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A medical team from Zibo No. 148 Hospital spent eight days and over a thousand kilometres delivering frontline care to coastal garrisons in Bohai Bay, treating more than a thousand servicemen and women. The outreach combined mobile physiotherapy, traditional medicine and institutional cooperation with local veterans’ authorities, reflecting China’s emphasis on troop welfare and civil‑military medical integration.

A Tibet Military District unit has piloted a “one soldier, one household” tutoring programme in a Lhoba village that pairs well‑educated soldiers with schoolchildren for weekend home visits, homework help and civic activities. The initiative has improved academic outcomes, deepened civil‑military ties and been institutionalised as part of a broader national‑defence education push in a strategic border region.

Chinese media published footage of the Z-20T helicopter conducting live‑fire exercises, highlighting improvements in the PLA’s armed rotorcraft capabilities. The demonstration underscores Beijing’s progress in weapons integration and tactical aviation, with implications for regional rapid‑reaction and littoral operations.

The European Space Agency reports that solar flares can be triggered by a cascade of tiny, rapid magnetic disturbances that amplify into a "magnetic avalanche." This emergent mechanism reframes flare onset as a scale-crossing process and could improve space-weather forecasting if validated and incorporated into monitoring systems.

Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest estimates Tesla could undercut autonomous rivals on cost by at least 50%, relying on vertical integration and high fleet utilisation. The claim highlights Tesla’s disruptive potential in Robotaxi economics but runs into technical, regulatory and competitive headwinds that make the outcome uncertain.

Honor and Pop Mart have launched a limited‑edition Honor 500 Pro featuring the MOLLY character to coincide with MOLLY’s 20th anniversary. Priced at ¥4,499 (¥3,999 after subsidy), the phone exemplifies a broader industry shift toward pop‑culture collaborations to stimulate demand among younger consumers in a saturated smartphone market.

President Trump praised British troops on social media after his remarks in Davos suggesting some NATO partners had stayed “off the front lines” in Afghanistan drew strong criticism from allies. The selective praise, following a phone call with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, was widely interpreted as a partial withdrawal of his earlier comments rather than a full apology, leaving strain with other NATO capitals.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and COO, has long been the operational anchor behind Elon Musk’s ambitions, credited with rescuing the company during its 2008 crisis and sustaining key customer relationships. As SpaceX prepares for a high‑profile IPO, her steadiness reassures investors, even as public markets will demand clearer governance and succession structures than a founder‑centric private company has relied on to date.

Magic Atom, a young Chinese humanoid‑robot start‑up, was named an official robotics partner for China’s 2026 Spring Festival Gala, a high‑visibility sign that humanoid robotics are moving toward commercialisation. Its co‑founder warned that embodied intelligence remains a long‑cycle, capital‑intensive field: hardware costs, scarce effective real‑world data, and the difficulty of passing training costs to customers are the industry’s core challenges.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s modest Shanghai market visit underscored the company’s ongoing commercial commitment to China even as export controls and rapid domestic innovation reshape the competitive landscape. Chinese advances in open‑source models, homegrown accelerators and emerging photonic computing are narrowing reliance on foreign GPUs and creating a more diversified global AI infrastructure.

Beijing has surpassed 1.3 million new-energy vehicles and says over 80% of its car fleet are either NEVs or meet the National V emissions standard. The city is accelerating scrappage of older diesel trucks and buses, electrifying municipal fleets and expanding charging infrastructure, shifting both air-quality outcomes and market demand for EV makers and charging operators.

Wang Xiaochuan has repositioned Baichuan Intelligence from a broad generalist-AI play to an all-in bet on medical AI, promising patient-facing decision support and an IPO push in 2027. The company faces steep hurdles: fierce competition from better-resourced incumbents, the high cost and time of clinical validation, regulatory and privacy burdens, and uncertain consumer willingness to pay.

Beijing’s 2025 GDP reached Rmb5.21 trillion (about USD740 billion), making it the second Chinese city after Shanghai to cross the Rmb5 trillion threshold. The milestone reflects a service‑and‑innovation‑led growth model achieved under a policy of “reduced‑scale development,” positioning Beijing as a global economic actor comparable to many medium‑sized countries while presenting new strategic tradeoffs in openness, livability and high‑level transformation.

China’s GDP surpassed RMB140 trillion, reflecting broad‑based growth across agriculture, industry and especially services, with consumption playing a leading role. Washington has reacted with layered export controls and investment restrictions aimed at constraining technology transfer and capital flows, prompting Beijing to double down on domestic resilience and indigenous capabilities.

Japan’s prime minister warned of decisive action after the yen reversed sharply, a move traders linked to a New York Fed inquiry that many read as a precursor to coordinated U.S.–Japan intervention. While coordination could calm markets in the short term, analysts say it would not resolve the deeper fiscal and bond market imbalances that are driving yen weakness.

An ex‑husband has sued Chen Xiaoying and STO Express seeking around 20.28 million shares (≈RMB 280m), claiming the block was part of a 2012 divorce settlement. The Yuhuan court has accepted the case but not yet tried it; STO says the litigation will not materially affect operations or control while unresolved. The dispute highlights governance risks in family‑run Chinese public companies and could set a legal precedent for post‑divorce claims over equity that became listed after corporate restructuring.

Shandong’s 2025 GDP surpassed RMB 10.3 trillion, converting to roughly $1.48 trillion and placing the province among mid-ranked national economies. The milestone reflects a combination of a comprehensive industrial base, aggressive capacity restructuring, growing innovation capabilities and regional coordination, while leaving significant environmental and structural challenges to address.

President Trump threatened 100% tariffs on Canadian goods if Ottawa strikes unspecified deals with other countries, prompting Canada’s prime minister—named in Chinese reports as "Kani"—to urge citizens to buy domestic and accelerate trade diversification. The exchange highlights mounting bilateral tensions, tangible economic vulnerabilities in energy and manufacturing supply chains, and Ottawa’s push to reduce reliance on the U.S. market.

Prediction markets now favor BlackRock’s Rick Rieder as the leading candidate to replace Jerome Powell, with traders pricing his probability around 60 percent. His Wall Street standing, openness to Fed reform and positive feedback from investors have put him ahead of other contenders, even as questions about central‑bank independence and policy direction persist.

Jensen Huang’s early-2026 visit to Shanghai and public-facing interactions underline ongoing commercial links between Nvidia and China despite geopolitical headwinds. At the same time, Beijing is accelerating support for a domestic commercial space sector — highlighted by policy measures for satellite-data use and Zhongke Yuhang’s completion of IPO counselling — while tightening data and security regulation, creating both opportunities and risks for firms operating in China.