed." In addition, if the helium was filled too quickly, the gas could be "forced" into the vacuum pump, causing damage. "We set alarms and checked the equipment status every 10 minutes." Fu Jinglin and his colleagues worked in two shifts, keeping 16 helium storage tanks and 2 gas cylinder trailers running without interruption.
After the replacement work was completed, sampling and testing of the gas compartments showed that the new method saved 13,600 standard cubic meters of helium, and the actual cost of the replacement was less than 400,000 yuan.
Saving helium is not only about the "starting point," but also about daily launch operations. Before launch, based on the historical gas consumption of different rocket models, high-pressure, medium-pressure, and low-pressure gas cylinders are used to match different needs; after launch, with the help of valves and diaphragm compressors, helium that would otherwise escape is recovered into storage tanks.
The energy-saving account for "golden gas" can be calculated even further. The closer the gas supply is to the launch site, the lower the cost can be driven. "Our factory is only a few kilometers from the launch tower, and the entire chain—production, storage, filling, and transportation—can work in coordination." Yang Chun, a relevant person in charge of Hainan Jiufeng Specialty Gases Co., Ltd., said that the company can supply liquid hydrogen, high-purity liquid methane, helium, liquid oxygen, and liquid nitrogen nearby, and in the future will also adapt to new demands for special fuels and special gases at the launch site.
In the future industry of commercial spaceflight, energy conservation and efficiency improvement are an "ongoing process." "We will further promote innovative integration to serve the needs of industrial development," He Yan said.

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US and European astronauts complete partial replacement of communication antenna during spacewalk

According to Xinhua News Agency (reporters Tan Jingjing (谭晶晶), Luo Yu (罗毓)) — NASA said on the 18th that two astronauts aboard the International Space Station completed a spacewalk lasting more than six hours that day, aimed at replacing the station's ground-to-air communication antenna. Because the operation took longer than expected, the replacement antenna was not installed during this spacewalk.

The two spacewalking astronauts were NASA's Anil Menon and the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot. According to the introduction, Menon and Adenot removed a faulty ground-to-air communication antenna and permanently secured it to the International Space Station's truss structure. Because disconnecting cables and loosening bolts took longer than expected, the astronauts were unable to install the replacement antenna as originally planned. The relevant installation work is expected to be completed during the next spacewalk, currently planned for the 25th of this month.

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本版责编：智春丽 陈圆圆 银 燕

Layout design: Zhang Fangman (张芳曼)

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Professional services respond to public needs; Taikang focuses on delivering long-term value

Taikang Insurance Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Taikang"), over its 30 years since establishment, has actively responded to national development strategies, continuously answered the people's aspirations for a better life and especially for a better old age, and with innovation as its engine, has blazed a path of high-quality development from life insurance to the broader health sector, and from traditional life insurance to new life insurance.

Taikang has always adhered to the concrete action of "service first," fully leveraging the insurance industry's function as an economic shock absorber and social stabilizer, and writing Taikang's long-term value answer sheet in serving the overall situation of Chinese-style modernization.

Responding to the tide of development with sustained innovation

The insurance industry is an undertaking that is people-oriented and closely bound up with the well-being of the people. Only by deeply rooting its own development in the soil of the overall development situation and the needs of the masses can it possess the vitality to traverse economic cycles.

Looking back at Taikang's 30-year development journey, its two key leaps were both forward-looking layouts that followed the tide of development and echoed the demands of the masses.

The first leap was Taikang's response to market demand, filling the supply gap in the domestic life insurance market. In the 1990s, residents' demand for risk protection gradually emerged, but the domestic life insurance industry was still in its infancy. Since receiving approval for establishment in 1996, Taikang spent 15 years actively responding to the public's demand for family risk protection, launching the "Love Family Agreement" (爱家之约) family insurance policy, and itself evolved from a learning, imitative, follower-type life insurance company into a modern life insurance company with standards and governance structures.

The second leap was Taikang's forward-looking layout for the "longevity era," proactively responding to the medical and elderly care needs under the background of population aging. Facing the trend of population aging, Taikang anticipated that with the arrival of the "longevity era," health and elderly care would become important livelihood needs, and that life insurance companies could not merely be payers of post-hoc claims, but must become providers of full-lifecycle services. Therefore, Taikang embarked on its second 15-year path of independent innovation: from launching the insurance product connecting to elderly care community rights — "Happiness Agreement" (幸福有约) — to constructing the three closed loops of "longevity, health, and prosperity," and then to formally proposing the new life insurance model, adding the "service end" of medical care, elderly care, health, and hospice (医养康宁) to the traditional life insurance two-dimensional structure of "payment end" and "investment end," committed to providing silver-haired populations with three major solutions: longevity, health, and prosperity.

Responding to livelihood needs with coordinated efforts

A main business oriented toward goodness is the deepest foundation of Taikang's fulfillment of social responsibility. At present, the public's demand for high-quality medical and elderly care services is increasingly prominent, which requires the financial and insurance industry to proactively undertake the social responsibility of enhancing people's livelihood and well-being and optimizing the allocation of elderly care and health resources, and to comprehensively write the major chapter of elderly care finance with more three-dimensional and tangible services.

Taikang answers livelihood needs with its new life insurance model. The new life insurance model resolves the limitation of traditional life insurance of "paying only, not serving," and through the coordinated efforts of the payment end, service end, and investment end, upgrades insurance from a paper contract to a companionship running through the entire life cycle.

At the payment end, Taikang helps improve the multi-tiered social security system. As of the end of 2025, Taikang's cumulative claims payments exceeded 220.3 billion yuan, holding the risk bottom line for tens of millions of families. For groups with insufficient traditional protection coverage, Taikang has launched a series of inclusive products: in 2025, it provided exclusive insurance protection to nearly 10.88 million new urban residents and over 13.49 million elderly people; provided over 9.07 million insurance protections to small and micro enterprises and self-employed households; as of the end of June 2026, it had cumulatively participated in 45 long-term care insurance pilot projects, with coverage exceeding 100 million person-times, cumulative benefits received exceeding 2.993 million person-times, and claims payments exceeding 2.01 billion yuan.

At the service end, Taikang expands the supply of high-quality elderly care and health services. Over more than 10 years, Taikang has built the "urban elderly care consortium" (城市养联体) model of "flagship CCRC communities — city-center institutions — community and home-based services": at present, Taikang Community (泰康之家) has laid out 48 projects in 37 cities, with 30 communities open for operation, and over 23,000 elderly people enjoying the integrated medical-elderly care service of "one community, one medical institution"; five medical centers have been established, two of which have been upgraded to Class 3A hospitals.

At the investment end, Taikang leverages the advantages of patient capital to empower the real economy. Taikang actively participates in and supports economic construction, serving as a co-initiator of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway equity investment plan, helping China's high-speed rail achieve independent innovation and accelerated development; it has engaged in oil and gas pipeline joint ventures and cooperation with PetroChina, serving the construction of the West-to-East Gas Transmission project. As of the end of 2025, Taikang has accumulated a considerable scale of high-quality long-term assets in infrastructure fields such as high-speed railways, expressways, natural gas pipeline networks, and new energy through equity and debt methods. In the technology finance field, Taikang treats technology as a core strategic investment direction, focusing on key areas such as information technology, semiconductors, new energy, and robotics for investment layout. As of the end of 2025, Taikang's investment amount in the technology industry exceeded 180 billion yuan. In the green finance field, Taikang has anchored onto the "dual carbon" goals, conducting systematic in-depth research and forward-looking layout in key industries such as photovoltaics, new energy power generation, and energy storage, with green finance investment scale exceeding 300 billion yuan. In the broader health field, Taikang has cumulatively invested over 70 billion yuan, building an elderly care and health service network comprising "longevity communities + longevity medical" institutions, with services covering 56 key cities.

From weaving a dense livelihood network, to optimizing service supply, to empowering the real economy, in the three-end coordination of Taikang's new life insurance, every end is closely tied to livelihood needs, and every end is focused on serving the overall situation.

Empowering public welfare undertakings with professional capabilities

In recent years, the public welfare practices of modern enterprises have gradually moved away from purely monetary donations toward professional empowerment that uses core corporate advantages to solve social pain points and promote sustainable development.

At present, Taikang, with the professional capabilities forged through years of innovation and practice in elderly care, continuously gives back to society through its increasingly complete public welfare system.

The most representative project in Taikang's public welfare matrix is the Yicai Elderly Assistance (溢彩助老) program, which has built a "public welfare elderly care consortium" (公益养联体): through the "Yicai Thousand Homes" (溢彩千家) project, it has funded 500 elderly care institutions and donated over 40,000 pieces of elderly-appropriate rehabilitation equipment; through the "Yicai Training" (溢彩培训) project, it has trained over 150,000 person-times of elderly care practitioners; through the "Yicai Elderly Care Practitioner" (溢彩康养人) selection, it has discovered industry role models and enhanced the sense of fulfillment of elderly care workers. This model exports the professional capabilities Taikang has accumulated in the elderly care field to grassroots elderly care institutions, and at present, 98,000 elderly people have enjoyed high-quality elderly care services as a result.

In other fields, Taikang has also begun to apply and promote its capability-export public welfare model: in the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas, it has built projects such as the Hubei Jingshan Farm and the Guangdong Luofu Mountain Health and Elderly Care project, exploring sustainable rural development models from the perspectives of industrial upgrading and talent return; in public health, it has established special funds to support research projects at universities and hospitals, producing 124 academic papers and providing intellectual support for the construction of the public health system; in art public welfare, it has spent 23 years supporting over 1,050 artists, holding more than 620 exhibitions and events, bringing art into communities and campuses, and becoming an important supplement to social aesthetic education.

The deep empowerment of professional capabilities and the sustained investment of financial support highlight Taikang's fundamental character of goodness.

From a startup life insurance company to a health industry group that has ranked among the Fortune Global 500 for nine consecutive years, Taikang fulfills its social responsibility with sustained public welfare practice, forges the cornerstone of the enterprise's long-term development, and firmly adheres to the choice of business toward goodness. Facing the future, Taikang will continue to closely align with livelihood needs to improve product and service supply, and continue to write new chapters of business toward goodness in the process of responding to development requirements.

Data source: Taikang Insurance Group Co., Ltd.

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Microblades: The Key to Decoding China’s 10,000-Year Cultural Prelude (Archaeology in China)

By: 仪明洁

In daily life and work, the tools we use are almost all composite tools assembled from parts produced by modern industrial standardization and batch production. In the long cultural evolution of the Paleolithic, there is one stone tool technology most similar to industrial production concepts—microblade technology. Before the popularization of agricultural civilization, microblade technology witnessed the survival evolution, technological innovation, and cultural exchange of prehistoric populations, and is a key to decoding the ten-thousand-year cultural prelude of China.

China's traditional core-flake technology, which continued for nearly 2 million years, belongs to the simple hard-hammer flaking mode. In contrast, microblade technology is a systematic stone tool production system of prepared cores and directed blade removal. Through soft hammer, indirect percussion, pressure flaking and other blade removal techniques, dozens of standardized special micro-flakes, mostly 2 to 5 cm in length, with parallel and regular edges, thin, sharp and acute, were continuously removed from a single core. Microblades are small in size and not convenient for direct hand-held use; they had to be hafted and bound onto wooden handles, bone grooves, antler shafts and other carriers, assembled into multifunctional composite tools, serving as hunting arrowheads, spear blades, and cutting implements. Microblades were consumables that could be replaced at any time. Standardized preparation, batch production, modular hafting, and lightweight portability made microblades more suitable for the survival needs of ancient humans.

From the perspective of the global technological lineage, microblade technology was a technological innovation by which ancient humans adapted to the extreme environment of the Last Glacial Period. Existing archaeological dating data show that initial microblade technology remains first appeared in the Altai region of Siberia, dating to approximately 35,000 years ago. From 29,000 to 15,000 years ago, global annual average temperatures dropped significantly, forests retreated, dry-cold steppe and tundra expanded, and animal and plant resources changed accordingly. Ancient humans expanded their survival radius and carried out cross-regional seasonal migrations. Traditional heavy handaxes, irregular flakes, and large blades were heavy and wore out quickly, unable to match the highly mobile survival mode, and microblade technology became the optimal solution for ancient humans to adapt to the glacial environment. Driven by the continuous cooling of the glacial climate, initial microblade technology gradually spread southward and eastward, and matured in Northeast China and North China. Over the past 20 years, continuous excavations at a number of key sites such as Helong Dadong in Jilin (和龙大洞), Xinmiaozhuang in Hebei (新庙庄), and Shuiquanyu in Shandong (水泉峪), combined with multidisciplinary approaches including lithic technology analysis, high-precision dating, lithic raw material provenance, and paleoenvironmental reconstruction, have completely outlined a clear spatiotemporal evolutionary trajectory of mature microblade technology.

Around 28,000 years ago, mature microblade technology first appeared in Northeast China, and the Xishantou site in Heilongjiang (西山头) has yielded the earliest microblade materials known to date. Around 27,000 to 26,000 years ago, North China rapidly completed the localization of microblade technology, represented by the Xishahe (西沙河) and Xinmiaozhuang sites in the Nihewan Basin (泥河湾盆地), Xiachuan in Shanxi (下川), Shuiquanyu in Shandong, and Peiligang in Henan (裴李岗), and mature microblade technology became widely popularized. In the following 2,000 years, two mature microblade industries in Northeast and North China spread rapidly, completing full implementation in northern China before the arrival of the Last Glacial Maximum, thereby evolving into two parallel technological systems, namely the dual structure of the northern microblade industry and the conical/boat-shaped microcore industry as defined by the archaeological community. The two major systems are roughly demarcated by the Yanshan-Great Wall belt, displaying the cultural pattern of northern China in the late Paleolithic and suggesting the differentiated adaptation of prehistoric populations to different ecological environments.

Microblades are the key link connecting the late Paleolithic and the Neolithic. Around 18,000 years ago, the Last Glacial Maximum ended, global temperatures rose, vegetation recovered, the total amount of available animal and plant resources increased, and population size expanded. Under the dual influence of population growth and the reshaping of resource patterns, the highly mobile hunting-gathering system of the late Paleolithic became unsustainable. Populations mastering microblade technology established long-term camps, forming fixed sites with multi-layer cultural deposits and concentrated fire-use remains, clearly different from the one-time temporary camps of the glacial period. At late Paleolithic sites such as Yujiagou (于家沟) and Lijiagou (李家沟), grain-grinding tools, ground stone tools, proto-pottery and other artifacts appeared successively. At Neolithic sites such as Donghulin (东胡林), Peiligang, and Hongshan (红山), microblades still existed. Ancestors relied on pottery for cooking and ground stone tools for cultivation, but fishing and hunting remained an important food supplement, and microblades continued to serve hunting and cutting functions. In Northeast China and on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, microblades continued to be used, constituting a tool kit combining hunting-gathering and agricultural production, until the arrival of the Bronze Age.

After the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, the alpine cold environment of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau improved, and North China ancestors who mastered microblade technology were able to break through the limitations of low-altitude survival, using the northeastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau as a springboard to continuously expand the boundaries of high-altitude survival. The third locality of the Niadi site in Tibet (尼阿底), dating to 11,000 years ago, has yielded the earliest microblade remains in the hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, consistent with the microblade technology of the southern part of North China, showing a strong connection between the microblade technologies of the two regions. The Layihai (拉乙亥) and Canxiong Gashuo (参雄尕朔) sites in Qinghai, dating to approximately 7,000–8,000 years ago, also show inheritance of the North China microblade technological system.

The production and use of microblades was a systematic activity of advance planning and orderly control, with distinct technological organizational logic. Ancestors selected and optimized raw materials, repaired and prepared cores, controlled flaking angles and force, and followed fixed technological processes to batch-produce standardized microblades, breaking away from the primitive production mode of picking up and striking at will without regular form. Through long-term production practice, they formed a technological paradigm of standardized manufacture, modular assembly, and consumable replacement and reuse, constructing a mature composite tool production system. This technological rationality and ordering thinking, born in the glacial period and running through the Paleolithic–Neolithic transition, was passed down from generation to generation and continued to evolve, gradually extending from the technological norms of stone tool production to the internal cultural genes of handicraft standardized production, jade grade selection, and ritual order construction.

The tiny microblade contains the survival wisdom of Chinese ancestors more than 20,000 years ago in adapting to nature and cultural interconnection. From the northern plains to the snow-covered plateau, from the inland hinterland to the eastern islands, this stone tool technology born of survival needs supported ancient humans through the desperate glacial environment, connected the cultural transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic, and demonstrated the 连绵不绝 (lián mián bù jué - "continuous and unbroken," ceaseless and unending) and 兼容并蓄 (jiān róng bìng xù - "inclusive and embracing," tolerant and all-embracing) character of Chinese prehistoric culture.

(Author affiliation: School of History, Renmin University of China)

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When Ballads Take Root in the Rice Fields

By: 周飞亚

Sowing rice seed at the time of Grain Rain, then after the seedlings grow, transplanting them into the paddy fields while simultaneously releasing fish fry; once the fry reach two to three fingers in width, ducklings are released. The rice plants provide shade and protection for the fish, the various insects attracted become food for the fish and ducks, the ducks help the rice plants eat pests, the movement of the fish and ducks loosens the soil of the paddy fields and increases the oxygen content of the water, and their manure just happens to fertilize the fields. This is the farming method — the rice-fish-duck symbiosis system — that has been passed down for more than 1,400 years in the ethnic minority regions deep in the mountains of Congjiang, Guizhou.

In Guizhou, where "there is not three feet of flat land," arable land is scarce and precious. The rice-fish-duck symbiosis system can achieve "three products from one field," utilizing cultivable land with maximum efficiency, embodying the survival wisdom of the mountain ancestors who turned scarcity into abundance.

Recently, the Tenth Agricultural Heritage Conference was held at Kaili University in Guizhou, coinciding with the 15th anniversary of the Congjiang Dong Township Rice-Fish-Duck System becoming a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System of the United Nations. Expert teams once again entered Congjiang to conduct field investigations of the current state of protection and development pathways of the heritage site.

Fifteen years after the successful heritage inscription, the changes in Congjiang are visible and tangible. The golden signboard of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System has injected a continuous source of development momentum into this county town in southeastern Guizhou.

Heritage protection has brought a win-win outcome of ecological protection and economic growth.

The rice-fish-duck symbiosis forms a natural pest and disease prevention and control network. In the demonstration areas, the incidence of rice blast has decreased by 40 percent, weeds in the fields are only one-fifth of those in monoculture rice paddies, the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has been reduced by 90 percent, and methane emissions have been reduced by more than 30 percent. The thousand-year-old terraced field water systems continue to conserve water, soil, and biodiversity, preserving more than 200 types of local characteristic germplasm resources. Congjiang Xianghe Nuo (fragrant glutinous rice) has a fragrant aroma and enjoys the reputation that "one mu of rice plants spreads fragrance for ten li, one household steaming rice perfumes the whole village." In 2016, it was selected as a geographical indication agricultural product by the Ministry of Agriculture. The paddy field fish is a type of carp raised in rice paddies, formed through hundreds of years of natural selection and artificial breeding under the local specific ecological environment. It is extremely well adapted to the shallow water of rice paddies, has strong reproductive capacity, high survival rates, and delicious meat. The ducks are also carefully selected breeds — tolerant of coarse feed, relatively small in size, and able to move flexibly through the gaps between rice seedlings.

The core heritage area of the Congjiang Dong Township Rice-Fish-Duck System was once a deeply impoverished region. Ten years ago, Congjiang established agricultural heritage as the leading industry for the county's poverty alleviation, focusing on its cultivation, registering the geographical indications of "Congjiang Xianghe Nuo" and "Congjiang Paddy Field Fish," and taking the lead in establishing the Qiandongnan Rice-Fish-Duck Industry Alliance. Today, this thousand-year-old farming treasure has long since transformed from an initial self-sufficient smallholder economy into a pillar industry of the county. Scattered terraced fields have been upgraded into standardized bases, with per-mu output value exceeding 10,000 yuan. The single-product annual output value of paddy field fish has exceeded 200 million yuan, and supporting cold-chain processing and e-commerce channels sell products to major urban clusters across the country. The terraced field study tour and homestay demonstration areas built on the agricultural heritage receive an average of 3 million visitors annually and have been selected as an excellent case in global poverty reduction.

Culture, in turn, endows this land with a deeper attraction. Local cultural and tourism departments encourage villages to hold folk activities on a regular basis, such as the "Opening the Rice Seedling Gate" festival, the "Tasting the New" festival, the Swan Mountain Loach Festival, and the Drum Festival, while completely preserving the agricultural landscape of the rice-drying racks and the Dong village terraced fields. Traditional festivals are organically integrated with modern life, becoming important vehicles for the living transmission of ethnic culture. The Grand Song of the Dong people, the Dong pipa songs, the Dong wooden architecture construction techniques, the Yao medicinal bath, and other national-level intangible cultural heritage items are the foundation and support for the development of the agricultural heritage site. However, at present, the cultural and tourism integration of the heritage site mostly remains at the level of basic business forms such as terraced field sightseeing, farmhouse dining, and simple Yao medicinal bath experiences. The expert team recommends that local authorities strengthen overall planning and coordination, reinforce the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System brand identity on the rice paddies, homestays, and specialty product packaging of each village; build thematic museums to systematically display knowledge of biodiversity, water and soil resource management, and traditional farming wisdom; and add immersive and in-depth experience products such as farming activities and nature education, so that visitors can "see the heritage and take away the culture."

Every Dong child, from a young age, must learn to sing the "Song of Building Ponds." The general meaning of the lyrics is: The Dong children, dig the mud, the adults set up bamboo troughs, channeling water across the field ridges, over the mountain cliffs, building ponds to grow crops, building ponds to raise fish and shrimp...

Fish play amid falling rice flowers, ducks swim amid the fragrance of glutinous rice. As the ancient songs take root and sprout among the layered terraced fields, the wisdom of the mountains giving birth to all things finds a warm echo — resounding not only in the valleys, but also in the hearts of all who walk into Congjiang.

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Witnessing Tang Dynasty Border Governance

By: 尚玉平

In 2022, the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology (新疆文物考古研究所) and the Turfan Studies Academy (吐鲁番学研究院) jointly conducted a rescue excavation of the Badamu East Cemetery (巴达木东墓群) north of the Gaochang Ancient City, clearing a total of 11 tombs. The unearthed artifacts and archaeological discoveries carry multiple academic significances, including reconstructing the historical picture of the Western Regions, supplementing gaps in documentary records, and deepening research on frontier governance systems and cultural integration.

The cemetery is located in Badamu Village (巴达木村), Huoyanshan Town (火焰山镇), Turpan City, Xinjiang, and is a burial site dating to the middle and late Tang Dynasty. The tomb forms are relatively uniform, all oriented north-south with the entrance facing south, presenting a "knife" shape in plan. The tombs are generally large in scale, 21–28 meters in total length and 4.5–7.3 meters deep, consisting of a tomb passage, passage hole, light well, corridor, eastern and western side chambers, and a burial chamber. Each tomb contains one to two burials placed on "U"-shaped earthen platforms; individual coffin platforms have door-shaped openings (壸门) built of adobe bricks on their sides, with traces of red painted decoration remaining. The grave goods are extremely abundant, with many artifacts being first discoveries in Xinjiang.

Epitaphs of Cheng Huan (程奂) (died 776, auxiliary fourth rank, upper grade), Deputy Protector-General of the Beiting Protectorate of the Tang Dynasty, and Li Chonghui (李重晖) (died 789, principal fifth rank, upper grade), Chief Administrator of the Xizhou Governor's Office (西州都督府), were successively discovered at the cemetery, filling gaps in historical records. The "Epitaph of Lord Cheng" (程府君墓志) was unearthed from the front chamber of Tomb M11 in this excavation. According to the epitaph text, the tomb occupant Cheng Huan had served as Acting Deputy Protector-General of Beiting during his lifetime. This is another tomb of a senior Western Regions official discovered after the Gao Yao (高耀) tomb in Turpan in 1984. Through examination and interpretation of this epitaph, the tomb occupant's official career has been clarified, confirming that after the An Lushan–Shi Siming Rebellion, the Western Regions still completely inherited Central Plains funeral rites and institutions, implemented the administrative system of prefectures, counties, townships, and villages, and that officials governing regions were all selection-appointed officials commissioned by the imperial court. They moved westward with their families, 恪尽职守 (kè jìn zhí shǒu - "scrupulously fulfill one's duties," to diligently discharge one's responsibilities), and guarded the territory of the Great Tang. Even under the difficult circumstances of "the state's gates blocked to the east, the sea frontier distant to the west," they did not slacken, demonstrating their loyalty to the Great Tang Dynasty.

The relatively large number of painted clay figurines unearthed mainly include tomb guardian beasts, warrior figurines, twelve-zodiac animal figurines, male and female attendant figurines, and animal figurines such as horses, cattle, and camels, serving as the most direct material manifestation of Central Plains funeral ritual institutions. In addition, the funeral custom of placing coins in the mouth and holding coins in the hands of the deceased was prevalent across the tombs. A set of "Wooden Certificates of the Eighth Year of the Tianbao Reign (749)" (天宝八载木券) was unearthed, with more than 230 characters of surviving ink writing, recording the process of holding burial ceremonies before tomb construction. This is closely related to the "grass-cutting ceremony" (斩草仪) recorded in the "New Book of Geography" (地理新书), a geomantic-geographical text compiled by the Northern Song government. Iron certificates discovered in multiple tombs are in fact land purchase certificates buried after the grass-cutting ceremony. The combination of the two provides valuable materials for studying the popularity of Daoist geomancy in Xizhou.

The cemetery yielded large numbers of Kaiyuan Tongbao and Qianyuan Zhongbao coins circulated in the Central Plains, as well as foreign currencies such as Turgesh coins, Persian silver coins, and Byzantine gold coins, and an extremely rare jade Kaiyuan Tongbao, reflecting the flourishing scene of Silk Road trade. Artifacts including a gold-and-silver pingtuo bronze mirror with flower-and-bird patterns representing the relatively high craftsmanship of the Tang Dynasty, a three-handled green-glazed jar with strong Persian style, and a bronze chin rest worn by the tomb occupant fill multiple gaps in Tang Dynasty Western Regions funeral customs and restore the cultural picture of exchange, interaction, and integration among different populations along the Silk Road.

M20 is an earthen cave tomb with a long sloping passage and a single light well, 25.6 meters in total length, with a square burial chamber 4.1 meters long. According to relevant documentary records, the tomb occupant is presumed to have been a frontier ethnic official of the third rank or above enfeoffed by the Tang court. The tomb furnishings consist of a painted wooden coffin, wooden couch, wooden frame, wooden chest, and wooden screen, constituting a first discovery in China. On the wooden couch are placed a table, wooden tray, brush rest, and a ceramic winnowing-basket-shaped inkstone, simulating the behavioral pattern of working in the front hall and resting in the rear bedroom during life, embodying the typical "front hall, rear bedroom" design concept and reproducing the ancient funeral view of "serving the dead as one serves the living." The coffin base has six door-shaped openings on each of the north and south sides, with 12 winged divine beasts painted inside, and images of two tigers capturing a sheep and a tiger capturing a deer painted on the eastern and western sides. These winged beasts present Fulin (拂菻)-style characteristics, both absorbing foreign cultural elements and incorporating Tang Dynasty aesthetics and regulations, demonstrating the Tang Dynasty's tolerance and integration of foreign cultures and serving as a vivid specimen of the pattern of pluralistic unity.

The archaeological discoveries at the Badamu East Cemetery fill multiple archaeological gaps, reproduce the historical scene of the integration and coexistence of various ethnic groups in the Western Regions, embody the unity and inclusiveness of Chinese civilization, witness the effective governance and cultural infiltration of the Western Regions by the central government, and enrich the content of research on the historical development process of Xinjiang within the unified multi-ethnic state system.

(Author's affiliation: Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)

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Those Smiling Faces (New Arrival)

By: 辛 阳

On an early autumn afternoon, in Exhibition Hall No. 1 of the Liaoning Provincial Museum, the lighting was restrained to keep the bronze and pottery from reflecting harsh glare, settling warmly and gently down upon the contours of each artifact. Not arranged by dynasty or vessel type, more than 300 objects spread out along the slightly upturned arc of a mouth corner.

This exhibition is titled "Smile — The Imprint of Chinese Spirit in Cultural Relics." The Liaoning Provincial Museum has linked 38 cultural and museum institutions nationwide, gathering more than 300 pottery, jade, bronze, stone sculpture, painting, and sculpture works. The curators abandoned chronology and classification, building instead five thematic threads along a single trace of smile — life and livelihood, the everyday world, optimism, integration, and continuity.

The first smiling face encountered is hidden on a pottery shard. The shard is not large, bearing the grayish-brown hue characteristic of coarse pottery. On the vessel wall, two dots form the eyes; a curved arc forms the lips. The brow and eyes are relaxed, the mouth corners upturned — childlike, unpretentious, casual. It was unearthed at the Hemudu Site (河姆渡遗址) in Yuyao (余姚), Zhejiang, a fragment of a cooking vessel from the Neolithic Age. It is utterly ordinary — a fragment from the bottom of a pot used by ancestors for cooking, buried in the earth for 7,000 years before being lifted out again by an archaeologist's hands. Yet it is precisely this fragment that gently preserves the earliest aspirations of the Chinese people.

Continuing further, the smiles suddenly become livelier. A group of Eastern Han dynasty pottery kitchen figurines wear head wraps and long right-lapel cross-collar robes, belted at the waist, sleeves rolled up, with serene and pleasant expressions. Before each figure stands a bucket, and he sits on the ground, with a cutting board atop the bucket bearing fish, snails, and other ingredients, hands working over the board as if preparing food. In the water bucket beneath the board, a small fish is trying to leap out. The Han dynasty practiced lavish burial, adhering to the principle of "serving the dead as one serves the living." Ancestors shaped street performers, kitchen cooks, and dogs lying at doorways — one by one — into pottery to bring into the next world. The joy of the Chinese people has never resided in lofty halls and temples, but in the ordinary scenes of three meals and four seasons.

Past the liveliness, the smiles grow quiet. Zhao Mengfu's "Arhat in Red Robe" from the Yuan dynasty hangs there, on limited-time display. In the painting, the arhat wears a plain red robe, seated upright beneath a bodhi tree, his expression peaceful, a faint smile at the corners of his lips. Zhao Mengfu lived a life of official service, faced censure, and experienced rises and falls, yet the figures he painted are always serene, as if the world's turmoil could not enter his heart. Wind and rain did not wear away the gentleness in his heart; instead, they tempered his temperament into breadth and clarity. This smile is harder to achieve than liveliness, and it lasts longer.

In the depths of the exhibition hall, there is another object of great weight — the Shang dynasty openwork human-face-pattern yue axe. The bronze texture is thick and austere, the vessel form majestic, the ornamentation solemn — the dignified appearance of an ancient ritual implement. Yet upon close examination of the human face, a faint smile is hidden at the corners of the eyes and brows. This time, a pair of Yachou yue axes (亚丑钺), separately housed in the National Museum of China and the Shandong Museum, are displayed together for a rare reunion — heavy ritual implements spanning millennia standing side by side, meeting for the first time at the Liaoning Provincial Museum since their excavation. Austere bronze and gentle smiles grow on the same face. Reverence for heaven and earth and adherence to ritual constitute the bones of the Chinese nation; kindness of heart and tolerant gentleness constitute its soul. The exhibition also includes a group of bronze figurines of foreigners offering tribute — foreign faces, humble demeanor, also bearing smiles. The Silk Road stretched long, mountains and seas separated peoples, and ethnic groups differed — only smiles needed no translation.

Several artifacts, several traces of smiles. The form of the smile changes — from the tenacity of survival in ancient times, to the liveliness of daily life in the Han dynasty, to the composure of one who has seen through worldly affairs, to the inclusiveness extended to guests from all directions. The undertone of the smile carries the warmth of everyday life, and also the refinement of scholarship. It is not perfunctory courtesy, but something that grows from the very bones of the Chinese people: standing firm against wind and frost; finding joy in ordinary days; remaining gentle after seeing all of human nature; and opening one's arms even when journeying to the 天南海北 (tiān nán hǎi běi — "south of heaven, north of sea," far and wide, all over the world).

Walking out of the exhibition hall, dusk is approaching. Light leaks through the door crack — still that restrained, warm quality. The artifacts do not speak; they simply smile, waiting in their glass cases for the next person to walk in and recognize them across a thousand years.

Curator Liu Yun (刘韫) said they hope to lead visitors into dialogue with thousand-year-old artifacts, allowing them to feel, within the smiles, the life force of the Chinese people's inherent goodness and open-mindedness. Young people today love healing-oriented cultural products. They have captured this need of the era, moving beyond stiff artifact research, using emotional narrative to revitalize China's excellent traditional culture, providing the public with a cultural space for spiritual solace, allowing those silent smiles to settle once again into the hearts of modern people.

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The artifacts also tell of the craftsman's hands.

By: 荆志淳

Standing before the bronze vessels unearthed from the Tomb of Fu Hao at Yinxu, the thick, heavy vessel walls, dense ornamentation, and solemn royal bearing rush toward the viewer. It is as if solidified historical testimony is speaking: more than 3,000 years ago, the Shang dynasty already possessed a highly developed bronze civilization. But if one shifts one's gaze to the inner walls of the vessel body, the joints of attachments, the residual clay cores, and the fracture surfaces—places not easily seen—another stretch of history gradually reveals itself.

Some bronze vessels have raised "rivet heads" on their inner walls. They are not decoration, but traces left by post-casting. Craftsmen first cast the vessel body, reserved channels, then attached the ears, handles, or lid knobs, and poured in molten bronze anew. The bronze liquid passed through the holes, congealed on the inner side of the vessel wall, and locked the attachments firmly in place. This "cast-rivet post-casting" required accurately grasping the positions of the two mold halves, controlling the pouring temperature, and managing the flow and mold-filling of the molten bronze. With the slightest deviation, all the preceding work could be wasted. An inconspicuous protrusion is therefore no longer merely a "patch for a casting defect." It preserves the craftsmanship, experience, and judgment of ancient artisans. The questions of archaeology also change accordingly: we no longer only ask what type this vessel belongs to and what status it symbolizes, but also ask what manufacturing process it underwent, who mastered these techniques, how knowledge was transmitted, and why the craftsmen chose this method.

The production of bronze vessels especially illustrates this point. Faced with high-relief ornamentation, some craftsmen in the south adopted a method of coordinating the outer mold and inner core: where the outer wall of the vessel was raised, the inner wall correspondingly sank, thereby keeping the vessel wall thickness roughly uniform. Anyang craftsmen, however, often preserved a flat inner wall, ensuring the casting effect by increasing the vessel wall thickness.

Which method is more "advanced"? The answer is not simple. The southern method saved metal but required precise coordination between mold and core. The Anyang method consumed more bronze but may have reduced the casting risk of complex vessels. Technology does not necessarily develop along a straight line from backward to advanced. Resource supply, royal aesthetics, production scale, craftsman habits, and material properties all influence technological choices.

There were no modern classrooms in ancient workshops, nor operating manuals. Young people might first start by carrying water, mixing clay, and preparing fuel, and only later come into contact with mold-making, ingredient mixing, and pouring. Much knowledge could not be fully expressed in language; it could only be mastered through observation, imitation, failure, and correction. How much force the wrist applies, how dry the clay material should be, when the molten bronze can be poured in—these judgments often reside in the fingers, the muscles, and long-formed sensations.

The workshop was not only a place of production, but also a "community of practice." When a person grew from apprentice to craftsman, what they gained was not only skill, but also identity, responsibility, and the qualification to master core knowledge. Who could learn the key processes, who could only engage in auxiliary labor for a long time, who had the right to evaluate products, who possessed techniques that could not be passed on—all of this was related to kinship, age, status, and power.

The casting traces inside a bronze vessel may precisely be the material memory left by a "learning network." Behind the several hundred bronze vessels in the Tomb of Fu Hao lay the mining of copper, tin, and lead; the consumption of wood and fuel; and the long-term maintenance of transport routes, pottery mold workshops, and skilled craftsmen.

Looking outward from a single bronze vessel, we also see a city. The "Great Settlement Shang" (大邑商) in the oracle bone inscriptions was not a capital consisting only of palaces, ancestral temples, and royal mausoleums. Archaeological discoveries show that Yinxu was a low-density city of vast extent, dispersed settlements, and diverse population. The palaces, ancestral temples, and royal mausoleums represented institutional power from the top down. The neighborhoods, workshops, cemeteries, and sacrificial spaces distributed throughout recorded the production, exchange, cooperation, and coordination in residents' daily lives.

Urban order was not a work completed in a single plan by the Shang king. People built houses, chose roads, organized production, and handled neighborly relations; the state established institutions, conducted sacrifices, and mobilized resources, also continuously responding to changes within the city.

In its early period, Yinxu gathered people, dialects, and technologies from different regions. Diversity could bring friction, but it could also bring creation. New bronze styles, new production methods, and new social relations may have gradually taken shape precisely in these encounters. The early Yinxu bronze artistic peak represented by the Tomb of Fu Hao was precisely the result of the combined action of materials, technology, population movement, workshop learning, and royal organization.

Archaeology therefore does not only study "what the past left behind," but also "how the past happened." A seam, a piece of residual clay core, a repeatedly repaired vessel—any of these can become an entry point for re-understanding history. When we learn to observe relics from the perspectives of manufacture, learning, maintenance, and change, the silent "material evidence" is no longer silent. They begin to tell of the craftsman's hands, the formation of the mind, social organization, and the generation of urban order. How we understand the past will in turn change how people today view objects, society, and themselves.

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