Ministers Cast SCO, Spanning 40% of World Population, as a Pillar of Multipolar Order
Convened in Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan, on 24 July, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s foreign ministers approved the draft declaration marking the bloc’s 25th anniversary ahead of the 1 September Heads of State Summit in Bishkek. Representing around 40% of the world’s population and nearly a quarter of global GDP, the SCO reaffirmed its commitment to strengthening regional security, economic cooperation and a multipolar international order. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also held bilateral meetings with counterparts from Russia, India, Iran, Pakistan, Belarus and Uzbekistan.
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Xi Backs Brazil against External Interference as US Tariffs Reach 37.5% before October Election
In a phone call initiated by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on 27 July, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged deeper bilateral and multilateral strategic coordination and reaffirmed China’s support for Brazilian sovereignty, independence and opposition to external interference. The conversation came days after the United States raised tariffs on Brazilian exports to 37.5% and imposed sanctions on Brazilian officials ahead of the country’s October presidential election. Both leaders also advanced Mercosur talks and cooperation in artificial intelligence, satellites, critical minerals and fertilizers.
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Draft Cyberbullying Law Would Outlaw Knowingly Supplying Hosting, Traffic, Ads and Phone Cards
The Cyberspace Administration of China opened a 60-article text to public comment on 29 July, running until 28 August, whose reach extends past abusers and platforms to anyone knowingly providing internet access, server hosting, data storage or communications transmission, or traffic, funding, advertising and payment services; the same clause bars selling personal information and selling, renting or lending phone cards, internet of things cards and online accounts.
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New Relic Data Rules Open State Museum Archives to Scholars, Animators and Game Studios
The National Cultural Heritage Administration told a Beijing press conference on 28 July that measures taking effect in November will build a comprehensive management system covering the entire life cycle of relic data – collection, processing, storage, transmission, registration and services – around a traceable registration mechanism, benefiting scholars conducting academic research and nonprofit activities while meeting demand from industries such as cultural product development, animation, video games and advertising.
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African Exports to China Jump 23.5% in First Two Months of Continent-Wide Zero-Tariff Regime
Two-way commerce reached a first-half record of 1.41 trillion yuan (US $208 billion), Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a briefing on 27 July, with capital and intermediate goods comprising 75 percent of Chinese shipments to the continent; dried chillies, coffee beans, cashews and wild aquatic products have since won unified regional market access, the narrow band of goods where duty-free entry was genuinely new.
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Commerce Ministry Paper Rejects ‘Overcapacity’ Charge, Noting No WTO Rule Defines It
Released on 28 July as European and US trade-defence measures tightened, the four-chapter document severs the asserted links between industrial subsidies, trade surpluses and excess capacity, and argues capacity must be judged against each economy’s development stage; Brookings concedes the core point, calling the term neither established in economics nor defined by the World Trade Organization, though it still treats 80% utilisation as normal.
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Breeders Win Legal Share of Derived-Variety Profits as Seed IP System Covers 10 Crops
Developing a wholly new crop variety takes eight to 10 years and heavy investment, so the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs on 27 July required anyone commercialising a lightly modified version to obtain the original breeder’s authorisation and share proceeds, covering 38,600 plant variety rights applications filed by end-2025 across rice, wheat, cotton and seven other crops.
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Mangrove Area Reaches 31,700 Hectares, Making China One of the Few Countries with Rising Coverage
Closing its first dedicated five-year policy cycle on 26 July, the Ministry of Natural Resources reported 11,600 hectares of newly planted forest against a 9,050-hectare target, with over 90 percent of stands now inside the ecological protection red line; coastal cities are simultaneously piloting carbon credit auctions and judicial credits, monetising restoration whose benefit-cost ratios of 15.5 to 47.0 outstrip every other coastal habitat.
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Hefei’s Public Capital Books over US $148 Billion Paper Gain on CXMT after Decade-Long Bet
Underwriting 80 percent of an 18 billion yuan (US $2.67 billion) first-phase memory project in 2016 and holding through a decade of industry downcycles, the eastern city’s state investment platforms saw ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) close its Shanghai debut at 49 yuan against an 8.66 yuan issue price, turning a 33.1 percent stake into a book floating profit exceeding 1 trillion yuan (over US $148 billion) that remains unrealised.
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Kakeya and Hilbert Problems Fall as Chinese Citizens Take Fields Medal for the First Time
Classmates in Peking University’s 2007 undergraduate cohort, Deng Yu and Wang Hong dispersed to MIT and France before closing questions left open since 1900 and 1917; neither works in China today – Deng is at the University of Chicago and Wang at New York University and France’s Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques – yet the two make China the fifth country, and the first in Asia, to take two medals at one ceremony.
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Wenwu-01 Moves Relic Enforcement from Quarterly Checks to a Dedicated Half-Metre Orbital Watch
Manual patrols, local reporting and drone-based spot checks had left China’s more than 760,000 immovable cultural relics with limited coverage and lagging data updates, while the National Cultural Heritage Administration monitored world heritage and key national-level sites only once a quarter from 2024; the purpose-built craft, whose first images were released on 28 July, instead tracks the external environment around sites, flagging boundary changes and abnormal construction.
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Robots, AI Glasses and Old Books Recast National Book Fair, with US $173.71 Million Traded
Closing on 27 July after four days in Hangzhou, the 34th edition drew around 560,000 visitors and over 1,000 exhibitors to a format rebuilt around heritage woodblock printing, AI design, robot displays, livestream sub-venues and a state-backed secondhand-book zone, with total transactions of 1.18 billion yuan (US $173.71 million) registered in the first year that China’s national reading-promotion regulation has been in force.
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