China successfully tests nuclear-capable submarine-launched ballistic missile
China’s Ministry of National Defense announced on 7 July that the People’s Liberation Army Navy had successfully launched a missile from a strategic nuclear submarine into the Pacific Ocean as part of its annual training program. The test, conducted with a dummy warhead, was designed to assess the reliability of the country’s strategic weapons systems and the combat readiness of its strategic forces. According to the ministry, the launch achieved its expected objectives. The announcement came as China and Russia began the Joint Sea-2026 naval exercise near Qingdao, followed by joint maritime patrols in the western Pacific as part of their annual military cooperation plan.
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China Urges US to Lift Sanctions on Venezuela to Support Post-Earthquake Reconstruction
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning called on the United States on 7 July to lift illegal sanctions on Venezuela, saying the restrictions are hampering humanitarian assistance and post-earthquake reconstruction. More than 3,800 people have died and over 17,900 have been left homeless. Mao reaffirmed China’s opposition to unilateral sanctions, echoed Acting President Delcy Rodríguez’s call to release Venezuela’s frozen assets, announced the arrival of the first Chinese shipment of more than 80 tonnes of emergency supplies, highlighted Beijing’s 100 million yuan (US $14 million) humanitarian assistance package, and said China would continue supporting the country’s reconstruction efforts.
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At UN Security Council, Beijing Urges Ceasefire and Dialogue as US-Iran Strikes Threaten Truce
Warning that the Middle East ‘cannot once again become an arena for big-power rivalry,’ Fu Cong, China’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, used an emergency Security Council session on 2 July 2026 to press Washington and Tehran to honour their memorandum of understanding and reopen the Strait of Hormuz – which carries as much as 20% of the world’s seaborne oil and gas – while affirming that dialogue and negotiation remain ‘the only viable way’ to resolve disputes.
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CPC Commends 149 Outstanding Members and 399 Grassroots Party Bodies on 105th Anniversary
On 1 July, the Party leadership singled out outstanding individuals and advanced collectives from every front, conferring the National Outstanding Party Member title on 141 living comrades and 8 posthumously, alongside 150 outstanding Party affairs workers and 399 advanced primary-level organisations, and calling on the CPC’s 101.29 million members to emulate their loyalty and service in advancing Chinese modernisation.
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Forex Reserves Dip to US $3.42 Trillion as Central Bank Extends Gold Streak to 20th Month
A stronger US dollar trimmed the valuation of non-dollar holdings (a translation effect rather than capital flight), pulling China’s foreign exchange reserves down US $26 billion to $3.42 trillion in June, though the world’s largest stockpile held above the $3.4 trillion sufficiency level for a third month as the central bank extended its gold-buying streak to a 20th consecutive month, its largest purchase of the current cycle, adding 480,000 ounces to reach 75.44 million.
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China’s First Outbound Investment Regulation Takes Effect, Adding Security Review to Opening-Up
Issued through a State Council decree signed by Premier Li Qiang, the 34-article framework brings promotion, services, safeguards and management under a single architecture, subjecting deals that bear on national security to formal review while pledging alignment with high-standard international economic and trade rules and high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, as outbound direct investment reached 506.95 billion yuan (US $73.36 billion), up 3 percent year on year in the first five months of 2026.
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China mobilizes hundreds of millions of yuan in disaster relief after floods, tornadoes and landslide leave at least 71 dead
China has expanded emergency response after extreme weather disasters across several regions. Floods caused by Tropical Storm Maysak, which led to reservoir breaches in Guangxi, killed 39 people, left nine missing and forced around 130,000 evacuations. Tornadoes in Hubei killed 11 people, while a landslide in Gansu left 21 forestry workers dead. Authorities raised Guangxi’s flood response level, deployed more than 4,000 troops and 9,500 rescue workers with boats and drones, and allocated hundreds of millions of yuan in emergency funds, including 260 million yuan (approximately US $38 million) for flood and typhoon relief.
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China’s World-First Standard Bars EV Battery Fire and Explosion After Thermal Runaway
Issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and in force since 1 July 2026, GB 38031-2025 replaces a 2020 version that only guaranteed occupants a five-minute escape warning, now obliging battery packs to neither ignite nor explode even after a cell enters thermal runaway and to pass an external short-circuit test after 300 fast-charge cycles, raising the safety floor in a market where new energy vehicles already make up more than half of new car sales.
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Memristor Chip Reconstructs Human Brain Cortex in 2.12 Milliseconds for Medical Diagnosis
Published in the journal Science by a Peking University and Chinese Academy of Sciences team, the world’s first neural dynamical system built on phase-change memristors performs computation inside memory to reconstruct the cerebral cortex up to 478 times faster than an NVIDIA A100 GPU on that specific task, opening the way to real-time brain ‘digital twins’ for surgical navigation, Alzheimer’s screening and brain-computer interfaces.
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China Marks 89th Anniversary of Anti-Japanese Resistance War’s Outbreak at Lugou Bridge
Flowers, bowed tributes and a tolling peace bell across Beijing, Nanjing and Shenyang on 7 July 2026 commemorated the 1937 July 7th Incident, when Japanese troops attacked Chinese forces at the Lugou (Marco Polo) Bridge outside Beijing, escalating aggression into a full-scale invasion whose atrocities included the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731’s germ-warfare human experiments and the coercion of some 200,000 ‘comfort women’; the 14-year war inflicted 35 million military and civilian casualties before Japan’s 1945 surrender.
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