Beijing's local government unveiled a new action plan on Wednesday for industrial innovation and development in the robot industry from 2023-2025, aiming to boost self-development across the supply chain in key technology areas. 

The plan comes as a follow-up to government efforts to take an active approach in the preparation for future industry development in areas like robots and artificial intelligence (AI), experts said.

The plan aims to ramp up the industry layout of humanoid robots and support enterprises and universities in developing key robot components. The capital also aims to support the establishment of an innovation center for humanoid robots.

Specific goals are included in the plan. By 2025, Beijing's innovation capability in the robot industry will be greatly improved and 100 types of high-tech and high value-added robot products will be cultivated, along with 100 application scenarios.

The city's robot industry is expected to generate revenue of more than 30 billion yuan by 2025.

The application scenarios for humanoid robots are wide-ranging, with potential demand in industries ranging from the services sector to municipal firefighting, Xiang Ligang, a veteran technology analyst, told the Global Times on Wednesday. "We need to proactively plan and prepare for the future in order to be in the front league of the world," Xiang noted.

Talking about the importance of developing humanoid robots and AI, Xiang said that it requires high levels of technological integration and represents the core of technological development. 

For example, the robots need to be able to move and maintain balance, and they should be able to sense and react to the surrounding environment, while demonstrating certain levels of artificial intelligence and understanding.

China has been an active player in technology development in this area, which gives the country an advantage for reaching its ambitious goals.

In January 2022, fifteen government departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission rolled out a plan for China to become a global leader in robot technology innovation by 2025. 
China's development in the related industries has been conspicuous in terms of expansion and technology advancement. For example, from 2016 to 2020, the scale of the country's robot industry grew at an average annual compound rate of about 15 percent.

Breakthroughs in key technologies and components such as precision reducers and intelligent controllers have also accelerated, and innovations and application scenarios are constantly emerging.

"We have already made significant progress domestically in terms of technological foundations. As the government takes the lead, providing funding and policy support, we can see that opportunities in the new industries - robots and AI - are about to emerge," Xiang said.

"Surely, this will require long-term investment, and it may take years to see significant results, but in order to take the lead, we must start preparing now," the expert said.

China successfully sent the Land Exploration-4 01 satellite, the world's first high-orbit synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite, into a preset orbit via a Long March-3B carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Southwest China's Sichuan Province at 1:26 am on Sunday.

The Global Times learned from the China National Space Administration (CNSA) which oversaw the organization of the launch and manages the satellite program, that the newly launched satellite is the world's first high-orbit SAR satellite that has entered the engineering implementation phase. Able to provide all-weather and all-day observation of China's territory and surrounding areas, it will further improve the country's space-based disaster monitoring system and is of great significance for comprehensively boosting the country's disaster prevention, reduction, and relief capabilities.

The Land Exploration-4 01 satellite is a remote sensing research satellite listed in the country's Medium and Long Term Development Plan for Civilian Space Infrastructure (2015-2025.)

The satellite operates in an inclined geosynchronous orbit and is equipped with a synthetic aperture radar payload with high resolution, wide coverage, multiple modes, and lightweight advantages, the CNSA revealed.

Compared with low-orbit satellites and optical satellites, the Land Exploration-4 01 satellite combines the advantages of a short revisit period and large imaging swath in high-orbit observation with the advantages of microwave observation that is not limited by weather conditions (all-weather) and not limited by lighting conditions (all-day), which can improve the accuracy and efficiency of identifying abnormal changes in weather and enhance the nation's comprehensive disaster prevention and control capabilities, the CNSA said in a press release sent to the Global Times on Sunday.

With the satellite now in orbit, it will enrich China's key regional observation methods and provide all-weather and all-day observation of China's territory and surrounding areas, meeting the needs of disaster prevention and reduction, earthquake monitoring, land and resources surveying, as well as applications in industries such as the marine, water conservancy, meteorology, agriculture, environmental protection, and forestry industries, according to the press release.

State departments led by China's Ministry of Emergency Management, including the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ministry of Water Resources and China Meteorological Administration, are key users of the satellite and they will carry out construction of ground systems and operation systems according to their specific needs.

The satellite was developed by the China Academy of Spacecraft Technology (CAST.)

This was the second disaster prevention-related satellite launched within a week by China, following the codenamed Environmental Surveyor 2F, launched by a Long March 2C rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in North China's Shanxi Province on Wednesday.

Also developed by CAST in Beijing, the satellite is tasked with using its synthetic aperture radar to obtain images and data to support disaster prevention and mitigation, ecological monitoring and emergency response efforts. Its users are the Ministry of Emergency Management and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

On Sunday, space industry observers hailed the country's innovative strength in the space domain, which they say has been increasingly creating value in civilian applications and shows that the country's space development upholds the concept of "putting people first."

During the recent heavy rainfall that impacted the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in North China as well as Northeast China's Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces, 16 satellites, including Gaofen-3 remote sensing satellites, were deployed to provide rapid imaging services to assist disaster monitoring, according to the state-owned aerospace giant China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) on Saturday.

The CASC told the Global Times on Sunday that these near real-time satellite images taken over the hardest-hit flood areas have provided scientific data services to support disaster relief work.

Three men from Southwest China’s Guizhou Province who attempted to illegally cross the border into Myanmar to engage in telecom fraud have been handed prison sentences ranging from four to six months, a local intermediate people’s court announced on Monday. 

Before the three men surnamed Wu, Huang and Yang were apprehended by police in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province when they attempted to illegally cross the border into Myanmar this February, it was discovered that the group had already crossed the border and entered Myanmar on multiple occasions.  

Wu had successfully illegally crossed the border between China and Myanmar in July of 2019, October of 2019, March of 2020 and October of 2020. He was rejected by the local crime syndicates there because he could not type and was unable to be part of the syndicate’s local telecom fraud operations. 

Huang also illegally crossed the border between China and Myanmar in January of 2019, July of 2019 before being apprehended when he attempted to cross the border in August of 2020. 

Yang illegally crossed the border in March of 2019. He illegally crossed the border again in May of 2020 but turned himself in December of 2020 upon returning to China. 

The three defendants had planned to travel to Myanmar together in February but were discovered on route in Yunnan. 

Their behaviors violated the laws and regulations governing border management and committed the crime of illegal border crossing. 

According to China’s Criminal Law, Wu was sentenced to six months in prison and was fined 7,000 yuan ($965). Huang was handed five months in detention and was fined 6,800 yuan while Yang was sentenced to four months detention and fined 6,800 yuan. 

The local judge noted in the decision that the public must remain vigilant to the pitfalls of high-paying jobs abroad and that overseas jobs should be sought through normal employment channels.

China's top anti-corruption watchdog has stepped up its anti-corruption efforts in the medical and pharmaceutical industry with the release of a public education animation on anti-corruption efforts in the industry. 

The release of the short film comes as market watchdogs in multiple places have joined in the nationwide campaign to crack down on corruption in the industry.

In the short film released by the Communist Party of China Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), pharmaceutical salespersons offer rebates to medical personnel based on the number of drugs prescribed by doctors, while some Party members and officials take advantage of their positions to illegally collect and sell prescription data and accept illegal benefits from pharmaceutical salespersons.  

The CCDI warns that such behavior will eventually face serious investigation and punishment and urges local discipline inspection and supervision organs to strengthen the daily supervision of personnel in key positions to ensure their proper conduct.

Recently, the market supervision bureaus in localities including Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Nanchang in East China's Jiangxi Province and Datong in North China's Shanxi Province have recently started to solicit tip-offs on bribery in the pharmaceutical industry.

These tips include people giving kickbacks to medical practitioners in the form of consulting fees, lecture fees, promotion fees, the illegal act of transferring benefits in the name of academic conferences and benefits in other non-monetary forms such as domestic and overseas travel.

Fighting against corruption is a comprehensive process which requires the coordination of multiple supervision and regulation departments to address both the symptoms and the root causes of the problem, a Beijing-based anti-corruption expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times on Sunday.

Together with other nine departments, the National Health Commission (NHC) has launched a one-year campaign to crack down on corruption in the healthcare sector across the country to ensure high-quality development of the medical and healthcare sector, the NHC announced on Tuesday.

Since China started the anti-corruption drive in the public health sector in mid-July, at least 184 Party chiefs or heads of hospitals had been put under investigation as of Thursday, according to media estimates.

These officials in the healthcare sector come from 24 provinces and regions with the most personnel in question from South China's Guangdong Province, Southwest China's Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, according to chinanews.com.cn.

Also, 53 among the 184 come from the third-tier (top level) hospitals.

The anonymous expert stressed that the investigation of the officials in the healthcare sector shows the Party's resolution to combat graft since high officials shoulder the core responsibility to prevent corruption as well as the Party's strict attitude toward solving this issue related to people's livelihood.

China on Tuesday released implementation guidelines as part of standards for new emerging industries, vowing to continuously improve the technical level and internationalization of new industry standards, and to provide solid technical support for accelerating the high-quality development of new industries by 2035.

The guidelines, released by four ministries including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, have been divided into three steps. 

The guidelines said that by 2025, the standard system that supports the development of emerging industries will be gradually improved, and the standards that will lead the innovation and development of future industries will be accelerated.

By 2030, the standard system that meets the high-quality development needs of new industries will continue to improve, and the standardization work system will become more complete.

By 2035, the supply of standards to meet the high-quality development needs of new industries will be more sufficient, and new industry standardization work will be fully formed.

The emerging industries include eight major fields: new generation information technology, new energy, new materials, high-end equipment, new energy vehicles, green environmental protection, civil aviation, ships and ocean engineering equipment. 

As for future industries, the plan said it will focus on the metaverse, brain-computer interface, quantum information, humanoid robots, generative artificial intelligence, bio-manufacturing, future displays, future networks and new energy storage.

To ensure sound implementation, the plan said it will take concrete measures including increasing resource input and promoting national science and technology projects.

Events in China involving US actor Will Smith's son Jaden Smith set for Friday to Sunday were delayed after the rapper was accused of making racist comments about China. Refunds for the events are currently being carried out.

A post on Chinese lifestyle app Xiaohongshu has taken over Chinese social media. The post claims that a Chinese netizen was traveling on a high-speed train from Kyoto to Tokyo in Japan on August 19, and happened to be in the same cabin with Smith and his team. 

"Someone asked Jaden his opinion on different countries including China. Jaden replied with 'F*** China.' Smith repeatedly made derogatory remarks about China," the post wrote. 

The post on Xiaohongshu said that Smith and his team were drinking, laughing, banging the tray table and making these offensive comments very loudly. The train attendants and someone who appeared to be a passenger had to talk to the crowd several times to get them to lower their voices. The lot didn't seem to care despite other people's dissatisfaction.

The witness also posted photos and a video of Smith and his team on the train. "Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture their offensive comments in the video," the post read.  

While some fans posted pictures showing themselves unfollowing Smith on social media to express their disappointment and anger toward his alleged remarks, comments flooded his Instagram page, urging him to give a further explanation or apology. The rapper didn't respond, instead comments for his recent posts were turned off. An Instagram story announcing that his events in China would be rescheduled was also posted. 

"Rescheduled dates will be announced soon," he wrote.   

The rapper was originally scheduled to perform in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen on Friday to Sunday. On Wednesday the event organizer in China announced that refunds would be issued within five to seven business days.   

On Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo, the hashtag related to Jaden Smith has reached more than 466,000 views.

Some fans noted that there was no actual proof that the rapper made any racist comments and that the original post was just a one sided story. They called for the witness to provide more concrete proof.

Searching for the witness on Xiaohongshu on Sunday, the Global Times could not find the original user.  

Some argued that if he hadn't made up his story, he would have clarified the misunderstanding. 

This post was particularly shocking to Chinese netizens, given the Smith family's historically positive ties with China. Will Smith, Jaden's father, has maintained accounts on major Chinese social platforms and has also endorsed many Chinese products in the past. His popularity among Chinese audiences is evident. Notably, he and a young Jaden's performance in the movie The Pursuit of Happynes is much beloved by Chinese fans.

Jaden himself isn't a stranger to China either. As a child actor, he worked alongside Hong Kong action movie superstar Jackie Chan in the remake of The Karate Kid. As an adult and a musician, he's visited the country multiple times. 

The question on many minds is: Why would someone, who's repeatedly visited a country for work and seemingly built connections there, risk damaging those ties with derogatory comments? And who continues to provide such figures with platforms and opportunities despite repeated controversies?

There's a broader lesson here about the importance of cultural sensitivity, especially for global celebrities. A casual comment can quickly spiral into a major incident with far-reaching implications, said a commentator. 

In an age of instant information and constant connectivity, celebrities need to be more cautious than ever. And as audiences, perhaps we ought to think more critically about the figures we choose to support.

The total number of internet users in China has reached 1.079 billion, with internet usage increasing to 76 percent, according to a new report released on Monday. Observers said China's digital infrastructure, especially generative artificial intelligence (AI), is greatly empowering the country's economic and social development.

The number of internet users as of June 2023 saw an increase of 11.09 million compared to December 2022, according to the Report on China's Internet Development by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) on Monday. Also, a total of 2.937 million 5G base stations have been constructed and put into use.

The report showed almost all Chinese internet users are video users, with the number of network video users reaching 1.044 billion, an increase of 13.8 million from December 2022. 

About 82 percent of net users are purchasing online, with the number reaching 884 million, an increase of 38.8 million from December 2022, according to the report.

Observers said the fact that internet usage in China has increased to 76 percent shows that the country's digital infrastructure has entered a phase of rapid development and is likely to continue growing at a fast pace. Some mentioned that promoting internet usage in China's rural villages could offer a new growth point. 

By organizing events such as the Village Basketball Association, counties in Southwest China's Guizhou Province are setting an example for Chinese rural areas about how to use China's mature infrastructure and social media networks to connect with the outside world, which can also generate huge economic benefits.

Mao Li, vice chairman of the China Internet Association, believes that against the backdrop of gradual recovery in the first half of the year, the digital economy has become an important engine for stable growth.

The report said that since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese internet companies such as online retailers, ride-hailing services, and online travel firms, have seized the favorable market conditions and consolidated strong development momentum.

As of June, the user base for online shopping, ride-hailing services, and online travel bookings in China increased by over 30 million people, compared to the data for December 2022. 

In the first half of the year, the national online retail sales reached 7.16 trillion yuan, up 13.1 percent year-on-year, with rural online retail sales amounting to 1.12 trillion yuan, the CNNIC report said. 

The report said that as of June, China has built and put into operation of a total of 2.937 million 5G base stations, with 676 million 5G mobile phone users. 5G applications have also been integrated into 60 major economic sectors, accelerating their expansion into key areas such as healthcare, education, and transport. 

Zhang Hui, vice dean of the School of Economics at Peking University, told the Global Times the rapid construction of digital infrastructure in the first half of 2023 helps to accelerate economic and social development.

In addition, the CNNIC report said the accumulated mobile internet traffic has reached 142.3 billion GB, up 14.6 percent year-on-year. Mobile internet applications have flourished, with a monitored total of 2.6 million active apps in the domestic market, further covering the daily learning, work, and lifestyle needs of internet users.

Wang Changqing, a research fellow from the CNNIC, noted that generative AI techniques have been flourishing in the first half of 2023, which has injected increased vitality into the digital industrial environment. Along with the push to develop generative AI products, China has also rushed to integrate AI with the manufacturing industry, with more than 2,500 digital and intelligent workshops and factories built across the country so far, Wang noted. 

A wandering baby Jupiter could help explain why there are no planets closer to the sun than Mercury and why the innermost planet is so tiny, a new study suggests.

Jupiter’s core might have formed close to the sun and then meandered through the rocky planet construction zone. As the infant Jupiter moved, it would have absorbed some planet-building material while kicking out the rest. This would have starved the inner planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars — of raw materials, keeping them small and preventing any other planets from forming close to the sun, say planetary scientist Sean Raymond and colleagues online March 5 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“When I first came up with it, I thought it was ridiculous,” says Raymond, of the Laboratory of Astrophysics of Bordeaux in Floirac, France. “This model is kind of crazy, but it holds up.”

Rocky planets snuggled up to their suns are common in our galaxy. Many systems discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope have multiple planets — several larger than Earth — crammed into orbits smaller than Mercury’s. Though Kepler is biased toward finding scrunched-up solar systems, researchers wonder why there is a large gap between the sun and Mercury.

Scientists suspect that the inner planets of our solar system formed 4.6 billion years ago from a belt of debris that stretched between the current orbits of Venus and Earth. Mercury and Mars were built out of material along the edges of this belt, which explains why they are relatively small. Jupiter, traditionally thought to have formed much farther out, gets the blame for creating the belt’s outer edge. What shaped the inner edge has remained difficult to explain (SN Online: 3/23/15).

Raymond and colleagues ran computer simulations to see what would happen to the inner solar system if a body with three times the mass of Earth started inside Mercury’s orbit and then migrated away from the sun. They found that if the interloper didn’t move too fast or too slow, it would sweep clean the innermost parts of the disk of gas and dust that encircled the young sun and leave just enough material to form the rocky planets.

Raymond and colleagues also discovered that young Jupiter could have corralled enough debris to form a second core — one that got nudged away from the sun as Jupiter migrated. This second core could be the seed from which Saturn grew, the researchers suggest. Jupiter’s gravity could have dragged debris to the asteroid belt, too. Raymond says that might explain the origin of iron meteorites, which some researchers argue should have formed relatively close to the sun.
Jupiter plowing through the inner solar system sounds plausible, says Sourav Chatterjee, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. “But there are several ways this can go wrong.”

Building a giant planet core inside the orbit of Mercury is not hard, he says. Pebbles and boulders in the nascent solar system probably drifted inward. They could have piled up close to the sun where solar magnetic fields created turbulence that trapped infalling material. If just a fraction of this debris stuck together, a rocky orb a few times as massive as Earth could form.

Having proto-Jupiter wander to the outer solar system, however, is asking a lot, says Chatterjee. Gravitational interactions with spiral waves in the disk that surrounded the sun can propel a newborn planet either inward or outward. But how fast, how far and in which direction the planet travels depends on properties such as disk temperature and density, which Raymond and colleagues readily acknowledge. Their simulations assume and simplify disk characteristics to see if building the solar system inside-out is even plausible.

“We’re building up a logical chain that shows [this idea] is not completely crazy,” Raymond says. “We’re not saying it happened. Just if it happened, what would it do?”

Doubt cast on quasars — Quasars are considered the brightest and most puzzling objects in the universe. They are also believed to be the most distant, some 10 billion light-years away. However, doubt was thrown on this picture of quasars by Dr. Halton C. Arp…. He reported that some quasars are not at the far reaches of the universe but are relatively close, astronomically speaking. — Science News, April 2, 1966

Update
Quasars are luminous disks of gas and dust swirling around supermassive black holes. Quasar light is redshifted, stretched toward the red part of the spectrum, which astronomers now attribute to the expansion of the universe. High redshifts imply that quasars are billions of light-years away. Light from the farthest known quasar, which pumps out as much power as 63 trillion suns, takes about 13 billion years to reach Earth. Arp was a celebrated astrophysicist at California’s Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories when he suggested that quasars are local. He remained a prominent critic of quasar distances and the Big Bang theory until his death in 2013.

Scientists have built a bacterium that contains the minimal genetic ingredients needed for free living.

This bacterium’s entire set of genetic blueprints, its genome, consists of only 473 genes, including 149 whose precise biological function is unknown, researchers report in the March 25 Science.

The newly-created bacterium contains a minimalist version of the genome of Mycoplasma mycoides. Mycoplasma already have some of the smallest known genomes. M. mycoides used in the experiments started with 901 genes. In comparison, other bacteria, including E. coli, may have 4,000 to 5,000 genes. Humans have more than 22,000 genes, although not all are necessary (SN: 4/2/16, p. 18).
In 2010, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, Calif., replicated the entire genome of M. mycoides and popped it into a cell of a different species, Mycoplasma capricolum, creating what some people called the first synthetic organism (SN: 6/19/10, p. 5). The new work strips the M. mycoides genome down to its essential elements before transplanting it to the M. capricolum shell, producing a minimal bacteria dubbed syn3.0.

Researchers hope syn3.0’s uncluttered genome will teach them more about the basics of biology. Such minimal genome bacteria also may be chassis on which to build custom-made microbes for producing drugs or chemicals.
J. Craig Venter, founder of the nonprofit institute, and a team of researchers there led by Clyde Hutchison III and Daniel Gibson initially set out to design an organism based on a core set of about 300 genes that researchers surmised a microbe would need to survive on its own. But when the researchers tried to bring their computer creations to life, “every one of our designs failed,” Venter said in teleconference with reporters. The failure was due to leaving genes of unknown function out of the mix. About 32 percent of the genetic ingredients ultimately needed to cook up even a simple organism were left out of the initial recipe because the researchers didn’t know what the genes did and didn’t understand their importance. Once those genes were mixed back into the batter, the bacteria sprung to life.

“I think we’re showing how complex life is in even the simplest of organisms,” Venter said. “These findings are very humbling” because they show that researchers still don’t fully understand even the minimal requirements for life.

That lack of knowledge is “frustrating after so many years of molecular biology,” says synthetic biologist Pamela Silver of Harvard Medical School. But the pared-down microbe may be a good platform for discovering what genes of unknown function do, she says.

Other researchers have attempted to make minimal genomes by stripping away one gene at a time. But the Venter group built their lean microbe from the ground up, synthesizing pieces of DNA that would later be stitched into a complete genome.

Drew Endy, a synthetic biologist at Stanford University, is among several scientists applauding the made-from-scratch approach. “Only when you try to build something do you find out what’s truly required. Too often in biology we end up with only data, a computer model, or a just-so story. When you actually try to build something, you can’t hide from your ignorance,” Endy said in an e-mail. “What you build either works or it doesn’t.”

At first, the bare-bones genome didn’t work. Some genes that appeared to be nonessential for life are really requirements, the researchers discovered. Those genes tended to have redundant functions with another gene. Researchers could remove one of those genes, but not both at the same time, just as knocking out one engine on a twin-engine jet will keep the plane airborne, but disabling both engines will lead to a crash, says Gibson.

Although syn3.0’s genome is far smaller than those of other free-living bacteria, it may not be the minimal genome for every independent organism in every situation. (Symbiotic bacteria living inside host cells may have fewer genes than syn3.0 does, but cannot survive on their own.) Other researchers have theorized that a minimal cell could consist of one single RNA-replicating gene inside a membrane, says geneticist George Church of Harvard University.

Starting with another organism or growing the bacteria under different conditions would probably lead to a microbe with a different minimal set of genes, says Jay Keasling, a synthetic biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “The minimal genome is in the eye of the beholder,” he says.

Gibson and Venter agree that they have created a minimal genome, but not necessarily the minimal genome. Syn3.0 is streamlined, but still contains a few frills. The team kept several “quasi-essential” genes that aren’t strictly necessary for life, but allow the bacteria to grow fast enough to make them useful in the lab.