• Chinese women dance in train aisles, shocking passengers and leading to disturbance warning
• China urged to keep eye on border as India upgrades road to move tanks and missiles
• OpenAI’s GPT-5 draws mixed reviews in China amid heightened AI competition
• China counts down to start of work on Xinjiang-Tibet Railway
• Pandas and table tennis: China’s national icons fall victim to toxic fan culture
• Europe is expecting a wave of Chinese tourists. Should it thank Donald Trump?
• Unicorn Z.ai adapts models for Huawei chips in drive to broaden China’s AI ecosystem
• China woman jailed for killing lover after he told her to hit him when she wanted to break up
• China’s consumer prices flat in July, while producer deflation persists
• Chinese scientists create meteorite diamond in laboratory breakthrough
• Did Chinese authorities take a page from the Covid-19 playbook for chikungunya?
• China judge tells estranged couple how to split 29 chickens – ‘Eat odd one out before divorce’
• As AI chatbots gain popularity in China, so does the business of inserting ads into results
• For university that bridges China and West, geopolitics is ‘biggest challenge’

Chinese women dance in train aisles, shocking passengers and leading to disturbance warning

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/article/3320932/chinese-women-dance-train-aisles-shocking-passengers-and-leading-disturbance-warning?utm_source=rss_feed

A group of middle-aged Chinese women have taken square dancing onto a completely new track by doing it on trains.

On July 27, a passenger on a train to Changchun, in northeastern China’s Jilin province, complained that a group of so-called aunties were dancing in the sleeping carriage next to his, disturbing his rest.

He also posted a viral video of the women dancing to loud music and sometimes singing along.

The clip has attracted many critical comments.

One person described them as annoying and having no manners.

Another online observer said: “They should compensate other passengers for causing them mental suffering.”

“It is horrible when people have no shame or sense of boundaries,” said a third person.

Some also took the opportunity to complain about the square-dancing aunties in their neighbourhood.

Aunties who dance to loud music in squares and parks are a special feature of life in China.

Some such groups achieved international fame a decade ago when they performed in front of the Louvre in Paris and Red Square in Moscow.

Many who emigrate from China continue the pastime in other countries.

In 2021, a group of elderly people reportedly square danced every morning in a playground in New York’s Flushing, which has been dubbed “the Chinese Manhattan”, sparking complaints from neighbours.

Even in China, there have been constant rows over the noise they make.

China implemented a revised Law on the Prevention and Control of Noise Pollution in 2022.

It set standard noise levels for day and night. People who exceed the controls can face a fine of between 200 and 1,000 yuan (US$28 and US$140).

Square dancing is also banned in many places during important tests such as the national college entrance examination.

It is also not the first time that Chinese aunties have been spotted dancing on trains.

A member of staff with China Railway said they are not allowed to play loud music or dance and disturb other passengers in train carriages.

He advised people to seek help from staff when such disturbances occur.

China urged to keep eye on border as India upgrades road to move tanks and missiles

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3321305/china-urged-keep-eye-border-india-upgrades-road-move-tanks-and-missiles?utm_source=rss_feed

Beijing should be vigilant about India’s recent moves to strengthen infrastructure in a disputed border area while setting its own pace for China’s development efforts in the region, observers say.

Indian newspaper The Tribune reported last month that the country’s only land access to the Galwan Valley – known as the Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie (DSDBO) Road – was undergoing a major upgrade to accommodate tanks and specialised trucks capable of carrying long-range missiles.

The road, which was completed in 2019, is India’s only strategic land access to the Galwan Valley, where a deadly clash in 2020 led to the deaths of at least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese.

Meanwhile, a 130km (80-mile) alternative route to the road, west of the existing road, was also in the final construction stage and was expected to be completed next year, several Indian media outlets reported last month.

The route – which Indian media said had minimal exposure to Chinese army ground patrols and surveillance near the border – is seen as a way to reduce dependence on the DSDBO Road.

Beijing claims the whole Galwan Valley as its territory, a claim that Delhi rejects. The Line of Actual Control, a de facto boundary, separates the areas that each side controls but not their full territorial claims.

Amit Ranjan, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore, said Delhi’s key target of upgrading infrastructure was to “ease and speed up the movement of the troops on the border region in case any emergency situation [confrontation with China] occurs”.

China’s border region along the flat Tibetan Plateau offers a logistical advantage, while India’s mountainous terrain hampers its ability to support its front lines, according to Zhang Jiadong, director of Fudan University’s Centre for South Asian Studies.

Zhang said that to address this gap, India had prioritised highway projects such as the road.

“After the expansion, it will further improve its ability to support the front lines. That is certain. As a result, its transport speed will also increase,” he said.

Led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Delhi has been rapidly accelerating its infrastructure building near the border region, especially since the Galwan Valley clash.

The India-China Border Roads – the Indian border network project established in 1999 – is close to finishing its first and second phases, which included 73 strategic roads. Construction started on the third phase last year.

India has been building roads at an increasing rate. From 2017 to 2020, it cut roads at 470km (292 miles) per year, up from 230km per year averaged over the previous decade.

According to Lin Minwang, vice-dean at the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, the new construction benchmark is essentially “a manifestation” of border infrastructure competition between China and India for claiming “control” during “unprecedented” intensity in the Modi era.

“Currently, both China and India are strengthening their control [near the border],” he said, adding that India was taking unprecedented measures in this regard,

He Xianqing, an associate researcher at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said China should remain alert to this kind of expansion, and that it needed more advanced technology for its border infrastructure.

“India’s border infrastructure … deserves close attention. It has substantially improved logistics and military capabilities in border areas. Its enhanced infrastructure capabilities may lead to risky provocations in border areas,” He said.

China opposed India’s road construction close to the Galwan River and just 7.5km from the Line of Actual Control, a key factor leading to tensions in 2020.

“Since Modi took office … all of these incidents were related to infrastructure construction, and occurred in areas of India with relatively good infrastructure conditions,” He added.

He said China should develop its infrastructure “at its own pace”, as India’s building capacity still lagged.

“China should focus on promoting developmental infrastructure and new types of infrastructure, such as networks, electromagnetic systems, drone landing platforms and border situational awareness platforms.”

Because of China’s construction and military capacity and the flat terrain in Tibet, its highway and railway networks near the border – centred on the G219 highway and the Sichuan-Tibet Railway – are more advanced than India’s and have constantly been expanding and closing in on the edge of the contested area.

China has also been rapidly improving navigation and surveillance power in border villages since the 2020 clash. Beijing has been supporting Tibet’s “smart border defence” initiative, bolstering network and surveillance systems.

New intelligent monitoring towers – some equipped with thermal imaging and night vision – have been deployed in border villages in the Tibet region in recent years. It is a field in which India has lagged.

“If India seeks to compete in border infrastructure development, China still holds a significant advantage,” Lin, from Fudan University, said.

Despite both countries’ infrastructure ambitions, the two Asian powers have been mending ties in recent years. Modi will reportedly attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin on August 31 and September 1, which would be his first China visit in seven years.

And last year, after years of intense talks on the issue, India and China reached a border patrol agreement that appeared to return border management to a pre-2020 conflict approach.

Zhang from Fudan University said the likelihood of further conflict was low, as Beijing and Delhi had reached a consensus on several issues.

He said the “rules of engagement” of both sides had “caused the most problems in recent times”.

He Xianqing said the China-India reconciliation process was still in its early stages, and both sides needed to rebuild mutual trust.

Zeno Leoni, a lecturer in the defence studies department of King’s College London, agreed that the territorial dispute was just one thread of overall bilateral ties, which needed more comprehensive solutions.

“The relationship between India and China is a complex one. While territorial disputes have a negative impact on the relationship, these two developing countries tend to align on certain issues in multilateral institutions,” he said.

OpenAI’s GPT-5 draws mixed reviews in China amid heightened AI competition

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3321320/openais-gpt-5-draws-mixed-reviews-china-amid-heightened-ai-competition?utm_source=rss_feed

OpenAI’s latest flagship artificial intelligence model, GPT-5, has drawn mixed reviews in China, where some critics expressed disappointment over the new system’s lack of breakthroughs.

At its live-streamed launch on Thursday in the US, GPT-5 was touted by OpenAI as its “smartest, fastest, most useful model yet, and a major step towards placing intelligence at the centre of every business”.

The new AI model features improved performance across coding, maths, writing, health and visual perception, among others. OpenAI described it as “a unified system” that features a built-in “thinking” function, with the ability to automatically switch between “standard” and “deep thinking” modes based on factors such as conversation, task types and query complexity.

The new system is “like a PhD-level expert in anything, any area”, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at the launch.

In mainland China, where ChatGPT and other OpenAI services are not officially available, AI experts were confident that domestic users would not miss out on anything.

“GPT-5 is not significantly ahead of Chinese models, so it won’t put substantial pressure on Chinese researchers and developers,” said Zhang Linfeng, assistant professor at the School of Artificial Intelligence at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in a Saturday post on Xinchuang Shanghai, a WeChat public account affiliated with the state-backed newspaper Jiefang Daily.

GPT-5 “doesn’t come with revolutionary breakthroughs; it lacks memorable characteristics”, Zhang said.

The model’s thinking feature is not a new concept, according to Zhang, pointing out that Chinese companies like Alibaba Group Holding have already rolled out a similar function in their AI systems. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

That assessment reflects the heightened competition in the market for large language models, even as OpenAI looked to make a big splash with its new flagship AI system, considering that GPT-4 was released in March 2023.

In the meantime, open-source models from Chinese start-ups like DeepSeek and MoonshotAI, along with those from mainland Big Tech firms led by Alibaba, have seen increased adoption across the industry on the back of their low-cost appeal and innovative features.

Still, AI professor Zhang credited OpenAI for GPT-5’s reduced “hallucination”, improved coding capability and enhanced general intelligence. In AI, hallucinations are incorrect or misleading results that models generate.

There was also wide interest across the mainland Chinese tech community about GPT-5’s launch. At the Quora-like question-and-answer platform Zhihu, one discussion about GPT-5 was viewed more than 3.2 million times, with some users posting positive comments about the new model’s enhancements.

GPT-5 is now the default model option on ChatGPT, covering both free and paid tiers.

Microsoft, a major investor in San Francisco-based OpenAI, announced as part of the launch that it was incorporating GPT-5 into a wide variety of products.

Developers on Microsoft platforms GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code, for example, can write, test and deploy code using GPT-5.

China counts down to start of work on Xinjiang-Tibet Railway

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3321311/china-counts-down-start-work-xinjiang-tibet-railway?utm_source=rss_feed

Work is expected to get under way this year on one of the world’s most ambitious rail projects with the launch of a state-owned company to oversee construction and operations of a line that will link Hotan in Xinjiang and Lhasa in Tibet.

The Shanghai Securities News reported on Friday that Xinjiang-Tibet Railway Company had been formally registered with 95 billion yuan (US$13.2 billion) in capital and wholly owned by China State Railway Group.

According to the registration, the company’s business scope also includes diversified operations such as real estate development, tourism, catering, accommodation and international project contracting.

Under the plan, the route will join the existing Lhasa-Shigatse line with a new one from Hotan to Shigatse, forming a roughly 2,000km (1,240-mile) strategic artery linking northwestern and southwestern China.

The Xinjiang-Tibet Railway is one of four lines planned to connect Tibet with the rest of the country, with the other services linking the western region to Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.

The Qinghai-Tibet line is up and running while construction continues on the other two.

“This ambitious project aims to establish a 5,000km plateau rail framework centred on Lhasa by 2035,” Hubei-based Huayuan Securities said in a research note on Friday.

The project’s registered capital represents initial funding, not total project costs. For example, the 1,800km Sichuan-Tibet Railway required an estimated 320 billion yuan to build.

Parts of the route will also run near the China-India Line of Actual Control, the de facto border between the two countries, giving it defensive importance in a frontier area with less infrastructure than the rest of China.

The route will have an average elevation of over 4,500 metres, and pass through the Kunlun, Karakoram, Kailash and Himalayan mountain ranges, going through glaciers, frozen rivers and permafrost.

Winter temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau can plunge to -40 degrees Celsius (-40 Fahrenheit), with oxygen levels at just 44 per cent of inland regions.

Along with the engineering challenges, the project team will have to cope with accelerated machinery wear, soaring logistics costs, and environmental conservation needs.

Planning for the Xinjiang-Tibet line dates back to 2008, when it was included in the revised “Medium and Long-Term Railway Network Plan” approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner.

Key milestones include the May 2022 launch of survey and design tenders for the Hotan-Shigatse section.

Ministry of Transport officials confirmed in April that construction was expected to get under way this year.

Pandas and table tennis: China’s national icons fall victim to toxic fan culture

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3321316/pandas-and-table-tennis-chinas-national-icons-fall-victim-toxic-fan-culture?utm_source=rss_feed

Pandas and table tennis are two of China’s most beloved national symbols, but the behaviour of some of their admirers has prompted concerns about extreme online fandom.

In a rare open letter issued last month, the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda in the southwestern province of Sichuan condemned what it called toxic fan culture and online abuse targeting panda keepers.

“Recently, it has been deeply disheartening to see certain individuals inciting and manipulating public opinion – both domestically and abroad – to smear China’s ‘friendship ambassadors’, the giant pandas, while relentlessly cyberbullying frontline panda caretakers,” it said.

It warned that extreme behaviours, including cyberbullying, would undermine China’s decades of professional panda conservation efforts.

“This work calls for real commitment, not emotional outbursts or fan frenzy. While public oversight is welcomed, we firmly oppose extreme or illegal acts carried out in the name of ‘love’.”

In June, a court in Sichuan convicted two people of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for falsely claiming that researchers had abused giant pandas, and for inciting online harassment against research institutes and staff.

According to China News Service, the pair were accused of using dozens of accounts and spreading false information through live streams and short videos on social media. One was sentenced to one year and six months in prison and the other received a sentence of one year and two months.

Meanwhile, table tennis superstar Fan Zhendong also voiced his frustrations about toxic fan culture last month.

Fan, a 28-year-old Olympic champion and four-time World Cup singles winner, said in an interview on July 26 that he had suffered “significant psychological trauma” after a fan broke into his hotel room in 2023.

“Those fans won’t focus on your performance, but instead are keen to hype up off-court topics, spreading conspiracy theories and fabricated claims through multiple accounts, generating widespread buzz,” he told Phoenix TV.

Fan, now playing for the German table tennis club Saarbrucken, said he had not expected being successful would have such a dark side.

Beijing has launched a series of campaigns in recent years to “clean up” what it called “distorted” fan culture.

More than 100,000 online accounts were shut down during a three-month crackdown last summer, and police said “prompt measures” had been taken to investigate multiple cyberbullying cases in the sports sector involving “fandom” behaviours such as rumour-mongering, defamation and verbal abuse during the Paris Olympics last year.

Still, there is no sign that out-of-control fan behaviour is fading, at home or abroad.

On Wednesday, the panda centre in Sichuan rejected claims on Chinese social media that the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington was “experimenting with replacing bamboo in the giant pandas’ diet with corn stalks”. The zoo is home to two pandas, four-year-old Bao Li and three-year-old Qing Bao – both sent to Washington from China last year.

The centre clarified that the zoo provided the two pandas sufficient bamboo to maintain their normal diet, and corn stalks were offered solely as a form of dietary enrichment, not as a substitute.

Last year, South Korean fans of the giant panda Fu Bao accused the panda centre of abusing the animal. Fu Bao was born in South Korea in 2020 but moved to the Chinese facility in April of last year.

Photos that surfaced after her transfer appeared to show patches of missing fur, which social media users said was evidence of mistreatment. South Korean fans even paid for a billboard ad in New York’s Times Square accusing the panda centre of abuse. The centre denied the claims, saying Fu Bao had received proper treatment since her arrival in China.

Wang Jingya, a lecturer at Zhejiang International Studies University who researches Chinese fan culture, said that compared with fandom surrounding entertainment celebrities, fan behaviour about pandas and table tennis was “more sensitive” because of their symbolic meaning in China.

“For instance, the reason pandas are revered as China’s ‘national treasure’ lies not only in their ecological status as an endangered species but also in their state-constructed role as cultural symbols and diplomatic assets – embodying national sentiment and identity,” she said.

Similarly, table tennis, considered the “national sport”, has long represented a sense of collective pride.

Wang added that “the quasi-organisational nature of fandom circles means their mobilisation power often outweighs their regulatory capacity”.

“The fans are good at rallying collective action quickly, but lack effective mechanisms for preemptively, actively, and retrospectively managing member behaviour and emotions,” she said.

“But once misunderstandings or disagreements occur, they can easily escalate into public criticism and emotional confrontations, adversely affecting the athletes, their teams, and even the normal operations of public institutions.”

Europe is expecting a wave of Chinese tourists. Should it thank Donald Trump?

https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3321240/europe-expecting-wave-chinese-tourists-should-it-thank-donald-trump?utm_source=rss_feed

Europe is basking in summer, with sunny skies, high temperatures – and a surge in Chinese tourists.

Despite lingering challenges such as visa requirements and reduced airline capacity due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the continent’s tourism industry is hopeful that 2025 could mark the highest number of Chinese visitors since the Covid-19 pandemic

“We’re pretty optimistic. I work at the centre of Brussels and we see a lot of Chinese. I hear Mandarin everywhere,” said Ludivine Destrée, senior marketing manager at the European Travel Commission (ETC).

Europe as a whole, including Switzerland, recorded a 13 per cent year-on-year increase in Chinese tourists during the first half of 2025, according to Destrée.

This momentum is only expected to continue. A recent report by the ETC found that 72 per cent of Chinese tourists expressed a willingness to travel long-haul to the continent. That was well above the global average of 39 per cent, and higher than the US and Japan – two traditionally strong markets – at 33 per cent and 13 per cent respectively.

The unusually low interest from Japanese tourists may be linked to the weakening yen, while Chinese enthusiasm is driven by a mix of factors – including an economic rebound and a renewed appetite for long-distance travel, according to the report.

Geopolitics may also be playing a role. US President Donald Trump’s harsh tone and tariffs against Beijing have likely made America a less attractive holiday destination for many Chinese, Destrée said.

“Sometimes Trump is also good news for us,” she said with a laugh.

There are also efforts to make travel to the continent more convenient. In the first half of the year, cross-border WeChat Pay transactions in Europe rose by nearly 30 per cent year on year, with the United Kingdom taking the crown with a 40 per cent jump, according to data provided by WeChat.

The Chinese super-app has become more useful across Europe, now accepted by transport companies including Flixbus – the continent’s largest long-haul bus company – and Italo, Italy’s second-largest high-speed railway provider.

European companies are responding to the surge in Chinese enthusiasm. Parisian luxury department store Galeries Lafayette launched two campaigns this summer on Alipay and WeChat Pay, offering preferential exchange rates and cash back of up to five per cent.

Alipay operator Ant Group is the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, which owns the South China Morning Post

A spokesperson said the department store – a symbol of French luxury – had yet to see a significant uptick in Chinese visitors but was satisfied with current numbers and would continue its promotions in the market.

Still, Chinese tourist numbers to Europe remain below pre-pandemic levels, due to two main obstacles: visa requirements and airline restrictions, Destrée said.

Chinese nationals still need to apply for visas to visit most European countries, putting the continent at a disadvantage compared to parts of Southeast Asia that offer visa-free access, she added.

In contrast, passport holders from most countries in Europe can now enter China visa-free for 30 days.

Air travel was also disrupted after Russia closed its airspace to European airlines in response to sanctions over the Ukraine war. This raised flight times and costs, leading many European airlines to accuse their Chinese counterparts of enjoying an unfair advantage.

France suspended its bilateral air agreement with China in 2023, citing the closed airspace to French carriers. There are currently fewer than 60 weekly round-trip flights between France and China – far below the pre-pandemic high of over 100.

Spain, however, has bucked the trend and emerged as the biggest winner in the scramble for Chinese tourists. Visitors from the country during the first four months of 2025 surpassed a pre-pandemic high in 2019 by 15 per cent, largely thanks to increased airline capacity, Destrée said.

From April to September, scheduled air capacity between China and Spain is set to rise by 35.9 per cent to 337,524 seats – the largest increase among European countries, according to data from Turespaña, the Tourism Institute of Spain.

Chinese tourists spent a total of US$2.13 billion in Spain in 2024, according to Turespaña.

Unicorn Z.ai adapts models for Huawei chips in drive to broaden China’s AI ecosystem

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3321314/unicorn-zai-adapts-models-huawei-chips-drive-broaden-chinas-ai-ecosystem?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese unicorn Z.ai, formerly known as Zhipu AI, has adapted its GLM artificial intelligence models for Huawei Technologies’ semiconductors, bolstering the country’s broad push for technology self-sufficiency.

Beijing-based Z.ai said its GLM models were now compatible with Huawei’s Ascend processors, which are used on AI servers, and Kirin chips that run inside smartphones and laptops, according to the start-up’s statement on Saturday.

“The tie-up marks a major breakthrough in cloud-device collaboration between home-grown large [language] models and computational architecture, highlighting the deeper integration of a domestic AI ecosystem,” Z.ai said in the statement.

Huawei’s collaboration with Z.ai – one of China’s four so-called AI tigers – marks another milestone for the telecommunications equipment giant, days after announcing that it would open-source its Compute Architecture for Neural Networks (CANN) – the software toolkit used to develop applications on the firm’s Ascend AI processors – to provide an alternative platform for developers to build applications on domestic chips.

The open-source approach gives public access to a program’s source code, allowing third-party software developers to share or modify its design, or scale up its capabilities.

CANN competes with Nvidia’s proprietary Compute Unified Device Architecture toolkit, which many Chinese AI developers have used as their default development platform for years amid the broad use of the US firm’s graphics processing units in many data centres.

The tie-up with Z.ai also strengthens Huawei’s push to expand the use of locally developed processors for AI projects.

The Shenzhen-based company’s Ascend computing business unit last month signed up as one of the initial members of the Model-Chips Ecosystem Innovation Alliance. Other members include StepFun, Infinegence AI, SiliconFlow, MetaX, Biren Technology, Enflame, Iluvatar Corex, Cambricon Technologies and Moore Threads.

According to Z.ai, it would use CANN for tasks such as fine-tuning its GLM models on Huawei’s Ascend-powered cloud computing infrastructure, a process that would show the toolkit’s open-source capabilities.

In June, ChatGPT creator OpenAI said in a post that its analysts found that the Chinese start-up, then known as Zhipu, made “notable progress” in providing infrastructure solutions to governments and state-owned firms in non-Western markets.

Z.ai, which has attracted more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) in funding, filed pre-initial public offering documents with China’s securities regulator in April, as the company eyes a public listing as soon as 2026.

China woman jailed for killing lover after he told her to hit him when she wanted to break up

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/article/3319952/china-woman-jailed-killing-lover-after-he-told-her-hit-him-when-she-wanted-break?utm_source=rss_feed

A woman in China has been sentenced to 11 years in jail for causing the intentional injury of her boyfriend after she banged his head against a wall, causing his death.

The woman, identified by the alias Ajuan, said she beat her boyfriend after he asked to hurt him in a bid to save their relationship after she suggested they break up, according to the news outlet chinanews.com.

Ajuan and her boyfriend, known as Aqiang, lived in a rented house in Taiyuan, the capital city of Shanxi province in northern China. It is not clear how long they had been in a relationship.

Ajuan said she had proposed splitting up many times because of Aqiang’s record of hiring prostitutes and lying to her. But he always begged her to stay and hurt himself to make his point.

Ajuan once rubbed chopsticks on his chest and on another occasion burned a plastic spoon before letting the melted liquid drop onto his belly and thigh, leaving him with slight injuries.

When Ajuan again proposed a break-up on June 5, Aqiang hit his head on a wall, causing bleeding from his mouth and nose.

“Baby, why do you not come to beat me?” he asked her.

Ajuan, who said she felt “extremely disgusted” with her boyfriend for his betrayals and habit of hurting himself, grabbed his hair to hit his head on the wall.

She did so four or five times, Ajuan admitted.

The man collapsed and lost consciousness.

Ajuan asked her neighbours for help. They called an ambulance to send her boyfriend to hospital, where he later died.

The woman appealed the original 11-year jail sentence handed down by a local court, but the Shanxi Provincial High Court upheld the verdict.

It has also been reported that while Ajuan was in custody, she had a conflict with a roommate, causing the victim slight injuries.

The case sparked a widespread discussion on mainland social media.

“I think both parties have psychological problems,” one online observer said.

While another said: “It is really all about what Ajuan said unilaterally. Do you believe that? I do not.”

A third netizen said: “This story reminds us to stay away from those with extreme personalities.”

China’s consumer prices flat in July, while producer deflation persists

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3321299/chinas-consumer-prices-flat-july-while-producer-deflation-persists?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s consumer prices were unchanged last month from a year ago and producer deflation persisted, suggesting that demand remains weak in the world’s second-largest economy amid trade turbulence.

The national consumer price index (CPI), a key gauge of inflation, was flat in July compared to a year ago, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday.

The reading beat market expectations, as a poll by financial provider Wind had forecast a 0.12 per cent decline for July. In June, the CPI rose by 0.1 per cent, year on year after four straight months of decline.

“Policies to expand domestic demand showed results in July, resulting in a 0.4 per cent rise in CPI from June,” said Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician at the bureau.

China is grappling with persistent deflationary pressures, driven by a dual challenge of sluggish domestic demand and oversupply, with trade uncertainty hindering suppliers’ ability to clear excess inventory.

In July, consumer goods prices declined by 0.4 per cent from a year earlier, while service prices rose by 0.5 per cent, according to the statistics bureau. Food prices fell by 1.6 per cent.

Prices for other goods and services as well as clothing increased by 8 per cent and 1.7 per cent, respectively, while housing saw a rise of 0.1 per cent.

Core inflation, which excludes the volatile prices of food and energy, rose last month by 0.8 per cent, year on year.

China’s producer price index (PPI), which tracks factory gate prices, fell in July by 3.6 per cent year on year marking the 34th consecutive month of contraction.

Dong, from the NBS, blamed the PPI decline on “seasonal factors” and “uncertainties brought by the international trade environment”.

The government has launched a series of measures to boost consumption, including a massive trade-in programme providing subsidies for cars, household appliances and other goods.

Policymakers have also vowed to tackle “disorderly low-price competition” recently in the auto and other key industries.

However, deflation remains a serious concern for the Chinese government, as a prolonged housing downturn and a fragile trade truce with the US are weighing on consumer spending and factory activity.

Chinese scientists create meteorite diamond in laboratory breakthrough

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3321183/chinese-scientists-create-meteorite-diamond-laboratory-breakthrough?utm_source=rss_feed

Researchers in China say they have recreated the elusive “meteorite diamond” in a laboratory – settling six decades of debate about the material’s existence and opening up new avenues for advancements in defence and electronics.

The first hexagonal-structured diamond was discovered in 1967 within the Canyon Diablo meteorite that hit Arizona 49,000 years ago. It was widely believed to have formed from graphite under the intense heat and pressure generated by the impact with Earth.

While all diamonds consist of carbon atoms, they are not limited to the better-known cubic structure. Research teams from around the world have been trying for years to recreate the hexagonally arranged variant with its distinct atomic stacking.

In an article published on July 30 by the peer-reviewed journal Nature, the Chinese researchers detailed how they achieved high-purity hexagonal diamond crystals of 100 micrometres in size, providing definitive proof of the material’s macroscopic existence.

The team combined expertise from the Centre for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics.

While other teams around the world claimed to have synthesised the material, previous attempts typically yielded cubic diamonds or mixed-phase samples rather than pure hexagonal structures, according to the paper’s corresponding author Luo Duan.

Luo, a professor at the Xian institute in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, told the South China Morning Post that the hexagonal diamonds created by other researchers were at the nanoscale – thousands of times smaller than the Chinese team’s result.

“They typically exist as products of impact synthesis or as miniature particles and have not yet been realised in bulk samples suitable for structural performance testing,” he said.

Luo added that the research team’s innovation had the potential to “create international patent barriers”, providing a solid foundation for subsequent technology transfer and industrialisation.

The hexagonal structure promises superior hardness and thermal properties, with potential applications in cutting tools, superhard abrasives, high-performance electronic devices, quantum technology and high-efficiency heat dissipation devices, he said.

According to Luo, the hexagonal diamond is a structural variant of the cubic version with the same mechanical, thermal and optical properties – and is even superior in some respects.

The paper’s lead author Yang Liuxiang, from the Centre for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, told state news agency Xinhua that the team’s achievement had been possible for two reasons.

“Firstly, selecting ultra-pure, impurity-free natural graphite single crystals as raw material facilitated the creation of highly ordered, micrometre-sized hexagonal diamond samples,” he said.

“Secondly, they used live monitoring – gradually compressing graphite crystals while watching structural changes with real-time X-ray imaging. This prevented defects and produced pure, perfectly formed hexagonal diamond blocks.”

In a separate report on its website, the institute in Xian said the experiment confirmed that the hexagonal diamond was “a truly independent material, resolving nearly 70 years of debate about its structure and formation pathways”.

According to the performance data, the material rivals premium natural diamonds in hardness – reaching 110 gigapascals – while exhibiting superior compressive strength and impact resistance.

The material achieved a thermal conductivity five times greater than copper’s while maintaining structural stability at 1,100 degrees Celsius – far exceeding conventional semiconductor cooling materials.

The study also noted that the material’s non-uniform anisotropic structure could potentially yield piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties that may one day power quantum sensors and high-frequency devices.

Luo from the Xian institute said the team’s synthesised samples “already meet industrial manufacturing standards for ultra-cutting and wear-resistant materials”.

The researchers are now striving to make larger, higher-quality samples for practical applications. To achieve this goal the team will need to optimise the synthesis conditions and explore nanocrystal engineering, among other things, he said.

Fellow author Mao Ho-kwang, from the research centre, said that the material was expected to pioneer new pathways for developing ultra-hard materials and advanced electronic devices.

“Very excitingly, this is just the beginning. The hexagonal diamond … has been predicted with many extremely favourable mechanical, electrical, thermal and optical properties comparable and complementary to [cubic] diamonds.”

Did Chinese authorities take a page from the Covid-19 playbook for chikungunya?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3321276/did-chinese-authorities-take-page-covid-19-playbook-chikungunya?utm_source=rss_feed

When a drone’s camera picked up water buckets and potted plants on the balcony of a four-storey village house in Foshan – the city in Guangdong province at the centre of southern China’s chikungunya outbreak – local authorities acted quickly.

An official visited the house but was denied entry, prompting the village’s Communist Party secretary to lead a task force to the building, knocking and shouting at the front door until the residents finally came downstairs.

According to an article on the Nanhai district government’s official WeChat account on July 26, the team explained the hazards of breeding mosquitoes, the potential consequences of the disease, as well as the laws and regulations on pandemic prevention.

On the top floor of the residence, the task force found “a dozen buckets containing muddy, stagnant water and, upon closer inspection, swarms of wriggling mosquito larvae”, the article said.

In the battle against the mosquito-borne viral disease, Chinese authorities have turned to a familiar playbook, with some measures – such as quarantine, disinfection of neighbourhoods and real-name registration for fever medicine – recalling the response to Covid-19.

Some of the more intrusive measures have sparked concerns and complaints – such as a Beijing News report about a child with a fever whose parents refused to let community workers take a blood sample on August 3.

The following day, police and local staff returned to the house, in the west Guangdong city of Zhanjiang, where they found the child alone and drew some blood, according to the report.

The chikungunya outbreak began with an imported case that was detected in Foshan on July 8. Within a month, more than 7,000 cases had been reported in China, mostly in Guangdong.

Those affected have been quarantined in hospital wards, with screens on windows and doors to keep mosquitoes out.

Last week, Foshan upgraded its public health emergency response to level 3 – the second lowest in a four-tier system – while a neighbouring city issued a travel advisory, urging people returning from disease-hit areas to monitor themselves for two weeks.

Grass-roots cadres in the province have been working overtime, spraying parks and pavements with insecticide and checking door-to-door for stagnant water. Residents who do not comply face fines or even criminal charges under public health regulations.

Electricity supply was cut to at least five houses to force residents to cooperate, according to a government notice. In Foshan’s Chancheng district, warnings were issued to hotels and housing compounds after inspectors found larvae in flower vases and swimming pools.

On Thursday, Foshan also launched a patriotic health campaign – a concept from the Mao Zedong era – asking companies, factories and residential compounds to thoroughly clean garages, bushes, ditches and balconies, removing water and rubbish.

The measures brought back painful memories, with some people complaining on social media that their rented rooms had been forcibly entered by landlords and community workers, much like during the zero-Covid period. None responded to the South China Morning Post’s interview requests.

The outbreak and corresponding response were much lighter than during zero-Covid, when homes were sealed, some babies were taken to group quarantine, and even a few pets were killed to stop the spread.

While chikungunya can be serious for the elderly and newborns, most people recover from the disease within a week and are likely to experience months of joint pain as a side effect.

A Foshan resident surnamed Zeng told the Post that community workers visited once to check for stagnant water and register how many people lived in the flat, and they had not returned.

According to Zeng, volunteers have been spraying insecticide and placing mosquito repellents in lifts. When he took his child to hospital recently with a fever, he was asked to sign a document saying he would be responsible for any public health consequences, as a formality, he said.

“It wasn’t as strict as Covid times. Most of the measures were auxiliary, there aren’t any stringent control or quarantine requirements on the general public,” Zeng said, adding that he was receiving several cautionary text messages from the local governments each day at most.

An infectious diseases expert in Guangdong said that some of the measures taken by authorities were justified by the unique circumstances of the disease, including that there were no chikungunya vaccines available in China.

“We need to contain the source of infection and cut transmission routes to protect those vulnerable and identify cases. These measures would effectively contain the disease.” According to the expert, who requested anonymity, the official data indicated a decline in the number of new cases.

The Guangdong Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a downward trend in new cases as of last Saturday, with Shunde district – the core affected area – showing consecutive daily declines.

However, prevention efforts continued to face “complex and severe challenges” because of rainfall and international travel, the CDC said.

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said a mobilisational, elimination-centred approach had its downsides.

“It’s disproportionate to a vector-borne disease with very low mortality. It may create public resistance and may not be sustainable in the long term,” he said, adding that a more targeted and less coercive approach would prove equally effective.

Measures taken by other countries have included targeted vector control, community education, voluntary compliance and sustainable environmental management rather than mass mobilisation, according to Huang.

He added that the World Health Organization and the US CDC emphasised prevention through repellents, protective clothing and the elimination of mosquito breeding sites.

China judge tells estranged couple how to split 29 chickens – ‘Eat odd one out before divorce’

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3321053/china-judge-tells-estranged-couple-how-split-29-chickens-eat-odd-one-out-divorce?utm_source=rss_feed

An estranged couple from southwestern China became embroiled in a dispute over 29 chickens during their divorce proceedings.

After telling them to split the batch of birds evenly, a judge advised them to eat the extra one as a “farewell meal” before finalising their divorce.

The idea was not only practical but also reflected traditional Chinese wisdom, which is deeply rooted in Confucian thought and values harmony among people, society and nature.

Instead of relying on strict legal rules, the shared meal embodied the Confucian concept of li, which refers to ritual propriety that fosters respect and balance even in times of separation.

According to the mainland media outlet Jimu News, a woman surnamed Tu from a village in Sichuan province and her husband Yang recently applied for divorce.

Their main income came from livestock farming, with Yang occasionally taking on odd jobs.

Apart from their self-built homes, they had no major assets. Since they came from different villages, local regulations allowed them to decide the ownership of their homes.

As a result, the focus of their asset division shifted to their poultry.

The presiding judge, Chen Qian, said that the couple raised 53 birds, including 29 chickens, 22 geese and 2 ducks.

While the geese and ducks could be divided equally, the chickens became a point of contention.

The couple consulted their parents but found no resolution, and their children refused to get involved.

Tu told the court that she had raised the chickens herself and was emotionally attached to them, so she deserved one more.

Yang disagreed, claiming he had also put significant time and effort into caring for the animals.

Judge Chen then offered two mediation options: either they eat the extra chicken together or the one who keeps it should compensate the other.

In the end, the pair agreed to cook the chicken and eat it together before divorcing. Afterwards, Yang took Tu home on an electric bike.

Both decided to remain financially independent but still support each other, maintaining a basic friendship.

They reportedly treated the chicken as a “farewell meal”, though the specific details were not revealed.

Judge Chen said that when dividing poultry assets, factors like feeding costs and growth cycles must be considered, making it more complex than simply counting the animals.

“Eating the chicken together complies with legal regulations and respects rural customs,” she said.

Their story has amused mainland social media.

One netizen said: “The judge offered a fair solution, but the chicken is the real victim.”

“Maybe after sharing a chicken soup, the couple reconciled and decided not to divorce,” quipped another.

China’s divorce rate has been rising; more than 3.6 million couples registered for divorce in 2023, a significant increase from 2022.

Under Chinese law, property acquired during marriage is considered a joint asset, with both parties entitled to equal division.

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As AI chatbots gain popularity in China, so does the business of inserting ads into results

https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3321194/ai-chatbots-gain-popularity-china-so-does-business-inserting-ads-results?utm_source=rss_feed

As ChatGPT-like chatbots gain traction, generative engine optimisation (GEO) has emerged as an increasingly significant approach for brands seeking visibility in answers generated by artificial intelligence.

Unlike traditional search engine optimisation (SEO) that is meant to improve rankings in results, GEO aims to ensure content is cited, summarised or recommended by AI models, which generate “answers with a word limit”, said Yuan Yong, branding director of Big Fish Marketing in Shenzhen.

Yuan, who has been working with SEO since 2014, only ventured into GEO this year after Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek burst onto the scene, prompting many local companies to rethink their strategies.

Optimising AI-generated content involves improving the information provided on a company’s website, thereby increasing its exposure to news outlets, online portals and Wikipedia-like platforms, Yuan said.

Yuan cited the example of online education platform Nuoyun, which received a recommendation from DeepSeek as one of the best such resources in China after the Big Fish team “polished” the content on its website, as well as posting 40 articles on other websites.

But that does not mean the new-found visibility stayed permanent, as continued attention would be required to fine-tune the content.

Big Fish offers its clients three standard packages costing from 3,800 yuan (US$530) to 29,800 yuan, depending on the number of prompts and length of time needed. The most expensive package guarantees that at least 12 prompts out of 20 in a month would deliver results. Otherwise, Big Fish would refund 1,000 yuan for each failed prompt.

When it comes to how long a company’s information can stay in answers provided by GEO, “it depends on your competitors”, Yuan said.

For example, if the product targets individuals, like lipstick, there will be advertisements from other brands feeding the internet every few days, so it is harder to stand out. But for a specialised product, like medical equipment, it may be able to continue being cited by AI chatbots for a few months, Yuan said.

The GEO industry itself is also competitive. Yuan said that players need to keep updating “every day, or even every few hours”, to boost visibility when users search for GEO services.

AI chatbot developers have started to monetise their services through advertising. In November, US-based Perplexity AI said it had started to experiment with ads that would be displayed as sponsored follow-up questions. The company added, however, that answers would “not be influenced by advertisers”.

Major Chinese AI companies have yet to announce any similar plans. Tencent Holdings’ chief strategy officer James Mitchell said in a November earnings call that it was focused on making its Yuanbao chatbot “as appealing and attractive to users as it can be”, and that it was “not focused on premature monetisation” for now.

That means some AI platforms may resist showing marketing content in answers.

“If your content contains words such as ‘cheapest’ or ‘absolutely effective,’ or if it includes mobile phone numbers or WeChat accounts, AI may simply ignore your content,” Lu Songsong, a marketing specialist who runs Beijing Songsong Brother Technology, said in a post on WeChat earlier this month.

For now, GEO is still a nascent industry. Yuan said his company relied on traditional SEO for revenue, as income from GEO is “only a fraction” of the total.

Lu said GEO was an “avant-garde” concept in China where deep-pocketed companies could test the waters, but there “would not be much of a splash”.

“If AI search becomes mainstream, for example, with a market share of more than 30 per cent, GEO will definitely become a necessity”, he said.

Globally, AI search remains limited in use. In 2024, Google handled 14 billion searches per day, more than 373 times as many as ChatGPT, but the OpenAI tool was growing faster, according to a March report by SparkToro and Datos.

For university that bridges China and West, geopolitics is ‘biggest challenge’

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3321213/university-bridges-china-and-west-geopolitics-biggest-challenge?utm_source=rss_feed

Geopolitics is stifling academic freedom and scientific research, but a university head in eastern China believes there is a way to ease the situation on campuses – by letting more foreign students in.

Xi Youmin, president of Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, said easing visa restrictions for foreign students and visitors could help improve understanding of China.

“The world is in a state of division defined by wars, geopolitics and the US tariff war,” Xi said in an interview.

“Such uncertainty leaves people feeling confused and lost.”

He said the closure of some joint venture universities in China and investigations in the United States into scientists of Chinese descent was “a shock to the global scientific community because people used to believe that science and knowledge transcend national borders”.

“Geopolitics is now restructuring the world order. The conflict has already permeated universities and the scientific realm,” Xi said.

“Under the US government’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, including threats of funding cuts, universities are making concessions under political pressure – a trend that is quite abnormal,” he said.

XJTLU is a Chinese-British joint venture set up by Xian Jiaotong University and the University of Liverpool in 2006. It has come under scrutiny over collaborations with Chinese and Russian entities that have been sanctioned by the West – links highlighted in a report by an Australian think tank in June.

In the report, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute pointed to XJTLU’s research partnership with the National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi, a joint lab with iFlytek, and the School of Chips it founded with the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology. Both iFlytek and the Shanghai institute are on the US entity list.

The report also highlighted the XJTLU’s new Centre for China-Russia Humanitarian Cooperation and Development, saying its co-director was a member of a Russian state agency that was sanctioned by the European Union.

It said XJTLU had also invited an adviser to the Moscow regional government, who had been sanctioned by Britain, to its opening ceremony.

“The previously unreported links to sanctions highlight the risks posed by foreign science, technology and academic partnerships in China in a period of heightened geopolitical rivalry, intensifying technological competition and deepening China-Russia cooperation,” the report said.

“Much of the activity outlined in this ASPI research appears to be at odds with the British government’s own defence, foreign policy and national security positions and policies spanning its relationships with the US and EU and strong support for Ukraine.”

Responding to the ASPI report, Xi said that as a Chinese university operating in China, XJTLU “abides by Chinese law and is not restricted by the American entity list”.

“Because XJTLU confers British degrees from the University of Liverpool, research projects involving collaborators on the UK sanctions list could be impacted and scrutinised by the British government,” he added.

Xi said such restrictions on academic and scientific collaborations were “unreasonable for the scientific community”.

He said “geopolitics has distorted people’s views on science and universities” and it would take one to two decades to resolve as the global order shifted.

“The impact on international universities could be that academia and universities are no longer free,” he said. “Politics is closely tied to the world order, and this poses our biggest challenge.”

He said this would have an impact on XJTLU’s researchers collaborating with their peers from the University of Liverpool and other institutions worldwide, as well as the admission of international students.

According to Xi, the university has fewer students from the US and Europe than it did before the pandemic. But those from other countries have helped XJTLU to double its international enrolment from last year to around 1,100 students.

XJTLU was one of the earliest and largest foreign joint venture universities approved by China’s education ministry. These universities are now feeling the chill as US institutions withdraw from partnerships in China.

Georgia Tech discontinued its Shenzhen institute in September, followed by the University of Michigan ending its Shanghai Jiao Tong partnership in January and the University of California, Berkeley relinquishing ownership in the Tsinghua Berkeley Shenzhen Institute a month later.

But as American universities scale back, Xi said he expected British institutions to continue their partnerships – albeit with more scrutiny.

“International students benefit the British economy in a more significant way than in the US. Despite the political pressures, it is difficult for them to turn away all Chinese students,” he said.

“Britain is likely to expand its due diligence on international education, with government officials assessing how international collaborations, especially with China, may impact national security,” he said.

“Although the scrutiny might not be as stringent as in the US, it does introduce additional considerations for research collaborations.”

Britain is the second most popular global destination for international students after the US, with over 730,000 enrolled there in the 2023 academic year. Overseas students – around 13 per cent of whom are from China – make up nearly a quarter of the total student population in British higher education, according to data from the British House of Commons.

International students brought in £37 billion (US$49.2 billion) of net economic benefits to the country in 2021, the parliament’s research briefing released in June said, citing an estimate from an economic consultancy.

As for the US, there was a record high of 1.1 million international students in the country in the 2023 academic year. That represented 5.9 per cent of the total higher education population in the United States. Of those international students, a quarter were from China, according to the 2024 annual Open Doors report sponsored by the US State Department.

Uncertainties brought by President Donald Trump’s threats to defund leading American universities and revoke the visas of international students might lead them to rethink where they should pursue their studies.

Meanwhile, China has become the third largest host in the world of international students. The number stood at 500,000 in 2023, according to a paper that year on international students in China by researchers from Tsinghua University’s Institute of Education.

“Our recent study explored the decision-making of international students who chose to study in China [and] found that economic motivation, including the low living cost and better career prospects – due to economic exchange and cooperation between China and their home countries – was an important pulling force of international student mobility to China,” they wrote.

“The academic quality reputation of China’s research universities also serves as a driving force for attracting international students, especially those from East and Southeast Asia,” they continued.

“However, China’s contemporary culture does not function as a pulling force due to the difficulty of explaining it to a foreign culture.”

Xi said the university aimed to expand its education and research network globally, recruiting and collaborating with students and researchers from Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

“The common perception for us as a young university is that we cannot compete globally. However, in this chaotic world, we can leverage our late-mover advantage, free from the burden of history,” he said.

“As an international university, we showcase Chinese culture while also representing educational directions for future global developments.

“This sets us apart from those opposed to global integration. Despite current complexities and uncertainties, we strive to develop solutions for future education to impact China and beyond.”

He said that for China to continue its rise in the coming decade it should welcome people interested in learning about the country to experience it first-hand.

“True cultural confidence means allowing the world to understand the essence of our culture and the living standards of our people. The Chinese government should consider further relaxing visa restrictions [to foster cultural exchanges],” Xi said.

“It should also address internal social and economic issues with smart and rational solutions to steadily develop and reach new heights as the global order reshapes.”

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