• China’s Fujian aircraft carrier may have conducted first catapult take-off drill
• Chinese woman, 26, missing in Australia after being swept away by floodwaters
• China’s Guangdong province pledges ‘decisive’ mesasures as chikungunya fever cases spread
• Passion, pride and live pigs: inside China’s booming local basketball league
• How China’s new ‘Darwin Monkey’ could shake up future of AI in world first
• Caring China shop owner keeps store lights on for 13 years to aid women coming home late
• Earthquakes can power hidden life in the darkest depths of Earth, China-led study finds
• Adult pacifiers trending in China for stress relief and sleep; doctors warn of health risks
• Russian media search for China boy who met Putin 25 years ago; now engineer recalls kiss
• Will India’s Modi attend China’s World War II victory parade? What would it mean at home?
• Chinese scientists say they can create a ‘storm eye’ for PLA forces in electronic warfare
• Why Nanking massacre remains such a powerful Chinese cultural symbol
• China boy writes to marine park about missing fish, receives personal reply, invitation
• ‘Shrimp among whales’: South Korea faces a US vs China dilemma
• Meta changes course on open-source AI as China pushes ahead with advanced models
• From Legoland to Disney: how China is using theme parks to fuel consumer spending

China’s Fujian aircraft carrier may have conducted first catapult take-off drill

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3320599/chinas-fujian-aircraft-carrier-may-have-conducted-first-catapult-take-drill?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s third and most advanced aircraft carrier may have successfully conducted a fighter jet catapult take-off drill, according to the latest footage aired by state broadcaster CCTV.

The feat marks a key milestone for the Fujian – China’s first aircraft carrier equipped with an electromagnetic catapult – before its expected entry into service this year.

The 6½ minute segment showing the apparently successful take-off was aired as part of Forging Ahead, a five-episode series launched on August 1 to mark the 98th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

State media earlier reported that the Fujian could enter active service before the end of this year. The USS Gerald R. Ford is currently the only active carrier equipped with an advanced catapult launch system.

The segment featuring the Fujian take-off drills was published on the CCTV website on Sunday.

It showed a control room operator announcing: “Parameters checked, position two cleared for take-off.”

Then came the final command: “All set, conditions normal … take-off!” – followed by a roar from the launch that was met with cheers from crew members and researchers on board the vessel.

There was no footage of the actual catapult take-off, but the cheers and congratulations shared around suggested that the drill had been successful.

One researcher exclaimed emotionally: “Not easy! Not easy! … 17 years! [That’s enough time] for a child to grow up!”

His remark indicated that China’s development of electromagnetic catapults dated back to around 2008.

The caption to the clip later said: “Every successful simulation was preparation for this actual take-off.”

Although a continuous shot of the complete catapult launch was not shown, multiple J-15T shipborne fighter jets specifically designed for electromagnetic launch systems appeared throughout – including one fully powered at the take-off point of the flight deck.

The segment ended with a shadow cast on the Fujian’s deck by an airborne J-15T.

A senior commander onboard suggested that the Fujian was exploring take-offs with more carrier-based models, including those successfully deployed on China’s two other aircraft carriers.

“The Fujian is now entering its final preparatory stage [after completing its eighth sea trial in May],” said Senior Captain Tian Wei, head of naval aviation aboard the Fujian.

“Our current challenge is to add to its [capacity for] seamless transition from ski-jump to catapult take-off, optimising and shortening this time to rapidly achieve combat capability upon commissioning.”

China’s Liaoning and Shandong aircraft carriers both use a ski-jump system for launching their fixed-wing aircraft, specifically the J-15 fighter jets.

The Fujian, which is China’s first domestically designed and built carrier, began sea trials in May last year. Tyre marks spotted on the flight deck in December suggested it was already close to conducting take-off tests, but experts suggested the marks could have been left after “touch-and-go” tests – an initial phase before the actual trials for carrier-based fighters.

Sunday’s programme also showed an unidentified naval training facility equipped with a land-based electromagnetic launch simulator, with a rarely seen twin-seat J-15S aircraft shown in launch position.

Deploying the J-15S on the Fujian would offer the Chinese navy a dual-seat, catapult-capable heavy fighter option, which could also embark on missions of electronic warfare. It would also serve as a command centre in air to coordinate drone missions around it in a strategy called “manned-unmanned” teaming.

Besides the J-15S, the PLA Navy’s other twin-seat carrier-based jet is the J-15D electronic warfare fighter. The force also operates the KJ-600 airborne early warning aircraft and is developing the J-35 stealth fighter for carrier operations.

Chinese woman, 26, missing in Australia after being swept away by floodwaters

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3320603/chinese-woman-26-missing-after-being-swept-away-raging-floods-australia?utm_source=rss_feed

A Chinese woman remains missing after being swept away by floodwaters in southeastern Australia.

China’s Consulate General in Sydney had confirmed the news, while urging local authorities to “make every effort” to save her, Chinese state media reported on Sunday.

The 26-year-old was one of two Chinese women caught up in floods in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales (NSW) state on Saturday evening. The other woman, 27, was rescued, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported, citing the consulate.

The mission said that it had contacted local police multiple times, urging them to make every possible effort and deploy maximum resources in the search for the missing person, the report said.

The NSW Police Force said in a statement on Sunday that emergency services had been called back to the area on Saturday evening after receiving reports that a car was trapped in floodwaters.

Police said the two women had tried to drive through floodwaters but became stranded. As they tried to exit the small car, the driver was rescued uninjured but her passenger was swept away.

A multi-agency search for the woman continued on Sunday but was suspended around 4.30pm local time due to poor weather and limited visibility, according to police. The operation is expected to resume on Monday morning.

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, NSW emergency services had dealt with over 1,800 incidents after severe weather – including snow, strong winds and heavy rain – hit parts of the state, causing widespread damage to buildings and blocking roads.

The missing Chinese woman was in Australia on a work visa, it said.

China’s Guangdong province pledges ‘decisive’ mesasures as chikungunya fever cases spread

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3320600/chinas-guangdong-province-pledges-decisive-mesasures-chikungunya-fever-cases-spread?utm_source=rss_feed

The southern Chinese province of Guangdong reported thousands of new cases of chikungunya fever last week as the local authorities promised “decisive and forceful measures” to stop the spread of the disease.

According to state broadcaster CCTV, Guangdong reported 2,892 new cases in the week leading up to Saturday, with no severe or fatal infections.

Most of those – 2,770 – were in Foshan, with Guangzhou, the provicincial capital, recording 65 cases.

At a meeting of the provincial government on Saturday, governor Wang Weizhong, called for “more resolute” measures to “win the tough … battle against the outbreak in the shortest possible time,” according to state-run news portal southcn.com.

On the same day, Shen Hongbing, head of the national Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, visited Foshan urging swift efforts to “stamp out the outbreak in the shortest time and safeguard public health and social stability”.

Chikungunya fever is a viral disease transmitted by the Aedes mosquito that suddenly causes high fever, severe joint pain, rash and fatigue. It cannot be contracted through direct contact with another person.

While rarely fatal, the illness can lead to debilitating symptoms lasting weeks.

Guangdong has been the hardest-hit province in China so far, with Foshan – a manufacturing hub of 10 million residents – accounting for more than half the cases reported so far.

During his Saturday visit to Foshan, Shen also stressed the need to standardise treatment.

On Friday, Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection said there had been thousands of cases in Fouhan but all had been mild, with no severe or fatal infections reported.

On Saturday the city confirmed its first chikungunya case since 2019.

At the provincial meeting in Guangdong, Foshan was urged to focus efforts on key areas and step up targeted control measures, whilst creating favourable conditions for “an early turning point in the outbreak.”

---

Passion, pride and live pigs: inside China’s booming local basketball league

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3320442/passion-pride-and-live-pigs-inside-chinas-booming-local-basketball-league?utm_source=rss_feed

In China’s hottest new basketball league, the players are all amateurs, the mascots are a pair of live chickens riding a remote control Jeep, and the winning teams are presented with plastic bags full of live fish.

Welcome to the “ZheBA” – an intercity competition in China’s eastern Zhejiang province that has become a national sensation by tapping into the region’s fierce local pride and diverse culture.

The contest, officially named the Zhejiang Provincial City Basketball League, features dozens of local teams from across the region of more than 66 million people, which compete in a series of divisions leading to a final playoff to crown the eventual champion.

It is a world away from the polished world of the CBA, China’s answer to the NBA. The standard of play is uneven. Matches often take place in small local gymnasiums. On one occasion, a game was interrupted by a defecating goat.

But for its legions of fans, that is all part of its charm. “The ZheBA might not understand basketball, but it understands Zhejiang”, one user wrote on the social platform RedNote, in a post that received thousands of likes.

The ZheBA is part of a broader movement in China towards embracing grass roots amateur sports, after years of growing frustration with the dysfunctional state of the nation’s professional leagues.

Zhejiang launched its basketball league just months after a neighbouring province, Jiangsu, scored a major hit with a local amateur football league known as the “SuChao”.

The SuChao quickly became a viral sensation after launching earlier this year, which eventually led to teams of local accountants and delivery drivers playing matches in front of packed stadiums filled with tens of thousands of fans.

Now, Zhejiang is trying to replicate that success, with the local government seeing the ZheBA as a vehicle to both celebrate the region’s local customs and stimulate the economy.

Despite being highly local, the ZheBA is also explicitly commercial. The games partly serve as platforms to promote the region’s local produce: teams exchange gifts from their cities before tip-off; the winners are presented with more signature local items, such as live fish or pigs, after the final buzzer.

“Our team may not guarantee a win, but Pinghu watermelons guarantee sweetness”, read one banner at a recent event.

Local authorities often organise live streaming sales events to promote the products spotlighted during the games, and hold night markets, music concerts, and other events near the venues to encourage spectators to splash more cash.

But none of this has put off the fans. There appears to be a genuine passion for the league in Zhejiang, with several locals who spoke with the Post saying they enjoyed the fact that the players were often friends, colleagues or even family members.

Chinese media have also given plenty of coverage to amateur players like Wu Yiquan, who juggles playing in the ZheBA with his day job as an artificial intelligence researcher at Zhejiang University.

“The matches have an especially vibrant and passionate atmosphere,” said Xuan Sunyang, a police officer from the city of Huzhou who often watches live broadcasts of ZheBA games after work. “It’s exciting to see our hometown compete for the city’s honour.”

The opening phase of the ZheBA, which began in July, saw 250 games take place in front of a total of nearly 780,000 spectators, China National Radio reported on Wednesday. About 390 markets were held alongside the games, which generated combined sales of 174 million yuan (US$24.2 million), it added.

Local authorities have pointed to the league as an example of a new way to drive consumption – a policy priority in China as the government battles weak domestic demand and tries to offset the impact of a trade war with the United States.

Yu Jie, deputy director of Zhejiang’s Provincial United Front Work Department, stressed during a symposium in late July that local authorities needed to harness the event economy and make extra efforts to set up unique markets near competition sites on game days.

“With sports as the stage and consumption as the performance, ZheBA seamlessly integrates basketball events with urban consumption,” China National Radio commented on July 20.

For the fans, however, the focus is on the games themselves. Basketball is serious business in this part of China: in May, the Zhejiang Lions sparked celebrations by becoming the first team from the province to win the CBA Championship, beating the Beijing Ducks 4-2 in the finals.

With the ZheBA division phase now complete, 22 teams have advanced to the City Championships, a knockout competition that begins on August 15. At stake will be glory, bragging rights – and an array of delicious local livestock.

How China’s new ‘Darwin Monkey’ could shake up future of AI in world first

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3320588/how-chinas-new-darwin-monkey-could-shake-future-ai-world-first?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese engineers have unveiled the world’s first brain-like computer made up of more than 2 billion artificial neurons.

The neuron count of the “Darwin Monkey” approaches that of a macaque and could be used to advance human brain-inspired artificial intelligence (AI), according to its developers at Zhejiang University.

The Darwin Monkey is the latest generation of brain-inspired computers produced by Zhejiang University researchers.

“This is the world’s first brain-like computer based on a dedicated neuromorphic chip with more than 2 billion neurons,” the university said on its social media account on Saturday.

The computing system, made up of 960 Darwin 3 brain-inspired computing chips creating over 100 billion synapses, is “a step closer to achieving more advanced brain-like intelligence”, it said in the post.

The Darwin Monkey has been successfully deployed to complete tasks like content generation, logical reasoning and mathematics, using the groundbreaking Chinese AI company DeepSeek’s brain-like large model.

The neuron and synaptic resources of the brain-inspired computer could also be used to simulate the brains of various animals, such as macaques, mice and zebrafish, which the university noted could advance brain science research.

Neuromorphic computing, also known as brain-inspired computing, draws inspiration from the brain’s neural networks and processing capabilities through the use of artificial neurons and synapses.

Brain-inspired computing can allow for more efficient information processing by allowing systems to mimic cognitive functions like decision-making, learning and memory.

This could enable faster and more adaptable problem-solving as well as more advanced AI systems.

Spiking neural networks go one step further than traditional artificial neural networks, by using discrete spikes or signals rather than continuous values to represent and transmit data, thereby more closely modelling the function of biological neurons.

In April last year, Intel announced that it had built the first 1.15 billion-neuron neuromorphic computing system, Hala Point, saying it would build a path towards “more efficient and scalable AI”.

The system was initially deployed at the US Department of Energy-funded Sandia National Laboratories.

The Darwin 3 chip, which the Darwin Monkey system relies on, was developed in 2023 by Zhejiang University in collaboration with the research institute Zhejiang Lab. The lab is jointly funded by the university, the Zhejiang provincial government and Alibaba Group. The South China Morning Post is owned by Alibaba.

Each Darwin 3 chip supports more than 2.35 million spiking or pulsed neurons and hundreds of millions of synapses, and comes with “specialised brain-inspired computing instruction sets and neuromorphic online learning mechanisms”, the university said.

Under typical operating conditions, the system only consumes around 2,000 watts of power.

“[Darwin Monkey’s] large-scale, high parallelism and low-power features will provide a new computing paradigm for existing computing scenarios,” Pan Gang, director of the State Key Laboratory of Brain-Computer Intelligence at Zhejiang University, told ministry newspaper Science and Technology Daily on Saturday.

This achievement follows the “Darwin Mouse”, a brain-inspired computer released by the same team in 2020, which featured 120 million artificial neurons.

The Darwin Monkey is the outcome of breakthroughs in a number of technologies, including improving the interconnection and integration of the neural system and developing a new generation of brain-inspired operating systems, according to the university.

---

Caring China shop owner keeps store lights on for 13 years to aid women coming home late

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/article/3319971/caring-china-shop-owner-keeps-store-lights-13-years-aid-women-coming-home-late?utm_source=rss_feed

A grocery shop owner has kept her lights on all night, continually for 13 years, to help people make their way home when it is dark.

Sun Meihua, 60, opened the shop in the old town of Changsha in central China’s Hunan province in 2012.

During the first month of her new business, some young women told her that the light in front of her shop made them feel secure when they finished work late.

Since then, Sun has never turned off the light at night.

She also adjusted the opening hours to close at 2am for those in need, and sometimes walked timid girls home.

Some people have nicknamed Sun “street light auntie”.

The thoughtful shop owner also moved the landline phone from her home into the business premises.

She lets the elderly and young children make free calls to their families.

Sun said the neighbourhood has many elderly people who are unfamiliar with mobile phones and children who are not allowed to take phones to school.

The shop owner has to change the telephone set every year as it gets worn out very fast, but she has never thought of stopping the service.

“I just want to help those in need,” said Sun.

Sometimes, when the calls did not get through, Sun also sent messages to the person for her neighbours.

Sun even keeps spare keys for locals for free.

An octogenarian neighbour said she would go to Sun every time she needed help: “I trust Meihua,” she said.

Another neighbour said they did not have spare keys and simply give the only one they have to Sun when they go out.

Sun and her husband have lived in the neighbourhood for more than two decades. They used to have no full-time work and lived on allowances.

The shop owner said she had received a lot of help from her community and wanted to repay it.

“It is easy to be a Good Samaritan for once or twice, but it is not easy to do that for life,” one online observer said.

“It is a grocery shop that gives love for free,” said another.

---

Earthquakes can power hidden life in the darkest depths of Earth, China-led study finds

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3320270/earthquakes-can-power-hidden-life-darkest-depths-earth-china-led-study-finds?utm_source=rss_feed

Beneath our feet, in sunless depths once thought barren, a vast and vibrant ecosystem thrives.

A groundbreaking study by Chinese and Canadian scientists has revealed the surprising “energy engine” powering this hidden biosphere: the very breaking and grinding of Earth’s crust during earthquakes and tectonic shifts.

Forget 19th century French novelist Jules Verne’s fantastical depictions of mastodons and giant dragonflies dwelling in mushroom forests nine to 12 metres (30 to 40 feet) tall in an illuminated subterranean world. Traditional science held that kilometres below the surface, cut off from sunlight and surface organics, life could not exist.

Yet, recent discoveries have unveiled a massive, active deep biosphere, harbouring an estimated 95 per cent of Earth’s prokaryotes and constituting roughly one-fifth of Earth’s total biomass.

But how do these microbes survive in the deepest, most isolated zones?

A study led by Zhu Jianxi and He Hongping, professors at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry (GIG) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Kurt Konhauser, professor at the University of Alberta, provides an answer.

Their findings were published in Science Advances on July 19.

They discovered that seismic activity and crustal fracturing act like a natural “generator”, constantly producing energy for deep life.

“In the silent darkness, chemical reactions between rock and water generate energy. This process functions like a battery, creating positive and negative poles that drive electron flow – the currency of life’s metabolism,” Zhu said in a GIG news release on July 19.

The team simulated Earth’s most common silicate mineral, quartz, in the lab to recreate two fundamental types of rock fracture: extension, where rocks suddenly crack open, exposing fresh surfaces instantly to water; and shear fracture, where faults grind continuously, crushing rocks in water.

Both fracture types split water molecules, producing hydrogen gas and reactive oxygen species. Extensions were particularly efficient at accumulating hydrogen peroxide.

The hydrogen peroxide paired with the generated hydrogen to form a natural “redox couple” – a pair of chemicals that drive reduction-oxidation reactions. This reaction produced electrical energy of up to 0.82 volts, easily sufficient to power most life-sustaining reactions.

Iron, one of Earth’s most abundant elements, acts as a crucial energy shuttle. Tiny amounts of hydrogen peroxide oxidise dissolved ferrous iron into ferric iron. Simultaneously, abundant reactive hydrogen atoms, produced during rock fracturing, reduce ferric iron minerals back to ferrous iron.

This continuous electron flow creates an “underground power grid”, energising microbial life and driving the biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen and sulphur.

As highlighted in the GIG report, the team discovered in 2023 that minerals under stress can produce oxygen at their surfaces, potentially exceeding production rates from atmospheric photochemistry.

“This long-overlooked radical chemistry could simultaneously explain the origins of Earth’s initial oxygen and hydrogen,” Zhu explained. “It might be the intrinsic mechanism driving the early co-evolution of minerals and life.”

“Furthermore, the deep subsurface provides a sanctuary, shielded from catastrophic events like intense ultraviolet radiation and asteroid impacts, offering a previously unrecognised crucial environment for the origin and evolution of life,” he added.

The study quantifies the power: a single moderate earthquake can generate hydrogen fluxes 100,000 times greater than production via radiolysis, which involves splitting water molecules through ionising radiation, or serpentinisation – a chemical reaction between water and ultramafic rocks at high temperatures and pressures.

Such intense energy flow can readily sustain populations of deep chemosynthetic microbes and may even lead to localised accumulations of dihydrogen gas.

According to He, “This process of converting mechanical energy into chemical energy isn’t unique to Earth.

“It applies to other planetary bodies like Mars ... and Enceladus (a moon of the planet Saturn). Detecting signals related to redox couples – such as hydrogen, methane, oxygen, or redox fluctuations of iron – within Martian fault zones could indicate active subsurface life.”

So the next time you feel an earthquake’s tremor, remember: deep beneath the surface, in unfathomable darkness, shattering rocks might just be igniting sparks of life. The hidden worlds within Earth – and perhaps even Mars – could be far more alive than we ever imagined.

---

Adult pacifiers trending in China for stress relief and sleep; doctors warn of health risks

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3320266/adult-pacifiers-trending-china-stress-relief-and-sleep-doctors-warn-health-risks?utm_source=rss_feed

Adult pacifiers which claim to relieve anxiety and improve sleep have become a trending product in China, sparking concerns from doctors and internet users.

Some online shops claim they sell more than 2,000 such items a month.

They are described as being bigger than the baby version and sell for between 10 and 500 yuan (US$1.4 and US$70), the news outlet The Cover reported.

Many shops say that adult pacifiers offer stress relief and help with sleep.

Some say the products can also help people quit smoking and assist with proper breathing.

The nipple part is transparent and the shield comes in a variety of colours, the Post found.

“It is high quality, soft, and I feel comfortable sucking it. It does not impede my breathing,” one buyer said on a leading shopping platform.

“It is amazing in helping me quit smoking. It gives me psychological comfort and makes me not so fidgety during my smoke cessation periods,” said another person.

A third buyer said: “When I am under pressure at work, I suck on the dummy. I feel I am indulged in a sense of safety from childhood.”

But doctors have warned of potential health hazards.

“The potential damage to customers’ mouths by the pacifiers is intentionally played down by their sellers,” Tang Caomin, a dentist in Chengdu, Sichuan province in southwestern China, was quoted as saying.

Using pacifiers over a long period may limit a person’s ability to open their mouth and cause pain when chewing, he said.

“By sucking the dummy for more than three hours a day, the position of your teeth might change after a year,” said Tang.

The doctor also warned that parts of the dummy could be inhaled while a person is asleep.

Zhang Mo, a psychologist in Chengdu, said the emotional needs of a person using a dummy may not be being met.

“The real solution is not to treat themselves as a child, but to face the challenge directly and to solve it,” she told the media.

This product has provoked a lively debate on mainland social media after being viewed 60 million times on one platform alone.

“This world has become so mad that adults are using pacifiers,” said one online observer.

“Is this not a kind of stupid tax?” joked another.

Russian media search for China boy who met Putin 25 years ago; now engineer recalls kiss

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3319949/russian-media-search-china-boy-who-met-putin-25-years-ago-now-engineer-recalls-forehead-peck?utm_source=rss_feed

A Russian media search for a Chinese boy who had his photo taken with President Vladimir Putin 25 years ago has gone viral on mainland social media.

Now an engineer, the man has recalled the moment the president kissed his forehead and says the encounter had a lasting impact on his life.

On July 17, Russia Today TV, which is also known as RT, posted a “missing person search” on a major social media platform.

The post recounted how, on July 17, 2000, Putin, then 47, made his first official visit to Beijing as President.

After visiting the Forbidden City, Putin suggested rowing in a park. The sudden change of plan left security unable to clear the area in time, drawing a crowd of tourists.

During the visit, Putin interacted with a 12-year-old Chinese boy and his father, creating a heartwarming moment captured by photographers.

The boy, Peng Pai, is reportedly from Yueyang City in Hunan province, central China.

The RT post concluded: “Finding him on the same day, 25 years later, would be truly meaningful.”

The post made headlines, and major media outlets and netizens joined in the search for the boy.

On July 25, Hunan province’s official media outlet, Red Net, reached out to Peng Pai.

Peng told them how, after Putin got off the boat and waved at the crowd, he excitedly stood on a stone railing by the lake to respond.

The president then lifted him from the railing, kissed his forehead, and said something in Russian that he could not understand at that time.

“President Putin was like a kind uncle to me, and I feel so lucky to have been lifted out of that crowd by him,” Peng said.

Meeting Putin was a life-changing moment for Peng. Inspired by the encounter, he developed an interest in Russia and began learning Russian.

In 2007, he received the Russian Presidential Scholarship and studied bridge and tunnel engineering at a top university in Moscow.

After earning his master’s degree in 2013, Peng returned to China and became the head of the engineering department at a major construction company in Hunan.

He and his team developed a new bridge railing that won a national patent and designed a pedestrian landscape bridge that earned a national award.

Peng told the mainland media that government officials had mentioned arranging a possible meeting between him and President Putin if he visits China for a military parade in Beijing in September.

Peng said: “I am really looking forward to the chance to meet him again, express my respect, and share my story of growth.

“I have changed a lot over the years, but President Putin still looks as handsome as ever.”

The story has fascinated mainland social media.

One online observer said: “President Putin’s hug and kiss not only changed Peng’s life but also showed the warmth of diplomacy.”

“I am deeply moved by this decades-long connection. The bond between China and Russia is growing stronger,” said another.

Will India’s Modi attend China’s World War II victory parade? What would it mean at home?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3320536/will-indias-modi-attend-chinas-world-war-ii-victory-parade-what-would-it-mean-home?utm_source=rss_feed

A historian has called on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend China’s Victory Day parade in September. However, analysts believe this is highly unlikely.

Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, a network of research institutes in the Global South, said he strongly suggested that Modi attend the parade in Beijing on September 3 and commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with China and Russia.

“[China, India, and Russia] can hold a tripartite meeting and, by leveraging the power of Russia as an ally, effectively resolve the differences between China and India,” Prashad said during a live show hosted by Chinese media outlet Guancha.cn on July 26.

He also described the China-India border dispute as a “political issue” that was “solvable”.

However, observers said Modi was not likely to take part, despite the recent thaw in China-India relations.

Ivan Lidarev, a visiting research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, said Modi’s presence at the parade would spark controversy back home.

If Modi attends, he is likely to face accusations of “cosying up to India’s rivals”, according to Lidarev, who highlighted the Indian opposition’s persistent criticism of the prime minister’s China policy after a border deal in October.

Earlier in July, India’s main opposition party called on Modi to agree to a full-fledged national dialogue in parliament to address mounting security and economic challenges posed by China, including those related to Beijing’s rare earth exports and special fertiliser restrictions.

The Indian National Congress party has also criticised the border deal as a compromise of India’s national interests and an undue concession to Beijing.

Modi’s appearance at the parade would be deemed “a grand, symbolic gesture that would drastically reset China-India relations”, Lidarev said. “The fact that relations have not improved to such a degree to permit a reset is a major reason why Prime Minister Modi is unlikely to be present.”

Further, Lidarev said that since the parade would commemorate China’s WWII victory over Japan, an Indian prime minister’s presence would be interpreted as “a major dig” at Japan, a key economic and strategic partner for India as well as fellow Quad members Australia and the United States.

“Attending such a parade often signifies the tacit or explicit acceptance of the host country’s historical narrative and the recognition that this country is an important partner or ally,” Lidarev said.

The potential attendance of major Pakistani leaders might also “complicate things”, he added.

It is not known if or when Modi plans to travel to China, but Li Hongmei, a research fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies’ Centre for South Asian Studies, said attending the parade would not be a priority for Modi and was not a key indicator for assessing China-India relations.

What really mattered, she said, was whether Modi would attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin at the end of August.

The Kremlin has confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin will join the summit as well as attend the parade in Beijing.

“If Modi personally attends the coming SCO summit, it will mark his sixth visit to China as prime minister,” Li said, noting that this would make him the most frequent visitor to China among all Indian prime ministers since independence in 1947. “This alone would send a positive political signal about improving bilateral relations.”

In an interview with Indian media in April, Chinese ambassador to New Delhi Xu Feihong said Modi was “warmly welcome to China” for the SCO summit this autumn.

But like Lidarev, Li too noted the need to heed domestic concerns.

“While Modi’s personal participation would certainly demonstrate stronger commitment to normalising bilateral ties and showcasing India’s dedication to world peace, his absence would hardly be surprising given the need to navigate India’s domestic political landscape and avoid criticism from opposition parties and China hawks,” she said.

Relations between the world’s two most populous countries have slowly improved in recent months. Last month, India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar made his first trip to China in five years, where he announced that the two sides would restore direct flights for “facilitating people-to-people exchanges”, according to the Indian foreign ministry.

Last week, India resumed processing tourist visas for Chinese nationals for the first time since 2020, when a deadly border clash in a disputed Himalayan region and the Covid-19 pandemic led to the suspension of such services.

In another sign of thawing relations, China has allowed Indian pilgrims to return to the Tibet autonomous region, with the first group crossing the Himalayas into Tibet last month to visit sites that are sacred to many Hindus, Buddhists and other religions.

Still, tensions have simmered. Indian officials accused China of offering support to Pakistan after Islamabad claimed Chinese-made J-10C fighter jets were used against India’s air force in their four-day clash in early May.

Speaking at a defence industry event in New Delhi last month, Lieutenant General Rahul Singh, India’s deputy chief of army staff, said China had provided “all possible support” and that Pakistan was a “live laboratory” for testing China-made weapons.

China has rejected the claims, saying its cooperation with Pakistan did not target a third country.

Meanwhile, controversy over the 14th Dalai Lama’s succession has further complicated the China-India detente.

In July, senior Indian minister Kiren Rijiju stated that only the Dalai Lama – who lives in exile in India – and his established institution had the authority to decide his successor as the Tibetan spiritual leader.

The remarks, together with Modi’s birthday greetings to the Dalai Lama on social media days later, drew criticism from China twice within a week. Beijing also lodged a formal protest, asserting that the Dalai Lama’s succession must adhere to tradition and Chinese law while urging India to stop interfering in what it said were China’s domestic affairs.

Chinese scientists say they can create a ‘storm eye’ for PLA forces in electronic warfare

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3320354/chinese-scientists-say-they-can-create-storm-eye-pla-forces-electronic-warfare?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese scientists have developed an advanced electronic warfare technique that can create a zone of electromagnetic calm, similar to the eye of a storm at the heart of an intense signal jamming environment.

This groundbreaking innovation could allow Chinese military forces to disable enemy communications and navigation systems while protecting their own troops and allied networks from collateral disruption.

The technology, still at an early stage with feasibility verified in computer simulations, relies on coordinated unstaffed aerial platforms that emit precisely-tuned radio frequency (RF) interference.

By adjusting the waveform, amplitude, phase and relative timing of their signals, these drones can generate a targeted null at friendly positions where jamming signals are cancelled out.

“Under the simulation condition of a 20 dB interference-to-signal ratio, electromagnetic interference at the target legitimate user can be reduced to zero,” wrote the team led by Yang Jian, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, in a peer-reviewed paper published in Chinese journal Acta Electronica Sinica on July 24.

This dual capability – jamming adversaries while safeguarding allies – marks a significant evolution from traditional electronic warfare, which often relies on brute force. This usually comes in the form of omnidirectional jamming that disrupts everything within range, friend or foe, according to Yang and his collaborators from the National Key Laboratory of Wireless Communications in Chengdu, Sichuan.

The concept hinges on two drones acting in tandem. One serves as the primary jammer, targeting enemy radar or communications.

The second acts as a “coordinated nullifier”, emitting a counter-signal engineered to destructively interfere with the jamming wave at a specific location – typically where friendly forces are operating. When the two signals converge, they cancel each other out at that precise point, creating the null.

But the success of the technique depends on nanosecond-level synchronisation between the two platforms. Even tiny clock errors – measured in picoseconds – can misalign the signals, weakening the null or shifting it off-target.

The team acknowledges that perfect synchronisation is unattainable in real-world conditions.

To address this, they incorporated adaptive algorithms that use feedback from the null zone to continuously monitor residual interference and adjust the drone signals in real time. Using gradient descent techniques, the system fine-tunes the phase and amplitude to deepen the null even as conditions change.

Their simulations show that the strategy boosts the effective data rate for friendly users by an average of 3.2 bps/Hz (bits per second per hertz) compared to conventional jamming methods. Even under non-optimised conditions, the improvement is 1.5 bps/Hz. It is significant, as military bandwidth can go from tens of megahertz to several gigahertz.

The study also explores multi-node coordination – linking three or more drones into a resilient mesh network. If one platform drifts out of sync, others compensate, ensuring the integrity of the electromagnetic umbrella.

This level of sophistication aligns with recent developments showcased at last year’s Zhuhai air show, where China displayed new electronic warfare pods for long-endurance, medium-altitude drones – platforms ideal for sustained electronic dominance over contested regions like the Taiwan Strait.

These pods integrate threat detection, jamming, decoy deployment and laser-based countermeasures against infrared-guided missiles.

With power outputs now reaching 15 kilowatts – comparable to advanced fighter jets – these systems can operate continuously, turning previously vulnerable drones into survivable frontline electronic warfare assets.

Western analysts note that Russia’s war in Ukraine has exposed the dangers of untargeted jamming. Over the Baltics, Russian electronic warfare has repeatedly disrupted civilian GPS signals, affecting hundreds of commercial flights daily.

While Moscow claims this is collateral damage from efforts to counter Ukrainian drones, some officials accuse it of waging a “hybrid war” against Nato nations.

Chinese scientists have achieved groundbreaking advances in high-precision time synchronisation that could be crucial for next-generation electronic warfare and quantum communication.

In a landmark experiment conducted across a 113 km (70 mile) baseline in Xinjiang a few years ago, a team from the University of Science and Technology of China synchronised two optical atomic clocks using laser pulses transmitted through free space. This achieved a synchronisation precision of less than one second in 80 billion years – rivalling the stability of the clocks themselves.

Precise timing technology can also lead to powerful directed energy weapons that can converge multiple beams into one.

Why Nanking massacre remains such a powerful Chinese cultural symbol

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3320162/why-nanking-massacre-remains-such-powerful-chinese-cultural-symbol?utm_source=rss_feed

This summer, two Chinese films – Dead To Rights and 731 – have stirred strong public reactions. Focusing on some of the darkest chapters of World War II in Asia, these films revisit the horrors of the Nanking massacre and the atrocities of Japan’s Unit 731, which conducted biological experiments on civilians in northeastern China.

The films have triggered a wave of reflection, especially among younger audiences. Many are watching depictions of these wartime events for the first time, discovering a legacy of trauma that still shapes Chinese national identity – and foreign policy.

The timing is significant. This year marks the 80th anniversary of China’s victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, which began in 1931 and left more than 35 million Chinese dead. The Nanking massacre started in December 1937, when Japanese troops occupied the then capital and killed over 300,000.

I remember first learning about it in a history textbook. The shock, for a teenager, was beyond words. Just looking at the pictures was excruciating. There are things one never wants to see again, even as the images never leave you. I have not yet prepared myself to step into the cinema – not because I forget, but because I remember all too well.

For many Chinese, it is more than a tragic chapter in history – it is a moral wound, never properly acknowledged or atoned for by the Japanese government.

Top Japanese politicians continue to pay tribute at Yasukuni Shrine, where Class-A war criminals are enshrined alongside Japan’s war dead. Official apologies, when they come, are often vague and quickly undermined by revisionist rhetoric. For Chinese citizens, the lack of sincere contrition is not just diplomatically offensive, it feels like a betrayal of the truth.

This is why the Nanking massacre remains such a powerful cultural symbol. It is not just about the pain of the past, but also about historical justice. It is about remembering what was done so it does not happen again. It is a refusal to let historical crimes be buried under political convenience.

As a Confucian saying puts it, not correcting an error is a true error. When a nation fails to confront its past, it forfeits moral credibility in the present.

In Chinese culture, history is not a static record – it is a living compass, essential to moral governance, national dignity and the preservation of peace. The idea that by using history as a mirror, one can understand the rise and fall of nations, dates back centuries. It is deeply embedded in the Chinese world view that past suffering must serve as a warning for future generations.

President Xi Jinping echoed this belief at the 2014 memorial for Nanking massacre victims. He said history was not to be forgotten, distorted or denied. While hate should not be heaped upon a people for what a small minority had done, he said, no one should ever forget the serious war crimes committed. The memorial, he emphasised, was not to fan hatred but to reaffirm our commitment to peace.

This message – rooted in remembrance, aimed at reconciliation – is at the heart of China’s approach to its memories of war. For China, peace is not an abstract ideal. It is a hard-earned achievement, forged in suffering.

The war against the Japanese left deep wounds. But it also brought about the birth of a new, modern China. Victory in 1945 ended China’s “century of humiliation”, a period of colonisation and invasion. It gave the Chinese people a renewed sense of purpose and unity. And it laid the foundation for a nation determined never again to be subjugated.

This is why China commemorates that victory with solemnity. Monuments, museums, schools and now the cinema all serve the same purpose: to ensure younger generations understand the cost of peace and the value of national dignity.

For China, remembrance is not about keeping grudges. It is about protecting truth from erasure. It is about building a future on the foundations of justice, not denial.

Xi himself has frequently connected historical remembrance with China’s global vision of peace and development. In 2015, at a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war, he said: “We Chinese love peace. No matter how much stronger it may become, China will never seek hegemony or expansion.” He also said: “We must learn the lessons of history and dedicate ourselves to peace.”

This is no empty slogan. It reflects China’s strategic orientation as a power that – because of its painful past – holds peace as a sacred principle. It is not merely self-reflection; it is a call for global historical accountability, a reminder that peace requires more than treaties – it requires truth. And that truth begins by acknowledging suffering, confronting injustice and rejecting whitewashing.

As the world faces new conflicts and crises, the Chinese experience teaches us that peace is not inevitable. It must be earned and protected. Films like Dead To Rights are part of that effort. They remind the young why history matters. They educate, awaken and mourn. And they ask difficult questions that remain unanswered – especially of those who still refuse to reckon with the crimes of the past.

Amid growing geopolitical tension, China’s commitment to historical memory should not be misread as nationalism. It is, rather, a solemn promise: that what was suffered will not be forgotten, and that peace will not be taken for granted.

Peace begins with remembrance – and remembrance begins with the truth.

China boy writes to marine park about missing fish, receives personal reply, invitation

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/environment/article/3320166/china-boy-writes-marine-park-about-missing-fish-receives-personal-reply-invitation?utm_source=rss_feed

A six-year-old boy who is besotted with fish wrote to an ocean aquarium after noticing some sea life had disappeared, and surprisingly received a well-illustrated handwritten letter back and an invitation.

Tao Tianxing has been a huge fan of the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium since the age of two.

He does not know many Chinese characters, but already knows more than 800 species of fish and has drawn tens of thousands of sea life in his sketchbook.

In January, he noticed that several fish had gone missing from the aquarium. His mother, surnamed Xu, said he was deeply bothered by it.

She suggested that he write a letter to the aquarium.

The parents wrote down his questions, which were illustrated with Tao’s drawings of the fish.

To the family’s surprise, in February, they received a letter back from the institution.

It was a carefully handwritten missive, illustrated with drawings and photos of the fish that Tao cared about.

Written in the tone of the aquarium’s mascot, Sea Horse Didi, the letter answered each question Tao asked.

For example, the letter explained that the payara was still in the South American zone, but they have grown bigger and swim more freely, so it requires more time to find them.

The clown knifefish has disappeared because it was sent to live in a larger tank in Xiamen Undersea World in southeastern China’s Fujian province.

Instead, the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium introduced arowana and Asian arowana into the clown knifefish’s old home.

Tao also asked why he did not see the publicised snake eel.

Didi answered that the eel used to hide in the reef and was difficult to spot. Also, it had been bullied by other fish and had been removed for its own safety. However, once it was do badly hurt that it died.

Xu posted the letter online. She said it also came with a gift. Her boy was so happy about the letter that he immediately asked her to read it to him three times.

He also asked her to read the letter every evening before going to sleep.

Xu said she was deeply moved by the letter and was thankful to the aquarium for cherishing her son’s hobby.

She said they were happy to live in a city as warm as Shanghai.

It turned out the letter was written by a member of the public education staff, Zhu Runyu.

Zhu said she was impressed by Tao’s knowledge of fish and how observant he was. She said both his drawings and descriptions of the fish were accurate.

The aquarium also arranged a meeting between Tao and Zhu in July, so that Zhu could answer more questions in person.

The heartwarming story has won widespread applause online.

“Such a good boy full of curiosity and dedication to his hobby. Such a pair of good parents that respect their son’s hobby. And such a good aquarium that treats a child’s letter seriously,” one commented.

“He has been visiting the aquarium since two. Those fish are truly his friends,” another said.

‘Shrimp among whales’: South Korea faces a US vs China dilemma

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3320497/shrimp-among-whales-south-korea-faces-us-vs-china-dilemma?utm_source=rss_feed

The Korean peninsula has once again become a fulcrum of global anxiety, as South Korea grapples with intensifying pressure from its US ally to take sides in Washington’s deepening rivalry with China, all while North Korea rattles its sabres on Seoul’s doorstep.

Analysts warn that Seoul must tread this delicate geopolitical tightrope with unequalled agility to avoid being drawn into a major-power confrontation.

“As tensions escalate between superpowers, South Korea must retain strategic flexibility – otherwise, it risks becoming the proverbial shrimp crushed between two fighting whales,” said Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies.

Chang, who is also a former presidential adviser on national security, argues that Beijing must also play a constructive role if it seeks to ease US pressure on South Korea.

“To create more diplomatic room to manoeuvre for Seoul, China should take visible steps to stabilise the Korean peninsula, including restraining North Korea’s provocations,” he told This Week in Asia.

But the room for manoeuvre is shrinking. Koh Yu-hwan, emeritus professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University, described South Korea as being mired in a policy dilemma, particularly regarding any potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

“Washington is urging Seoul to take clearer positions, but South Korea’s strategic interests are not always aligned with a full containment approach towards China,” Koh said. “This leaves Seoul with limited room to define its own stance in a fast-evolving security environment.”

When asked by This Week in Asia about Washington’s ties with Seoul, a US State Department spokeswoman said that the alliance was viewed as the “linchpin of peace, security, and prosperity” in Northeast Asia and the wider region and had been since 1953.

She emphasised in her email that this partnership, strengthened and modernised over seven decades, “must continue to adapt to a changing regional security environment” and highlighted the ongoing discussions that were being held on Seoul shouldering more of the defence burden.

Should conflict erupt on the Korean peninsula, China could pose a “third-party intervention threat”, according to Sydney A. Seiler, a senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies’ Korea Chair.

Mainland Chinese forces would likely support Pyongyang, he said, making it “most prudent to plan today for how the US and ROK [South Korea] can prepare to deal with a breakout of hostilities” over Taiwan. Seiler added that Pyongyang’s stance amid such a crisis would be a critical variable.

“Most important is that Beijing and Pyongyang understand the shared US-ROK commitment” to counter aggression from China or North Korea, Seiler said. “Indifference, apathy, equi-distancing, or hedging risk would be exploited by Beijing.”

Analysts say Washington has been increasingly explicit in its demands for allies to shoulder more defence responsibilities under US President Donald Trump.

“Trump explicitly demands the sharing of roles, responsibilities and burdens from allies and friendly nations,” said Park Won-gon, chairman of the East Asia Institute’s North Korea Studies Centre, in a recent commentary.

The call for greater burden-sharing was reinforced at May’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said it “makes no sense” for Asian nations exposed to North Korean and Chinese threats to spend less on defence than their Nato counterparts. South Korea spent around 2.8 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence last year – far below the 5 per cent pledged by some European allies.

Hegseth further warned against “seeking both economic cooperation with China and defence cooperation with the United States”, which he said was becoming increasingly untenable.

“Economic dependence on China only deepens their malign influence and complicates our defence decision space during times of tension,” Hegseth said. “Nobody knows what China will ultimately do, but they are preparing. And therefore we must be ready as well.”

Under this evolving paradigm, US forces stationed in South Korea – currently numbering some 28,500 – may see their role expand from deterring Pyongyang’s military to broader operations across the Indo-Pacific, including potential contingencies in the Taiwan Strait.

Speaking at a symposium in Hawaii in May, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson reportedly described South Korea as “a fixed aircraft carrier floating between Japan and mainland China”.

Stressing the strategic necessity of a continued US ground presence on the Korean peninsula, he told the US Army’s Land Forces Pacific Symposium that “the mission of USFK is not solely focused on North Korea”, signalling a shift in the military command’s traditionally narrow focus.

Against this backdrop, regional cooperation is also deepening. The US, South Korea and Japan have been exploring closer missile defence integration and intelligence sharing, moves analysts say are aimed squarely at countering China’s growing military reach.

But this evolving alliance comes with its costs. In his commentary for the East Asia Institute, Park argued that the Trump administration’s strategy linking economics and security “imposes a substantial burden on US allies”. For South Korea – directly threatened by Pyongyang and economically intertwined with both Washington and Beijing – that challenge is most acute.

“South Korea stands at a crossroads of choices more arduous and momentous than ever,” Park wrote. This was especially true as the USFK’s focus started shifting from “deterring North Korean threats to cover the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China”, he added.

Military strategists say US forces stationed in South Korea are more vulnerable to Chinese attacks than those deployed elsewhere such as Japan, which offers a more defensible staging ground for regional power projection.

In recent months, Washington has reportedly been pressing South Korea to apply their mutual defence treaty to any possible Taiwan Strait crisis.

One article of their treaty does stipulate that an armed attack “in the Pacific area” is to be treated as a mutual threat.

But Seoul, for its part, says it has neither accepted nor rejected such a demand.

In a televised debate before he took office, South Korea’s newly elected President Lee Jae-myung, who self-identifies as a pragmatist, emphasised the need for balance.

“We shouldn’t exclude or antagonise China and Russia. Diplomacy must always prioritise national interest and be approached pragmatically,” he said.

When pressed on whether South Korea should intervene in a potential Taiwan Strait conflict, Lee was unequivocal: South Korea should prioritise its own “national interests” and avoid being drawn in, he said.

But that might be easier said than done. “As long as Seoul remains unable to clearly define its position on USFK’s role in a Taiwan contingency, its direct involvement remains a matter of speculation,” Koh said.

Meta changes course on open-source AI as China pushes ahead with advanced models

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3320523/meta-changes-course-open-source-ai-china-pushes-ahead-advanced-models?utm_source=rss_feed

Facebook parent Meta Platforms, a major proponent of open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models with its Llama family, has indicated it would be more “careful” going down the open-source road, a move that contrasts with China’s embrace of open-source.

In fact, China has probably found the path to “surpass the US in AI” thanks to the momentum in the country’s vibrant open-source AI ecosystem, according to Andrew Ng, a renowned computer scientist known for his work in AI and the field of deep learning.

Wu, an adjunct professor at Stanford University’s computer science department, praised China’s open AI ecosystem, where companies compete against each other in a “Darwinian life-or-death struggle” to advance foundational models. In a post published on DeepLearning.AI, the education platform he co-founded, Wu noted that the world’s top proprietary models were still from frontier US labs, while the top open models were mostly from China.

Chinese companies have been launching open-source models in quick succession in recent weeks. Alibaba Group Holding and Zhipu AI rolled out their latest reasoning and video models this past week.

Alibaba claimed its Wan 2.2 video tool was the industry’s “first open-source video generation models incorporating the Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture” to help users unleash film-level creativity. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Zhipu boasted its GLM-4.5 as China’s “most advanced open-source MoE model”, as it secured third place globally and first place among both domestic and open-source models based on the average score across “12 representative benchmarks”.

Wu wrote in his post that US labs’ more secretive approach to developing foundational models, including poaching talent through hefty pay cheques, meant that knowledge spread within the industry slowly and at a high cost.

Wu’s comments came as Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company would be less open-source than it has been, citing security concerns as AI technology rapidly develops. “We’ll need to be rigorous about mitigating [AI safety] risks and careful about what we choose to open source,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post published on the Meta website.

Zuckerberg’s latest AI musing is a backslide from his thoughts just a year ago, when he published an essay titled “Open Source AI is the Path Forward”. At the time, Meta’s open-source Llama was the world’s most advanced and popular, although since then Chinese open-source models have been catching up, especially since DeepSeek’s open models burst onto the scene.

Instead, Meta is hiring a team of top AI scientists to work on personal “superintelligence”. Zuckerberg noted that his company would differ from other AI firms as Meta aimed to bring “personal superintelligence to everyone”.

Meanwhile, OpenAI was expected to launch GPT-5 this month, reportedly the world’s most powerful AI model.

A ranking on Hugging Face, the world’s largest open-source AI platform, showed that as of Thursday eight of the 10 most popular models were developed by Chinese firms, including start-ups Zhipu and Moonshot AI, as well as video gaming giant Tencent Holdings and Alibaba.

Jeffrey Ding, assistant professor of Political Science at George Washington University, said Zuckerberg’s latest announcement “would have been more meaningful if it was made when Meta’s open-source models were pushing the frontier, instead of at the present time, when they are far from the state-of-the-art”.

From Legoland to Disney: how China is using theme parks to fuel consumer spending

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3320389/legoland-disney-how-china-using-theme-parks-fuel-consumer-spending?utm_source=rss_feed

As temperatures soared to a sweltering 39°C, thousands of families still lined up for the launch of China’s first Legoland resort, undeterred by the heatwave.

The attraction became an instant hit – not just for children craving plastic-brick adventures, but for policymakers desperate to find the next big demand driver and jolt a weary consumer market back to life.

With families eager for quality experiences during the summer holidays, the spotlight is back on leisure spending – one of the few bright spots in a faltering consumer landscape, where retail sales have slumped and stimulus measures have lost steam.

The fanfare surrounding Legoland Shanghai Resort, which opened its doors on July 5, coincides with a new wave of investments in the sector across China.

As the largest Legoland in the world, it adds to over 4,400 attractions and amusement facilities nationwide – a figure forecast to grow at an annual rate of 19 per cent over the next three years, according to IAAPA, the global association for the theme park industry.

“What we see is that one yuan of operating revenue has an economic impact of 3.8 yuan in the local economy,” said Jakob Wahl, CEO of IAAPA, during the IAAPA Expo Asia in Shanghai held on June 30-July 3.

“Attractions are a driver for the economy wherever they are.”

For businesses upstream and downstream – from construction and retail to accommodation and transport – the ripple effect could be even greater, double or even triple that amount, he added.

A string of new theme parks is also in the pipeline. Legoland Shenzhen, set to become the world’s largest, is already under construction. iQiyi Land will open later this year and will feature immersive IP zones, while Shanghai will host a Harry Potter Studio Tour and the world’s largest Peppa Pig park by 2027.

Shanghai Disneyland, which opened in 2016, is also adding a Spider-Man zone, while Universal Beijing is undergoing a second phase of expansion following its launch in 2021.

Together, these projects reflect a broader push to anchor family spending and tourism through branded, experience-driven destinations – even as consumer sentiment remains cautious.

China has made household spending a central policy priority this year, and its sweeping trade-in programme for cars, appliances and electronics has delivered a short-term boost.

Sales of consumer durables have picked up, offering a rare bright spot in otherwise muted economic growth. But the gains have done little to lift broader household sentiment. With job security uncertain and income growth stagnating, many Chinese consumers remain cautious, opting to save rather than spend.

This anxiety-driven thriftiness is proving harder to shake, even as policymakers seek new ways to stimulate domestic demand. While the trade-in scheme moves products off shelves, it does little to address the confidence deficit that continues to weigh on discretionary, experience-based spending.

“Legoland is a new thing for China, and it can help unlock fresh consumer demand – especially in the family and parent-child segment,” said Liu Jianbin, COO of Sunriver Tourism.

“In a sluggish consumption environment, parks like these can play a meaningful role, even becoming a sustained lever for household demand,” he pointed out. But he also cautioned that their overall impact would depend on whether the parks can drive ancillary spending and encourage repeat visits.

As of October 2024, China had a total of 385 theme parks, including 87 large and supersized parks, with 59 per cent of them profitable, according to a report published last year by the Institute for Theme Park Studies in China.

The 86 large and supersized theme parks surveyed – all of which opened before January 2023 – recorded strong growth in 2023, welcoming over 130 million visitors and generating total revenue of 30.4 billion yuan (US$4.24 billion), marking year-on-year increases of 71.8 per cent in foot traffic and 97.9 per cent in revenue.

However, the sector still faces significant challenges, with 22 per cent of the 385 parks losing money, as high investment costs and steep ticket prices remain significant hurdles.

According to the institute, performance has declined notably compared to 2023, with a significant drop in visitor numbers as of October 2024.

Lin Huanjie, director of the China Theme Park Research Institute, told state media last year that at least 20 large-scale theme parks were in the pipeline across the country, many covering more than 40 hectares (nearly 100 acres). As for local governments, theme parks promise considerable economic and social benefits, and many cities hope to make them a calling card of urban development.

The recent wave of theme park openings aligns with the evolution of Chinese consumption, said Wang Ke, a senior tourism analyst at consulting firm Analysys. “Despite talk of a ‘consumption downgrade’, people are still willing to pay for quality experiences,” Wang noted.

“That said, spending habits remain cautious overall. Many parks are turning to aggressive discounts and promotions to bring in visitors.”

For the first two months into its grand opening, for instance, Legoland Shanghai is offering a 50 per cent discount on all food and beverages.

Legoland would undoubtedly boost tourism in Shanghai to some extent, Wang said, as parents are still willing to splurge on their children despite broader weak spending. But its impact would likely be limited compared to a heavyweight like Disneyland, as most of the attractions are geared towards younger children or LEGO fans – “so the appeal is narrower”.

Indeed, after the initial buzz and crowds in the opening weeks, online comments began to highlight one of Legoland’s unexpected “strengths” – shorter lines and fewer visitors. While framed as a perk, the subtext hints at subdued foot traffic and raises questions about the park’s longer-term commercial appeal.

Chen, who declined to give her full name, was among the thousands of visitors at Legoland Shanghai’s grand opening. A theme park enthusiast, she and her family had secured tickets a month in advance – and were pleasantly surprised to find food and beverages offered at half price.

“Legoland feels more suited for younger kids, it’s really an immersive experience for them,” Chen said, pointing to the summer splash zone where kids can play in the water all day as well as brick-building areas.

“It’s a different kind of fun compared to Disneyland, which is more about IP-driven immersion.”

She did acknowledge, however, that the broader economy had made people more cautious.

“I still try to find balance. I have cut back in some areas, but I’ll still take my family to a theme park once or twice a year – just to enjoy the experience.”

Theme parks have become strategic tools for what Wahl calls “destination development”, turning underutilised land into tourist magnets.

“When you have a park, you see how hotels are being built around it, how restaurants grow. That drives the economy and tourism,” he said. “Attractions are often the reason why people travel.”

While Chinese consumers are spending more cautiously this year, Massimiliano Freddi, IAAPA’s 2025 Chair of the Board, said the breadth of the domestic market has made it resilient.

“This diverse market integrates so many different levels of attractions… and helps in moments of consumption contraction,” he said.

Freddi also pointed to the country’s ability to adapt. “China is very good at diversifying the size and the price of attractions. That satisfies the need for getting together – even when people are spending less.”

But despite growing demand, local brands face challenges, particularly around monetisation and intellectual property.

Many in China still heavily rely on ticket revenue, Wahl noted, compared to other regions where food, merchandise and events like Halloween or flower festivals are huge revenue drivers, encouraging repeat visits and higher per capita spending.

Still, China has shown it can create home-grown success stories, Wahl said, pointing to the rise of Pop Mart’s Labubu as an example of a local IP going global.

“The Chinese entertainment and attraction market is still fairly young,” Wahl said, noting that the US and Europe had a head start of several decades.

“With the continued growth of the middle class, there’s an increased need for leisure activities.”

China’s domestic tourism industry continued its strong recovery in 2024, with both traveller numbers and spending experiencing solid growth, according to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Total trips taken rose by nearly 15 per cent year-on-year, while overall tourism spending jumped by over 17 per cent. Per-trip spending by domestic tourists also hit a record high, rising slightly by 2 per cent from the previous year to 1,024 yuan (US$143) per person per trip, a sign of growing demand for leisure experiences.

China’s summer travel season is off to a strong start, with bookings surging as students and families drive demand.

According to travel platform Tuniu, summer group tour bookings have jumped by more than 35 per cent compared to the same period last year, with outbound travel bookings soaring by 60 per cent.

Data from Spring Tour also shows a nearly 30 per cent rise in total summer travel reservations year-on-year, with outbound trips leading the trend – up nearly 50 per cent from 2024.

The travel peak began in mid-July and is expected to last through mid-August.