Summary: During an inspection in Ulanqab City, Inner Mongolia, Xi Jinping emphasized that green development is an inherent requirement of high-quality development, calling for coordinated high-quality development with high-level protection and unswerving adherence to ecological priority and green development. Accompanied by Wang Weizhong and Bao Gang, Xi visited the Huangqihai Lake Nature Reserve, stressing the importance of preserving original ecology, implementing the Wetland Protection Law, and using natural recovery as the primary approach for degraded wetlands. At the Qahar High-tech Industrial Development Zone, he highlighted the "East Data, West Computing" project as a key Party Central Committee deployment, urging scientific planning, efficient operation of completed projects, and deep integration of the digital economy with the real economy. He also encouraged the development of the green computing power industry, emphasizing "computing-electricity coordination" and "computing-water coordination" to advance Digital China and new quality productive forces. Xi concluded that all regions should implement the new development philosophy and promote high-quality development based on local conditions, with He Lifeng and other central officials accompanying the inspection.
Summary: Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, President of the State, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, sent a congratulatory letter on the 16th to congratulate Hunan University on its 100th anniversary, extending congratulations to all faculty, staff, students, and alumni. In the letter, Xi Jinping hoped the university would take the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era as its guide, carry forward the glorious revolutionary tradition, continue the academic lineage of the thousand-year-old academy, and promote the spirit of "seeking truth from facts and daring to be first." He urged the university to continuously improve the quality and standards of education, strive to cultivate more outstanding talents with practical application of knowledge to society, and make new contributions to building a strong education nation and advancing Chinese modernization. Hunan University was founded in 1926, with the thousand-year-old Yuelu Academy located on its campus.
Summary: Premier Li Qiang chaired a State Council executive meeting on October 16, hearing a report on the "Artificial Intelligence+" initiative, discussing revised drafts of the Teachers Law and Price Law, and approving a decision to amend and repeal certain administrative regulations. The meeting emphasized driving technological innovation through practical application, coordinating computing power and electricity, and translating AI technology into real productive forces while holding the security bottom line. It approved in principle the Teachers Law revised draft for submission to the NPC Standing Committee, stressing protection of teachers' remuneration and rights and reduction of non-educational burdens. The Price Law amendment draft was also approved in principle, focusing on governing low-price disorderly competition and regulating platform economy pricing conduct. The meeting also decided to amend 14 administrative regulations and repeal 4, including the Provisions on the Limits of Liability for Compensation for Passenger Transport by Sea Between Ports of the People's Republic of China.
Summary: Ding Xuexiang, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council, attended and delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of the 2026 World Conference on the Development of Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Tianjin. He cited President Xi Jinping's emphasis on building a vocational education system that integrates vocational and general education and combines industry with education, and highlighted China's historic achievements in vocational education. Ding put forward four suggestions for global cooperation, including joint building of standards, transformation through innovation, fairness and inclusiveness, and mutual learning to strengthen people-to-people bonds. Chen Min'er, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the Tianjin Municipal Party Committee, attended the ceremony, while Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and UNESCO General Conference President Santiago Irazabal Mourão delivered speeches. Before the event, Ding met with Zahid in Beijing, expressing China's willingness to advance high-quality cooperation with Malaysia in infrastructure, high technology, agriculture, and vocational education.
Summary: The article highlights a themed exhibition commemorating the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Long March of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. It notes that the most frequent words on the message board are "Red Army" and "the People." The piece also references a scientific feature on drawing a panoramic map of the "Tree of Plant Life."
Summary: The 9th China International Import Expo (CIIE) will be held in Shanghai from November 5 to 10, with preparations basically complete and 162 countries, regions, and international organizations participating. Vice Minister of Commerce Yan Dong highlighted three main features, including a more pronounced open character, with U.S. company exhibition area exceeding 50,000 square meters and maintaining first place for eight consecutive editions. The expo will set a new record with more than 480 representative exhibits making global, Asian, or China debuts, and over 300 Fortune Global 500 companies and industry-leading enterprises participating for the first time. Shanghai Vice Mayor Lu Shan stated that all preparatory work is complete, with 18 customs clearance facilitation measures introduced and 123 special windows set up to achieve on-the-spot inspection and release of exhibits. Lu Shan also noted that Shanghai's actual use of foreign capital reached 11.59 billion U.S. dollars in the first eight months, a year-on-year increase of 6.9 percent.
Summary: The article reports on the 46th World Food Day and National Food Security Awareness Week, themed "Implementing the Whole Grain Action Plan, Promoting Grain Conservation, Loss Reduction, Nutrition, and Health," with the main event held at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui. Liu Huanxin, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Director of the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, introduced that the activities aim to inject new momentum into grain conservation and loss reduction and add new vitality to promoting residents' nutrition and health. The piece highlights progress since the December 2024 release of the "National Whole Grain Action Plan (2024–2035)," including rising public awareness, an expanding standards system, technological breakthroughs, and growing product supply. It also details efforts in high-protein corn breeding, upgraded nitrogen-filled grain storage technology at the Heyuan Direct Depot of Central Grain Reserves, and initiatives to make whole grain products both delicious and nutritious, such as at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. Liu Huanxin stated that efforts will continue to extensively carry out whole grain science popularization and make sustained efforts in improving standards, quality, and the industrial foundation.
Summary: During an inspection tour in Ulanqab City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, on October 16, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed: "Promote the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy." The article highlights Ulanqab's transformation from a bleak grassland into a land of development vitality through implementing the new development philosophy and injecting new drivers of growth into traditional industries. It emphasizes that the integration of the digital and real economies must not be a "forced match" or resort to applying the same policy indiscriminately to everyone, citing examples from Ningbo, Zhejiang, and Liuzhou, Guangxi. The piece concludes that with digitalization irrigating the real economy, the green momentum of high-quality development will surge more powerfully.
Summary: A Chinese sci-tech innovation enterprise's independently developed all-weather aerostat completed its first-flight series of tests in stages in Rong County from October 13 to 16. On October 15, the aerostat underwent a low-altitude hovering test in the Rong County Economic Development Zone of Zigong City, Sichuan Province. The white floating platform, 21 meters in diameter and 24 meters in length, integrates communication relay, navigation enhancement, and meteorological detection onto a single platform. The platform is intended to better serve economic and social development. The photo was taken by Peng Minxiang of Xinhua News Agency.
Summary: At the 140th Canton Fair, American home appliance distributor Gaboron, a founder and third-largest shareholder of Guangdong Thermia Technology Co., Ltd., said he attends not to buy or sell but to see friends. He first visited the fair in 1995, placed an order for 2,000 air conditioners, and later invested in building factories in China, expanding to three. Gaboron credited his Chinese partners' reliability and honesty for the trust that grew into a deep friendship and business partnership. He also highlighted his role in introducing heat pump technology from Europe to China, which his factory developed and successfully launched. Gaboron praised China's supply chain flexibility as key to his business's continuous growth, transforming from an order-buying buyer into an investment partner.
Summary: At the 140th Canton Fair's new product debut display area, U.S. first-time buyer Nicole was guided to try a product with electrocardiogram detection functionality, saying, "There are so many new products; I can't wait to buy some and take them home." Guangzhou Haiweite Technology's Lu Yinan noted the company's screenless wristband has reached preliminary cooperation intentions with buyers from the United States, Turkey, and other places. North Macedonia first-time buyer Gjichi admired a motorcycle from Guangdong Daye Motorcycle Technology, whose sales manager Chen Feiyan highlighted its high-performance twin-cylinder water-cooled engine. Zhixing Robotics chairman Bai Guochao said the company's tactile perception data collection hand has received orders from buyers in Canada, the United States, and some European countries. This edition features over 700 new product debut events, a 15 percent increase, helping domestic and overseas buyers make new connections.
Summary: At the New Energy Vehicles and Smart Mobility exhibition area of the Canton Fair, buyers were experiencing the automotive exhibits, as shown in a photo provided by the China Foreign Trade Centre.
Summary: A China-U.S. youth exchange event themed "Embarking on a New Journey — Meeting Each Other, Journeying to the Future Together" was held in Beijing from October 12 to 14, co-hosted by the China Education Association for International Exchange and Peking University, with over 200 students from both countries participating. The event responded to President Xi Jinping's "50,000 in Five Years" initiative and his September announcement inviting 100,000 American youths to China for exchange and study over the next five years. Tian Xuejun, President of the China Education Association for International Exchange, and He Guangcai, Secretary of the CPC Peking University Committee, both emphasized that youth exchanges build mutual trust and friendship between the two countries. American students and teachers, including Otta Uipi, Delmer Pilling, Seran Baker, Joseph Clark, and James Brindley, shared experiences of cultural and technological exchanges, expressing appreciation for the initiative and hopes for lasting U.S.-China friendship. Zhang Lipei, China Region President of the U.S.-China Business Council, noted that understanding and trust between the two countries are built through generations of people drawing closer to each other.
Summary: The article highlights President Xi Jinping's announcement, during his September state visit to the United States, that China will invite 100,000 American youths to China for exchange and study over the next five years, building on the earlier "50,000 in five years" initiative completed two and a half years ahead of schedule. A China-U.S. youth thematic exchange activity under the theme "Embarking on a New Journey — Meeting Each Other, Going to the Future Together" was recently held in Beijing, with more than 200 Chinese and American students participating in thematic visits and roundtable dialogues. The piece emphasizes that face-to-face encounters are reshaping mutual perceptions, with American youths experiencing China's ancient charm and modern vitality at sites like the Great Wall and the National Museum. It notes that U.S. public favorability toward China continues to rise, citing a Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey in which 57 percent of American respondents supported friendly cooperation and engagement with China. The article concludes that people-to-people connectivity remains the deepest foundation of China-U.S. relations, with China willing to deepen non-governmental interactions to consolidate the foundation of bilateral friendship.
Summary: Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, met with Palestinian Foreign Minister Farsin in Baku on the sidelines of the CICA Summit. Wang Yi stated that China was one of the first countries to recognize Palestine and firmly supports the just cause of the Palestinian people in restoring their legitimate national rights. He said the Palestinian question is the longest-running hotspot issue and the greatest historical injustice since World War II, and that the world must not forget the 2 million Palestinian people struggling in Gaza. Farsin briefed on the latest developments, highly appreciated China's just position, and thanked China for its long-term support and humanitarian assistance to Gaza. The Palestinian side looks forward to China continuing to uphold justice and play a more important role in realizing the "two-state solution."
Summary: Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on October 15 in Baku on the sidelines of the CICA Summit at the latter's request. Herzog affirmed Israel's firm adherence to the One-China policy and expressed willingness to advance bilateral exchanges in science, technology, investment, and people-to-people ties, while sharing Israel's views on the Middle East situation and appreciating China's efforts for regional peace. Wang Yi recalled mutual assistance during World War II and stressed that the most urgent task is to fully open passages into the Gaza Strip, urging Israel to stop and revoke settlement actions in the West Bank. Wang Yi noted that President Xi Jinping has put forward initiatives for Middle East peace as public goods, and cited Herzog's father's legacy in promoting China-Israel ties. Wang Yi concluded that adherence to the "two-state solution" and a spirit of cooperation would eventually bring the peace the people await.
Summary: Three Chinese women—Yin Yuzhen, Yu Jinxiu, and Dong Minfang—were honored at the FAO's "100 Heroines of Agriculture and Rural Development" award ceremony in Rome on October 15. Yin Yuzhen, a desertification-control worker from Inner Mongolia, was praised for her long-term afforestation efforts in the Mu Us Sandy Land, with American friend Ronald Sakolsky joining her on stage. Yu Jinxiu, a rural crafts master from Hubei, highlighted her promotion of Qichun moxibustion therapy and its role in rural employment, while Dong Minfang, a Hunan cooperative chairwoman, emphasized her work in agricultural mechanization and supporting rural women. FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu stated that women are vital to agrifood systems and food security. The ceremony coincided with the 2026 World Food Forum, where FAO official Ruben Sessa praised China's practices in empowering rural women and preserving cultural heritage, expressing hope for deeper cooperation.
Summary: The article, marking World Food Day, highlights the severe global food security situation, with approximately 645 million people facing hunger in 2025. It emphasizes that South-South cooperation is a vital pathway for developing countries to share experience and enhance food security capacity, with China's development practice offering a useful reference. The piece details the work of the World Food Programme Centre of Excellence for Rural Development in China, including a project in Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea that reduced post-harvest grain loss rates from about 30 percent to 15 percent and increased farmers' incomes by about 30 percent. The author, the Representative of the United Nations World Food Programme in China, concludes that South-South cooperation is joint learning and innovation built on equality, and expresses willingness to continue working with China and Global South partners toward the global "Zero Hunger" goal.
Summary: Mu Hong, Vice Chairman of the CPPCC National Committee, met in Beijing on the 16th with a senior cadre delegation led by İlyas, Vice Chairman of Turkey's Justice and Development Party. The two sides held in-depth exchanges on implementing the important consensus of the two countries' heads of state, strengthening inter-party exchanges and cooperation in various fields, and promoting the development of China-Turkey strategic cooperative relations.
Summary: Djibouti's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Omar, will pay an official visit to China from October 19 to 25 at the invitation of Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Republic of the Congo's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francophonie and Congolese Diaspora, Banda, will also pay an official visit to China from October 19 to 25 at the same invitation. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson announced this on the 16th.
Summary: Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said on October 16 that China will continue to work with the international community to jointly promote poverty reduction cooperation, jointly advance the poverty reduction process, and achieve common development. Responding to a question about global poverty challenges, Mao noted that China has historically eradicated absolute poverty, achieving the poverty reduction goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule. She said China actively promotes poverty reduction cooperation, making it the first of the eight key cooperation areas of the Global Development Initiative, helping Global South countries through technologies such as Juncao technology and hybrid rice. China has also initiated the establishment of the Global Alliance for Poverty Reduction and Development, transforming its practical experience into international public goods.
Summary: The second China-Belgium Business Dialogue was held on October 15 in Brussels, bringing together nearly 120 representatives from Chinese and Belgian government departments, business associations, financial institutions, and the corporate sector. Participants exchanged views on digital connectivity, supply chain cooperation, green innovation, and the local development of enterprises, exploring new opportunities for deepening bilateral economic and trade cooperation. The dialogue, themed "Fifty-Five Years of working together side by side, Creating a Shared China-Belgium Future," was hosted by the China Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and Luxembourg.
Summary: In Huining County, Baiyin City, Gansu Province, autumn grain management has entered a critical stage, with terraced fields and corn fields showcasing the benefits of new agricultural technologies. The article links this progress to the 1936 Red Army joining of forces, noting that the red gene now inspires rural revitalization. Niu Zongyi, Party branch secretary of Fuxing Village, said the Red Army's example of daring to forge ahead has driven the village to embrace technological innovation, consolidating 2,000 mu of arable land into a demonstration area for potato yield increases. In Gangouyi Town, cooperative head Li Wenbing highlighted that water-fertilizer integration has cut water use by one-third and reduced fertilizer use, while worker Tian Hong noted more even crop growth and easier labor. Huining County has built 1.0553 million mu of high-standard farmland, with a mechanization rate exceeding 68%, and expects to add 10,000 mu of ridge-film furrow irrigation and 60,000 mu of under-film drip irrigation this year.
Summary: The article reports on Tanchang County, Gansu Province, leveraging its red history and natural ecology to promote integrated "ecology + cultural tourism + wellness" development. It highlights the Hadapu Red Army Long March Memorial Hall and Red Army Street, where the Central Red Army rested in September 1935 and decided to "go to northern Shaanxi." Local figures like Zhao Feifei and homestay operator Zhao Zhangchun are featured for developing study tours and folk-custom experiences that attract tourists. During the National Day holiday, 629,700 tourists visited the county, and in the first three quarters of this year, it received 12.8567 million tourists with cultural tourism revenue exceeding 8 billion yuan. The piece emphasizes how revolutionary sites, Qiang village scenery, and herbal medicine fields are linked together to support local livelihoods.
Summary: At a State Council Information Office meeting on October 16, five transportation-sector representatives discussed their work under the theme "Striving for the 15th Five-Year Plan, Bravely Serving as Vanguards." Sangzhu, a Tibetan road maintenance worker, described decades of service on high-altitude highways and the expansion of Tibet's road network to 125,200 kilometers. Hu Jian recounted a 2020 rescue of a burning chemical vessel at the Yangtze River mouth, while Hu Hang highlighted the Three Gorges ship lock's record throughput of over 170 million tons in 2025. He Xiaoman, a vocational student, credited skills training for her World Skills Competition success, and Yin Wenxue detailed his volunteer freight deliveries for villagers in Gansu. The representatives outlined future goals, including new maintenance technologies, saturation diving trials, and a "Three Gorges solution" for new ship locks.
Summary: The article reports on wildlife rescue efforts at the Tianqiaoling Management and Protection Center of the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, where a young musk deer was rescued and is being rehabilitated. Wen Jinzhang, director of the center, described the animal's recovery and noted that tiger and leopard activity is increasing, with sightings of a tigress with four cubs now occurring. Chen Xiaocai, director of the Comprehensive Business Division of the park administration, said a professional wildlife rescue center is imperative because current facilities are small and injured tigers or leopards must be sent far away. A new rescue center in Wangqing County is nearing completion, designed for rapid response and collaboration with Yanbian University for research and training. The article concludes that the young musk deer will be released next spring to improve its survival rate, underscoring the goal of returning rescued animals to the wild in good health.
Summary: A geological worker recounts a seven-year effort to restore two polluted drinking water wells in Zhengjiazhuang Village, Xinmi City, Henan Province, a former coal mining area. Using an "endoscopy" method and salt tracing, the team identified pollution channels from a subsidence pit and an abandoned mine shaft connected to aquaculture wastewater. They implemented a "repair over sealing, intercept pollution to protect clean water" approach, surveying 126 abandoned shafts and sealing 21 high-risk ones. By 2022, clear water flowed from the wells again, with the restoration method recognized by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and promoted in surrounding areas. The author, deputy director of the Institute of Eco-Environmental Geological Survey, Henan Academy of Geology, reflects on the village's improved environment and the ecological civilization progress symbolized by the wells' rebirth.
Summary: The article discusses groundwater protection challenges in northern karst coal-mining areas, where coal mine goafs, abandoned mines, and karst conduits create new pollution risks. It argues that sealing contaminated wells only addresses symptoms without tackling the root cause, and instead advocates for "repairing instead of sealing" and "intercepting contamination to preserve clean water" as targeted measures. For abandoned mines, layered anti-seepage measures are cited as a way to block pollution pathways. The piece notes that geologists' persistent efforts have yielded visible results, with clear water and green mountains, and concludes that protecting clean soil in this "behind the scenes" battle secures the people's sense of gain, happiness, and security.
Summary: The State Council has appointed Liu Shuang as Deputy Director of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs and Hao Liping (female) as Deputy Director of the China Meteorological Administration. It has removed Wang Gang from the post of Deputy Minister of Transport, Xu Yao from the post of Deputy Director of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, Bi Baogui from the post of Deputy Director of the China Meteorological Administration, and Wang Yunpeng from the post of President of Beihang University.
Summary: The article, marking World Food Day, highlights the severe global food security situation, with approximately 645 million people facing hunger in 2025. It emphasizes that South-South cooperation is a vital pathway for developing countries to share experience and enhance food security capacity, with China's development practice offering a useful reference. The piece details the work of the World Food Programme Centre of Excellence for Rural Development in China, including a project in Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea that reduced post-harvest grain loss rates from about 30 percent to 15 percent and increased farmers' incomes by about 30 percent. The author, the Representative of the United Nations World Food Programme in China, concludes that South-South cooperation is joint learning and innovation built on equality, and expresses willingness to continue working with China and Global South partners toward the global "Zero Hunger" goal.
Summary: The article reports on China's efforts to expand mutual-aid elderly care services, following a policy issued this year by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and 10 other departments that sets a goal of 70 percent coverage of community elderly care facilities with mutual-aid functions by 2030. Field visits in Nanjing, Guangyuan, and Zhangye illustrate models such as time banking, where volunteers "deposit" service hours and later "withdraw" care, and "pastoral mutual aid" in Gansu, where elderly residents live in age-friendly housing and pair up to help each other. In Sichuan's Chaotian District, village collective economies and "silver-haired workshops" enable elderly people to earn income through light labor and crafts. Local officials, including Zhou Xuelei, deputy head of Jing'an Township, and Sun Xiaoqin, head of the township's Party and Mass Service Center, are quoted describing the benefits of these approaches for rural elderly living alone. The article does not mention the United States or U.S.-China relations.
Summary: The National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the National Health Commission jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Further Improving the Price Formation Mechanism and Promoting the Improvement of Quality and Expansion of Coverage of Universally Beneficial Elderly Care Services." The document clarifies the scope of safety-net guarantee institutions, universally beneficial support institutions, and fully market-oriented institutions, and implements tiered price management by category. Government-guided pricing applies to basic service fees of safety-net guarantee institutions and publicly built institutions, while market-adjusted pricing is encouraged for fully market-oriented institutions to meet diverse needs. Fee standards are to be set under the principle of "compensating costs, reasonable profits," with a dynamic evaluation cycle not exceeding 3 years. The policy also mandates catalog list management to ensure no fees are charged outside the list.
Summary: The 2026 China Outdoor Sports Industry Conference, hosted by the All-China Sports Federation under the theme "Beijing's Splendid Outdoors, Science and Technology Creating the Future," opened in Beijing on the 16th. The conference comprises five major sections and focuses on "new experiences, new scenarios, new integration, and new technology." A report released at the opening ceremony shows that by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period, over 500 million people participated in outdoor sports in China, with the total scale of related industries at approximately 3.17 trillion yuan. The report highlighted four characteristics, including strengthened policy guidance, accelerated infrastructure development, enriched event supply, and effectively released consumer market vitality. The China BeiDou Outdoor Sports Event Management System was also released, establishing a four-tier collaborative supervision system for high-risk events nationwide.
Summary: The 2026 Global People Annual Ceremony was held on October 16 in Bazhong, Sichuan, with approximately 200 attendees, including responsible officials from the People's Daily, Sichuan Province, and Bazhong City, as well as representatives from various sectors. Guests exchanged views on implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and treading the Long March road of the new era well, marking the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Long March of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. Under the theme "Toward the New · Resonance," the ceremony aimed to consider how to transform revolutionary spirit into practical momentum, strengthen the foundation and nurture the essence while upholding fundamental principles, and forge ahead through innovation. In sub-forum sessions, guests discussed topics such as "The Energy Answer Sheet of the Sodium-Ion Battery Revolution and New Quality Productive Forces" and "Characteristic Clusters for the Low-Altitude Economy and Future Industries." Hosted by *Global People* magazine, the ceremony has been held for seven sessions since its founding in 2019.
Summary: The "Science Pioneer · Revitalizing Xinjiang Tour" science popularization event, hosted by the Tacheng Prefecture Science and Technology Association of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, was held at the Central School of Sikeshu Town in Wusu City. Teachers and students took part in interactive science projects and experienced the charm of technology up close. The photo shows students interacting with a robotic dog. The image was captured by Li Renxi.
Summary: The Lanzhou Intermediate People's Court publicly pronounced its first-instance judgment in the case of Li Huifang and five others for producing and selling toxic and harmful food, sentencing Li Huifang to life imprisonment and others to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from eight to fifteen years with fines. The court held that Li Huifang, the actual person in charge of the Hesh Peixin Kindergarten in Maiji District, Tianshui City, and Zhu Jinglin, the executive principal, violated national food safety regulations by instructing kitchen staff to mix toxic and harmful non-food raw materials into food for children and staff, causing serious consequences. All six defendants were found guilty of the crime, with especially serious circumstances, and the judgment was rendered according to law based on each defendant's role and harm to society.
Summary: On October 15, the communications and sensing network in the Bohai Sea waters was officially put into operation, marking a new stage of high-speed interconnection and whole-domain sensing for the sea. The network, built by the Beihai Navigation Support Center of the Ministry of Transport with CNOOC Limited Tianjin Branch and China Mobile Communications Group Tianjin Co., Ltd., integrates 5G, VHF, AIS, and hydrological observation to enable smooth calls, internet access, and real-time ship tracking. Li Wei, head of the Communications Information Division, and Yang Zhe, director of the Beihai Navigation Support Center, detailed how 48 5G base stations on offshore oil platforms and other infrastructure achieve 95% comprehensive signal coverage, benefiting an estimated 300,000 ship transits and 5 million passenger trips annually. Yang Zhe noted that the network will expand coverage using buoys and drones, improve quality, and deepen integration with logistics for smart port and waterway applications.
Summary: China's first million-ton-class low-concentration CCUS full-chain demonstration project broke ground on October 16 at the Shengli Oilfield, as reported by People's Daily. Upon completion by the end of 2028, it will capture low-concentration flue gas from coal-fired power plants for oil displacement and storage via over 70 injection wells, covering reservoir types including beach-bar sand, turbidite rocks, and shale oil. The project pioneers a green electricity system directly supplying the carbon capture facility, realizing a closed-loop model of "direct green power connection, low-carbon capture" to support China's "dual carbon" goals. It integrates a source-grid-load-storage system of "wind power + energy storage + direct connection lines + CCUS capture," with 13 wind turbines totaling 98.8 megawatts generating 217 million kilowatt-hours annually.
Summary: The article reports on the Plant Planet Project, led by Chinese scientists and launched in February, which aims to reconstruct the "Tree of Life of Land Plants" by filling gaps in reference genome data for the vast majority of plant species. Huang Sanwen, President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explains that the project will push plant science from "scattered knowledge" to "systematic decoding," support food security by tapping wild genetic resources, and build a "digital Noah's Ark" for endangered species. E Weinan, Professor at Peking University and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, highlights that AI and big data serve as a "super accelerator" and "intelligent decoder" for plant genome research, enabling high-throughput gene annotation and precision breeding. Detlef Weigel of the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Germany and Deng Xingwang, President of the Peking University Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences, discuss the project's potential to transform plant understanding, guide conservation, and address crop breeding pain points such as wheat's narrow genetic base. The project aims to discover 100 potential economic crops and 1,000 natural products for drug development, providing a new engine for global food security and human health research.
Summary: The article highlights the Plant Planet Project, which has attracted over 40 top-tier research institutions from 15 countries, including the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It contrasts China's past 1 percent role in the Human Genome Project with its current leadership in setting global standards for sampling, sequencing, and data. The project establishes a "dual-lead" mechanism of equal collaboration between plant taxonomists and genomics experts, framed as a "grand chorus" of global botanical science. It adheres to international norms like the Convention on Biological Diversity, ensuring data is open and that developing countries are partners, not just sample providers. The author, President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, states China aims to build an open, fair, and inclusive platform to address global challenges through mutually beneficial and win-win international cooperation.
Summary: The article explains how Beijing is piloting an AI signal control system that makes traffic lights dynamic, adjusting green light durations based on real-time conditions, leading to a 21% increase in vehicle speed and a 19% decrease in congestion at test intersections. The system uses multi-source perception, including cameras, radar, and navigation data, with a multimodal large model as its "brain" to generate timing plans and execute micro-level scheduling. Safety is maintained by not delegating authority to AI, as AI can only modify temporary plans and all outputs must pass compliance checks, while multi-source data fusion ensures reliability under adverse conditions. The system avoids wasteful large-scale demolition and construction by compensating for single-point perception shortcomings through data fusion. Currently, 7,900 of Beijing's approximately 12,000 signal lights are networked, with a 100% networking rate within the Fifth Ring Road and the city's sub-center.
Summary: The China Institute of Atomic Energy, under the China National Nuclear Corporation, collaborated with Nanchang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and other institutions to achieve a breakthrough in research on the volatilization behavior of materials under high-temperature ultra-high vacuum conditions. For the first time, they quantitatively revealed the anisotropic volatilization mechanism of nickel-based alloys, which are key structural materials in reactor cores. The team designed and built a high-temperature ultra-high vacuum volatilization test apparatus and conducted experiments lasting up to 3,000 hours on the nickel-based superalloy Hastelloy 230. Combining experiments with theoretical calculations, they elucidated the synergistic controlling effect of crystal orientation and grain boundary type on volatilization behavior. The results indicate that regulating grain orientation and grain boundary character distribution could enhance the volatilization resistance of materials at the microstructural level.
Summary: Chinese scientists have unraveled the mystery of the vanishing "little red dots" in the early universe, a class of compact, reddish celestial bodies observed by the James Webb Space Telescope that largely disappeared about 2 billion years after the universe's birth. A team led by Associate Professor Zhang Huanian and Professor Wu Qingwen of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, collaborating with Peking University and the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, analyzed nearly 100 spectroscopically confirmed "little red dots" and found they tended to "live alone" in low-density environments, unlike ordinary galaxies of the same period. As the universe evolved, their dark matter halo masses grew from about 10 billion to 200 billion times the solar mass, approaching ordinary galaxy levels, indicating these objects are a transient stage in galaxy evolution rather than eternal special bodies. The findings, published online in *Nature Astronomy*, offer a new perspective on black hole-galaxy co-evolution and suggest early universe galaxy evolution was more diverse and dynamic than previously imagined.
Summary: The article reports that Australian white pearls, produced by the white-winged pearl oyster, are now being cultivated successfully around the Hainan (Changjiang) Nuclear Power Base in Hainan. Yang Ziqian, deputy director of the Environmental Emergency Division of Hainan Nuclear Power, explained that the plant's cooling water maintains a temperature of around 25 degrees Celsius, providing a "natural warm room" for the oysters, which require clean water and specific temperatures. The cultivation, begun in 2021 with aquaculture enterprises and research institutions, has stabilized yields across more than 1,000 mu of sea area, after earlier trials in Sansha failed due to low algae content. Yang also addressed radiation concerns, stating that the cooling water is isolated from the reactor core and undergoes multiple radioactivity tests before discharge, with surrounding radiation levels remaining within background range. The project is hailed as a model of "nuclear power + ecology" cooperation, with plans to expand cultivation.
Summary: A Chinese research team led by Professor Chen Xianhui and Professor Wang Zhenyu of the University of Science and Technology of China, in collaboration with Professor Xiang Bin and Professor Liu Junwei of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, fabricated quantum spin Hall insulators into scanning tunneling microscope tips, developing a new method for atomic-scale spin detection, with results published in *Nature*. The team observed stable one-dimensional helical edge channels in bismuth iodide and prepared bismuth bromide single crystals into tips with atomic resolution and spin selectivity. They applied this method to study the altermagnet candidate potassium vanadium selenium oxide. The work demonstrates the potential of topological quantum materials as probes and is expected to aid research on two-dimensional magnets and moiré materials.
Summary: The article discusses the development and application of smart elderly care products in China, following policy guidance from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council. It highlights examples such as AI-assisted health sensors for fall detection, smart watches with emergency call features, and intelligent chat companions, noting that China's elderly population exceeded 320 million by the end of 2025. Industry experts like Zhang Yunquan emphasize the need for technology to address home-based care priorities and the "9073" pattern, while acknowledging challenges such as fragmented industrial chains, missing standards, and insufficient age-friendly design. The piece also notes that emotional value and companionship are increasingly important, with products like smart butlers offering personalized interaction and health management. The article concludes that smart elderly care is transitioning from pilot projects to broader application, but requires systematic solutions and improved offline service networks to succeed.
Summary: The article describes the Nanxi River in Yongjia as the birthplace of Chinese landscape poetry, tracing its origins to Xie Lingyun's demotion to governor in 422 AD and his composition of poems like "Ascending Lüzhang Mountain." It highlights how the river's ease persists today through bamboo raft rides, ancient villages like Cangpo and Furong designed around traditional ideals, and the preservation of Yongjia Kunqu opera. Li Xincong, chairman of the Yongjia County Culture and Tourism Group, is quoted on restoration efforts, while Chen Zhihua, a Tsinghua University professor, and villager Li Dongfeng are noted for private guardianship. The piece concludes that modern music festivals and high-speed rail access have transformed the ancient question of "when will we arrive" into the ease of "come anytime."
Summary: The article profiles Tabusai Village in Tumd Left Banner, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, a traditional village whose name reflects ethnic unity, with five families of different ethnicities having lived there harmoniously for centuries. Yun Zaiping, director of the Tabusai Village Committee, explains the name's origin and notes the village now hosts Han, Mongolian, Manchu, Hui, and other residents. The piece highlights a Qing Dynasty residence with kang surround paintings, an art form blending agrarian and nomadic cultures that was listed as regional intangible cultural heritage in 2009. Zhang Lu, publicity committee member of the Tabusai Township Party Committee, describes the annual temple fair featuring Peking opera and Jin opera performances. Nan Yunfei, head of the Feiyue cooperative, discusses strawberry cultivation and tourism ventures that have driven employment, with the village's collective annual income exceeding 200,000 yuan and 50,000 tourist visits in 2025.
Summary: The article describes the "Great Expedition" exhibition at the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution, which opened on September 22 to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Long March victory. The exhibition is divided into seven sections, covering the Red Army's strategic shift, the Zunyi Conference, battles against pursuing enemies, revolutionary ideals, mass mobilization, and the enduring Long March spirit. It features 357 photographs, nearly 80 artworks, and 1,061 cultural relics, with over 300 items displayed for the first time. The curatorial team incorporated interactive projects, high-altitude scenes, and oral-history videos to enhance visitor engagement. The author, the museum's director, notes that visitors' most frequent comments on the exhibition are "Red Army" and "the people."
Summary: The article reports on new archaeological progress in research on the Yangshao culture, following a 2021 congratulatory letter from General Secretary Xi Jinping marking the centenary of its discovery. Over the past five years, institutions in Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Hebei have conducted excavations under major national projects, yielding results on settlement patterns, social complexification, and cross-regional interaction. Early Yangshao finds of ring trenches and defensive walls revised the view of an egalitarian society, while middle-period central settlements with large ring trenches and specialized pottery production indicate accelerated civilizational progress. Late Yangshao discoveries, such as the Shuanghuaishu and Nanzuo sites, show capital-level settlements, rammed-earth construction, and ritual systems, with multi-disciplinary research confirming agricultural practices, genetic continuity, and the spread of cultural elements that fostered an early Chinese cultural sphere. The author, a researcher at the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, concludes that the past five years have presented a relatively complete picture of Yangshao society's evolutionary trajectory toward civilization.
Summary: The article highlights *Records of the Red Army's Long March with the Army*, written by Chen Yun under the pen name "Lianchen" and published in 1949, as the earliest precious document to introduce the Red Army's Long March to the world. It recounts how Chen Yun, entrusted by the Party Central Committee, secretly left the Long March contingent in 1935 to restore underground Party organizations and the connection with the Communist International, writing the book based on his eight months of experience. The book records the Central Red Army's expedition from October 1934 to June 1935, including key battles and the heroic spirit of the officers and soldiers in overcoming great difficulties and challenges. It emphasizes the Red Army's strict discipline toward the masses, such as adhering to the "Three Main Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention," and describes an episode where Mao Zedong gave his woolen sweater and a bedsheet to a peasant woman in Guizhou. The article concludes that the book is a vivid portrayal of the great Long March spirit, reflecting the original aspiration and mission of Chinese Communists.
Summary: The article recounts a visit to Lao Shan Jie (Old Mountain Pass) in Guangxi, where the Central Red Army crossed the Yuecheng Mountains in December 1934 after the Battle of the Xiang River, its numbers reduced from over 86,000 to just over 30,000. It highlights the story of a young Red Army soldier who was buried alive by a landlord after being injured by a poisoned bamboo spike, and quotes Lu Dingyi's essay on the revolutionary optimism of the crossing. The piece describes the treacherous terrain, including the near-vertical 108 stone steps at Leigong Rock, and cites Mao Zedong's "Sixteen-Character Lyric" composed during the march. It also features comments from Su Bo, a tourist from Hunan, and Zhang Qiuju, a docent, on the hardships and faith of the Red Army, as well as Yin Tanghuai, curator of the Memorial Hall of the Red Army's Breakthrough of the Xiang River Blockade, on the army's propaganda efforts. The article concludes by detailing how Huajiang Yao Township has integrated red tourism with ecological and Yao cultural resources to promote rural revitalization.
Summary: The article describes the Red Army Bridge in Qinglinkou ancient town, Jiangyou, Sichuan, a Qing Dynasty covered bridge renamed in 1956 to commemorate an unknown female Red Army battalion commander who died a martyr's death there in 1935 after refusing to betray secrets under torture. The bridge, originally named Heyi Bridge, was the site where the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army established a Soviet regime and chiseled revolutionary slogans. In 2013, the bridge and related Red Army stone-carved slogans were listed as a nationally protected key cultural relic and patriotic education base. The piece reflects on the bridge as a symbol of revolutionary memory and the enduring red spirit.
■ Green development is an inherent requirement of high-quality development. It is necessary to coordinate high-quality development with high-level protection, adhere to the integrated protection and systematic governance of mountains, waters, forests, farmlands, grasslands, and deserts, and synergistically advance carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion, and economic growth, unswervingly following the path of ecological priority and green development.
■ The value of wetland protection lies in preserving the original ecology. It is necessary to respect nature, follow its laws, and protect it, fully implement the Wetland Protection Law, strictly observe the ecological protection red lines, strive to enhance the quality and stability of ecosystems, and safeguard biodiversity. For degraded wetland ecosystems, it is necessary to adhere to the principle of natural recovery as the primary approach and human intervention as supplementary, carrying out scientific and reasonable restoration.
■ Implementing the "East Data, West Computing" project and building a nationally integrated computing power network is an important deployment of the Party Central Committee. It is necessary to strengthen scientific planning, factor support, and security safeguards, ensure the efficient operation of completed projects, and complete subsequent project construction on schedule. It is necessary to actively extend the industrial chain, promote the deep integration of the digital economy with the real economy, and continuously transform computing power advantages into development advantages.
■ Our country has a vast territory, with notable differences in resource endowments across the east, west, south, north, and central regions. On the new journey, all regions should, in accordance with the strategic decisions and planning deployments of the Party Central Committee, establish and practice a correct view of political achievements, fully, accurately, and comprehensively implement the new development philosophy, keep pace with the trends of the times, seize development opportunities, base themselves on their own conditions, give play to their comparative advantages, and promote high-quality development in light of local conditions.
(People's Daily, Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, October 16) Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, President of the State, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, emphasized during an inspection in Ulanqab City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, on the 16th that green development is an inherent requirement of high-quality development. It is necessary to coordinate high-quality development with high-level protection, adhere to the integrated protection and systematic governance of mountains, waters, forests, farmlands, grasslands, and deserts, and synergistically advance carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion, and economic growth, unswervingly following the path of ecological priority and green development.
On the morning of the 16th, accompanied by Wang Weizhong, Secretary of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Party Committee, and Bao Gang, Chairman of the Autonomous Region People's Government, Xi Jinping came to Ulanqab City for inspection and research.
Huangqihai Lake, located in Qahar Right Front Banner, Ulanqab City, is an inland closed lake that was once on the verge of drying up due to climate and other factors. After years of comprehensive governance, the water area has gradually recovered and expanded. Xi Jinping came to the Huangqihai Lake Nature Reserve, listened to reports on the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region's efforts to strengthen ecological and environmental protection and the local promotion of comprehensive environmental governance and ecosystem restoration of Huangqihai Lake, and inspected on site the ecology of the water banks and mudflats and the inhabiting birds. He emphasized that the value of wetland protection lies in preserving the original ecology. It is necessary to respect nature, follow its laws, and protect it, fully implement the Wetland Protection Law, strictly observe the ecological protection red lines, strive to enhance the quality and stability of ecosystems, and safeguard biodiversity. For degraded wetland ecosystems, it is necessary to adhere to the principle of natural recovery as the primary approach and human intervention as supplementary, carrying out scientific and reasonable restoration.
Ulanqab is rich in wind and solar resources. In recent years, by giving play to its comparative advantages in green electricity, climate, and location, it has achieved positive results in the development of the green computing power industry. Xi Jinping went to the Qahar High-tech Industrial Development Zone, where he learned about the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region's progress in advancing the construction of hub nodes for the "East Data, West Computing" project and the development of the green computing power industry in the exhibition hall. He pointed out that implementing the "East Data, West Computing" project and building a nationally integrated computing power network is an important deployment of the Party Central Committee. It is necessary to strengthen scientific planning, factor support, and security safeguards, ensure the efficient operation of completed projects, and complete subsequent project construction on schedule. It is necessary to actively extend the industrial chain, promote the deep integration of the digital economy with the real economy, and continuously transform computing power advantages into development advantages.
Subsequently, Xi Jinping had a cordial exchange with the persons in charge of relevant computing power center projects, technical personnel, and staff of the Qahar High-tech Zone who were present. He emphasized that the computing power network is one of the "six networks" planned and constructed by the state, and that the computing power industry is in an accelerated development stage with broad prospects. He hoped that everyone would conscientiously implement the requirements of efficiency, greenness, and safety, pay attention to "computing-electricity coordination" and "computing-water coordination," do a good job in the construction and operation of computing power center projects, actively promote the development of the green computing power industry, and contribute more to advancing the construction of Digital China and promoting the development of new quality productive forces. Xi Jinping required the high-tech zone to strengthen the Party's leadership and Party building, optimize various public services and factor guarantees, and create a good environment for enterprises and talents of all kinds to start businesses and pursue careers.
Xi Jinping also viewed the display of local specialty agricultural and livestock products, learned in detail about the main varieties and quality characteristics, and encouraged the locality to strengthen the connection between production and sales to help farmers and herdsmen increase their incomes and become prosperous.
During the inspection, Xi Jinping emphasized that our country has a vast territory, with notable differences in resource endowments across the east, west, south, north, and central regions. On the new journey, all regions should, in accordance with the strategic decisions and planning deployments of the Party Central Committee, establish and practice a correct view of political achievements, fully, accurately, and comprehensively implement the new development philosophy, keep pace with the trends of the times, seize development opportunities, base themselves on their own conditions, give play to their comparative advantages, and promote high-quality development in light of local conditions.
He Lifeng and responsible comrades of relevant departments of the Central Committee and state organs accompanied the inspection.
Return to TopCongratulatory Letter
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Hunan University, I extend my congratulations to all faculty, staff, students, and alumni!
At this new starting point, I hope Hunan University will take the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era as its guide, carry forward the glorious revolutionary tradition, continue the academic lineage of the thousand-year-old academy, promote the spirit of "seeking truth from facts and daring to be first," continuously improve the quality and standards of education, strive to cultivate more outstanding talents with practical application of knowledge to society (经世致用, jing shi zhi yong - "govern the world, apply to use"), and make new contributions to building a strong education nation and advancing Chinese modernization.
Xi Jinping
October 16, 2026
(Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, October 16)
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, October 16 — Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, President of the State, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, sent a congratulatory letter on the 16th to congratulate Hunan University on its 100th anniversary, extending congratulations to all faculty, staff, students, and alumni.
In the congratulatory letter, Xi Jinping emphasized that at this new starting point, he hopes Hunan University will take the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era as its guide, carry forward the glorious revolutionary tradition, continue the academic lineage of the thousand-year-old academy, promote the spirit of "seeking truth from facts and daring to be first," continuously improve the quality and standards of education, strive to cultivate more outstanding talents with practical application of knowledge to society, and make new contributions to building a strong education nation and advancing Chinese modernization. (Full text of the congratulatory letter issued separately)
Hunan University was founded in 1926, and the Yuelu Academy, with a history of one thousand years, is located on its campus. Over the past 100 years, the university has adhered to inheritance and innovation, cultivating a large number of outstanding talents for the country.
Return to Top(Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, October 16) Premier Li Qiang of the State Council chaired an executive meeting of the State Council on October 16, at which a report on the progress of the "Artificial Intelligence+" initiative was heard, the Teachers Law of the People's Republic of China (Revised Draft) was discussed, the Price Law of the People's Republic of China (Amendment Draft) was discussed, and the Decision of the State Council on Amending and Repealing Certain Administrative Regulations (Draft) was reviewed and approved.
The meeting noted that artificial intelligence is a key variable affecting future development. Proceeding from such realities as China's complete industrial system, rich application scenarios, and strong engineering capabilities, efforts should be focused on driving technological innovation through practical application, and the "Artificial Intelligence+" initiative should be continuously deepened and expanded. The foundation for development should be consolidated, with stronger efforts in technological breakthroughs and algorithm innovation, promotion of coordination between computing power and electricity, and an increased supply of high-quality data, so as to shore up weaknesses and strengthen strengths. Empowerment through application should be highlighted, with supply-demand connectivity strengthened with the real economy as the focus, joint research and development encouraged, pilot-scale validation advanced, and scenario cultivation intensified, so that artificial intelligence technology can be better translated into real productive forces. Development and security should be coordinated, with differentiated and classified policies adopted by industry, risk assessment and evaluation strengthened, and the bottom line of artificial intelligence security firmly held.
The meeting discussed and approved in principle the Teachers Law of the People's Republic of China (Revised Draft), and decided to submit the draft to the NPC Standing Committee for deliberation. The meeting noted that teachers are the fundamental basis of education (立教之本, li jiao zhi ben - "establish, teaching, particle, root") and the source of invigorating education. Efforts should be made to effectively strengthen the protection of teachers' remuneration and rights and interests, reduce the burden of non-educational and non-teaching tasks on teachers, strengthen social public services for teachers, and safeguard the professional dignity and lawful rights and interests of teachers. A contingent of highly qualified and professional teachers should be cultivated and built, the teacher education system should be improved, the ability to teach and educate should be enhanced, the building of teacher ethics and professional conduct should be strengthened, and a favorable atmosphere of respecting teachers and valuing education (尊师重教, zun shi zhong jiao - "respect, teacher, serious, teach") should be fostered throughout society.
The meeting discussed and approved in principle the Price Law of the People's Republic of China (Amendment Draft), and decided to submit the draft to the NPC Standing Committee for deliberation. The meeting noted that this amendment adapts to new circumstances and new changes, further improving the price governance mechanism, perfecting government pricing procedures, and clarifying the criteria for identifying improper pricing conduct and the corresponding legal liabilities. Low-price disorderly competition should be governed in accordance with laws and regulations, supporting rules such as industry cost surveys and measures to stop below-cost dumping should be improved, and price law enforcement and supervision should be strengthened. Price competition conduct in the platform economy should be continuously regulated, enterprises should be guided to continuously enhance the value of their products and services, and a fair and orderly market environment should be fostered.
The meeting decided to amend certain provisions of 14 administrative regulations, including the Regulations for the Implementation of the Archives Law of the People's Republic of China, and to repeal 4 administrative regulations, including the Provisions on the Limits of Liability for Compensation for Passenger Transport by Sea Between Ports of the People's Republic of China.
Other matters were also studied at the meeting.
Return to Top(Xinhua News Agency, Tianjin, October 16) (Reporter Qi Zhongxi) The 2026 World Conference on the Development of Technical and Vocational Education and Training opened in Tianjin on the 16th. Ding Xuexiang, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council, attended and delivered a speech.
Ding Xuexiang stated that vocational education is a foundational project for cultivating high-quality skilled personnel and occupies a position and plays a role of great importance or influence (举足轻重, ju zu qing zhong - "lift, foot, light, heavy") in economic and social development. President Xi Jinping emphasized the need to build a vocational education system that integrates vocational and general education and combines industry with education, and to vigorously cultivate master craftsmen of the nation, skilled artisans, and highly skilled personnel. In recent years, China has continuously improved its modern vocational education system, broadened pathways for young people to grow and become successful, consolidated the talent support for industrial development, deepened international exchanges and cooperation, and driven historic achievements and pattern-level changes in the development of vocational education.
Ding Xuexiang pointed out that the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is accelerating and breaking through, placing new and higher demands on vocational education and the cultivation of skilled personnel. He put forward four suggestions for promoting the cooperative development of world vocational education: First, lead open cooperation through the joint building of standards. Strengthen policy communication and rule alignment, jointly improve standards for teaching, practical training, faculty, and evaluation, and promote the cross-border flow and efficient allocation of skills resources. Second, promote transformation and upgrading through change and innovation. Advance the deep integration of new technologies such as digital-intelligent technology and green technology with vocational education, innovate in specialties, curricula, and practical training, and cultivate highly skilled personnel who better meet the needs of economic and social development. Third, promote the all-round development of people through fairness and inclusiveness. Increase assistance to underdeveloped countries and regions, implement a batch of "small yet beautiful, beneficial to people's livelihoods, and sustainable" vocational education cooperation projects, and enable more young people to grow and become successful. Fourth, strengthen the bonds of friendship through learning from and studying each other (互学互鉴, hu xue hu jian - "each other, learn, each other, examine"). Deepen exchanges and cooperation in skills training and dissemination, promote understanding and respect among different cultures, and enhance people-to-people bonds among all countries.
Chen Min'er, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the Tianjin Municipal Party Committee, attended the opening ceremony. Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, and Santiago Irazabal Mourão, President of the General Conference of UNESCO, delivered speeches on-site or via video.
Before the opening ceremony, Ding Xuexiang visited a special exhibition on China's vocational education.
On the morning of the 15th, Ding Xuexiang met with Zahid in Beijing. He stated that China is willing to work with Malaysia to thoroughly implement the important consensus of the two countries' leaders, advance high-quality cooperation in infrastructure, high technology, agriculture, vocational education, and other fields, build a high-level strategic China-Malaysia community with a shared future, and better benefit the peoples of both countries. Zahid stated that Malaysia attaches great importance to the Malaysia-China comprehensive strategic partnership, is committed to further promoting Malaysia-China friendship, better aligning development strategies, and achieving more mutually beneficial and win-win outcomes.
Return to TopScience & Technology · New Knowledge
Drawing a Panoramic Map of the "Tree of Plant Life"
Sixth Edition
"The Great Expedition — Themed Exhibition Commemorating the 90th Anniversary of the Victory of the Long March of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army"
The Most Frequent Words on the Message Board: "Red Army" and "the People"
Eighth Edition
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 欧阳洁
The 9th China International Import Expo (CIIE) will be held in Shanghai from November 5 to 10. On October 16, the State Council Information Office held a press conference to introduce the preparations for the expo.
"Preparations are basically complete. A total of 162 countries, regions, and international organizations will participate, and the overall area will exceed 440,000 square meters for the first time." Vice Minister of Commerce Yan Dong introduced that this year's CIIE will focus on enhancing its market-oriented, distinctive, and professional standards, with three main features.
The open character is more pronounced. The country exhibition of this year's CIIE has attracted 69 countries and international organizations to participate, with the number of participants exceeding last year; Canada and Sri Lanka are the guest countries of honor, while five countries including Moldova and Romania, as well as the United Nations Development Programme, are participating for the first time. In the enterprise exhibition, the exhibition area of U.S. companies exceeds 50,000 square meters, maintaining first place for eight consecutive editions, an increase of 1,500 square meters over last year. The concurrently held Hongqiao International Economic Forum will newly release the "Report on Export-to-China Capacity Development."
The momentum of innovation is stronger. For the first time, more than 300 Fortune Global 500 companies and industry-leading enterprises are participating, and nearly 200 enterprises and institutions have attended all nine editions of the CIIE; more than 2,000 "new face" enterprises are participating for the first time. As of now, more than 480 representative exhibits making their global debut, Asian debut, or China debut have been confirmed, setting a new record high.
The attribute of sharing is more prominent. Six international organizations, including the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, are participating. Various departments and localities are coordinating in synergy, with more than 40 trading delegations and over 600 trading sub-delegations expected to attend for observation and procurement.
The enterprise exhibition of this year's CIIE has exceeded 370,000 square meters for the first time, with 4,142 enterprises from 148 countries and regions participating, the largest number of enterprises in the history of the expo. Xiao Lu, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of the China International Import Expo Bureau, introduced that the three major exhibition areas—medical devices and healthcare products, consumer goods, and agricultural and food products—have been fully expanded; the Asia-Africa products zone will be further upgraded, with the exhibition area of African enterprises growing steadily, and the free booth area provided for least developed countries increasing by 17%. More than 200 representative exhibits making their global debut, including cochlear implants capable of 360-degree sound detection, 6G terminal prototypes, and water treatment systems that can simultaneously soften and mineralize, will be unveiled.
This year's CIIE has for the first time created a global national brand display zone. Xiao Lu said, "Focusing on the guest countries of honor of this year's CIIE and the annual theme country of 'Export to China,' we have selected about 100 brands with a long and storied history, excellent quality, and high national reputation for a concentrated display."
The CIIE Shanghai conference activities provide an efficient platform for exchange and interaction for participating merchants. Shen Weihua, Director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, stated that nearly 100 conference activities have been prepared, which will release research reports on enterprise going global and bulk commodity price indices, launch functional carriers such as a cross-border data compliance platform and a digital credit insurance zone under Shanghai's international trade "single window," and promote the centralized signing of a number of cooperation projects.
In the first eight months, Shanghai's imports reached 1.87 trillion yuan, a record high, accounting for 12.8 percent of the nation's total imports. As the host city of the CIIE, what new features and new explorations does Shanghai have in expanding imports? Lu Shan, Vice Mayor of Shanghai, introduced that in terms of institutions, it will further accelerate quarantine access and promote the efficient conversion of temporary-entry exhibits into general trade imports; in terms of carriers, it will further enhance the capacity of the three national-level import trade promotion and innovation demonstration zones of Waigaoqiao, Hongqiao, and Huaihai Xintiandi; in terms of supply chains, it will attract and cultivate a number of leading supply chain enterprises to enhance global procurement and distribution functions.
Regarding urban support services, Lu Shan stated that all preparatory work is basically complete. It will further strengthen precise matching of supply and demand and carry out supporting activities such as the buyer corridor. Eighteen customs clearance facilitation measures have been introduced, and 123 CIIE customs special windows and dedicated channels have been set up to achieve "arrival, inspection, and release" of exhibits on the spot. The number of negotiation activity areas has been increased to 19, with an area three times that of the previous edition.
Lu Shan introduced that more and more exhibitors are shifting from "six days of exhibiting" to "taking root in China and increasing investment." In the first eight months, Shanghai's actual use of foreign capital reached 11.59 billion U.S. dollars, a year-on-year increase of 6.9 percent; the cumulative number of regional headquarters of multinational companies and foreign-funded R&D centers reached 1,120 and 675, respectively. Taking the CIIE as an opportunity, Shanghai is focusing on institutional innovation, financial support, and supporting facilities to build a market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized first-class business environment. Through the first-launch of facilitation measures for the inspection of imported consumer goods, customs clearance time has been shortened from a minimum of seven days to release on the same day at the fastest, promoting the rapid landing of more than 30,000 first-launch new products in Shanghai. Since 2018, Shanghai has cumulatively attracted more than 1,700 high-caliber first stores at the global, Asian, and national levels.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 王东辉
October 16 this year marks the 46th World Food Day, with the National Food Security Awareness Week activities unfolding in tandem. This year's National Food Security Awareness Week is themed "Implementing the Whole Grain Action Plan, Promoting Grain Conservation, Loss Reduction, Nutrition, and Health," and the main venue event was successfully held at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui.
Implementing the whole grain action plan holds dual value for both nutrition and health and for grain conservation and loss reduction. General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized: "Food conservation and loss reduction can both effectively ease supply pressure and reduce resource use" and "guide the whole society to establish a correct view of health and engage in effective health self-shaping and self-management." General Secretary Xi Jinping's important remarks provide the fundamental guidance for implementing the whole grain action plan.
Gradually improving consumers' dietary nutrition structure
In Rongding Town, Mabian Yi Autonomous County, Sichuan Province, in the thousand-mu whole grain green planting base, the thick-skinned purple rice carefully cultivated by Mabian Zi Bai Qing Jin Rice Industry Co., Ltd. is about to be harvested; in the early morning, the "Duofu Duo Staple Food Kitchen" in major supermarkets and community convenience stores in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, are promptly stocked with fresh whole grain products, attracting customers to make purchases; in the production workshop of Anhui Wang Renhe Rice Noodle Food Co., Ltd., new product categories such as low-GI (glycemic index) rice noodles with added whole grain ingredients are coming off the production line in batches, meeting the needs of all scenarios.
From the fields to supermarket shelves and people's dining tables, whole grains are influencing people imperceptibly (潜移默化, qian yi mo hua - "subtle, move, silent, transform") and gradually improving consumers' dietary nutrition structure.
Liu Huanxin, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Director of the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, introduced that this year's World Food Day and National Food Security Awareness Week activities aim to inject new momentum into grain conservation and loss reduction and add new vitality to promoting residents' nutrition and health.
In December 2024, the "National Whole Grain Action Plan (2024–2035)" was released and implemented. Carlos Aldeco, FAO Representative in China, stated that the current agrifood system faces new challenges, and China's whole grain action plan has opened up an innovative path that can play a positive role in reducing food loss and waste, improving nutrition and health, and ensuring food security.
Han Jizhi, Director of the Department of Safe Storage and Science and Technology of the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, introduced that since the implementation of the National Whole Grain Action Plan, various localities have achieved positive results in the whole grain action through measures such as refining supporting measures, strengthening the formulation and revision of standards, and promoting the development of the entire industry chain, and the whole grain industry has gotten off to a good start.
Public awareness is gradually rising. A total of 2,643 themed activities and 1,164 science popularization lectures related to whole grains have been carried out, and the public's awareness and recognition of whole grains are increasing day by day.
The standards system is increasingly well-established. At the national level, 18 national and industry standards related to whole grains have been formulated, revised, and released; at the local level, 29 local standards, 200 group standards, and 179 enterprise standards have been formulated and revised.
Key technologies are gradually achieving breakthroughs. Various localities have organized 435 basic research projects and 657 applied research projects, built 70 local innovation platforms of various types, and developed 495 innovative products.
Product supply is gradually increasing. Currently, there are 926 enterprises nationwide with whole grain production and processing capacity, with 29 industrial parks (clusters) and 103 regional public brands.
Safeguarding the granary of a major country with science and technology, and firmly holding the rice bowl of China
Safeguarding the granary of a major country and promoting the upgrading of the whole grain industry must rely firmly on scientific and technological innovation.
Good varieties boost production and underpin nutrition——
As the new harvest season approaches, more than a dozen major grain growers in Ning'an City, Heilongjiang Province, are participating in a special "High-Protein Corn Food Tasting Event" in the fields. Delicacies such as corn porridge and corn flour pancakes have some veteran corn growers praising them unceasingly (赞不绝口, zan bu jue kou - "praise, not, stop, mouth").
The host of this tasting event is Qian Chunrong, Deputy Director of the Cultivation and Tillage Research Institute of the Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Over the past few years, she has led her team to develop the high-protein corn variety "Qianyu 568," whose grain protein content is close to 12%, 3 to 4 percentage points higher than ordinary corn.
"In order to make the villagers willing to plant and skilled at planting high-protein corn varieties, we have been continuously adjusting and optimizing cultivation and management techniques. This year, we promoted an intercropping model of wheat and corn in Pengsheng Village, Zhonghou Township, Fuyu County, Heilongjiang. At harvest time, while the villagers had a bumper wheat harvest, they also harvested more than 440 jin more high-protein corn per mu." Qian Chunrong said.
To match consumers' healthy dietary needs, researchers have developed a variety of whole grain corn products, achieving a leap from "refined processing of coarse grains" to "whole-kernel utilization," and promoting the transformation of the local corn industry from good yields to good quality and good benefits.
Upgrading grain storage technology to reduce storage losses——
Good grain must be well managed and well stored. During the storage stage, grain fears high temperature, high humidity, and insects and mold the most. The Heyuan Direct Depot of Central Grain Reserves is located in Guangdong, where the summer season is long and air humidity is high. Traditional nitrogen-filled controlled atmosphere equipment is bulky, and completing one round of nitrogen filling takes a long time, putting considerable pressure on ensuring the safety of stored grain.
To this end, the Heyuan Direct Depot of Central Grain Reserves has upgraded its nitrogen-filled controlled atmosphere insect control technology, using new processes such as "dual-mode nitrogen generation" to achieve cyclic nitrogen generation and cyclic oxygen reduction, ensuring full coverage of nitrogen in the warehouse without dead corners, causing pests to suffocate from oxygen deprivation and preventing mold from reproducing.
"Don't be fooled by its small size—it can produce nearly 40 cubic meters of nitrogen per hour." Bao Zhongping, General Manager of Heyuan Direct Depot Co., Ltd. of Central Grain Reserves, displayed the "Intelligent Nitrogen-Temperature Dual-Control Grain Storage Terminal" model. The equipment is about the same size as a grain warehouse air conditioner, and each warehouse can be equipped with one, achieving independent controlled atmosphere and temperature control for each silo, implementing the grain preservation policy of "prevention first, comprehensive control."
Making whole grain products both delicious and nutritious, integrating them into three meals across four seasons
In the cafeteria of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, a menu covering more than 130 types of whole grain foods showcases the possibilities of whole grains in university cafeterias.
On the basic meal line, whole grain staples are available every day; in the bakery section, whole wheat pastries come in a wide variety; mobile healthy whole grain food carts are stocked with self-created whole grain specialty drinks and various snacks and pastries, extending the cafeteria from the counter to the teachers and students' side...
Ma Mingsi, Manager of the Catering Service Center of the Logistics Service Corporation of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, introduced: "In order to ensure the long-term and stable supply of cost-effective whole grain delicacies, the cafeteria on the one hand carries out centralized procurement, and on the other hand produces 'customized' products based on the actual needs of teachers and students."
Accelerating the spread of whole grain foods to every household (千家万户, qian jia wan hu - "thousand, families, ten thousand, households") and integrating them into three meals across four seasons—making whole grain products both delicious and nutritious is an important condition.
At the Changping R&D and Pilot Production Base of the Academy of National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, a pilot production line records the entire process of repeated testing, adjustment, and optimization that a bag of highland barley crispy oatmeal underwent before it hit the market.
Using whole highland barley kernels as input instead of highland barley flour for testing, adopting double-sided baking, and carefully adjusting temperature control parameters... Tan Bin, Chief Researcher of the Academy of National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, led his team through round after round of debugging.
Tan Bin introduced that whole grain products have high dietary fiber content, which results in a coarse taste. In addition, whole wheat flour is prone to oxidation. To develop the whole grain industry, the difficulties of poor processing performance, short shelf life, and coarse taste must be overcome.
Physical crushing technology regulates the particle size of grains, giving flour a fine texture; biological enzyme preparations soften the dietary fiber structure, making the taste no longer coarse; enzyme inactivation technology stabilizes microorganisms, extending shelf life; presiding over the release of whole grain standards at various levels... With joint efforts on both hardware and software, a good foundation has been laid for promoting whole grains.
The outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan proposes promoting whole-chain conservation and loss reduction after grain production and implementing the whole grain action plan. Liu Huanxin stated that efforts will continue to extensively and deeply carry out whole grain science popularization and publicity, and continue to make sustained efforts in improving standards, improving quality, and consolidating the industrial foundation.
Return to TopBy: 高世林
During an inspection tour in Ulanqab City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, on October 16, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed: "Promote the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy." This is both an important methodology for developing new quality productive forces and building a modern industrial system, and an important guide for following the path of ecological priority and green development.
Looking at Ulanqab, its transformation from a bleak grassland into a land of development vitality lies in thoroughly implementing the new development philosophy, creatively carrying out the decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee, seizing opportunities, and injecting new drivers of growth into traditional industries. The ferroalloy industry has transformed from being crude and low-end industrial style (傻大黑粗, sha da hei cu - "silly, big, black, coarse") to being "high-tech, intelligent, green, and innovative"; industries such as potatoes and oats have seen their added value rise steadily thanks to digitalization across the entire chain. Computing power supports manufacturing and innovation, data empowers the real economy, and in continuous progress new seedlings are nurtured, new branches sprout, and new forests take shape.
The integration of the digital and real economies is not a "forced match," and one must never resort to applying the same policy indiscriminately to everyone (一刀切, yi dao qie - "one, knife, cut"). Ningbo, Zhejiang, uses "5G + industrial internet" to help industries such as molds and home appliances advance with the "number" (digitalization); Liuzhou, Guangxi, uses artificial intelligence and digital twins to transform automobile production lines, giving the old base of the automobile industry a "new engine"... China has a vast territory, with notable differences in resource endowments across the east, west, south, north, and center. Only by basing oneself on one's own conditions and finding paths in light of local conditions can integration yield results.
With the living water of digitalization irrigating the fertile soil of the real economy, the green momentum of high-quality development will surely surge even more powerfully, and the future of China's economy will surely be even brighter.
Return to TopOn October 15, in the Rong County Economic Development Zone of Zigong City, Sichuan Province, an all-weather aerostat underwent a low-altitude hovering test. From October 13 to 16, this aerostat, independently developed by a Chinese sci-tech innovation enterprise, completed its first-flight series of tests in stages in Rong County. This white floating platform, 21 meters in diameter and 24 meters in length, integrates functions such as communication relay, navigation enhancement, and meteorological detection onto a single platform, better serving economic and social development.
Photo by Peng Minxiang (Xinhua News Agency dispatch)
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 洪秋婷
On October 16, the second day of the 140th Canton Fair, in the home appliance exhibition area, a gray-haired American man walked with pauses, pulled out his phone to photograph product parameters, then flipped open a notebook and quickly jotted down a few notes.
His name is Gaboron, and he is the head of a leading home appliance distributor in the United States. His identity goes beyond that — he is also the third-largest shareholder and one of the founders of Guangdong Thermia Technology Co., Ltd.
"I'm not here to buy things, and I'm not here to sell things," he said with a smile to reporters. "I'm here to see friends!"
Let's go back to 1995. At that time, Gaboron was in the air conditioning business in the United States. That year, he walked into the Canton Fair for the first time, hoping to try his luck. In a corner of the exhibition hall with a bustling, noisy atmosphere (人声鼎沸, ren sheng ding fei - "people, sound, boiling, noisy"), he met a partner from China.
"Both sides started out with a try-it-and-see attitude," Gaboron recalled. "But the other party was very reliable, the quotes were honest, and they didn't beat around the bush."
So Gaboron placed an order, betting his entire year's demand on it — 2,000 air conditioners, filling 10 containers, shipped to the United States.
In this way, the first batch of orders became the cornerstone of trust. After that, the two sides' business grew bigger and bigger, and their friendship deepened — from trade partners, they became friends in life.
Subsequently, Gaboron invested in building a factory in China, producing air conditioners to sell back to the United States. The business grew larger and larger, the factory expanded to a third one, and Gaboron became the third-largest shareholder of Thermia.
"Once, while running around trade shows in Europe, I saw that local heating had already adopted very mature heat pump equipment, but at that time almost no supplier in China knew about this thing — everyone was 'competing fiercely' on air conditioners," Gaboron said. "A European customer said to me, why not make a sheet-metal box, put a water pump and electric heating equipment inside, form a water system, and make it into a heat pump?"
"We felt at the time that this idea was very good," Gaboron said. The factory spent a full year on research and development, optimizing prototypes again and again. That winter, they sent a small batch of the machines to Norway for field testing. He stretched out his hand and gestured: "Local European products were priced very high; our product had a high cost-performance ratio. As soon as we launched it, it made a splash."
"This idea came from Gaboron's sensitivity to overseas markets," said Tong Fengxi, president of Guangdong Thermia Technology Co., Ltd. Speaking of the cooperation model, Tong Fengxi described it very plainly: "He directly invested in our company and also gave us the orders." In Tong Fengxi's view, the value of this American shareholder goes far beyond providing capital: he continuously transmits the industry's latest requirements, standards, end-customer preferences, and market trends to Chinese suppliers, and from there continuously introduces new products and new opportunities into the world market.
Gaboron has participated in the Canton Fair for more than 30 years. "Meeting supplier friends, looking for new products — on this world-famous trade platform, no matter what the field or industry, you can find new business opportunities and manufacturing sources," Gaboron said.
From 10 containers in 1995 to 3 factories and 1 shareholder identity today; from coming with orders in hand to coming with capital, technology, and market information, Gaboron has transformed from an order-purchasing buyer at the Canton Fair into an investment partner embracing Chinese manufacturing.
"The biggest advantage of China's supply chain is its flexibility. It is thanks to the stable relationship with Chinese suppliers that my business has been able to grow continuously," Gaboron said.
Return to TopBy: 人民网记者 王雅蝶
On October 16, at the new product debut display area of the 140th Canton Fair, Nicole, a U.S. buyer attending the Canton Fair for the first time, was guided by staff to try on a product with electrocardiogram detection functionality. "There are so many new products; I can't wait to buy some and take them home."
"Our screenless wristband weighs 14 grams, supports long battery life, and works with specific mobile phone applications," said Lu Yinan, head of product marketing at the brand center of Guangzhou Haiweite Technology Co., Ltd. The company has already reached preliminary cooperation intentions with buyers from the United States, Turkey, and other places.
In the newly established new product debut display area, the reporter saw a vast array of beautiful things (琳琅满目, lin lang man mu - "gem, jade, fill, eyes") — consumer electronics, motorcycles, lighting products, and more. Many buyers got up close to learn about and experience the cutting-edge achievements of Chinese manufacturing. Some buyers engaged in enthusiastic exchanges with staff, some tried on new products to feel them firsthand, and some took out their phones to immediately record exhibitor information.
By the window, sunlight fell on a black motorcycle, and Gjichi, a buyer from North Macedonia attending the Canton Fair for the first time, looked at it again and again. "This motorcycle feels very suitable for me, with a strong sense of design. I'm planning to go find the sales staff," he said with a smile.
Chen Feiyan, sales manager of Guangdong Daye Motorcycle Technology Co., Ltd., said: "In recent years, the consumer base for motorcycles has become increasingly diverse. This product is equipped with a high-performance twin-cylinder water-cooled engine, which can deliver greater power output at relatively low fuel consumption."
At the booth of Zhixing Robotics Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd., a tactile perception data collection hand staged an "ink wash show" — the robot slowly dipped a round fan into paint, and in no time, a lacquer fan with lively colors was finished. Many buyers took out their phones to film the process.
"With the rapid global development of embodied intelligence, this data collection hand we developed in-house can be used in scenarios such as industry and cultural tourism. We have already received orders from buyers in Canada, the United States, and some European countries," said Bai Guochao, chairman of Zhixing Robotics.
This edition of the Canton Fair will feature over 700 new product debut events, offering formats such as dedicated release sessions, online-linked releases, and exhibition-exploration releases. The number of debuts has grown by 15 percent, and innovative products are helping domestic and overseas buyers make new connections.
(Liao Ruoting contributed to this report)
Return to TopAt the New Energy Vehicles and Smart Mobility exhibition area of the Canton Fair, buyers were experiencing the automotive exhibits.
Photo provided by the China Foreign Trade Centre
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 刘玲玲 李安琪
From October 12 to 14, a China-U.S. youth exchange event themed "Embarking on a New Journey — Meeting Each Other, Journeying to the Future Together" was held in Beijing. More than 200 students from China and the United States engaged in face-to-face exchanges through themed visits, roundtable dialogues, and other formats. The event was co-hosted by the China Education Association for International Exchange and Peking University, aiming to respond to the "50,000 in Five Years" initiative, promote more two-way exchanges between Chinese and American youth, and pool youthful strength for the cause of friendship between the two countries.
"Let more young people have the opportunity to draw closer to each other, understand each other, and fulfill each other"
"The hope of China-U.S. relations lies in the people, and the future lies in the youth. Here, I wish to announce that in the next five years, China will invite 100,000 American youths to China for exchange and study." This was stated by President Xi Jinping in September this year during his state visit to the United States. This is another invitation extended by President Xi Jinping to American youth, following the announcement of the "50,000 in Five Years" initiative in San Francisco, the United States, in November 2023.
Tian Xuejun, President of the China Education Association for International Exchange, stated that educational exchanges connect young people, cultivate trust, and shape the future. In recent years, China-U.S. youth exchanges have achieved positive results. Each real-life experience has become a vivid testament to the developing mutual understanding and affection (相知相亲, xiang zhi xiang qin - "mutually know, mutually be close") between the next generation of China and the United States. The "50,000 in Five Years" initiative will bring new opportunities to the cause of China-U.S. youth exchanges, "letting more young people have the opportunity to draw closer to each other, understand each other, and fulfill each other."
"From '50,000 in Five Years' to '100,000 in Five Years' — this is not only a doubling of numbers, but also a continuation and elevation of mutual trust between China and the United States." He Guangcai, Secretary of the CPC Peking University Committee and Chairman of the University Council, stated that thanks to the tireless efforts of generations of people of discernment and wisdom (有识之士, you shi zhi shi - "have knowledge, be person"), the tree of China-U.S. friendship has grown ever more upright after undergoing many hardships and trials (历经风雨, li jing feng yu - "pass through, experience, wind, rain"). The strength of youth is the future of China-U.S. relations, and the friendships forged today will ultimately converge into a force that upholds the world.
Otta Uipi, a student from Ridgeview High School in Utah, the United States, visiting China for the first time, said that in the process of communicating with Chinese students, she discovered that young people from both countries share the same interests and hobbies, as well as similar growing-up worries. "I am very grateful for the '100,000 in Five Years' initiative. It has given me a precious opportunity to experience China up close and communicate face-to-face with Chinese friends. This is not only conducive to building friendship between the young people of the two countries, but also plants the seeds of hope for U.S.-China friendship."
Wei Wei, one of the lead teachers of the American youth exchange delegation, said that in recent years she has led American students to China on multiple occasions and witnessed the changes that exchange activities have brought to students. "Some students, after coming to China, have already begun to consider studying in China in the future, or even starting businesses and living here." She said she looks forward to the "100,000 in Five Years" initiative creating opportunities for more American youth to step into China, get to know China, and understand China.
"Working together with Chinese youth to promote technology for good, so that innovative achievements benefit more people"
Digital Capability Development Center, Design and Prototyping Laboratory... At Tsinghua University, an immersive science and technology experience tour left a deep impression on the visiting youth. On the digital simulation platform of the Department of Electronic Engineering, a digital model of a future city gradually emerged. Delmer Pilling, a high school student from Utah, the United States, leaned in to closely examine the images, listened attentively to the explanations, and kept raising questions: "Does the construction of the model take urban environmental design into consideration? Is such urban design livable?" Pilling has been studying Chinese for ten years and has long been devoted to urban planning and construction. He looks forward to pursuing further studies at international institutions in the future, drawing on cutting-edge experience, and contributing his ideas to global urban development through the power of technology.
Seran Baker, from Riverton High School in Utah, began learning Chinese in the first grade of elementary school. More than a decade of accumulation has filled him with longing for China. Having now actually come to China, he summed up his feelings with the word "cool." "In China, cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics are not just eye-catching technological breakthroughs; they are deeply embedded in daily life, genuinely changing the lives of ordinary people," Baker said.
Joseph Clark, from New York University, said that "technology" was a high-frequency word in his exchanges with Chinese youth. From robots automatically sorting express packages to artificial intelligence entering classrooms to improve teaching efficiency, these innovative scenarios that have already become part of daily life in China gave him an intuitive sense of the true meaning of technology for good: technology is not a concept confined to the laboratory, but a force that can enter daily life, improve life, and serve ordinary people.
Wei Wei told reporters that for many American youth, participating in this event meant that the cases of Chinese modernization they had previously learned about in the classroom — high-speed rail, shared bicycles, mobile payments, and so on — were transformed from words in books into realities they could personally experience. Experiencing mobile payments and robot delivery firsthand, and getting an up-close feel for modern urban infrastructure, a series of vivid observations continuously refreshed their understanding of China.
"This trip to China has not only broadened my horizons, but also allowed me to make good friends sharing the same ambitions and ideals (志同道合, zhi tong dao he - "will, same, path, together"). More importantly, it has made my future plans clearer. I hope to work together with Chinese youth to promote technology for good, so that innovative achievements benefit more people," Clark said.
"I hope today's encounter can become the beginning of a lasting friendship between young Americans and Chinese"
"When the hazy moon's edge gently brushes the ocean's waves, crossing ten thousand miles, we embrace here..." On the afternoon of the 14th, in the Sunshine Hall of the Yingjie Exchange Center at Peking University, Chinese and American youth jointly sang "It's Great to Know You," the theme song of the "Young Envoys Exchange and Study Program" (YES Program), bringing the themed exchange event to a climax.
James Brindley, a student from Kean University in the United States who participated in the singing, said that the lyrics of the song fully expressed the longing of American and Chinese youth to get to know each other and build friendship. The process of rehearsing together with Chinese youth was filled with both joy and sweat, and was the most unforgettable experience of his trip. "Young people in the United States and China grow up in different environments and have great cultural differences, but this does not affect our ability to understand each other and build friendship. My Chinese friends and I overcame many difficulties to complete this performance. This made me realize that as long as we work working together with one heart and mind (齐心协力, qi xin xie li - "unite, hearts, cooperate, strength") and strive toward a common goal, the United States and China can completely join hands to solve many problems and contribute to building a better world."
At Tsinghua University's "Zijing Ink Fragrance · Chinese and Foreign Peers" calligraphy workshop, young people from both countries sat around the desks, picked up writing brushes, and experienced the unique charm and appeal of Chinese calligraphy through horizontal, vertical, left-falling, and right-falling strokes. Uipi showed reporters the character "fu" (blessing) she had written: "Writing with a brush requires more calmness and focus; not a single stroke can be rushed." In her view, Chinese culture is not just abstract textual symbols in textbooks; the composure and philosophical reflection hidden between the strokes of ink are equally moving.
Elias Sherman, a student at the University of Washington, visited China for the second time and greatly enjoyed the time staying together day and night (朝夕相伴, zhao xi xiang ban - "morning, evening, together, accompany") and engaging in relaxed interactions with Chinese students. After the event, he plans to continue keeping in touch with his newly made Chinese friends through social media. "Popular culture such as music, films and TV dramas, and anime are common topics for young people on both sides of the ocean. These shared interests truly confirm the similarities deep within the hearts of the youth of the two countries."
Zhang Lipei, China Region President of the U.S.-China Business Council, said that an experience of face-to-face exchange, joint learning, or working together is often more real and profound than simply learning about a country through books or media. The "100,000 in Five Years" initiative will create opportunities for more young Americans to get to know China and enhance friendship. "Understanding and trust between the United States and China have never been built overnight, but have been formed through generation after generation of people continuously drawing closer to each other. I hope today's encounter can become the beginning of a lasting friendship between young Americans and Chinese," Zhang Lipei said.
Return to Top"The hope of China-U.S. relations lies in the people, and its future lies in the youth. Here, I wish to announce that over the next five years, China will invite 100,000 American youths to China for exchange and study." In September this year, during his state visit to the United States, President Xi Jinping announced new measures to promote China-U.S. people-to-people and cultural exchanges. In response to this initiative, a China-U.S. youth thematic exchange activity under the theme "Embarking on a New Journey — Meeting Each Other, Going to the Future Together" was recently held in Beijing. More than 200 Chinese and American students gathered in Beijing to participate in thematic visits and roundtable dialogues, drawing closer and deepening friendship through their time together.
In November 2023, during his visit to the United States, President Xi Jinping put forward the initiative to "invite 50,000 American youths to China for exchange and study over five years," injecting new momentum into China-U.S. youth exchanges in the new era. Over the past two years and more, numerous Chinese and American youths have come to know the world and broaden their horizons through exchange and mutual learning: from classroom study to cultural experiences, from city visits to social practice, each real experience and each sincere friendship has become a vivid portrayal of the two peoples being close and friendly to one another. On the basis of completing the "50,000 in five years" initiative goal two and a half years ahead of schedule, the "100,000 in five years" initiative has followed in succession. From 50,000 to 100,000, what has grown is not just the number, but also the sincerity and action to give more Chinese and American youths the opportunity to approach one another, understand one another, and fulfill one another.
Touching the bricks on the Great Wall, gazing upon Chinese civilization in the exhibition halls of the National Museum, experiencing cutting-edge innovation in university laboratories... During this thematic exchange activity, American youths encountered a China that possesses both ancient charm and modern vitality. Beside the crenellations of the Great Wall, a student stroked the mottled city bricks and remarked that setting foot on this land in person had shattered many stereotypical imaginings from across the ocean; amid the roundtable discussions, some young people were pleasantly surprised to discover that, despite vastly different upbringings, their peers on the two sides of the ocean shared similar interests... The genuine perception of face-to-face, heart-to-heart encounters has sown seeds of understanding and trust, which are gradually reshaping how the generation of Chinese and American youths perceives one another, turning the imagination across the Pacific into vivid and real encounters.
The exchanges extend beyond cultural experiences to discussions of cutting-edge technology and common human concerns. In the roundtable dialogues, Chinese and American students engaged in speaking one's mind freely (畅所欲言, chang suo yu yan - "freely, as one wishes, speak words") on topics such as artificial intelligence, technological innovation, and social responsibility. Chinese and American youths share the same planet and jointly bear the mission of the times. Facing common development opportunities and global challenges, young people are the most creative and most action-oriented group; the understanding and trust built today will ultimately become the most solid foundation for future cooperation. Taking the "100,000 in five years" initiative as a new starting point, more and more Chinese and American youths are learning from each other and progressing together, becoming "ambassadors of friendship" across the Pacific, and jointly promoting the two peoples to be close and friendly to one another and the bilateral relationship to make steady progress to achieve long-term success.
People-to-people connectivity has always been the deepest foundation and most enduring driving force of China-U.S. relations. "Ping-Pong Diplomacy" knocked open the door of China-U.S. exchanges that had been closed for many years, the "Guling Bond" carries forward a friendship spanning a century, and Iowa has witnessed touching stories of local cooperation... The trickling streams of interaction between the two peoples converge into a continuous and fresh source of nourishment for the development of bilateral relations. Recently, surveys by several major U.S. mainstream polling institutions have shown that American public favorability toward China continues to rise; in a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 57 percent of American respondents supported "friendly cooperation and engagement with China." U.S. media have also noted that short-video platforms are becoming a window for young Americans to get to know China. People-to-people and cultural exchanges require meticulous and painstaking work, sustained effort, and sustained, long-term effort, allowing the tree of friendship between the two peoples to take deeper root and grow taller. Precisely for this reason, every sincere encounter in China-U.S. youth exchanges is all the more precious and worth guarding with care.
When hearts connect, enduring bonds are forged. From "50,000 in five years" to "100,000 in five years," the friendships forged between Chinese and American youths will surely converge into a mighty force driving the healthy and stable development of China-U.S. relations. China is willing to continue deepening non-governmental interactions and people-to-people and cultural exchanges with the United States, consolidating the foundation of China-U.S. non-governmental friendship, and pooling endless and continuous vitality of the people for a constructive and strategically stable China-U.S. relationship.
Return to Top(Xinhua News Agency, Baku, October 16) (Reporters Zhou Liang, Liu Shuchen) Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, met with Palestinian Foreign Minister Farsin on the 15th in Baku on the sidelines of the CICA Summit.
Wang Yi stated that China was one of the first countries to recognize Palestine. No matter how the international situation changes, the Chinese people have always stood with the Palestinian people and firmly support the just cause of the Palestinian people in restoring their legitimate national rights.
Wang Yi said that the Palestinian question is the longest-running hotspot issue and the greatest historical injustice in the world since World War II. If this issue is not resolved justly, the Middle East cannot achieve lasting peace and stability. The current situation in the Middle East remains tense, bringing new difficulties to the resolution of the Palestinian question. The Palestinian question should not be marginalized, and the world must not forget the 2 million Palestinian people struggling on the brink of death in Gaza. Justice may be delayed, but it will never be absent. As a responsible major country, China will continue to stand on the side of international justice, stand on the side of oppressed nations, and continue to actively speak up for the just cause of the Palestinian side on multilateral platforms.
Farsin briefed on the latest developments in the Palestinian question and highly appreciated China's just position on the Palestinian question. Farsin stated that the Palestinian side thanks China for its long-term strong support for the Palestinian people's restoration of their legitimate national rights, thanks China for insisting on speaking up for the Palestinian side at international multilateral occasions, and thanks China for its selfless assistance in humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Palestinian side looks forward to China continuing to uphold justice for the Palestinian side on the Palestinian question and playing a more important role in realizing the "two-state solution."
Return to Top(Xinhua News Agency, Baku, October 16) (Reporters Zhou Liang, Zhong Zhong) Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the request of the latter on the 15th in Baku on the sidelines of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) Summit.
Herzog said that the Jewish and Chinese nations have a long history of exchanges. The two sides once helped each other during the anti-fascist war. Israel firmly adheres to the One-China policy and is committed to advancing friendly relations with China. It is willing to take the 35th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and China next year as an opportunity to advance exchanges and cooperation between the two sides in such fields as science and technology, investment, and people-to-people exchanges.
Herzog shared Israel's views and position on the situation in the Middle East region, saying that China has always been an important constructive force for promoting peace in the world and the region. Israel attaches importance to the relevant initiatives and propositions put forward by China, appreciates China's efforts to promote peace and stability in the region, and is willing to maintain communication with China.
Wang Yi said that during the Second World War, the peoples of China and Israel both suffered greatly from the scourge of war, and during times of mutual suffering (患难之际, huan nan zhi ji - "hardship, time") they extended a helping hand to each other, giving rise to many moving stories. Over the more than 30 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, bilateral relations have maintained stable development, and practical cooperation has achieved positive results.
Wang Yi said that promoting peace and reconciliation in the region is the cornerstone of China's Middle East policy. At present, the regional situation remains tense, and peace and tranquility are far from being achieved. The most urgent task is to fully open the passages into the Gaza Strip. The 2 million civilians must not be allowed to continue struggling on the brink of survival, the humanitarian disaster must not be allowed to continue to spread, and at the same time Israel should also stop and revoke its actions of forcibly establishing settlements in the West Bank.
Wang Yi stressed that since the beginning of this year, President Xi Jinping has put forward a series of initiatives and propositions on promoting peace and security in the Middle East, which are public goods that China has provided to the Middle East and the world.
Wang Yi said that President Herzog's father, during his tenure as president, had promoted the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Israel and was also the first Israeli president to visit China. In his memoirs, he once wrote: compromise and negotiation do not always lead to losing something; they often bring important gains and long-term trust. China believes that as long as all parties adhere to the concept of peace, maintain strategic resolve for peace, explore moving toward each other in a spirit of cooperation (相向而行, xiang xiang er xing - "facing, each other, walk") on the path to peace, and uphold the correct direction of the "two-state solution," the peace that the people are looking forward to with great anticipation (翘首以盼, qiao shou yi pan - "raise, head, with, hope") will eventually arrive.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 谢亚宏
On October 15, local time, at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, Italy, the award ceremony for the "FAO 100 Heroines of Agriculture and Rural Development" was held. Three Chinese women, Yin Yuzhen, Yu Jinxiu, and Dong Minfang, were selected, showcasing Chinese women's outstanding contributions in the fields of food security and rural development.
Before presenting the award to Yin Yuzhen, a Chinese desertification-control worker and national model worker, the FAO played a video of her long-term efforts to root herself in the Mu Us Sandy Land in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and persist in desertification control and afforestation. Yin Yuzhen's story deeply moved the guests in attendance, who rose one after another to applaud and cheer for her. An American friend, Saikesi (whose real name is Ronald Sakolsky), who had once raised funds for Yin Yuzhen and forged a deep friendship with her, also came to the award ceremony. He was invited on stage, warmly embraced Yin Yuzhen, and the two raised the trophy together. Saikesi said that Yin Yuzhen's feat had deeply moved him, and he called on everyone to plant a tree and work together to improve the ecological environment. Yin Yuzhen said that this award belongs not only to herself, but even more to the millions of people who love the Earth. "As a farmer, I feel happy and proud to receive an award on the United Nations stage. The desertification-control work I engage in is an important part of the food security goals advocated by the FAO. I will continue to do my own work well and better repay nature."
Yu Jinxiu, a national rural crafts master from Qichun County, Hubei Province, has long been engaged in the inheritance and promotion of Qichun moxibustion therapy, a national intangible cultural heritage. Over more than 20 years, she has trained a cumulative total of over 30,000 professional moxibustion practitioners, helped thousands of people find employment and start businesses, driven the development of the local mugwort industry, and created income-increasing opportunities for rural residents, especially women, people with disabilities, and other groups. At the award ceremony, Yu Jinxiu held Qichun mugwort and introduced it to guests from various countries: "I hope that through this global event, mugwort can bring development opportunities to more farmers."
Dong Minfang is the chairwoman of Fengrui Agricultural Machinery Professional Cooperative in Yueyang County, Hunan Province. She resigned from her position as a corporate executive and returned to her hometown to engage in farming, promoting the mechanization of grain production, driving the development of smallholder farmers, and helping rural women increase their incomes by providing employment opportunities, skills training, and entrepreneurial support. She told reporters that this award made her feel the international community's attention to and recognition of Chinese women and agricultural and rural work. "In the future, I will continue to work hard in the countryside, lead the people of my hometown to better realize the goal of enriching farmers through science and technology, and tell the story of Chinese women in the countryside well."
Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the FAO, said at the award ceremony that women are an important driving force in agrifood systems and play an indispensable role in ensuring food security, managing natural resources, promoting rural development, and enhancing community resilience.
This award ceremony coincided with the 2026 World Food Forum, during which a wide range of China's specialty agricultural products and rural development cases were showcased. Ruben Sessa, Senior Programme Officer of the FAO's Youth and Women's Division, said: "The foundation of food security lies in rural revitalization, cultural inheritance, and the wisdom of those who cultivate the land. China's practice proves that empowering rural women, protecting intangible cultural heritage, and strengthening youth innovation in the digital age are not only about preserving tradition, but are also necessary measures for building a resilient global food system. The FAO looks forward to deepening cooperation with China and building a solid bridge between traditional heritage and the younger generation."
(People's Daily, Rome, October 16)
Return to TopBy: 赵 兵
October 16 is World Food Day. At present, with geopolitical conflicts dragging on, extreme weather occurring frequently, and economic growth under pressure, the global food security situation is becoming increasingly severe. In 2025, approximately 645 million people worldwide remain in a state of hunger, and many developing countries bear particularly heavy pressure.
Eliminating hunger and ensuring food security is an urgent and long-term common task facing the international community. To meet this complex challenge, both financial investment and technological innovation are needed, and mutual learning of experience and long-term partnerships are also indispensable. South-South cooperation provides an important pathway for developing countries to strengthen mutual learning of experience and enhance their capacity to ensure food security. The accumulated practice of the Global South is a valuable resource shared among all parties; developing countries are not only beneficiaries of development outcomes, but also important contributors of knowledge, experience, and innovation.
China's development practice provides useful reference for Global South countries in exploring food security development paths suited to their own circumstances. As one of the first United Nations agencies to cooperate in China, the United Nations World Food Programme has witnessed and participated in China's journey from a recipient country of food aid to an important partner in global food security and South-South cooperation. Today, while ensuring food security for more than 1.4 billion people, China actively works with United Nations agencies, including the World Food Programme, through mechanisms such as the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund, sharing valuable experience and practical technology in agricultural development to help developing countries enhance their capacity for food security assurance and production development.
In the course of advancing rural revitalization, agricultural production, poverty reduction, and nutrition improvement, China has accumulated rich experience. The value of this experience lies not in providing a model that can be copied wholesale, but in the methodology of "basing oneself on national conditions, focusing on the long term, and exploring through practice." Countries differ in their development stages, resource endowments, and social environments, and development has never had a path applicable to all situations everywhere (放之四海而皆准, fang zhi si hai er jie zhun - "place, in, four, seas, and, all, are, consistent"). The essence of South-South cooperation is precisely to combine experience tested through practice with local actual needs, and to transform it, through mutual learning, into solutions in light of local conditions and lasting development capacity.
The World Food Programme Centre of Excellence for Rural Development, established in China in 2016, is a concrete practice of this concept. Over the past 10 years, the Centre of Excellence has focused on key areas such as poverty alleviation innovation, agricultural value chain development, post-harvest loss reduction, disaster prevention and mitigation, and climate change response, promoting deepened experience exchange, technical cooperation, and knowledge sharing between China and other developing countries. Post-harvest grain loss reduction is a typical example. In some regions of West Africa, due to insufficient storage facilities and limited grain storage technology, a large amount of grain that farmers have worked hard to harvest is lost before entering the market. For smallholder farmers, what is lost is not only grain, but also their source of income and their capacity to withstand risks. In response to this pain point, the Centre of Excellence, together with Chinese research institutions and technical experts, shared experience in storage loss reduction, introduced grain storage facilities suited to smallholder farmers in Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea, and promoted technical training and localized production of equipment; the Côte d'Ivoire project also linked rice production with the school feeding procurement system, broadening market channels for smallholder farmers while reducing losses. After project implementation, the local post-harvest grain loss rate dropped from about 30 percent to 15 percent, and farmers' incomes increased by about 30 percent.
This case confirms that experience sharing, only when rooted in and serving the local community, can truly be transformed into stable and lasting development outcomes. The 10 years of practice of the Centre of Excellence show us that South-South cooperation has never been one-way experience export, but rather joint learning and joint innovation built on equality and mutual trust. On the occasion of World Food Day, the World Food Programme Centre of Excellence for Rural Development is willing to continue working hand in hand with China and Global South partners, responding to the call of needs with practical wisdom, empowering common development with coordinated action, and pooling greater synergy for achieving the global "Zero Hunger" goal and implementing the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
(The author is the Representative of the United Nations World Food Programme in China)
Return to Top(Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, October 16) Mu Hong, Vice Chairman of the CPPCC National Committee, met in Beijing on the 16th with a senior cadre delegation led by İlyas, Vice Chairman of Turkey's Justice and Development Party. The two sides held in-depth exchanges on implementing the important consensus of the two countries' heads of state, strengthening inter-party exchanges and cooperation in various fields, and promoting the development of China-Turkey strategic cooperative relations.
Return to Top(People's Daily, Beijing, October 16) (Reporter Chu Jun) A Foreign Ministry spokesperson announced on the 16th: At the invitation of Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Djibouti's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Omar, will pay an official visit to China from October 19 to 25.
At the invitation of Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Republic of the Congo's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francophonie and Congolese Diaspora, Banda, will pay an official visit to China from October 19 to 25.
Return to Top(People's Daily, Beijing, October 16) (Reporter Chu Jun) Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said on the 16th that China will continue to work with the international community to jointly promote poverty reduction cooperation, jointly advance the poverty reduction process, and achieve common development.
At the regular press conference that day, a reporter asked: October 17 is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Affected by factors such as slowing growth and geopolitical conflicts, the global poverty reduction cause faces many challenges. A report jointly released by the United Nations Development Programme and the University of Oxford shows that 1.2 billion people in the world live in severe multidimensional poverty. Some commentators say that China has made tremendous contributions to global poverty reduction and has also provided valuable experience for the Global South. What is the spokesperson's comment on this?
Mao Ning said that China has historically eradicated absolute poverty, achieving the poverty reduction goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule, reflecting the people-centered pragmatic actions, the livelihood warmth of "not leaving a single person behind," and the spirit of sticking to a single plan until completion (一张蓝图绘到底, yi zhang lan tu hui dao di - "one, map, draw, until, end"). China actively promotes poverty reduction cooperation, making poverty reduction the first of the eight key cooperation areas of the Global Development Initiative, helping Global South countries enhance development resilience through technologies such as Juncao technology and hybrid rice, and dispatching thousands of experts to carry out technical assistance. China has also initiated the establishment of the Global Alliance for Poverty Reduction and Development, transforming China's practical experience into replicable international public goods.
Return to Top(People's Daily, Brussels, October 16) (Reporter Niu Ruifei) The second China-Belgium Business Dialogue was held on the 15th in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Nearly 120 representatives from Chinese and Belgian government departments, business associations, financial institutions, and the corporate sector exchanged views on topics including digital connectivity, supply chain cooperation, green innovation, and the local development of enterprises, exploring new opportunities for deepening bilateral economic and trade cooperation.
This year's dialogue, themed "Fifty-Five Years of working together side by side (携手同行, xie shou tong xing - "hold hands, walk together"), Creating a Shared China-Belgium Future," was hosted by the China Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and Luxembourg.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 王锦涛
In the golden autumn of October, in Huining County, Baiyin City, Gansu Province, autumn grain management and protection has entered a critical stage.
In Fuxing Village, Baliwan Township, terraced fields spread out layer upon layer, with several rotary tillers shuttling back and forth, turning up moist new soil; in the corn fields of Gangouyi Town, drip irrigation pipes extend along the field ridges, and the corn stalks stand sturdy and straight, with a good harvest in sight.
In October 1936, the First, Second, and Fourth Front Armies of the Red Army, undergoing countless hardships and difficulties (历尽千难万险, li jin qian nan xian - "experience, pass through, thousand, difficult, ten thousand, danger"), triumphantly joined forces. Ninety years later, the red gene inspires the local area to vigorously advance the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas, and new agricultural technologies have made this land full of vigor and vitality (生机勃勃, sheng ji bo bo - "life, energy, surging, surging").
"The Red Army feared no hardship and dared to forge ahead — they are our good example." Standing on the field ridge, Niu Zongyi, Party branch secretary of Fuxing Village, grabbed a handful of freshly turned soil: "The courage to change and embrace technological innovation has been a great help. In the past, the land was so small that machines couldn't get in, and everything depended on people and oxen. It was only in the past two years, through the construction of high-standard farmland, that the patchwork of 'scrap fields' was pieced together."
After completing the land consolidation, the village, seizing the opportunity while it is still favorable (趁热打铁, chen re da tie - "follow, heat, strike, iron"), promoted the model of "village Party organization leadership + cooperative coordination + farmer participation," reaching out to every household to facilitate land transfer, consolidating 2,000 mu of arable land to create a demonstration area for increasing potato yield per unit area. The land is now under unified management by the cooperative, with unified seed supply, mechanized operations, and closed-loop management and protection. "Land transfer brings rental income, and working at the doorstep brings wages — the masses can earn two incomes," said Niu Zongyi.
Water use in the fields has also been transformed by technology.
At the corn planting base of the Wenbing Agricultural Machinery Professional Cooperative in Gangouyi Town, drip irrigation pipes are laid out in a crisscross pattern, and intelligent water-fertilizer integrated machines operate continuously. Staff adjust the water-fertilizer ratio according to crop growth needs, and the mixed nutrient solution slowly seeps into the soil along the drip irrigation belts. A single set of equipment can complete the irrigation and fertilization of the entire plot, eliminating the need for manual pipe pulling, watering, and broadcast application of chemical fertilizer.
"The crops receive a uniform supply of water and fertilizer, and their growth is noticeably more even than in previous years. Our work is also much easier," said Tian Hong, a worker at the cooperative.
Li Wenbing, head of the cooperative, further explained: "Since introducing the water-fertilizer integration system, water use has been reduced by one-third, fertilizer use has correspondingly decreased, and one person can now manage a large field."
To date, Huining County has cumulatively built 1.0553 million mu of high-standard farmland, and the comprehensive mechanization rate for cultivation, planting, and harvesting of major crops exceeds 68%. This year, Huining County is expected to add 10,000 mu of ridge-film furrow irrigation and 60,000 mu of under-film drip irrigation.
"With the help of new agricultural technologies, our good harvest is even more assured," said Li Wenbing.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 宋朝军
In Hadapu Town, Tanchang County, Longnan City, Gansu Province, people come and go in front of the Hadapu Red Army Long March Memorial Hall. On Red Army Street opposite the memorial hall, cultural relic protection units such as the Yihechang Herbal Medicine Shop and the Postal Agency are arranged along the street, with old-style residential houses standing in neat rows.
In September 1935, the Central Red Army captured Lazikou and entered Hadapu, where it restored its strength and prepared for action (养精蓄锐, yang jing xu rui - "nourish, essence, store, energy"), and obtained important information about the revolutionary base area in northern Shaanxi from newspapers, making the major strategic decision to "go to northern Shaanxi." At that time, the Red Army strictly observed all disciplines, preferring to sleep on the streets rather than disturb the people. Local people of all ethnic groups gathered grain and sewed shoes, providing great assistance and support (鼎力支援, ding li zhi yuan - "tripod, strength, support, aid"), and large numbers of young people enthusiastically signed up to join the army.
Today, Tanchang County is relying on resources such as its red history and natural ecology to promote the integrated development of "ecology + cultural tourism + wellness," building a pattern of all-for-one tourism development.
In the courtyard of the "Long March Station" in Jinbuchuan Village, Hadapu Town, several study-tour students sat around a stone table, listening to Zhao Feifei, the station's person in charge, tell stories of the Long March. In recent years, Zhao Feifei has renovated her own courtyard, arranged Long March-themed display boards, placed replicated old objects, carried out projects such as study tours and straw-sandal weaving experiences, and provided free guided explanations.
"During the peak season, we can receive more than 100 tourists a day. Coarse grain and wild vegetables, cold noodles and guokui bread are very popular with everyone," Zhao Feifei said.
In Lijie Village, Chengguan Town, Tanchang County, clouds and mist drift over the mountaintops, and Longnan-style residential houses are scattered among the hills. In the past two years, the original tourism song "Eman" from Tanchang County has become popular online, attracting many tourists to visit the Guanyegou Scenic Area where Lijie Village is located.
Humming softly while checking guest rooms, Zhao Zhangchun, a homestay operator born in the 1990s, was making preparations to welcome the next batch of tourists. "When I used to work away from home, I always missed the mountains and rivers of my hometown in my heart." Zhao Zhangchun returned to his hometown in 2018 and converted his old family courtyard into a homestay. At first, it had only five guest rooms, with little experience and few customers. With the help of local cultural tourism support policies, Zhao Zhangchun participated in service skills training and gradually became knowledgeable about the business. He delved into local folk customs and incorporated Qiang embroidery decorations and mountain wild farmhouse cuisine into the homestay experience. Now, the homestay has been expanded to 30 guest rooms and employs a number of local villagers.
In Tanchang County, revolutionary sites, Qiang village scenery, and Chinese herbal medicine fields are linked together into a continuous whole (串珠成链, chuan zhu cheng lian - "string, pearls, become, chain"), with red Hadapu and green Guanyegou echoing each other from afar — Hadapu polishes its red study-tour courses, Guanyegou enriches its folk custom experience projects, and one tourism route after another brings many villagers into participation.
Carrying forward the red bloodline and promoting local cultural tourism development. During this year's National Day holiday, a total of 629,700 tourists visited Tanchang County to appreciate the great Long March spirit and enjoy the beautiful natural scenery. In the first three quarters of this year, Tanchang County received 12.8567 million tourists, with comprehensive cultural tourism revenue exceeding 8 billion yuan, and more than 33,000 people earning their livelihood from tourism.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 韩 鑫
Transportation is the vanguard of Chinese modernization. Since the founding of New China, generations of transportation workers have overcome all obstacles to forge ahead (逢山开路、遇水架桥, feng shan kai lu, yu shui jia qiao - "encounter mountains, open roads; meet water, build bridges"), building a major transportation country; in the process of accelerating the building of a transportation power, a large number of vanguards of the new era have emerged in competition, delivering outstanding answer sheets.
On October 16, at the State Council Information Office's "Strivers on the New Journey" meeting with Chinese and foreign journalists, five outstanding representatives from the transportation field exchanged views with Chinese and foreign journalists around the theme "Striving for the 15th Five-Year Plan, Bravely Serving as Vanguards."
Behind the accelerated realization of "people enjoy convenient travel, goods flow smoothly" is the day after day (日复一日, ri fu yi ri - "day, repeat, one, day") silent dedication of countless transportation workers.
"My parents were road maintenance workers of the older generation." Sangzhu, head of the Jiali Maintenance Section of the Nagqu Highway Development and Emergency Support Center in the Tibet Autonomous Region, followed in his parents' footsteps at the age of 17 and also became a road maintenance worker. "For over 30 years, I have always remained on the front line of northern Tibet highways at an average altitude of over 4,500 meters, battling wind and snow, fighting flood damage, and ensuring smooth traffic in the high-altitude, oxygen-thin environment."
Through maintenance work shovel by shovel and pick by pick, Sangzhu has also witnessed the transformation of the "sky road": today in Tibet, the total highway mileage reaches 125,200 kilometers, of which graded highways reach 110,000 kilometers. "Seeing the people of my hometown walking on 'unity lines' and 'happiness roads,' as a road maintenance worker, I feel proud from the bottom of my heart," Sangzhu said.
In Liangdang County, Longnan City, Gansu Province, Yin Wenxue took up freight transport after retiring from military service, connecting thousands of households.
"While driving, I conveniently deliver things for the villagers." Yin Wenxue has been doing this for over 10 years, enthusiastically helping along the way and devoting himself wholeheartedly. In 2022, the county established a mobile party branch for truck drivers and also formed the "Yin Wenxue Party Member Vanguard Convoy." "Whenever a family has difficulties, everyone lends a hand; wherever there is danger, we step forward immediately, load up supplies, and rush to the scene." Over the years, Yin Wenxue and his colleagues have demonstrated unswerving perseverance (坚持不懈, jian chi bu xie - "persist, not, slack").
Dedication and contribution are found on the vast plateaus and also on the blue ocean.
"Do every shift of underwater operations well, hold onto every hope of rescue." Having worked for 26 years, Hu Jian, captain of the diving team of the Rescue and Salvage Engineering Fleet of the Shanghai Salvage Bureau of the Ministry of Transport, has never changed his conviction.
On August 20, 2020, the "Longqing 1" vessel, carrying more than 3,000 tons of isooctane, collided and caught fire at the mouth of the Yangtze River. Hu Jian and six team members accepted a mission in a moment of crisis (临危受命, lin wei shou ming - "approach, danger, receive, command"), boarding the vessel to handle the hazardous chemicals. "Through four days and four nights of continuous operations, we towed the stricken vessel into port before the typhoon arrived," Hu Jian said. Protecting the safety of people's lives and property is precisely the meaning of all such efforts.
Some measure the earth with their steps, others safeguard major equipment with technology.
Hu Hang, a post-90s electrical engineer and deputy head of the Maintenance Department of the Three Gorges Ship Lock Management Office of the Yangtze River Three Gorges Navigation Administration, has always regarded "safeguarding the nation's major equipment and escorting the ten-thousand-li Yangtze River" as his duty and mission. "Through repeated experiments by my colleagues and me, the ship lock industrial control system successfully completed its renovation and upgrade," Hu Hang introduced. In 2025, the Three Gorges ship lock throughput exceeded 170 million tons, setting a new historical record.
He Xiaoman, a 20-year-old student at Changchun Digital Science and Technology Vocational College, stepped from the training station onto the highest podium of the World Skills Competition. At the 48th World Skills Competition, she won the Albert Vidal Grand Prize. "It was skills that changed the trajectory of my life. Skilled talent is an important force supporting industrial upgrading, and vocational education can also achieve a wonderful life," He Xiaoman shared.
Now, the five representatives each have their own new goals—
Rooted on the plateau, Sangzhu hopes to work with his colleagues to "improve new maintenance technologies and comprehensively promote mechanized and refined maintenance"; braving the "deep blue," Hu Jian wants to "lead the team to complete the 500-meter saturation diving sea trial mission"; He Xiaoman's wish is to pass on the baton of "achieving success through skills," "growing from a competitor to a coach, cultivating more technical talent"; Yin Wenxue plans to "find time to learn more about short video production, promote the agricultural products of my hometown more, and help villagers expand sales channels and increase income"; the new channel project for Three Gorges water transport has already begun construction, and Hu Hang is determined to "form a replicable and promotable 'Three Gorges solution,' providing useful reference for the future operation and maintenance of the new channel's 10,000-ton-class ship locks."
Striving for the 15th Five-Year Plan, the goal of accelerating the improvement and basically forming a modern comprehensive transportation system is already clear. With continued struggle, responsibility, and dedication, the beautiful vision of "people enjoy convenient travel, goods flow smoothly" will surely be realized at a faster pace.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 尹 婕 蒋雪鸿
At the wildlife rescue station of the Tianqiaoling Management and Protection Center of the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, a young musk deer with glossy fur was lowering its head to nibble on tender grass. Wen Jinzhang, director of the management and protection center, said: "When the little one first arrived at the rescue station, it was very thin and weak, walking unsteadily. Now, it already weighs nearly 20 kilograms."
On July 1 this year, members of a construction crew found a small animal at the bottom of a ditch, soaked by rain and unable to stand, so they called for help, but could not say what kind of animal it was. Under Wen Jinzhang's guidance, the construction crew members sent the small animal to the rescue station. Seeing that its appearance resembled that of a Siberian musk deer, with yellowish-brown fur and light-colored spots on its back, everyone judged on this basis that it was the Chinese water deer, a wild animal under second-class national key protection.
After a careful examination by the rescue station staff, it was found that this young musk deer was less than two months old and was not yet able to feed itself or defecate on its own. The staff consulted reference materials, sought advice from experts, simulated natural rearing methods, fed it small amounts multiple times a day, and provided manual assistance with defecation, minimizing the young musk deer's stress response to the greatest extent and improving its survival rate. After more than half a month of providing meticulous and dedicated care (悉心照顾, xi xin zhao gu - "careful, attentive, look after"), the young musk deer grew stronger day by day. The rescue personnel gradually adjusted its feeding structure, slowly restored its wild foraging habits, and simultaneously carried out rewilding training.
The area under the jurisdiction of the Tianqiaoling Management and Protection Center is located in Laoye Ridge, a branch range of the Changbai Mountains, within Wangqing County, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Jilin Province, covering a total area of 179,600 hectares. It is a key area for the reproduction and dispersal of the wild Amur tiger and Amur leopard populations. In recent years, with the help of a protection network covering the entire area, the Tianqiaoling Management and Protection Center has successfully rescued more than a hundred wild animals of various species. Patrol guards travel through the forest sea year-round and have established a linkage mechanism with local residents, so that once injured or trapped wild animals are discovered, rescue is carried out at the first opportunity.
At the same time, the management and protection center continues to carry out habitat restoration work, continuously optimizing the living and habitat environment for wild animals, scientifically implementing projects such as forest tending, stand improvement, and replanting and revegetation to enhance the ecological carrying capacity of the forest; in addition, it is advancing three-dimensional restoration of trees, shrubs, and grasses, scientifically planting sea buckthorn and native tree species, and sowing grass seeds to provide natural food sources for animals such as roe deer, wild boars, and birds.
With the forest in better condition and more animals present, tiger and leopard activity is becoming increasingly frequent. "In the past, traces of wild Amur tigers were rarely found in our area. Now, even the sight of one tigress with four cubs has appeared," Wen Jinzhang said.
All 10 management and protection centers within the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park have wildlife rescue stations, but their scale is generally small. "When injured wild Amur tigers or leopards are encountered, they can only be sent to the Changchun Amur Tiger Park in Jilin or the Hengdaohezi Amur Tiger Park in Heilongjiang, making it difficult to guarantee transport safety and the timeliness of treatment," said Chen Xiaocai, director of the Comprehensive Business Division of the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park Administration. "Building a professional wildlife rescue center is imperative."
The wildlife rescue center of the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, located in Wangqing County, is about to be fully completed and put into use. The distance from this rescue center to the 10 management and protection centers is roughly equal, allowing for rapid response in emergency situations. In addition, it is close to Yanbian University, so it can rely on professional talent resources in medicine, agriculture, and other fields to carry out research on wildlife medicine, pharmacy, genetics, and epidemic sources and diseases, and to train a team of personnel.
In the future, the rescue center will not only undertake treatment tasks, but will also be responsible for the rehabilitation training and rewilding and release of rescued animals, and will provide support for scientific research and science popularization and education. "With this 'tiger and leopard hospital,' the protection chain of the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park will be more complete and more solid," Chen Xiaocai said.
The practice of the Tianqiaoling Management and Protection Center is a vivid epitome of the construction of the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park. Since the construction of the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park began, capabilities in patrol monitoring, habitat restoration, rescue and breeding, and scientific research support have continued to improve, the protection chain has been continuously extended, and the ecological barrier has been built ever more firmly.
"Winter is about to arrive. With low temperatures and scarce food in the wild, the young musk deer's ability to survive on its own is still insufficient. If it were released now, its survival rate might only be around 30 percent," Wen Jinzhang explained. After deliberation and judgment with experts, it was decided to release the young musk deer after the spring of next year, when the survival rate could reach over 80 percent. "We must not only save wild animals, but also enable them to return to the wild in good health."
Return to TopBy: 郭 林
Looking at the "remembering the source of one's benefits" (饮水思源, yin shui si yuan - "drink water, think of source") banner in my office, my thoughts drift back seven years.
In 2019, we geological workers came to Zhengjiazhuang Village, Chaohua Town, Xinmi City, Henan Province, to help more than 3,300 villagers identify the source of their drinking water safety problems.
Xinmi is an old coal city, thriving on coal but also leaving behind ecological debts. Zhengjiazhuang Village has much coal but little water, relying on deep wells for drinking water. The old well's water was murky and yellow, troubling villagers for years; after finally drilling a new well, it bred a type of red insect called chironomid larvae. The local government once considered diverting water from elsewhere, and some villagers even considered relocating...
From a professional perspective, drilling a well requires going several hundred meters underground, and finding an alternative water source is not easy either. The geological structure of karst coal mining areas in the north is unique—coal sits above water. Goaf areas left by past mining activities, mine shafts, poorly sealed boreholes, and water intake wells can easily become channels for pollution of the clean karst water below.
With support from central ecological environment funds and organization and promotion by provincial and municipal ecological environment departments, this area became one of the first national pilot sites for groundwater pollution prevention and control. Work on treating polluted groundwater source wells and sealing abandoned coal mine shafts subsequently began. But the water source lies hundreds of meters underground—invisible and untouchable. Where did the pollution come from? We could only investigate bit by bit.
On the surface, we climbed gullies and slopes and inspected subsidence areas, then lowered probes into the wells to examine the well walls and permeable layers, giving the wells an "endoscopy." Tracing the old well's ailment, we followed it several kilometers away, finally focusing on a subsidence pit. We used salt as a "tracer" in the water flow, and the next day captured the "signal" in the old well—it turned out that rainwater carrying sediment seeped down from the pit bottom, flowed through karst caves into the well, causing the murky yellow water.
The new well presented a different situation. The damaged and leaking sections of the well wall corresponded to underground goaf areas. We traced the source along the goaf areas to a larger scope, found the abandoned mine shaft, and discovered it was connected to surface aquaculture wastewater—the wastewater meandered around and mixed into the water supply well through the damaged well wall. The well water, rich in nutrients, became a "breeding ground" for the insects.
Two wells, two kinds of "illnesses." Fortunately, not all water layers were polluted. If we could cut off the channels through which polluted water entered and protect the clean water layers, both wells might resume water supply without needing to be sealed and re-drilled.
In the end, we settled on a treatment approach of "repair over sealing, intercept pollution to protect clean water." It sounds simple, but implementation was far more complex. In the early stages of restoration, we failed to meet expectations for several months and once considered abandoning the plan. But we were unwilling to give up: since we had found the "pathology," let's try again. Through repeated experiments and plan adjustments, and by targeted expansion of the sealing scope, the restoration work finally took effect.
We surveyed 126 nearby abandoned coal mine shafts and, based on environmental risk assessment, screened out 21 high-risk shafts with cross-layer pollution risks. Through sealing and filling measures, we blocked pollution channels; some shaft site plots, after being covered with soil, were restored to arable land.
In 2022, clear water flowed from these two wells again, with water quality indicators such as turbidity and total bacterial count steadily improving. After the new well was put back into use, the red insects no longer appeared; the old well was temporarily sealed after treatment and reserved as a backup water source. This restoration approach has been promoted and applied in surrounding townships, received recognition from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, and provided a reference for some old mining areas.
Not long ago, I revisited Zhengjiazhuang Village. On the former abandoned mine shafts, soybeans and peanuts have been planted, and the overall environment has improved further. I was invited into a villager's home, turned on the tap in the courtyard, and clear water gushed into the basin. The villager said with a smile: "The tap connects to the well. Now for cooking and brewing tea, we all use this water."
Behind the "remembering the source of one's benefits" banner lies the rebirth of one village's two wells, and also a footnote to the construction of ecological civilization in recent years. The well water has turned clear, flowing into farmhouses and benefiting the countryside. As a geological worker, being able to devote myself to this battle to protect clean soil is an honor I will never forget in my lifetime.
(The author is deputy director and senior engineer of the Institute of Eco-Environmental Geological Survey, Henan Academy of Geology, compiled from an interview by People's Daily reporter Zhang Wenhao)
Return to TopBy: 张文豪
In the northern karst coal-mining areas, coal mine goafs, abandoned mines, and karst conduits all pose new challenges to groundwater protection. If water wells are contaminated through cross-layer pollution and the only response is to seal them shut, the pollution pathways cannot be blocked, addressing symptoms without tackling the root cause (治标不治本, zhi biao bu zhi ben - "treat symptoms, not treat root"), and the drinking-water problem will not be thoroughly resolved.
When faced with complex problems, one must accurately identify the source of the ailment and take appropriate measures for a specific problem (对症下药, dui zheng xia yao - "against illness, administer medicine"). For polluted water wells, "repairing instead of sealing" and "intercepting contamination to preserve clean water"; for abandoned mines, layered anti-seepage measures to block pollution pathways... Through the unremitting exploration and efforts of geologists, the results of the treatment have become apparent — the water is clear, the mountains are green, and with a change in approach, the entire situation comes alive (满盘皆活, man pan jie huo - "whole board, all become alive").
When village wells are clean, people's hearts are nourished. Fighting groundwater pollution through the battle to protect clean soil is a battle fought "behind the scenes," and what is won is the sense of gain, happiness, and security that the people can see and feel.
Return to Top(Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, October 16) The State Council appoints and removes state personnel.
Liu Shuang is appointed Deputy Director of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs; Hao Liping (female) is appointed Deputy Director of the China Meteorological Administration.
Wang Gang is removed from the post of Deputy Minister of Transport; Xu Yao is removed from the post of Deputy Director of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs; Bi Baogui is removed from the post of Deputy Director of the China Meteorological Administration; Wang Yunpeng is removed from the post of President of Beihang University.
Return to TopBy: 赵 兵
October 16 is World Food Day. At present, with geopolitical conflicts dragging on, extreme weather occurring frequently, and economic growth under pressure, the global food security situation is becoming increasingly severe. In 2025, approximately 645 million people worldwide remain in a state of hunger, and many developing countries bear particularly heavy pressure.
Eliminating hunger and ensuring food security is an urgent and long-term common task facing the international community. To meet this complex challenge, both financial investment and technological innovation are needed, and mutual learning of experience and long-term partnerships are also indispensable. South-South cooperation provides an important pathway for developing countries to strengthen mutual learning of experience and enhance their capacity to ensure food security. The accumulated practice of the Global South is a valuable resource shared among all parties; developing countries are not only beneficiaries of development outcomes, but also important contributors of knowledge, experience, and innovation.
China's development practice provides useful reference for Global South countries in exploring food security development paths suited to their own circumstances. As one of the first United Nations agencies to cooperate in China, the United Nations World Food Programme has witnessed and participated in China's journey from a recipient country of food aid to an important partner in global food security and South-South cooperation. Today, while ensuring food security for more than 1.4 billion people, China actively works with United Nations agencies, including the World Food Programme, through mechanisms such as the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund, sharing valuable experience and practical technology in agricultural development to help developing countries enhance their capacity for food security assurance and production development.
In the course of advancing rural revitalization, agricultural production, poverty reduction, and nutrition improvement, China has accumulated rich experience. The value of this experience lies not in providing a model that can be copied wholesale, but in the methodology of "basing oneself on national conditions, focusing on the long term, and exploring through practice." Countries differ in their development stages, resource endowments, and social environments, and development has never had a path applicable to all situations everywhere (放之四海而皆准, fang zhi si hai er jie zhun - "place, in, four, seas, and, all, are, consistent"). The essence of South-South cooperation is precisely to combine experience tested through practice with local actual needs, and to transform it, through mutual learning, into solutions in light of local conditions and lasting development capacity.
The World Food Programme Centre of Excellence for Rural Development, established in China in 2016, is a concrete practice of this concept. Over the past 10 years, the Centre of Excellence has focused on key areas such as poverty alleviation innovation, agricultural value chain development, post-harvest loss reduction, disaster prevention and mitigation, and climate change response, promoting deepened experience exchange, technical cooperation, and knowledge sharing between China and other developing countries. Post-harvest grain loss reduction is a typical example. In some regions of West Africa, due to insufficient storage facilities and limited grain storage technology, a large amount of grain that farmers have worked hard to harvest is lost before entering the market. For smallholder farmers, what is lost is not only grain, but also their source of income and their capacity to withstand risks. In response to this pain point, the Centre of Excellence, together with Chinese research institutions and technical experts, shared experience in storage loss reduction, introduced grain storage facilities suited to smallholder farmers in Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea, and promoted technical training and localized production of equipment; the Côte d'Ivoire project also linked rice production with the school feeding procurement system, broadening market channels for smallholder farmers while reducing losses. After project implementation, the local post-harvest grain loss rate dropped from about 30 percent to 15 percent, and farmers' incomes increased by about 30 percent.
This case confirms that experience sharing, only when rooted in and serving the local community, can truly be transformed into stable and lasting development outcomes. The 10 years of practice of the Centre of Excellence show us that South-South cooperation has never been one-way experience export, but rather joint learning and joint innovation built on equality and mutual trust. On the occasion of World Food Day, the World Food Programme Centre of Excellence for Rural Development is willing to continue working hand in hand with China and Global South partners, responding to the call of needs with practical wisdom, empowering common development with coordinated action, and pooling greater synergy for achieving the global "Zero Hunger" goal and implementing the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
(The author is the Representative of the United Nations World Food Programme in China)
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 姚雪青 宋豪新 曾亦辰
Respecting and caring for the elderly is a traditional virtue of the Chinese nation. China has a large elderly population, and the service needs of the elderly continue to grow. How to enable more elderly people to feel care and concern and receive warm care is an important livelihood concern.
This year, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and 10 other departments jointly issued the "Opinions on Promoting the Development of Mutual-Aid Elderly Care Services," which for the first time at the national level defines mutual-aid elderly care services and sets forth the goals for promoting their development. The Opinions specify that by 2030, the coverage rate of urban and rural community elderly care service facilities with mutual-aid functions shall be no less than 70 percent, a working mechanism for visiting and caring for elderly people with special difficulties in townships (subdistricts) shall be fully established, mutual-aid elderly care services shall be widely carried out, and the sustainability of services shall be markedly enhanced.
Mutual-aid elderly care services refer to activities in which voluntary, non-profit elderly care services are provided to the elderly through mutual assistance among neighbors or residents of villages (communities). How are localities exploring new models of institutionalized, sustainable, and diversified mutual-aid elderly care services? Our reporter conducted a field visit.
"Depositing" time, "redeeming" elderly care services
Not long ago, in Wenkangyuan Community, Maqun Subdistrict, Qixia District, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, 74-year-old Hong Shougui suddenly developed a high fever and felt weak all over. Her chronically ill husband could not help, so Hong Shougui hurriedly called Liu Peiqin, her paired community volunteer. Liu Peiqin immediately came to her home, took her to the hospital, accompanied her through registration, blood draws, tests, and medicine pickup, and finally sent her home. These warm services were "redeemed" by Hong Shougui using the volunteer service time she had "deposited" over the years.
A relevant official from the Nanjing Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau introduced that in 2019, Nanjing launched the construction of a mutual-aid platform for elderly care services, exploring a new model of mutual-aid elderly care services—encouraging healthy young-old elderly people and young people to join the elderly care service team, "depositing" time through volunteer services, and being able to "withdraw" services when they need help in the future.
How do time "accounts" work for deposits and withdrawals? "Under normal circumstances, volunteer services adopt an appointment system. Elderly people, their family members, or staff at the community service point under their jurisdiction place orders on the 'My Nanjing' app, selecting from 38 elderly care services the content they need. Nearby volunteers accept orders on their own and provide services, and the volunteer service is then registered on the system. In emergency situations, they can directly contact the person in charge of the community service point or the paired volunteer, and service certification can be issued afterwards," introduced Zhao Qian, head of the Nanjing Mutual-Aid Platform for Elderly Care Services.
In 2019, served the elderly at a community service point; in 2022, went to the home of elderly Aunt Dong, who lives alone, to guide her in operating a smartphone; in 2023, helped 98-year-old paired service recipient Grandma Gu go out for activities; in 2026, "withdrew" volunteer service time for the first time... Opening the mutual-aid platform for elderly care services on her phone, every "deposit" and "withdrawal" of service time, item, and duration by Hong Shougui is clearly visible.
Zhao Qian explained that in some emergency or special situations, service orders cannot be issued in time, and the actual service time may far exceed the registered time. For this reason, the platform also provides some additional services for volunteers.
In the past two years, Hong Shougui has suffered from severe insomnia. After learning about this, Liu Peiqin applied for smart elderly care services for her through the platform and had a smart sleep mattress installed in her home free of charge. A month later, Liu Peiqin took the sleep report generated by the mattress monitoring and accompanied Hong Shougui to Nanjing Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital for treatment. As the platform's practice base for integrating medical care and elderly care, the hospital opened a green channel for Hong Shougui—waiving registration fees and consultation fees, and also tailoring a sleep improvement plan for her. At present, Hong Shougui's sleep condition has improved.
At present, the Nanjing Mutual-Aid Platform for Elderly Care Services has reviewed and approved 95,000 volunteers, enrolled 310,000 service recipients, completed a cumulative total of 1.5 million service orders, and stored more than 943,000 hours of volunteer service time.
Industry support, helping the elderly increase income
"Today I got my wages, more than 2,000 yuan!" In the blueberry garden of Wangyuanshan Community, Lijia Town, Chaotian District, Guangyuan City, Sichuan Province, 71-year-old resident Xiang Shirong received her wages for this period. Since 2014, the town has introduced blueberry cultivation and built a "blueberry silver-haired workshop," giving priority to recruiting elderly people with labor capacity from the surrounding area to participate in light physical work such as blueberry management, protection, and picking. In 2025, elderly people participating in the work increased their income by an average of 2,000 yuan, blazing a path of mutual-aid elderly care characterized by "supporting the elderly through the garden, and earning through labor."
In Chaotian District, developing and strengthening village-level collective economies has become a key lever for solving the problem of rural elderly care. Village Party organizations gather scattered land, resources, and labor onto the industrial chain, enabling surrounding residents to "earn rent through land transfer, earn wages through labor, and earn dividends through membership shares."
"Working at a village homestay during the peak tourism season, I can earn 4,000 yuan a month." 69-year-old Aunt Peng is a villager of Dazhu Village, Zengjia Town, Chaotian District. In 2024, the village introduced support funds to renovate idle old houses of villagers into boutique homestays, and Aunt Peng was able to earn a living from "cultural tourism" at her doorstep.
While activating idle rural resources, Chaotian District has also targeted the development of employment positions suited to the elderly, such as field management and protection, housekeeping services, and logistics support, enabling surplus rural labor, especially healthy young-old elderly people, to find employment at their doorstep. This not only allows the elderly to earn dignified income through labor, but also uses the dividends of the collective economy to shore up shortcomings in elderly care services. This year, Chaotian District also launched the "Knocking on Doors to Send Warmth" care initiative, organizing more than 1,500 Party member volunteers to pair up with elderly people living alone, providing warm services such as care, companionship, and assistance with errands, effectively solving problems such as difficulty in daily care and lack of spiritual comfort for elderly people living alone, and enabling the elderly to enjoy elderly care without leaving their villages and to have guaranteed services.
In Maliu Township, Chaotian District, many elderly people have learned embroidery skills since childhood. How can old crafts help support the elderly and increase their income? The local government established a special working group, conducted door-to-door surveys of information on embroidery artisans throughout the township, established "one household, one file" records for embroiderers, built a linkage mechanism of "company + association + artisans," and promoted a model of "associations collectively purchasing raw materials, enterprises designing and packaging, platforms livestreaming sales, and training institutes providing targeted training," driving more than 30 elderly people over the age of 60, including Liu Deying, to produce at home and earn income through their crafts. "We held two Maliu embroidery livestreams this year, selling a total of 177 orders and helping everyone increase their income by more than 179,000 yuan," said Liu Deying.
In recent years, Chaotian District has deepened rural elderly care reform, investing more than 13 million yuan to shore up shortcomings in elderly care service facilities, and providing centralized support and medical institution care for 175 elderly people with difficulties or disabilities.
Pastoral mutual aid, promoting mutual assistance among neighbors
Early in the morning, at the Happy Home of the Comprehensive Elderly Care Service Center in Jing'an Township, Ganzhou District, Zhangye City, Gansu Province, 76-year-old Pu Juxiang carried a pot of cooked millet porridge and knocked on the door of the room next door. "Old sister, drink it while it's hot. I also brought you two steamed rolls." 80-year-old Chen Cuixiang repeatedly expressed her thanks, then turned around, picked up a few native eggs, and pressed them into Pu Juxiang's hands.
This simple and warm scene plays out here every day. "My children work away from home. Before, I was alone in an empty courtyard, without even a person to talk to." Pu Juxiang sighed, then immediately smiled again, "Now it's great. My old sister lives right next door. When we're free, we chat. If I have a headache or fever, I just shout and someone answers. I can also help others. Life is full of flavor." This warm daily life among neighbors is precisely a microcosm of the "pastoral mutual-aid elderly care" model innovatively implemented by Jing'an Township.
"Rural hollowing-out, many elderly people living alone, and scattered elderly care resources are common difficulties in rural elderly care in the western region," said Zhou Xuelei, deputy head of Jing'an Township. The Happy Home preserves an independent living space and a small vegetable garden for each elderly household, helping the elderly continue their familiar way of life. At the same time, the township implements paired mutual aid of "young-old helping old-old, healthy helping frail," enabling the elderly to find a sense of belonging through labor and mutual aid. This model has low costs, is rich in human warmth, and is easily accepted by the elderly. At present, this model has been piloted and promoted in townships such as Dangzhai and Wujiang in Ganzhou District.
Stepping into Chen Cuixiang's residence, the 40-square-meter room is clean and bright, with anti-slip tiles on the floor, handrails installed in the corners, hot water as soon as the faucet is turned on, and a bed at a suitable height. "The old house before was dilapidated due to long-term disrepair (年久失修, nian jiu shi xiu - "year, long, lose, repair"), and I was living in constant anxiety or fear (提心吊胆, ti xin diao dan - "lift, heart, hang, fear"). The Happy Home has good living conditions, with water, electricity, and heating all guaranteed by the government, so we live with peace of mind," said Chen Cuixiang.
In order to eliminate the hidden dangers of elderly care in dilapidated rural houses and hold the bottom line of safe housing for elderly people living alone, Jing'an Township has implemented benefit-oriented policies such as old house exchange, rent offset, and tiered reductions, and has used idle school building space to build 28 sets of standardized age-friendly public housing, equipped with complete fire protection facilities, barrier-free passages, and so on. In today's Happy Home, the elderly live in spacious and comfortable rooms, have paired "silver-haired partners" to help each other, and have familiar small vegetable gardens in front of and behind their houses to cultivate. "Picking up a hoe to do some work, chatting and laughing with old friends—this elderly life is truly comfortable!" said 80-year-old Li Jihua.
"We will continue to deepen 'pastoral mutual-aid elderly care,' safeguarding both the material foundation of elderly care and the spiritual home of the elderly, so that they can spend their later years comfortably and peacefully," said Sun Xiaoqin, head of the Party and Mass Service Center of Jing'an Township.
(Zhao Hairong participated in the writing)
Return to Top(People's Daily, Beijing, October 16) (Reporter Liu Zhiqiang) Recently, to help improve the elderly care service system that is tiered and categorized, universally beneficial and accessible, covering both urban and rural areas, and sustainably developing, to expand the supply of universally beneficial elderly care services, and to promote the coordinated development of the elderly care service industry and its undertakings, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the National Health Commission jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Further Improving the Price Formation Mechanism and Promoting the Improvement of Quality and Expansion of Coverage of Universally Beneficial Elderly Care Services."
By clearly defining the scope of institutions, improving the price formation mechanism by category, reasonably formulating and adjusting fee standards, and strengthening policy integration and support guarantees, the Guiding Opinions better leverage the guiding and leveraging role of price policies for high-quality universally beneficial supply. It mainly includes three aspects.
Clearly define the scope of various types of elderly care institutions. Safety-net guarantee institutions refer to publicly run elderly care institutions that wholly or mainly admit extremely poor elderly people and elderly people with disabilities in financial difficulty. Universally beneficial support institutions include publicly built and publicly operated and publicly built and privately operated elderly care institutions that mainly admit elderly people from society, as well as privately run elderly care institutions that receive government support such as reductions or exemptions of venue fees or construction and operation subsidies. Other elderly care institutions are fully market-oriented institutions.
Improve the price management methods for elderly care services by tier and category. For basic service fees of safety-net guarantee institutions, government-guided pricing management is implemented, and for extremely poor elderly people and elderly people with disabilities in financial difficulty, free admission policies or relevant subsidies are provided as prescribed. For basic service fees of universally beneficial support institutions, publicly built and publicly operated and publicly built and privately operated institutions implement government-guided pricing, while privately run institutions may set reference intervals for fee standards for guidance or implement government-guided pricing. For fully market-oriented institutions, fees are subject to market-adjusted pricing, and high quality at high prices is encouraged to meet the diverse needs of elderly people. For integrated medical and elderly care services, fee standards may be reasonably formulated based on factors such as increased costs, so as to mobilize the enthusiasm of institutions, especially public medical institutions, in providing integrated medical and elderly care services. For community elderly care services, full-time care facilities with more than 10 beds are managed as elderly care institutions, while those with fewer than 10 beds are in principle subject to market-adjusted pricing. For home-based elderly care services, market-adjusted pricing management is implemented.
Standardize pricing and fee-charging behavior. Establish a catalog list management system, with all fees included in the list, and no fees may be charged outside the list. Clarify the principles for formulating fee standards, and generally determine government-guided prices or reference intervals for fee standards in accordance with the principle of "compensating costs, reasonable profits." Establish a dynamic fee evaluation and adjustment mechanism, with the evaluation cycle in principle not exceeding 3 years. At the same time, emphasize the coordinated linkage between price policies and other various supporting policies to jointly support the development of relevant elderly care service models.
Return to Top(People's Daily, Beijing, October 16) (Reporters Pan Junqiang, Tao Xiang'an) The 2026 China Outdoor Sports Industry Conference, hosted by the All-China Sports Federation under the theme "Beijing's Splendid Outdoors, Science and Technology Creating the Future," opened in Beijing on the 16th. The conference comprises five major sections — the opening ceremony, thematic activities, resource promotion, experience performances, and competition events — focusing on "new experiences, new scenarios, new integration, and new technology," closely following new trends in the development of the outdoor sports industry, and helping to improve the system for innovative development of the sports industry.
The "Report on the Development of China's Outdoor Sports Industry (2025–2026)," released at the opening ceremony, shows that by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the number of people participating in outdoor sports in China exceeded 500 million, and the total scale of industries related to outdoor sports was approximately 3.17 trillion yuan. The report summarized four characteristics of China's outdoor sports industry: policy guidance for the outdoor sports industry has continued to strengthen, with a series of policies being intensively deployed, providing solid and powerful policy support for the development of China's outdoor sports industry; the foundation of outdoor sports venue and facility infrastructure has been accelerated and consolidated, with increased supply of outdoor sports venues and facilities for ice and snow, mountain, and water sports, and further enhanced carrying capacity; the supply of outdoor sports events and activities has continued to enrich, with the leading role of high-level events becoming prominent, grassroots participation channels broadened, events extending down to county and township levels, and mass, youth, and parent-child events developing vigorously (蓬勃发展, peng bo fa zhan - "flourishing, developing"); the vitality of the outdoor sports consumer market has been effectively released, with the market maintaining a positive outlook on the industry's development prospects, middle-aged and young people constituting the main consumer group for outdoor sports, the consumption potential of lower-tier markets being further unleashed, and industry data for ice and snow sports, water sports, and mountain outdoor sports steadily improving.
At the opening ceremony, the China BeiDou Outdoor Sports Event Management System was also released. Relying on the BeiDou Satellite Navigation System, the system serves various outdoor events such as mountaineering, trail running, water sports, and aviation sports, integrating a management platform, BeiDou-specific terminals, standards and specifications, testing and certification, and application verification into one. It establishes a four-tier collaborative supervision system at the national, project center, provincial, and event-site levels, achieving unified access, tiered supervision, and coordinated linkage for high-risk events nationwide.
Return to Top(People's Daily, Bazhong, October 16) (Li Kaixuan, Chen Jiali) The 2026 Global People Annual Ceremony was held on the 16th in Bazhong, Sichuan. Approximately 200 people, including responsible officials from the People's Daily, Sichuan Province, Bazhong City, and representatives from various sectors, attended the event. The attending guests engaged in exchanges and discussions centered on implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and treading the Long March road of the new era well.
This year marks the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Long March of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. Every generation has its own Long March road, and every generation must walk its own Long March road well. With the theme "Toward the New · Resonance," this ceremony aims to, at the starting year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, jointly consider how to transform revolutionary spirit into practical momentum, how to strengthen the foundation and nurture the essence (固本培元, gu ben pei yuan - "solidify foundation, nurture origin") while upholding fundamental principles, and how to forge ahead through innovation. Spanning history and reality, and connecting science and technology with the humanities, the attending guests vividly recounted through their own practices: the breakthroughs in major national equipment, the rise of industrial tracks, the continuation of the red gene, and the revitalization of traditional culture have never come about out of thin air, but rather require generations of continuous struggle and sustained, long-term effort.
In the sub-forum sessions, guests focused their dialogues on topics such as "The Energy Answer Sheet of the Sodium-Ion Battery Revolution and New Quality Productive Forces" and "Characteristic Clusters for the Low-Altitude Economy and Future Industries."
The Global People Annual Ceremony is hosted by Global People magazine. Since its founding in 2019, it has been held for seven sessions.
Return to TopRecently, the "Science Pioneer · Revitalizing Xinjiang Tour" science popularization theme event, hosted by the Tacheng Prefecture Science and Technology Association of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, was held at the Central School of Sikeshu Town in Wusu City. Teachers and students participated in a rich array of interactive science projects, experiencing the charm of technology up close. The photo shows students from the Central School of Sikeshu Town interacting with a robotic dog.
Photo by Li Renxi (Image China)
Return to Top(People's Daily, Beijing, October 16) (Reporters Xu Hongmei, Wei Zhezhe, Wang Jintao) The Lanzhou Intermediate People's Court of Gansu Province on the 16th publicly pronounced its first-instance judgment in the case of defendant Li Huifang and five others for producing and selling toxic and harmful food. For the crime of producing and selling toxic and harmful food, Li Huifang was respectively sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of political rights for life, and ordered to forfeit personal property of RMB 500,000; Zhu Jinglin was sentenced to 15 years' fixed-term imprisonment and fined RMB 300,000; and Niu Aiyuan, Wen Yafang, He Xuxia, and An Chunling were respectively sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from eight to six years, along with fines.
The Lanzhou Intermediate People's Court, after trial, held that Li Huifang, the actual person in charge of the Hesh Peixin Kindergarten in Maiji District, Tianshui City, and Zhu Jinglin, the executive principal, as kindergarten management personnel, violated national food safety management regulations by instructing and arranging the kindergarten's kitchen staff Niu Aiyuan, Wen Yafang, He Xuxia, and An Chunling to mix toxic and harmful non-food raw materials into the food they produced and sold, for consumption by children and staff, causing serious adverse consequences. The conduct of all six defendants constituted the crime of producing and selling toxic and harmful food, with especially serious circumstances. In accordance with the facts, nature, circumstances, and degree of harm to society of each defendant's crime, the above judgment was rendered according to law.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 韩 鑫
On October 15, the communications and sensing network in the Bohai Sea waters was officially put into operation, marking that the Bohai Sea has fully entered a new stage of high-speed interconnection and whole-domain sensing. On the vast sea, ships now have "clairvoyant eyes" and "acoustic ears" for navigation, and personnel at sea can also make smooth phone calls and access the internet.
As an important navigable sea area in northern China, the Bohai Sea connects Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, and Shandong, with dense shipping routes and busy operations. "For a long time, there has been a communications and sensing bottleneck in the central Bohai Sea waters. When far from shore, mobile phones have no signal; when sea conditions are complex, ship-to-shore communication is not smooth," said Li Wei, head of the Communications Information Division of the Beihai Navigation Support Center of the Ministry of Transport. The Beihai Navigation Support Center of the Ministry of Transport, together with CNOOC Limited Tianjin Branch and China Mobile Communications Group Tianjin Co., Ltd., launched the construction of the communications and sensing network in the Bohai Sea waters.
"This communications network consists of four parts," introduced Yang Zhe, director of the Beihai Navigation Support Center: 5G communications serve as the maritime "highway," making mobile phone signals, video surveillance, and data transmission fast and stable; Very High Frequency (VHF) communications serve as the maritime "walkie-talkie," through which ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore real-time voice calls, dispatch, and command are conducted; the Automatic Identification System (AIS) serves as the maritime "ID card reader," tracking the position, course, and speed of every ship in real time; hydrological observation and forecasting serve as the maritime "weather station," capable of monitoring tide levels and current changes around the clock, providing environmental reference for navigation.
"Combined together, they weave into a communications and sensing network that can 'see, hear, and transmit back,'" Li Wei said. With this network, when fishermen go to sea, they can call for help at the first moment in an emergency; on ro-ro passenger ships plying the Liaoning-Shandong route, passengers can enjoy full signal strength during the voyage; the communication needs of hundreds of platforms and over ten thousand workers in the Bohai oilfields are met, and production data is transmitted stably. According to estimates, after the communications and sensing network in the Bohai Sea waters is completed, it is expected that 300,000 ship transits and 5 million passenger trips can directly benefit each year.
On the vast Bohai Sea, the newly built 48 5G base stations, 8 VHF base stations, 6 AIS base stations, and 4 hydrological observation stations are organically interwoven with the original shore-based and sea-based networks, achieving a comprehensive signal coverage rate of 95%, a 5G network coverage rate of over 80%, and full signal coverage of the major ports, anchorages, and shipping routes and channels in the Bohai Sea.
Getting 5G to work over the open sea is hardly easy (谈何容易, tan he rong yi - "talk, how, easy"). The Bohai Sea covers an area of approximately 77,000 square kilometers, with long signal transmission distances and frequent strong winds and heavy fog on the sea surface. Where should the communication base stations be placed? One after another, offshore oil platforms came into view.
"The Bohai oilfields have more than 300 offshore platforms, and the construction team selected 48 platforms with favorable locations and conditions from among them to set up 5G base stations," Yang Zhe introduced. These platforms are like islands scattered across the sea, providing installation sites, power supply, and communication links for the base stations.
Technical challenges were overcome one after another: in building the 5G communications network, the signal transmission rate was increased by approximately 50 times compared with the original architecture; domestically produced AIS base stations were fully deployed, with core hardware and system software completely independent and controllable; virtual buoyage technology was applied to delineate "visible lanes" on the sea, enabling merchant and fishing vessels to each keep to their own course; shipborne network enhancement equipment was deployed, like installing a "signal amplifier" on ships, enabling stable communication even in the central Bohai Sea...
"The completion of the network is only the starting point," Yang Zhe introduced. Next, the communications and sensing network in the Bohai Sea waters will accelerate its transition from "usable" to "easy to use"—
Expanding coverage area. In waters without offshore platforms, explore the use of large buoys, tethered balloons, drone relays, and other carriers to supplement base station deployment, further filling the communications and sensing gaps in the mid-to-far sea.
Improving network quality. Continuously optimize base station layout and network governance, improve signal stability and transmission rates, and make maritime communications faster and more stable.
Deepening integrated applications. Promote the deep integration of the communications network with the logistics network, achieving unimpeded flow across the entire chain of ship dynamics, channel environments, and navigation elements. In the future, scenarios such as auxiliary decision-making for ship navigation, intelligent early warning for navigation safety, and precise maritime regulation will be gradually implemented, promoting the construction of smart ports and smart waterways.
Return to Top(People's Daily, Jinan, October 16) (Reporters Hou Linliang, Wang Yunshan) On October 16, China's first million-ton-class low-concentration CCUS (carbon dioxide capture, utilization, and storage) full-chain demonstration project commenced construction at the Shengli Oilfield. Upon completion, the project will be able to capture and utilize low-concentration flue gas from coal-fired power plants, using it entirely for oilfield oil displacement and storage. The project pioneers a green electricity system directly supplying the carbon capture facility, realizing a closed-loop model of "direct green power connection, low-carbon capture," contributing to the realization of China's "dual carbon" goals.
The project is expected to be completed and put into operation by the end of 2028. The captured carbon dioxide will be injected into oil reservoirs through more than 70 injection wells, enabling full coverage of different reservoir types, including beach-bar sand reservoirs, turbidite rocks, and shale oil. The project is simultaneously equipped with an integrated source-grid-load-storage system of "wind power + energy storage + direct connection lines + CCUS capture," planning 13 wind turbines with a total installed capacity of 98.8 megawatts, generating 217 million kilowatt-hours of green electricity annually.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 喻思南
In Dapeng New District, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, researchers at the Shenzhen Institute of Agricultural Genomics of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences are pushing forward with great urgency (紧锣密鼓, jin luo mi gu - "tight drum, dense beat") a task — reconstructing the "Tree of Life of Land Plants." Supporting this task is the Plant Planet Project, led by Chinese scientists. In February this year, the project was officially launched, attracting the participation of scientists from more than 40 research institutions worldwide.
Why carry out the Plant Planet Project? What scientific and application value does this project have? What does it mean for botanical research? Let us follow the academicians and experts who participated in initiating the project to understand together the mysteries behind the evolution of plant life.
— Editor
Goal: Fill gaps in knowledge, promote "systematic decoding" of plant science
Plants account for more than 80% of the Earth's total biomass, yet we know very little about them — there are approximately 450,000 species of land plants globally, and currently, more than 99% of land plants lack high-quality reference genomes. As of the end of 2024, 95% of genera, 70% of families, and 51% of orders lack reference genome data, limiting humanity's in-depth understanding and application development of plant diversity, adaptability, and functional potential. The plants scientists have studied in relative depth are concentrated in crops such as rice and wheat and a few model plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana; however, their knowledge of the vast expanse of wild plants is almost a complete blank.
Scientists hope that by sampling orders, families, and genera that lack reference genomes, and then employing phylogenomic methods, they can construct a high-resolution, time-calibrated complete land plant phylogenetic tree, thereby clarifying the kinship relationships and divergence times among major plant groups, and thus drawing a complete "Tree of Plant Life."
[Expert Perspectives]
Huang Sanwen (President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences):
Why is drawing the "Tree of Plant Life" important? We can imagine, opening a large book of several hundred pages, if one is only familiar with a few pages of it, can one understand the book? Likewise, relying only on fragmented knowledge of plant genome data, scientists cannot grasp the overall picture of plant life evolution from a holistic perspective, and thereby unravel many key scientific puzzles.
To this end, scientists worldwide have long hoped to break the "island" status quo in which plant research is trapped in a few model species, to string together fragmented knowledge into a complete knowledge system, to push plant science from "scattered knowledge" to "systematic decoding," and thereby to build for the global botanical community an open, shared, and standardized scientific foundational database.
Behind the research there are also strong practical considerations. Taking the safeguarding of global food security as an example, by decoding the genetic code of land plants, we can tap into the rich genetic treasure trove of wild species, make up for excellent genes lost in crop varieties such as stress resistance and high yield traits, and thereby cultivate high-quality, high-yield crops.
The practical demand of species conservation makes this research even more urgent. Over the past 100 years, at least three plant species have gone permanently extinct every year, a rate more than 500 times the natural extinction rate. There are many plants that, before we have had time to figure out what they are, what value they have, and the unique genetic information they contain, have disappeared forever. By sequencing endangered species and permanently preserving their genetic information, scientists hope to build a "digital Noah's Ark" for plants.
According to the plan, in the next three years, scientists will focus on overcoming key gaps in phylogeny, prioritizing genome decoding for all orders and families that lack reference genomes. In the following 10–12 years, the research will expand to 90% of angiosperm genera and 90% of non-flowering plant families, and use these data to answer a series of scientific questions.
Innovation: Artificial intelligence drives the transformation of botanical research toward data-driven approaches
Plant genome data are extremely vast. Reading the "big book" of the genome requires doing massive foundational work, which is difficult to accomplish by human effort alone. Today, the deep integration of AI (artificial intelligence) and big data technologies has given scientists a "key" for interpretation, promoting the transformation of botanical research from experience-driven to data-driven approaches. This paradigm innovation will inject new vitality into scientific development.
[Expert Perspectives]
E Weinan (Professor at Peking University, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences):
Scientists' plan to jointly draw the "Tree of Plant Life" is not a whim. First is the substantial decline in the cost of genome sequencing technology. The first plant genome published in 2000 — the Arabidopsis thaliana genome — took a multinational team four years and approximately 70 million US dollars to complete. Today, completing a high-quality plant genome sequencing costs less than one ten-thousandth of that amount, and can be delivered in as little as one month.
A key support is the innovation that AI and big data technologies bring to plant research. Overall, we can regard AI as a "super accelerator" and "intelligent decoder" for plant genome research.
The "super accelerator" means accelerating the speed of plant genome decoding. In the past, a plant genome of medium complexity, from structural annotation to functional inference, often required a research team to work continuously for 3–6 months, and was highly dependent on manual experience-based judgment. Faced with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of plant genomes, this model is clearly unsustainable. AI can achieve high-throughput, standardized, automated gene annotation across species, shortening work that originally took months to a few days, while maintaining overall accuracy at a relatively high level stably. Through AI learning of cross-species, full-lineage plant genomes, scientists can also read the "common language" of plant genomes, breaking the limitation of past independent research on each species, connecting "knowledge islands" into a "complete continent," and promoting research from "scattered puzzle pieces" to a "complete picture."
The "intelligent decoder" means more precisely finding excellent genes, moving the discovery of excellent genes from "experience-based screening" to "precision navigation." In traditional crop breeding, finding high-quality genes for drought resistance, salt tolerance, and disease resistance from wild plants is like searching for something extremely difficult to find (大海捞针, da hai lao zhen - "big, sea, scoop, needle"). An innovative variety, from screening to implementation, often takes more than ten or even several decades. AI can combine high-quality plant genome data, use the "telescope" of phylogenetic information to lock onto highly conserved functional sites in hundreds of millions of years of evolution, and then use the "microscope" of population genomics to precisely locate key targets for breeding, turning "searching for a needle in a haystack" into "precision navigation."
Prospects: Providing a new engine for global food security and human health research
Drawing the "Tree of Plant Life" has major scientific significance and broad application prospects. According to the vision, the Plant Planet Project hopes to discover 100 potential economic crops and 1,000 natural products with active properties for drug development, providing a new engine for global food security and human health research.
[Expert Perspectives]
Detlef Weigel (Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Germany, Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Member of the German National Academy of Sciences):
We launched the Plant Planet Project not only to fill gaps in the database, but also because these genomes will change our understanding of plant evolution, guide the conservation of threatened species, and advance next-generation crop breeding. I believe that twenty or thirty years from now, when we walk in a forest, using a device similar to the "tricorder" in Star Trek, we can read on the spot the genome of any species around us, and understand what makes that plant unique, what it can offer, and how to protect it.
Deng Xingwang (President of the Peking University Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences):
Crop breeding has two pain points: first, the severe contraction of genetic diversity caused by long-term directional domestication; second, the difficulty of mining excellent genes from wild relatives.
Taking wheat as an example, wheat is one of the three staple grains and an important crop for safeguarding China's food security. But over the past 100-plus years, wheat breeding has followed the traditional cross-breeding and selection model; developing a stable variety takes 8–12 years, and the varieties have a narrow genetic base, with disease resistance and stress resistance continuously degenerating. The root of this problem lies in the fact that after thousands of years of artificial selection, we have screened out traits that do not meet human needs, while also discarding a large number of excellent genes from wild relatives of wheat. Data show that the genetic diversity of modern cultivated wheat is less than 30% of that of its wild relatives; a large number of genes for resistance to rust, resistance to Fusarium head blight, drought resistance, and salt-alkali tolerance are hidden in wild species. But in the past, without complete genomes of these wild species, finding a usable disease resistance gene often took 5–8 years or even longer. With the help of the "Tree of Plant Life" panoramic map, scientists can both lock onto target excellent genes and open the genetic treasure trove of wild plants, thereby fully tapping the genetic potential of wheat and achieving efficient breeding.
As the Plant Planet Project advances, in the future we will have a foundational operational platform for understanding, protecting, and utilizing plant life. It will transform plants from "familiar strangers" into "life partners" we truly understand.
Return to TopBy: 黄三文
At present, the Plant Planet Project has attracted more than 40 top-tier research institutions from 15 countries, including not only our own Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and the Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences of Peking University, but also such global botanical research institutions as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the United Kingdom and the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Germany.
More than 30 years ago, when the Human Genome Project was launched, China undertook only 1 percent of the sequencing tasks. Today, we have put forward the core scientific conception of this project, formulated globally unified standards for sampling, sequencing, and data, and built an open, shared international collaboration framework that has attracted the world's top research institutions to join voluntarily and participate deeply. Behind this lies the recognition of global peers for China's strength in botanical scientific research, organizational capacity, and openness of mind.
This project will establish a new paradigm for international cooperation in the field of botanical science. The research team has built a "dual-lead" mechanism of equal collaboration, namely, according to the natural taxonomic groups of land plants, plant taxonomists who work deeply on those groups and genomics experts jointly take the lead, coordinating decision-making and advancing the work together throughout the entire process. This is a "grand chorus" of the global botanical science community joining hands and moving forward together.
From the very inception of the project, we have strictly followed international norms such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and set down the rules — all genomic data generated by the project shall fully follow the principles of being findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, and be opened to the global scientific community. In terms of the cooperation model, we emphasize connecting the Global South and the Global North, ensuring that developing countries are partners, not merely providers of samples. In the future, new varieties, new drugs, and other achievements developed on the basis of these resources must fairly benefit the countries of origin of the resources and local communities, so that those who protect truly benefit.
At present, humanity is facing such global challenges as food security, climate change, and biodiversity loss. By taking the lead in this project, China aims to build an open, fair, and inclusive basic research platform for plant science for the world, promote the formation of a new pattern of international scientific and technological cooperation based on equal collaboration and mutually beneficial and win-win results (互利共赢, hu li gong ying - "mutual benefit, win-win"), and enable scientific achievements to benefit all of humanity.
(The author is President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; compiled from an interview by People's Daily reporter Yu Sinan)
Return to TopBy: 张 奇
Recently, many Beijing residents have noticed that traffic lights on city roads have become smarter: when there are no vehicles in the intersecting direction, the red light no longer stays on rigidly, and the green light comes more promptly; on certain road sections, one can even pass through several green lights in a row while driving... This is not an illusion, but rather the "AI (artificial intelligence) signal control system" we are piloting, which is quietly playing its role.
The previous signal lights were "rigid-minded," with fixed green light durations regardless of road conditions. With the help of the "AI intelligent signal control system," signal lights have learned to "think," achieving green wave passage and reducing idle waiting through dynamic adjustment. Data shows that at the pilot intersections, overall vehicle speed increased by approximately 21%, and the congestion index decreased by approximately 19%.
From "vehicles watching the lights" to "lights watching the vehicles," how is the "AI intelligent signal control system" realized?
The first is "perception." We collect rich data sources through the system to provide a basis for decision-making. For example, cameras at intersections can provide clearance status, refined perception devices such as radar can capture real-time headway distances, and navigation data can reflect regional macro-level congestion conditions.
Second, the system uses a multimodal large model as its "brain," deeply integrating multidimensional data and professional knowledge to complete global reasoning of macro-control strategies. Is the road section in morning peak or off-peak? Is it routine congestion or occasional congestion caused by accidents? Which intersections are suitable for "green wave bands" to allow continuous vehicle flow, and which are suitable for single-point adaptive control? The intelligent agent will first conduct a global scan of all intersections in the area, laying a solid foundation for the clearance strategies of each intersection and each time period.
On this basis, the intelligent agent will adopt a combination of "large model + small model" to generate timing plans in real time and carry out micro-level scheduling execution. For example, during the morning peak, it will automatically invoke the peak-hour plan, prioritize main road passage, and adjust the green light duration at upstream intersections in advance to prevent vehicle flow from backing up and overflowing; during off-peak periods, the intelligent agent will autonomously invoke dynamic green wave, DQN model (a model combining deep learning and reinforcement learning algorithms), adaptive, and other algorithms to respond to various traffic demand scenarios; during nighttime low-peak periods, the system switches to actuated control, giving the green light to whichever direction has vehicles. Moreover, the system possesses learning capabilities and continuously iterates, making traffic lights increasingly intelligent.
While making traffic lights smarter, safety is the bottom line.
First, the system does not "delegate authority" to AI; AI can only modify temporary plans and make limited control mode adjustments, and cannot alter the underlying fixed timing plans. Moreover, all AI-generated plans must pass compliance checks, with hard constraints on parameters ranging from the magnitude of plan changes to the maximum and minimum green light durations.
Second, the system remains trustworthy in the face of heavy rain, backlighting, or equipment failures. This brings us to the system's "multi-source perception" capability. The traditional model relies on a single data source and places extremely high demands on the completeness of front-end equipment and data accuracy; often, the loss of one device or a single frame of data causes the entire system's accuracy to decline. The advantage of the "AI intelligent signal control system" lies in its "cross-domain integration" capability. It can fully utilize multi-source data such as internet navigation data, roadside perception data, and ordinary surveillance video streams. It is "not picky," using whatever data is available. Under extreme weather conditions, if the system encounters restricted vision, radar data and other sources can serve as supplements.
This not only means that safety is better guaranteed, but also demonstrates that smart transportation does not rely on wasteful large-scale demolition and construction (大拆大建, da chai da jian - "big, demolish; big, build"). In the past, making an intersection smart required stacking large quantities of expensive equipment. Now, through powerful data fusion capabilities, we can compensate for the shortcomings of single-point perception.
At present, the pilot scope in Beijing covers only certain areas, but the foundation has already been laid: of the approximately 12,000 signal lights citywide, 7,900 have already been networked, and within the Fifth Ring Road and the city's sub-center, the networking rate is 100%. As a traffic management police officer, I look forward to that day: whether day or night, no matter which street one is on, traffic lights can read your footsteps and wheels, and urban traffic becomes smoother and more natural.
(The author is the squadron leader of the Signal Management Squadron of the Police Technology Support Detachment of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau Traffic Management Corps; compiled and organized by People's Daily reporter Wang Zhou)
Return to Top(People's Daily, Beijing) (Reporter Gu Yekai) Led by the China Institute of Atomic Energy under the China National Nuclear Corporation, in collaboration with Nanchang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and other institutions, a breakthrough has been achieved in research on the volatilization behavior of materials under high-temperature ultra-high vacuum conditions: for the first time, the anisotropic volatilization mechanism of nickel-based alloys under high-temperature ultra-high vacuum has been quantitatively revealed, providing an important theoretical basis and experimental data for the microstructure optimization, life prediction, and reliability design of high-temperature structural materials used in extreme thermal-vacuum environments.
Nickel-based alloys are key structural materials in reactor cores. Under high-temperature ultra-high vacuum conditions, they may undergo thermal-vacuum volatilization, leading to element loss and performance degradation. To improve the life and reliability of nickel-based alloys under extreme conditions, the team designed and built a high-temperature ultra-high vacuum volatilization test apparatus integrating ultra-high vacuum attainment, programmed temperature control, volatilization product capture, and real-time monitoring. Based on this apparatus, the research team, taking the nickel-based superalloy Hastelloy 230 as the research subject, conducted volatilization experiments lasting up to 3,000 hours under thermal-vacuum conditions. Combining experiments with theoretical calculations, they elucidated the synergistic controlling effect of crystal orientation and grain boundary type on volatilization behavior. The research results indicate that by regulating grain orientation and grain boundary character distribution, it is expected that the volatilization resistance of materials can be enhanced at the microstructural level.
Return to Top(People's Daily, Wuhan) (Reporter Fan Haotian) In its observations, the James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a class of special celestial bodies called "little red dots." They are compact in structure and reddish in color, existed in large numbers in the early universe, yet almost completely disappeared about 2 billion years after the birth of the universe, making this one of the major unresolved problems in the astronomical community.
A team led by Associate Professor Zhang Huanian and Professor Wu Qingwen of the School of Physics at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in collaboration with Peking University, the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and several other institutions, conducted research based on a sample of nearly 100 spectroscopically confirmed "little red dots," revealing for the first time the mystery of their disappearance from the perspective of large-scale environments and the evolution of dark matter halo masses. The relevant research findings were recently published online in the international astronomy journal Nature Astronomy.
The research team found that in the very early universe, "little red dots" tended to "live alone" in low-density environments, which is completely different (截然不同, jie ran bu tong - "completely, different, not, same") from the characteristic of ordinary galaxies of the same period gathering in matter-dense regions. As the universe evolved, the dark matter halo masses of these celestial bodies grew rapidly from about 10 billion times the solar mass to about 200 billion times the solar mass, gradually approaching the level of ordinary galaxies. This means that "little red dots" are not eternal special celestial bodies, but rather a transient stage in galaxy evolution — as dark matter halo masses grow, galaxies gradually grow larger, their physical properties converge toward those of ordinary galaxies, and they ultimately cease to appear as compact "little red dots."
This achievement provides a new perspective for understanding the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies in the early universe, and also indicates that galaxy evolution in the early universe may have been more diverse and dynamic than previously imagined.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 曹文轩
On the coastline of Changjiang Li Autonomous County in Hainan, a nuclear power plant operates day and night. Yet few people know that around this nuclear power plant, a "star" of the pearl world can be produced — Australian white pearls.
Australian white pearls are produced by the large pearl oyster, commonly known as the white-winged pearl oyster, and are named for their traditional main production area in Australia. In China, the white-winged pearl oyster is mainly distributed in warm waters off Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan, and other places. Due to overfishing, this shellfish once declined sharply in number and became a national second-class protected animal.
The white-winged pearl oyster is extremely "picky" about its living environment: water temperatures below 20 degrees Celsius are unfavorable for growth, above 30 degrees Celsius it easily falls ill and dies, and the water quality must be clean. Therefore, large-scale cultivation and production of high-quality pearls is extremely difficult.
With such high cultivation difficulty, why can successful breeding be achieved around a nuclear power plant? A reporter interviewed Yang Ziqian, deputy director of the Environmental Emergency Division of Hainan Nuclear Power.
Yang Ziqian explained that, in simple terms, nuclear power generation uses the heat of a nuclear reactor to heat water, and the steam drives a turbine to generate electricity. Because the steam requires large amounts of seawater to cool it back into liquid water for recycling, the water temperature in the industrial seawater-use area around the nuclear power base is maintained at around 25 degrees Celsius, providing a "natural warm room" for the white-winged pearl oyster, which prefers warm waters.
In 2021, the Hainan (Changjiang) Nuclear Power Base began exploration together with aquaculture enterprises and research institutions. After years of cultivation, the yield of white-winged pearl oysters in more than 1,000 mu of sea area has been stable, with excellent quality. Previously, the cultivation team had chosen to trial breeding in the Sansha area of Hainan, but the water quality in the Sansha sea area was too good, with relatively low algae content, so the white-winged pearl oysters did not get enough to eat and grew small. The hydrological conditions around the nuclear power plant happen to match the strict requirements of the white-winged pearl oyster for water quality.
After settling in the sea area, the white-winged pearl oyster also returns a favor with a similar kindness (投桃报李, tou tao bao li - "throw peach, report plum"). It turns out that rising water temperatures may cause algae to multiply in large numbers, and if it runs rampant it will affect the safety of water intake for the nuclear power plant. As a filter-feeding shellfish, the white-winged pearl oyster does not rely on the input of feed but feeds on phytoplankton in the sea area. Combined with manual prevention and control, it can effectively control the amount of algae and resolve potential ecological and safety hazards.
Some people worry that pearls cultivated beside a nuclear power plant will be contaminated by radiation. Yang Ziqian explained, "Not at all. The Hainan (Changjiang) Nuclear Power Base has been in operation for more than ten years, and the radiation level in the surrounding area has remained within the background range." He explained that the cooling water is completely isolated from the source of nuclear radiation. The first phase of Hainan Nuclear Power adopts a pressurized water reactor. The reactor core does not come into direct contact with the heated water, and the cooling water, used to cool the steam, likewise does not come into direct contact with the core or the heated water. Before the cooling water is discharged into the sea, it undergoes multiple radioactivity tests and can only be discharged after meeting safety standards. The "delicate" white-winged pearl oyster growing healthily in this sea area and producing high-quality pearls is itself the most direct "endorsement" of the water quality and environment.
The white-winged pearl oyster cultivation around the Hainan (Changjiang) Nuclear Power Base has become a model of "nuclear power + ecology" cooperation, and the scale of cultivation is expected to expand further. The two-way journey of technology and life shows people: the warmth of technology lies in the wisdom of coexistence between humanity and nature.
Return to Top(People's Daily, Hefei) (Reporter Xu Jing) Recently, a team led by Professor Chen Xianhui and Professor Wang Zhenyu of the University of Science and Technology of China, in collaboration with Professor Xiang Bin of the same university and Professor Liu Junwei of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and other co-workers, fabricated a class of quantum spin Hall insulators into scanning tunneling microscope tips, developing a new method for atomic-scale spin detection. The relevant results were published in Nature.
Spin is a fundamental property of electrons and is closely related (密切相关, mi qie xiang guan - "close, closely, relate") to the magnetic properties of materials. Traditional spin-resolved probes typically obtain spin sensitivity by means of magnetic tips. In the helical edge states of quantum spin Hall insulators, however, counter-propagating electrons carry opposite spins, which is expected to provide a new spin-selection mechanism. Previously, the team of Professor Chen Xianhui and Professor Wang Zhenyu observed stable and pure one-dimensional helical edge channels in the layered material bismuth iodide, whose interlayer hybridization coupling is extremely weak. On this basis, the research team, through focused ion beam micro-nano fabrication, prepared bismuth bromide single crystals into scanning tunneling microscope tips with atomic resolution capability and verified their spin selectivity. Subsequently, the team applied this method to the study of the candidate altermagnet material potassium vanadium selenium oxide.
This work demonstrates the potential of topological quantum materials as probes for measuring physical states, and is expected to be applied to two-dimensional magnets and moiré materials, providing new methods and technologies for studying their atomic-scale spin characteristics.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 谷业凯
The "Opinions on Deepening the Reform and Development of Elderly Care Services" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council proposes accelerating the development and application of elderly care technology and informatization. Currently, as the national "Respect-the-Elderly Month" is underway, the elderly care needs of China's senior population are becoming increasingly diverse, differentiated, and individualized. Smart elderly care products that comprehensively apply new-generation information technology are providing new supply to meet these new needs.
What new colors have current smart elderly care products brought to the lives of senior citizens? What new challenges must they face in actual application scenarios? How can smart elderly care products be made both well-received and well-sold?
— Ed.
Products
From "Pilot" to "Popularization"
"At 19:20, master bedroom, fall-from-bed event detected." Mr. Liu, who works in another city, received this telephone alert and quickly contacted Xiao Chen, a staff member of the Butterfly Island Community Neighborhood Committee in Nansha Subdistrict, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, requesting an on-site check on his father's condition. "Although the neighborhood committee conducts regular visits to 'empty-nest elderly,' more attention is needed for emergencies such as an elderly person falling. If the golden window for treatment is missed, it may cause irreparable consequences," Xiao Chen said.
More than a dozen "empty-nest elderly" in the jurisdiction of the Butterfly Island Community Neighborhood Committee have been provided with an AI (artificial intelligence)-assisted health and wellness sensor developed by the community. This product, developed by Huawei, can perform three-dimensional spatial micro-motion detection, enabling auxiliary monitoring of falls or fall-from-bed incidents in bathrooms and bedrooms.
The "2025 National Report on the Development of the Aging Cause" released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the National Committee on Aging shows that as of the end of 2025, China's population aged 60 and above exceeded 320 million, accounting for 23% of the total population.
Faced with the enormous demand for elderly care, the smart elderly care model, which relies on new technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, and artificial intelligence, is considered an important path to escape the traditional elderly care predicament and improve the level of age-friendly services.
Currently, domestic manufacturers have launched a variety of smart health and elderly care products and services, including smart watches, smart blood pressure monitors, smart blood glucose meters, and safety products capable of recognizing human body states and performing intelligent auxiliary detection of sudden situations. Fang Fei, President of the Product Line at Honor Terminal Co., Ltd., introduced: "The smart watch we launched can automatically trigger emergency calls for help when cardiac arrest escalates to extremely high risk or even sudden cessation, such as immediately dialing emergency numbers and activating high-frequency sound and light alerts, firmly holding the golden rescue window for elderly people living alone."
At present, China's smart elderly care is developing from technical pilot to popularized application. Deep technological integration, surging market demand, and accelerated construction of the industrial ecosystem are continuously giving rise to new scenarios and emerging models.
In terms of wearable devices, products such as ECG monitoring, fall warning, and chronic disease management are continuously emerging; internet medical resources such as AI consultation and electronic health records are being extended to the grassroots; elderly care robots with functions including rehabilitation training, disability care, and emotional companionship are flourishing and still growing (方兴未艾, fang xing wei ai - "direction, not yet, rise, not yet, end")...
"Our developed smart butler, relying on medical resources and self-developed large model capabilities, can not only remind elderly people to take medication on time and in the correct dosage, but also intelligently analyze drug efficacy and potential adverse reactions based on health data and medication history, safeguarding medication safety," introduced Xie Hong, General Manager of the Medical and Elderly Care Services Expansion Team at Ping An Life Insurance. Currently, the medical encyclopedia service supports query functions for a large number of diseases and drugs, and has connected a large pool of medical expert resources, effectively alleviating the pressure on elderly groups regarding daily health consultations and medical visits.
Zhang Yunquan, a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that elderly care services cannot be separated from technological support. Elderly care has high requirements for service refinement and personalization, and product safety and convenience. "Elderly people have urgent needs in medical care, cleaning assistance, mobility assistance, and meal assistance. These areas should become the focal points for new technologies."
Services
From "Care" to "Companionship"
In recent years, the acceptance and usage rate of smart products among elderly people has steadily increased. A survey conducted by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics on 803 permanent elderly residents aged 60 and above in the city showed that 86.2% of respondents were willing to use smart products.
Behind this lies the new space that "emotional value" has brought to smart elderly care products. Smart elderly care products are not only directly applied in specific elderly care scenarios but also pay attention to the spiritual and cultural life of senior citizens.
Mr. Song, aged 62, often uses his smart butler to plan travel itineraries and also enjoys discussing traditional Chinese medicine health knowledge with it; Aunt Li from Tianjin loves classical literature and often engages in interactions with her smart butler such as "poetry flying flower orders" and "idiom solitaire." "This application is like an old friend who understands me, speaking naturally and with emotion," Aunt Li said.
"We have customized and developed intelligent chat companionship and time diary functions for the elderly population, providing emotional comfort and spiritual companionship to enrich their later years," Xie Hong said.
For some time now, rapidly developing generative AI technology has been enhancing the elderly care living experience in multiple ways.
Xie Hong introduced: "Our intelligent chat companionship service has built a total of 35 characters. Based on AI large model capabilities combined with user profiling systems, it has undergone deep customization and optimization for the specific needs of elderly groups. Elderly people of different age groups and personality traits can all find a companion character that suits them."
At the same time, under the smart elderly care model, nursing staff are able to devote more energy to personalized services.
At the "Jincheng Shiguang" smart medical and elderly care community in Chengdu, multiple sets of smart devices reduce repetitive labor, allowing staff to spend more time on emotional communication with elderly people. "The smart dining settlement system identifies dishes through image recognition, and the backend connects to the food nutrition database and personal health records, providing real-time reminders about unsuitable dishes and those containing allergens; the smart walking exoskeleton automatically learns and recognizes walking patterns, helping elderly people with weak lower limb strength recover their walking ability," introduced Feng Xiaohua, Senior Vice President of BOE Technology Group and Chairman of the Smart Health and Elderly Care Industry Co., Ltd.
In the view of industry experts, smart elderly care is not merely a simple stacking of smart devices, but rather an organic integration of technological warmth and humanistic care. New technologies that have emerged in recent years, such as affective computing, big data prediction, and community interconnection, are reshaping the emotional care model for elderly people.
At present, emotional intelligence technology has played an important role in typical elderly care scenarios such as emotional communication and companionship, health management and care, and life safety monitoring. Through warm "emotional algorithms," it shifts companionship and care from passive to active, effectively alleviating loneliness among elderly people, and is gradually becoming one of the focal points for the high-quality development of smart elderly care.
Industry
From "Pathfinding" to "Chain Formation"
China has an ultra-large-scale domestic market and rich application scenarios. In the field of smart elderly care, a positive cycle of government guidance, enterprise innovation, family participation, and social collaboration is taking shape. In recent years, policy measures such as smart health and elderly care pilots, age-friendly renovations, and long-term care insurance have been gradually implemented, providing institutional guarantees for the development of the smart elderly care industry.
However, as an emerging field, smart elderly care products still face certain challenges in the promotion process.
Zhang Yunquan believes that China's elderly care presents a "9073" pattern, meaning approximately 90% of elderly people age at home, 7% rely on community-supported care, and 3% reside in institutional care. Relevant policies and products should be more oriented toward actual needs, taking home-based elderly care needs as the priority, while also launching more applicable products for community elderly care scenarios.
Smart elderly care products currently still face problems such as fragmented industrial chains, missing standards, and insufficient age-friendly design. Industry insiders believe that the software and hardware platforms, health and wellness services, medical services, and content services of smart elderly care products are provided by different manufacturers, lacking unified industry technical standards and data interfaces, making it difficult to form synergy. "We should proceed from an overall perspective and from needs, providing systematic solutions."
In Xie Hong's view, there are currently no corresponding standards established for various types of smart elderly care products, such as equipment standards and response service standards, resulting in inconsistent ease of use for elderly people, stability, and continuity of follow-up services across products.
Experts interviewed stated that smart elderly care products also face problems such as "buying but not using" due to insufficient age-friendly design, and difficulty in charging for services due to immature business models, which need to be gradually resolved in practice.
Furthermore, the true value of smart elderly care products lies in the services supporting them behind the scenes. Zhang Yunquan stated: "When the system issues an alarm, who can respond at the first moment? Currently, there is a lack of a mature, reliable, and efficient offline service network to complement it."
The "Several Measures on Cultivating Elderly Care Service Business Entities and Promoting the Development of the Silver Economy" issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and seven other departments explicitly proposes "vigorously supporting technology-enabled elderly care services," "encouraging elderly care technology research and product development," and "supporting product technology application verification." Experts suggest that, on the one hand, the digital and intelligent upgrading of the elderly care service field should be strengthened, applying new technologies to health monitoring, safety alarms, and personalized customized services for elderly people; on the other hand, new technologies and new products should be updated and applied, enhancing elderly users' experience through service sharing, equipment leasing, and pilot trials, accelerating the age-friendly transformation of products and technological iteration.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 唐中科
"Ascending Lüzhang Mountain in Yongjia" (Excerpt)
Xie Lingyun (Southern Dynasties)
Carrying provisions and a light staff, I linger on the path to the secluded abode.
Tracing the source, the path winds ever farther; nearing the heights, my feelings are not yet spent.
Calm ripples congeal into wintry beauty; clustered verdure moistens the frost-touched substance.
The stream twists and turns, the water often bewilders; the forest stretches far, the crags grow ever denser.
On an autumn day, a bamboo raft glides across the crystal-clear surface of the Nanxi River, as cloud shadows, mountain shadows, and raft shadows fall into the water. More than 1,600 years ago, Xie Lingyun also set aside his official documents and set his boat adrift midstream, at ease just like those on the raft today. A river of ease — how did it give birth to an entirely new school of poetry?
In the year 422 AD, Xie Lingyun was demoted to serve as governor of Yongjia. At that time, "mystery-learning" poetry prevailed, and landscapes served only as embellishment. Frustrated in his official career, he sailed upstream and arrived at Lüzhang Mountain in present-day Yongjia County, following the stream in search of seclusion — "The stream twists and turns, the water often bewilders; the forest stretches far, the crags grow ever denser," and thus "Ascending Lüzhang Mountain in Yongjia" was written. Thereafter, he traveled throughout Yongjia, composing verses wherever he went, writing more than twenty landscape poems including "Ascending the Pond Tower." Because of him, landscapes became for the first time the protagonist of poetry, and he came to be revered as the founding patriarch of the landscape poetry school. The mountain gained fame through poetry, and the river gained a school through its transmission — Yongjia, in this way, became the birthplace of Chinese landscape poetry.
Poets of later generations followed in his footsteps. Li Bai yearned for it: "Suddenly I think of Yongjia, not fearing the long sea road"; Su Shi remarked with emotion: "He himself said his official post was like Lingyun's, able to make rivers and mountains like Yongjia."
A thousand years later, this ease remains findable. Riding a bamboo raft from Zhaotan to Lion Rock, over more than four kilometers of waterway, the river water is as clear as national Class I and II water quality, and the beach forests are an unbroken expanse of green. On the riverbank, singers open their throats, their songs drifting away with the wind; on the boats, fishermen give whistles, and cormorants plunge into the blue waves. Paddleboards and tents dot the shores, and greenways and cafés are complementing each other in an interesting way (相映成趣, xiang ying cheng qu - "mutually, reflect; become, interesting"). Xiao Zhou, a guide, sat at the front of the raft and told reporters that some citizens and tourists spend an entire afternoon lost in thought on the river, and some tourists, after listening to the folk songs, deliberately turn back to drift another stretch. The river is still that same river, and the relaxation of "having returned to nature" is still the same.
The ease on the river is half a day of leisure drifting on a raft; the ease by the riverbank is the year after year of mutual companionship in the villages.
These ancient villages were "planned" according to the image of an ideal home after the migration south of the Central Plains gentry clans.
Cangpo Village is laid out according to the "Four Treasures of the Study": the Brush Street points straight at Brush Rack Mountain, the ink stick lies quietly beside the Inkstone Pond; two pools of clear water serve as the inkstone, and a great expanse of land serves as paper. And the garden in the village's northeast is an 800-year-old "park," complete with ponds, temples, pavilions, and corridors, all left for the villagers to share. Within the "park," the Wangxiong Pavilion and the Shuiyue Hall write the warmth of filial piety, brotherly love, and neighborly harmony into the village's public spaces.
Furong Village, by contrast, was built according to the "Seven Stars and Eight Dippers": the "stars" are square platforms at road intersections, and the "dippers" are wells and ponds. Water was managed first, then houses were built; living water circles the households and threads through the lanes, guarding against fire and facilitating daily use. And the village's Furong Academy allowed children from poor families to receive their first education, and the tradition of maintaining the tradition of farming and studying to pass down through generations (耕读传家, geng du chuan jia - "plow, read; pass down, family") has been handed down in this way, generation after generation.
By day, farming and studying bring contentment; by night, listening to music brings leisure.
On Lishui Street, the lamps of the Shuiting Shrine light up one by one, and Yongjia Kunqu opera opens its voice here, singing precisely of Xie Lingyun's autumn night. In the Ming dynasty, Kunqiang tunes crossed southward and merged with Yongjia's local accents and rustic melodies, forming a unique style in its own right (自成一格, zi cheng yi ge - "self, form, one, style"), known as "Yongkun," a living fossil of Southern drama surviving to this day. The newly composed play "Autumn Moon over the Water Pavilion" also tells of Xie Lingyun: on an autumn night, idling in the water pavilion, the flower spirit, sent by the mountain god to test him, is instead moved by his poetic feeling; the mountain god appears, and the poet recites the famous lines from "Ascending the Pond Tower" — "Spring grass grows by the pond, garden willows change to singing birds" — and man and the spirits of mountains and waters happily reconcile. With moonlight and pond water as the backdrop and the ancient shrine and pavilion corridors as the stage, there is no enclosed stage; the audience experiences "the play performed amid the scenery, the people wandering within the play."
Peaceful by day, joyful by night, ease resides within. And a river of ease that has lasted a thousand years endures through the guardianship of generation after generation.
"For more than 130 renovation projects, we have insisted on restoring old things to their original appearance (修旧如旧, xiu jiu ru jiu - "repair, old, like, old")." Li Xincong, chairman of the Yongjia County Culture and Tourism Group, said. Minimal intervention has allowed the 4.2-square-kilometer core area to retain the everyday life of the ancient villages; linking individual elements together into a whole (串珠成链, chuan zhu cheng lian - "string, pearls, become, chain") has in turn allowed the "300-li Nanxi" cultural tourism IP to connect landscapes and nostalgia. The once-endangered Yongkun, from restoring the troupe's institutional establishment and expanding its staffing to legislative protection, has regained new life step by step. This year, the Yongjia sub-venue of the China International Garden Expo, themed "Mountain-Water Human Habitation," has brought the wall-less "People's Garden Expo" to the village gates.
Guardianship also comes from the private sector. Chen Zhihua, a professor at Tsinghua University, once walked into the Nanxi River valley to capture the value of rural gardens; Li Dongfeng, a villager of Cangpo Village, has spent more than twenty years compiling the clan genealogy on a voluntary basis, sorting out the origins of the village's founding on the principle of "devotion to fundamentals."
The results of this guardianship are written on the faces of more and more people. Xie Lingyun writing landscape poetry was one kind of ease; people today attending music festivals is another kind of ease. Since 2017, music festivals such as the East China Sea and Midi festivals have successively landed on the riverbanks; this National Day holiday, the Nanxi River received more than 1.16 million tourist visits, and music fans, with the green mountains as their backdrop, shouted to their hearts' content, shedding their inhibitions. The forms have changed; the ease has not.
"May I ask the fellow passenger on the boat, when will we reach Yongjia?" A thousand years ago, Meng Haoran traveled by boat on the river, with wide waters and distant mountains, not knowing how many more stages remained to Yongjia; today, high-speed rail makes it reachable, departing in the morning and arriving by evening, the Nanxi River's 5A scenic area development is in full swing, and the "300-li Nanxi" has made a brand-new appearance — the question of "when will we arrive" has long since transformed into the ease of "come anytime." A river of clear water, a thousand years of ease, flowing here from ancient poetry, flowing onward toward new verses.
Return to TopBy: 本报记者 李祉瑶
On the Tumochuan Plain at the southern foot of the Daqingshan Mountains in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, traveling southward along the highway, one can see from afar a landmark landscape incorporating elements such as mountain peaks and auspicious clouds, bearing the inscription "Tabusai" — this is Tabusai Village, Tabusai Township, Tumd Left Banner, Hohhot. In 2013, Tabusai Village was included in the second batch of the List of Traditional Chinese Villages.
The three characters "Tabusai" carry the beautiful meaning of ethnic unity.
Several hundred years ago, five families of different ethnicities lived here in harmony, flourishing and multiplying over generations. "Our village was originally named 'Tabuzi,' which means 'five families' in the Mongolian language," said Yun Zaiping, director of the Tabusai Village Committee. "'Sai' means 'good' in Mongolian, and in 1965, the village was renamed 'Tabusai.'"
Today, Tabusai Village has villagers of Han, Mongolian, Manchu, Hui, and other ethnicities, and people of different customs live together here, "drinking from the same well, admiring the grassland flowers together."
Walking into the streets and lanes of Tabusai Village, houses with white walls and red tiles are neatly arranged, bearing distinctive characteristics of northern villages.
In a small lane not far from the village committee, a residence built in the Qing Dynasty retains the traditional mortise-and-tenon structure and is a typical adobe-walled, timber-framed dwelling.
The kang surround paintings beside the heated brick bed in the western room of the residence were painted in the 1950s, featuring both opera stories, towers, and pavilions that display traditional Han culture, and natural landscapes that reflect grassland culture. This art form, through the blending of agrarian culture and nomadic culture, has formed distinctive regional characteristics. In 2009, kang surround painting was included in the second batch of the Intangible Cultural Heritage List of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
An ancient street in the village is the place with the most lively atmosphere during local temple fair activities.
Every year on the thirteenth day of the fifth lunar month, the village holds a temple fair. On this day, villagers from the village itself and surrounding areas all attend in formal dress, and many tourists come attracted by its reputation. The village holds square dance performances and special opera performances in the cultural square and on village streets and lanes, making the occasion extraordinarily lively and bustling.
"We invite different performance troupes to perform Peking opera, Jin opera, and others for everyone," said Zhang Lu, publicity committee member of the Tabusai Township Party Committee. Every year at the temple fair, wandering sons away from home return to their native place, and people from nearby villages gather here, promoting commercial exchanges and cultural interaction, and also giving Tabusai Village broader visibility.
In recent years, the overall appearance of the village has been improving. "At present, Tabusai Village has renovated a total of 379 dilapidated houses, and all main streets have been paved," Yun Zaiping said with pride in his tone.
"We give priority to hiring local villagers, jointly research strawberry cultivation and management techniques, and have expanded into sightseeing and fruit-picking businesses, achieving good returns and also driving employment for nearly 300 people," said Nan Yunfei, head of the Feiyue Planting and Breeding Farmers' Professional Cooperative.
Through the deep integration of agriculture, culture, and tourism industries, the village's collective annual income exceeds 200,000 yuan, and in 2025 it received 50,000 tourist visits. The vision of "resources becoming assets, farmers becoming shareholders, and villages becoming scenic areas" has become a reality in the ancient Tabusai Village.
Return to TopBy: 刘中刚
On September 22, the "Great Expedition — Exhibition Commemorating the 90th Anniversary of the Victory of the Long March of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army" opened at the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution (hereinafter referred to as the "Military Museum"). The exhibition area covers approximately 3,300 square meters, with an exhibition line of 760 meters, presenting a panoramic display of the glorious course, valuable experience, great significance, and far-reaching influence of the Party's leadership of the Red Army in the Long March.
Since 1996, the Military Museum has hosted Long March-themed exhibitions three times. The curatorial team repeatedly pondered: how can the exhibition align more closely with the new era? We made a series of attempts.
The exhibition is divided into seven sections. In the first section, "Strategic Shift — Embarking on a Long Journey Toward Life Through Death," visitors can learn about the historical background of the Red Army's Long March, the difficult course of the Central Red Army in the early stages of the Long March, the successive departures of various Red Army contingents on the Long March, and the course of the three-year guerrilla war in the south. The second section, "Zunyi Conference — Achieving a Great Turning Point of Life-and-Death Importance," displays the Zunyi Conference and the series of meetings before and after it, the Central Red Army's four crossings of the Chishui River and skillful crossing of the Jinsha River, and its achievement of decisive victories in the strategic shift, highlighting that the Long March was a great expedition that tested truth. The third section, "Breaking Through Barriers — Composing a Soul-Stirring Epic of War," displays how the various Red Army contingents repelled more than a million extremely vicious and cruel (穷凶极恶, qiong xiong ji e - "seek, fierce, extreme, evil") pursuing and blocking enemies, winning a series of major campaign and battle victories. The fourth section, "Revolutionary Ideals — The Spiritual Pillar Inspiring Forward Progress," displays how the Red Army, under the Party's leadership, relying on lofty ideals and firm convictions, conquered snow-capped mountains and traversed grasslands, proving that the Party's leadership is the fundamental guarantee for the success of the revolutionary cause. The fifth section, "Awakening the Masses — Gathering the Source of Strength to Overcome Hardships," displays how the Red Army, along the Long March, connected with the masses, mobilized the masses, armed the masses, united the masses, and relied on the masses, winning the support and endorsement of the people and gathering a powerful force for united resistance against Japan and unified opposition to the enemy, highlighting that the broad masses of the people were the source of strength for the victory of the Long March. The sixth section, "Winning New Life — Opening the Door to Victory for the Chinese Revolution," displays how the Party, through making extraordinary efforts under extremely difficult circumstances (艰苦卓绝, jian ku zhuo jue - "hard, bitter, outstanding, absolute") practical exploration, successfully resolved the survival crisis and the national crisis, highlighting that the Long March was a great expedition that opened up a new situation. The seventh section, "Carrying Forward the Great Long March Spirit — Forging Ahead Bravely on the New Long March," displays the connotation of the great Long March spirit, the important expositions of the Party's and the state's main leaders on the Long March and its great significance, and displays the magnificent journey of the Party leading the people to inherit and carry forward revolutionary traditions and continuously create new historical glories over a long period, especially since the 18th National Congress of the Party.
The exhibition strengthens the connection between carrying forward the great Long March spirit and the achievements in strengthening the military in the new era and the modernization of national defense and the armed forces; adds content on the Party's leadership over the Red Army and army political work, displaying the moving deeds of Red Army commanders such as Hong Chao, Chen Shuxiang, Deng Ping, Wu Huanxian, and Huang Su, and displaying the good examples and good traditions of senior and mid-level Red Army commanders; and fully explores and displays the worldwide influence of the Long March.
Every generation of Chinese people has its own memories of the Long March. For example, the group aged 60 and above is thoroughly familiar with the stories in the song "Seeing Off the Red Army," the large-scale vocal suite "Long March Suite," the oil painting "Sons of Poor Peasants," and Edgar Snow's work "Red Star Over China"; several generations who grew up after the reform and opening up have deep memories of the Long March stories in primary and secondary school textbooks such as "Monument" and "The Golden Fishhook." The curatorial team carried out targeted design, such as designing an interactive project for "The Golden Fishhook," popularizing knowledge about cold-water fish in grasslands and the Red Army's fishing in grasslands, and displaying for the first time the fishing line used by He Long for fishing.
The rich exhibits are a major highlight of this exhibition. The exhibition displays a total of 357 photographs and charts, nearly 80 works of art, 16 videos, and 1,061 cultural relics and documents (sets), of which more than 300 (sets) are displayed for the first time, accounting for 28 percent, setting a record for the Military Museum and for exhibitions on the same theme.
During the Agrarian Revolutionary War period, battles were frequent and materials were crude, and especially the hardships of the Long March meant that very few historical images of the Red Army's Long March survive — there are no videos, and no more than 20 photographs. Against this background, many visual presentations had to be realized through works of art. The curatorial team excavated classic works of art in the museum's collection and organized the creation of a number of new works. During the process of inviting creations and soliciting works, artists of three generations — old, middle-aged, and young — contributed without regard to cost and with all their strength, which moved us deeply. These works of art were organically integrated into the exhibition line scenes, adding much luster to the exhibition.
On the occasions of commemorating the 60th, 70th, and 80th anniversaries of the victory of the Long March of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, many television stations and units interviewed and filmed a large number of oral-history videos of old Red Army soldiers about the Long March and produced documentary films. We sorted through these video materials, compiled more than 10 short videos to match the exhibition content, and additionally collected and displayed the earliest version of the video of the "Long March Suite," and played more than 10 Long March-themed songs such as "Seeing Off the Red Army" and "Song of Striking the Cavalry." To meet the needs of the exhibition, we also created sand-painting videos.
The Military Museum's exhibition halls are 5.5 to 6 meters high, and the exhibition makes extensive use of high-altitude scene construction. For example, in the center of the first hall is the group sculpture "The Red Army Crossing the Grassland," with 33 Red Army flags suspended from the ceiling; the second hall combines the presentation of the exterior facade of the Zunyi Conference site building with the interior view of the conference room, and reproduces at 1:1 scale the scene of a boat with its prow raised surging upward on river waves, depicting the hardship of warriors crossing the river.
The exhibition comprehensively employs works of art and scene-based arrangements, meticulously crafting key highlights such as the farewell at Yudu, the bloody battle at the Xiang River, the Zunyi Conference, the four crossings of the Chishui River, the flying capture of the Luding Bridge, and the snow-capped mountains and grasslands. For example, for the flying capture of the Luding Bridge, the initial idea was to design along the span of the exhibition wall, but it was felt that the momentum and flavor of battle were insufficient; in the end, the bold decision was made to suspend the bridge's iron chains flying across to the opposite exhibition wall, enhancing the visual impact. Visitors first view the exhibition wall, then pass beneath the bridge, and a sense of awe naturally arises. Also, for the battle at Lazikou, the building's load-bearing columns were utilized to create a mountain cliff and a sculpture of a figure climbing upward, displaying the story of the young soldier "Yunguichuan." To make the figure sculpture "come alive," the creators repeatedly weighed the volume, posture, and strength, so that although visitors do not see his true face, they can imagine his perseverance.
The curatorial team also meticulously designed interactive projects to enhance visitors' immersion and experience. For example, at the departure point of the Red Army's Long March, a 1.5-meter Red Army conscription line was designed based on real history, inspiring young visitors to also "join the Red Army." The third hall features an interactive touchscreen allowing visitors to select supplies the Red Army needed to prepare before climbing snow-capped mountains; a multimedia display case beneath the snow mountain landscape requires visitors to warm the screen with their hands to melt the "ice-covered" glass of the display case and see the cultural relics inside; a rotatable and flippable "Rubik's cube" is designed to popularize knowledge about fish in the grasslands and answer why, even though there were fish to catch, the Red Army's hunger problem could not be completely solved; and so on.
Next to the Red Army's written propaganda slogans, we set up simple water-writing quick-dry boards for visitors to express their comments on the exhibition. What is deeply impressive is that since the exhibition opened, the words visitors have written most frequently in their comments are "Red Army" and "the people."
In October 2024, the curatorial team was established, and in September 2026, the exhibition opened. Over the two years, the team revised the plan several times, and the installation process was refined with a pursuit of excellence. With the sentiment of "running the exhibition well with the great Long March spirit," we gained more support and evoked more resonance and empathy. May every visitor who enters the exhibition hall gain something, and, under the baptism of the great Long March spirit, walk well their own future Long March.
(The author is the director of the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution)
Return to TopBy: 魏兴涛
On October 17, 2021, General Secretary Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter marking the centenary of the discovery of the Yangshao culture and the birth of modern Chinese archaeology, pointing the direction for archaeological work and archaeological research on the Yangshao culture in the new era. Over the past five years, relying on major national projects such as the "Project to Trace the Origins of Chinese Civilization" and "Archaeology China — Research on the Civilizational Process in the Central Plains Region," archaeological institutions in Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Hebei, and other regions have been working together to tackle difficult problems (协同攻关, xié tóng gōng guān - "collaborate, attack, study"), carrying out proactive archaeological excavations on a certain scale around topics such as the settlement patterns of the Yangshao culture, the process of social complexification, and cross-regional cultural interaction, and achieving a batch of breakthrough academic results.
The Yangshao culture is a principal prehistoric archaeological culture mainly distributed in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, with an absolute chronology of approximately 7,000 to 4,700 years ago. It is a prehistoric culture in China with a long duration, wide geographical distribution, and strong cultural radiating influence, and is also a key object for understanding the origins of early Chinese civilization. The academic community has carried out systematic research around the central settlements of the early, middle, and late phases of the Yangshao culture, sorting out the civilizational process from relatively simple egalitarian communities gradually moving toward social stratification, the emergence of public power, and the appearance of early ritual systems.
In the early Yangshao period, new discoveries of a series of ring trenches and early defensive remains revised the traditional understanding that early Yangshao society was egalitarian and had not yet seen significant differentiation. Ring-trench settlements have been found at sites such as Zhaoyao in Wu'an, southern Hebei, and Gedachuan in Zhangjiachuan, southeastern Gansu; the Chengyan site in Lingbao, western Henan, has yielded a defensive system composed of rammed-earth wall foundations and inner and outer double ditches, along with large house remains with circular corridors. The Shicun site in Xia County, southern Shanxi, has also revealed two rammed-earth wall foundations. The above remains indicate that around 6,000 years ago, artificially planned settlement defense facilities had already appeared in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, differences among settlements were emerging, and the process of social complexification and civilization had already sprouted. At the same time, stone carvings, pottery silkworm pupae and cocoons, and silk residue have been unearthed at multiple sites, pushing back the physical evidence for the origin of China's sericulture and silk-weaving industry to the early Yangshao period, reflecting that handicraft production had reached a certain level of development.
Entering the middle Yangshao period (the Miaodigou phase), the Yangshao culture ushered in prosperity, and the civilizational process accelerated markedly. Multiple centrally planned central settlements with large ring trenches appeared in the border region of Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi. The Jiangjia site in Guanzhong has revealed double ring trenches, with clear functional zoning of the settlement, and the construction of public buildings developed in tandem with specialized pottery production. At the Huangzipo ring-trench settlement in Xi'an, early barbican-type defense facilities have been found outside the trench gate, pushing the date of this type of remains back to the middle Yangshao period. The Xiyin site in southern Shanxi has yielded double ring trenches with clear zoning between residential areas and pottery workshops; the Beihan—Nanhan site in Yicheng has been confirmed through survey and exploration as a large regional central settlement. Beiyangping in Lingbao, western Henan, is the largest settlement in the Zhudingyuan settlement cluster, with a surviving area of approximately 720,000 square meters. Surveys of the Lingbao basin show that at this time a pyramid-shaped settlement hierarchy had formed, with large central settlements at the core and secondary and small settlements coexisting. This batch of central settlements shares highly common features: settlement boundaries were generally defined by multiple ring trenches, large high-specification public buildings arose, pottery handicraft production moved toward specialization, and status differences among people within settlements gradually became apparent. Judging from the materials of the Zhudingyuan settlement cluster in Lingbao, improved productivity, mature agriculture, population growth, social stratification, and the formation of a public management system are important markers of this region's entry into the early ancient-state stage.
During this period, Miaodigou-style pottery spread widely in all directions, and cultural elements represented by floral-pattern painted pottery diffused extensively, achieving deep interaction of cultural features across different geographical units and bringing the archaeological cultures of most parts of China into interactive integration. This spread did not rely on military conquest, but rather on the shared beliefs and aesthetic concepts carried by artifacts and decorative patterns, fostering broad cross-regional cultural identity. The cultural consensus thus nurtured was continuously inherited and accumulated by later generations, becoming the ancient source of the cultural psychology of the Huaxia community, giving rise to an early Chinese cultural sphere — that is, leading to the emergence of an "early China" in cultural terms.
By the late Yangshao period, the cultural and social development achievements of the Zhengzhou-Luoyang and eastern Gansu regions were particularly outstanding, with a number of large-scale capital-level core settlements emerging and entering civilized society. The Shuanghuaishu site in Gongyi is the largest and highest-ranking capital settlement of the late Yangshao period, with a surviving area of 1.17 million square meters, laid out in a "front court, rear residence" plan, and featuring rammed-earth enclosure walls with embryonic barbicans, groups of large courtyards, multiple altars, and over a thousand orderly arranged burials; artifacts such as ivory-carved silkworms and star-and-moon-pattern painted pottery have been unearthed, presenting a relatively complete picture of the social features of the ancient-state stage. A number of large and medium-sized settlements such as Qingtai and Wanggou in Xingyang and Xishan in Zhengzhou together constituted a multi-level settlement network in the central Henan region, indicating that the social governance system of the time was tending toward completeness.
The Nanzuo site in Gansu is the most significant discovery in late Yangshao archaeology in recent years. The core area of the site is enclosed by nine large rammed-earth platform foundations to form a central zone of approximately 300,000 square meters, with large public buildings arranged on a central axis and high-grade ritual remains. Mature rammed-earth construction techniques and a complex ritual system reflect that the society of the time already possessed a high capacity for social organization, that ritual differentiation had emerged, and that cross-regional cultural exchange already existed. The Yuancun large late Yangshao ring-trench settlement in Xia County, Shanxi, adjacent to the Yuncheng salt lake, has yielded cylindrical pottery jars related to salt-working activities, indicating that salt-lake resources were already being exploited in the late Yangshao period, and that the extraction of scarce resources was an important factor driving social complexification.
Multi-disciplinary research results have given us a more three-dimensional understanding of the Yangshao culture. Archaeobotany has confirmed that after the middle Yangshao period, foxtail millet dominated agricultural production, supplemented by broomcorn millet, rice, and soybean, and this diversified dryland farming system supported population growth and the rise of large settlements. Zooarchaeology shows that domestic pigs were the main source of meat at the time. Ancient DNA research analyzing human bones from sites such as Wanggou and Yangshao village has revealed that prehistoric populations in the middle reaches of the Yellow River possessed significant genetic continuity, and that Yangshao ancestors continuously spread to surrounding areas, exerting a profound influence on the genetic makeup of later populations, including the modern Han Chinese.
Looking back over the past five years, both archaeology and research on the Yangshao culture have made notable progress, presenting a relatively complete picture of the evolutionary trajectory of Yangshao society in the middle reaches of the Yellow River as it moved step by step toward civilization.
(The author is a researcher at the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)
Return to TopBy: 王梦妮 桂星星
The Xiangshan Revolution Memorial Hall houses Records of the Red Army's Long March with the Army, written by Chen Yun, published by the People's Publishing House and issued by the Shanghai Mass Book Company in June 1949, under the pen name "Lianchen." The book was originally titled Records of the Western March with the Army and was first serialized publicly in March 1936 in The Masses Monthly, a publication run by the Communist Party of China in Paris. Once published, the articles were widely welcomed by readers and went through multiple renamings and reprintings; it is the earliest precious document to introduce the Red Army's Long March to the world.
In October 1934, Chen Yun embarked on the Long March with the Fifth Red Army Corps. In June 1935, entrusted by the Party Central Committee, he secretly left the Long March contingent as a central representative and made his way to Shanghai, shouldering the major mission of restoring underground Party organizations in the Kuomintang-ruled areas and the connection between the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist International. After arriving in Shanghai, drawing on his own eight months of Long March experience, and in order to facilitate dissemination in the KMT-controlled areas, he wrote Records of the Western March with the Army under the alias "Lianchen," posing as a captured KMT military doctor, systematically recording the magnificent and stirring course of the Red Army's Long March.
The book fully records the great expedition of the Central Red Army from its breakout and westward march from the Central Soviet Area in October 1934 to June 1935, traversing six provinces over a distance of 12,000 li. The book vividly restores a series of key battles, including the Red Army's breakthrough of the four blockade lines of the KMT forces, the diversion of troops into Guizhou, and the forced crossing of the Wujiang River, and vividly displays the heroic spirit of the Red Army officers and soldiers in overcoming great difficulties and challenges (攻坚克难, gong jian ke nan - "attack strongholds, overcome difficulties") and forging ahead single-mindedly without hesitation (一往无前, yi wang wu qian - "one, go, no, front").
Strict discipline toward the masses and sincere commitment to serving the people were the essence of what "Lianchen" recorded, and were precisely the code by which the Red Army broke through layer upon layer of blockades and won victory. The Red Army officers and soldiers always placed the interests of the masses first; even under extremely difficult marching conditions, they strictly adhered to the "Three Main Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention" and upheld the iron discipline of "not taking a single needle or thread from the masses."
The Red Army soldiers showed great care for the common people during their march, winning broad support from the masses. When the Red Army troops passed through Jianhe in Guizhou in the depths of winter, a peasant woman with a child lay collapsed by the roadside, shivering. Upon inquiry, it was learned that the woman's entire year's harvest had been paid as land rent, leaving her to beg for a living. Seeing this, Mao Zedong immediately took off his woolen sweater, took a bedsheet from his luggage and gave it to the woman, and also arranged for people to deliver a dou of white rice. Wherever the Red Army went, it confiscated grain and property from local warlords and despotic gentry, distributing the money and grain to the laboring masses. The common people thus witnessed the stark difference between the Red Army and the KMT forces and came to recognize that the Red Army was truly the people's own army.
This book is not only a documentary work recording the course of the Long March, but also a vivid portrayal of the great Long March spirit. As a firsthand participant in the Long March, Chen Yun's account of it adhered to the principle of seeking truth from facts, with objective narration that truthfully reproduced this world-renowned heroic feat and engraved the Long March as an indelible spiritual monument. As the earliest precious document to publicize the Long March to the world, the stories and details in the book three-dimensionally shape a heroic collective portrait of the Red Army as firm in faith, strict in discipline, united between army and people, and fearless in the face of danger; between the lines it reflects the original aspiration and mission of Chinese Communists and carries the great Long March spirit that is ever-living and ever-fresh across the ages.
(Author's affiliation: Cultural Relics Acquisition and Research Department, Xiangshan Revolution Memorial Hall)
Return to TopBy: 祝佳祺
"The sky was full of starlight, and the torches had been lit as well. Looking up from the foot of the mountain, one could see the torches arranged in many zigzag patterns, stretching all the way up to the sky, merging with the starlight, so that one could not tell whether they were torches or stars. This was truly a wonder I had never seen in my life." Lu Dingyi wrote these words in "Lao Shan Jie" (Old Mountain Pass). Many people first learned of "Lao Shan Jie" from this essay. The revolutionary optimism between the lines has moved countless readers and also made people eager to visit Lao Shan Jie for themselves.
"Standing here, I cannot help but think: when the Red Army crossed these mountains back then, the conditions were far harsher than now, and they also had to bear the pressure of a matter of life and death (生死存亡, sheng si cun wang - "life, death, exist, perish"), carrying heavy loads and marching day and night. How difficult that must have been!" At the foot of Mao'er Mountain in Xing'an County, Guilin, Guangxi, Su Bo, a 38-year-old tourist from Hunan, bowed deeply with his wife and child before the grave of a young Red Army soldier. The young soldier was only in his teens when he gave his life. Across from the grave stands the former site of the provisional command headquarters of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army — the Hengzhou Guild Hall.
A bamboo spike sharpened at both ends, a pair of worn-out straw sandals — the artifacts in the hall quietly tell a heartbreaking story. Along the Long March route, traps laid by the enemy were everywhere. Bamboo spikes coated with poisonous tung oil were hidden in the dry grass, with only a tiny tip exposed. "During a forced march, it was very easy to step on one. This young Red Army soldier had his foot pierced by a bamboo spike and could no longer continue the march," said Zhang Qiuju, a docent at the Xing'an County Cultural Communication Center.
The young Red Army soldier was taken in by local people, but before long, the landlord who hated the Red Army for "overthrowing the local tyrants and dividing up the land" searched him out and buried him alive. "He was buried standing. When the remains of Red Army martyrs were re-interred after the founding of New China and the remains saw the light of day again, the young soldier was still in a standing posture." Zhang Qiuju's voice choked with emotion.
The bright red five-pointed star atop the grave stood out brilliantly against the verdant mountains. What kind of faith, exactly, sustained a youth who walked all the way from Jiangxi to Guangxi? And what kind of road was this?
In early December 1934, the Central Red Army entered the Yuecheng Mountains after the Battle of the Xiang River, its numbers reduced sharply from more than 86,000 at departure to just over 30,000. With Kuomintang forces encircling and blocking from all sides, the Red Army, after deciphering intelligence, decisively resolved to cross Lao Shan Jie — a strategic choice made under extreme adversity.
"Mountains! / Whip your swift horses, / Without dismounting. / Startled, I turn my head, / Three feet three above the sky." Mao'er Mountain, the main peak of the Yuecheng Mountains, stands at 2,141.5 meters above sea level — the highest peak in South China and the first high mountain encountered since the start of the Long March. Mao Zedong's majestic "Sixteen-Character Lyric" was composed during the Long March.
Our group drove from the foot of the mountain to the Red Army Long March trail point (see photo, taken by Zhu Jiaqi), which took one hour; the winding mountain road left one feeling extremely dizzy or lightheaded (人头晕目眩, ren tou yun mu xuan - "person, head, dizzy, eye, dizzy"). The altitude exceeded 1,000 meters. Walking up the stone steps built later, within just one minute our steps grew heavy. Along the path lay a rusted giant bullet-shaped memorial installation, reminding people of that tragic history. Back then, the Red Army had walked on muddy roads. When we reached the summit, although it was high noon, white fog suddenly rose, and looking down at the foot of the mountain, no scenery could be seen at all. Local people said that on Mao'er Mountain, such fog rises several times a day, and at its thickest, one could not even see the face of the person opposite.
The Red Army crossed the mountain in several routes. One route had to pass the famous Leigong Rock, where on a cliff of a hundred steep steps, 108 stone steps were nearly vertical, with a hundred-meter-deep abyss beside them — when climbing up, the head of the climber behind could almost touch the heels of the person in front.
Finding new life after facing a desperate situation (置之死地而后生, zhi zhi si di er hou sheng - "place, at, death, place, then, live"). "Mountains! / Piercing the blue of heaven, your blunted blades are not damaged. / When the sky threatens to fall, / On them it can lean." The revolutionaries on the Long March were just like these towering, steadfast mountains.
It was precisely because of firm faith that the Long March was never a mere military march or relocation. "Even in extremely cold weather (天寒地冻, tian han di dong - "sky, cold, earth, freeze"), the first thing the Red Army did upon arriving at a station was not to boil water to wash their feet, but to write slogans to spread revolutionary truth. It was precisely this kind of propaganda that made the common people truly understand the original aspiration of the Chinese Communist Party," said Yin Tanghuai, curator of the Memorial Hall of the Red Army's Breakthrough of the Xiang River Blockade during the Long March.
A half-hour drive from Mao'er Mountain brought us to Huajiang Yao Township. In the two-story blue-brick-and-black-tile wooden building of Qianjia Temple, more than 20 slogans written by the Red Army back then remain on the exterior walls to this day. "Support the Chinese Communist Party," "Join the Red Army and get land to divide" — these direct and powerful slogans still show clear ink traces despite wind and rain. The place is also affectionately called the "Red Army Slogan Building" by local people.
Every generation has its own Long March. Over the years, Huajiang Yao Township has explored a three-color integrated development path of "historical red + ecological green + Yao township original colors," with the entire area incorporated into the overall plan for the Red Army historical experience ancient road section of the Long March Culture Park. By restoring the ancient Red Army road and linking the "Qianxiang—Tongren—Gao Village" premium red tourism route, the red resources of Lao Shan Jie and the Red Army Slogan Building are strung together with the ecological landscapes of the source of the Li River and the folk culture of the Yao people, planning a new chapter in rural revitalization.
The starlight over Lao Shan Jie shines even brighter now.
Return to TopBy: 廖光明
Entering the ancient town of Qinglinkou in Jiangyou, Sichuan, a fine rain falls like silk threads, and the Mage River, a tributary of the Tong River, flows slowly. Jiange and Zitong meet here, and a weathered covered bridge lies quietly across the river — it is the Red Army Bridge (see photo, provided by Liao Guangming). It is both a well-preserved Qing Dynasty stone-arch covered bridge in northern Sichuan and a red landmark engraved with the memory of the Long March.
This covered bridge was originally named Heyi Bridge, first built in the 57th year of the Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty (1792), funded collectively by local gentry and commoners, taking its name from the meaning of "all join together for mutual benefit." In 1935, the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army forcibly crossed the Jialing River and set foot in Qinglinkou. Red Army officers and soldiers established a Soviet regime here, attacked the local tyrants, distributed the land, and sowed the seeds of revolution across these mountains and fields. On the stone walls and stone pillars beside the bridge, scorching slogans were chiseled: "The Red Army is the savior of the poor," "Join the Red Army and get good land," "Freedom of marriage."
As the main force moved northward, a seriously wounded female Red Army battalion commander surnamed Liu, unable to march on the long expedition with the troops, hid in a commoner's home to recuperate. The Kuomintang returning corps launched a frenzied counterattack, searching everywhere for Red Army soldiers. To protect the villagers who had sheltered her, the female Red Army commander stepped forward to take responsibility or action (挺身而出, ting shen er chu - "rise up, emerge"). The enemy bound her to a wooden pillar of the covered bridge and subjected her to torture and threats; she possessed unyielding integrity and strength of character (铁骨铮铮, tie gu zheng zheng - "iron, bones, clanging, clanging"), revealing not a single secret, and ultimately died a martyr's death at the bridgehead. The hero's name has yet to be discovered, but her moral integrity is remembered in the hearts of the ancient town's people. The villagers still remember to this day that the soil at the bridgehead was soaked with the martyr's scorching hot blood.
In 1956, to commemorate the unknown martyrs, Heyi Bridge was officially renamed Red Army Bridge. A plaque hangs high beneath the eaves, turning a tragic past into an eternal memorial. In 2013, the Red Army Bridge, the Red Army stone-carved slogans, and other sites were incorporated into the Qinglinkou ancient building complex and listed as a nationally protected key cultural relic, becoming an important patriotic education base.
Today, visitors stroll across the bridge; the ancient bridge and flowing water remain unchanged, and the wooden pillars of the covered house have experienced much hardship or the passage of time (饱经风霜, bao jing feng shuang - "full, undergo, wind, frost"). One covered bridge, two spans of time: on one side, the antique charm of a century-old vernacular building; on the other, the glory of faith in an era of war. It stands quietly, reminding those who come after not to forget the road they have traveled, so that the red spirit may be passed down from generation to generation among the green mountains and clear waters.
Return to Top