Beijing Restricts Exports to 40 Japanese Defence Firms Amid Remilitarisation and Nuclear Ambitions
Two announcements by China’s Ministry of Commerce on 24 February banned the sale of dual-use items to 20 Japanese firms – including subsidiaries of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, IHI, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries involved in weapons production. Another 20 entities were placed under stricter licensing review. The measures mark the first large-scale deployment of entity-list controls against Japan, as bilateral tensions escalate following Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae’s assertion that a Taiwan contingency could trigger collective self-defence.
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German Chancellor Visits Beijing, Sixth NATO Leader in Three Months After US Threats Against Allies
Accompanied by executives from Volkswagen, BMW, Siemens, and Mercedes-Benz, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited Beijing, meeting President Xi Jinping, securing commitments for up to 120 Airbus aircraft and agreements on climate and food security cooperation. The visit follows a three-month wave of engagement by six NATO countries (Ireland, Finland, the UK, France, and Canada) as US allies seek stable partnerships amid Washington’s unilateral tariffs and territorial annexation threats. The trip highlights China’s growing economic and strategic importance, with 2025 figures confirming it as Germany’s largest trading partner.
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Xinhua Institute Launches Report at UN Geneva Outlining Global Governance Initiative Backed by over 100 Countries
Presented at the Palais des Nations on 24 February, the report articulates five core principles – sovereign equality, international rule of law, multilateralism, people-centred development, and action-oriented cooperation – underpinning the initiative that has drawn support from over 100 countries and international organisations since its proposal at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation expanded meeting in September 2025, while calling for reform of international institutions to better reflect the interests of the Global South.
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Hong Kong Allocates over HK $30 Billion for AI Ecosystem Spanning Schools, Workforce and Research Infrastructure
Financial Secretary Paul Chan’s 2026-27 fiscal plan – delivered amid the city’s first consolidated surplus in four years (HK $2.9 billion / US $370 million, reversing a forecast HK $67 billion / US $8.58 billion deficit) – earmarks HK $50 (US $6.4 million) million for public AI courses, seminars and competitions while channelling at least HK $30 billion (US $3.84 billion) into technology infrastructure across three Northern Metropolis innovation parks, as a new Committee on AI+ and Industry Development Strategy, chaired by Chan, coordinates industrial policy in sectors from embodied AI to life sciences.
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Central SOE R&D Spending Tops 1 Trillion Yuan for Fourth Straight Year as IMF Demands Industrial Policy Cuts
Days after the IMF’s 2025 Article IV consultation called on Beijing to halve what it termed excessive industrial subsidies, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission reported that centrally administered enterprises sustained annual research and development outlays above 1 trillion yuan (US $143 billion) for a fourth consecutive year, reaching 1.1 trillion yuan (US $158.5 billion) – figures that China’s IMF executive director cited to dismiss the fund’s cost estimates as ‘significantly overstated’, urging assessment free from double standards.
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Longest-Ever Spring Festival Holiday Draws Record 596 Million Domestic Trips and US $116 Billion in Tourism Revenue
Backed by 62.5 billion yuan (US $8.93 billion) in special treasury bonds for trade-in subsidies and 2.05 billion yuan (US $293 million) in local consumption vouchers, the nine-day Lunar New Year break generated 803.5 billion yuan (approximately US $116 billion) in tourism spending – a 126-billion-yuan (US $18 billion) year-on-year increase – while key retail and catering enterprises reported 8.6% average daily sales growth, with the trade-in programme alone leveraging nearly 200 billion yuan (US $28.6 billion) in purchases benefiting 28 million consumers.
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From Seventeen Greenhouses in 1989 to 157,000 Today: Shouguang Leads China’s Agricultural Modernisation
Now supplying 17,000 kg of vegetables per minute, the Shandong county-level city has achieved over 85% smart equipment adoption and IoT coverage in new greenhouses – boosting labour productivity by 30–50% and per-mu annual income from 10,000 to 80,000 yuan (US $1,430 to US $11,430) – while its enterprises build a Dh120 million (US $32.7 million) joint smart farming hub with the UAE’s Silal.
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Humanoid Robots Steal the Show at Spring Festival Gala as Post-Broadcast Orders Surge 150% on JD.com
Over 200 machines from four companies performed world-first parkour, aerial flips exceeding three metres, and high-speed swarm coordination before a prime-time audience on Lunar New Year’s Eve – a dramatic leap from the basic folk-dance routine staged twelve months earlier – with post-broadcast orders on JD.com surging 150% and Chinese firms now commanding more than 85% of global humanoid robot installations, backed by a near-vertically integrated supply chain from rare earths to batteries.
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Five AI Labs Release Next-Generation Open-Source Models in Record Simultaneous Spring Festival Wave
Led by Zhipu AI’s 745-billion-parameter GLM-5 – the first frontier large language model trained entirely on Huawei Ascend chips, proving the viability of a fully indigenous computing stack – the coordinated releases from five major laboratories including Alibaba and ByteDance demonstrate that Washington’s semiconductor export controls have accelerated rather than hindered frontier AI development, with the models’ permissive open-source licences offering a cost-effective alternative to closed US systems and reshaping the global AI landscape.
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Fifteen Medals Including Five Golds at Milano-Cortina Deliver Best-Ever Overseas Winter Olympics for Chinese Athletesection
China’s 126-strong delegation claimed five golds, four silvers, and six bronzes across seven disciplines at Milano-Cortina 2026, their best-ever overseas Winter Games result; freestyle skier Gu Ailing defended her halfpipe title – scoring 94.75 to claim a sixth Olympic medal and become the most decorated freeskier in Games history – while speed skater Ning Zhongyan shattered the Olympic 1500-metre record with 1:41.98 and Su Yiming added slopestyle gold to the tally.
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From Northern Niche to National Pastime: 313 Million People Take up Winter Sports as Indoor Ski Resorts Reach Southern China
What was once a pursuit confined to China’s frozen northeast has become a nationwide pastime embraced by 313 million people since Beijing 2022, with 79 indoor ski resorts – 55 of them in southern provinces where natural snowfall is rare – bringing the sport to subtropical cities from Guangdong to Sichuan; in Hebei’s Chongli, once a poverty-stricken district, roughly a quarter of the population now earns a living from winter sports and tourism.
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