The Maldivian presidential election concluded recently with Mohamed Muizzu winning 54 percent of the vote, making him the newly elected president of the Maldives. His campaign slogan, "India Out," has sparked extensive speculation in Indian media that he is pro-China, which could potentially harm India's strategic interests in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. India places great importance on its relationship with the Maldives. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) described India's position in the Maldives as "pre-eminent," with relations extending to virtually all areas. However, the excessive focus on the newly elected Maldivian president reflects India's strategic self-doubt, as it has long emphasized the so-called Chinese threat in strategic terms.

When considering bilateral issues, India should do more self-reflection rather than fabricating a "Chinese threat" out of thin air. The "India Out" movement in the Maldives began as early as 2020, reflecting widespread dissatisfaction among Maldivians with India. 

Maldivians believe that India's longstanding military presence in their country is a threat to their sovereignty. India maintains a military presence in the Maldives to operate the Dornier aircraft and two helicopters gifted to Male in 2020 and 2013, respectively. In November 2021, the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) had informed the parliamentary committee on security services that 75 Indian military personnel were stationed in the Maldives to operate the aircraft and choppers. 

In addition to its military presence, India has assisted in building a new police academy in the Maldives, which houses the Maldives National College of Policing and Law Enforcement. Some believe this could interfere with the Maldives' independent law-enforcement authority. 

The Maldives is also concerned about India's involvement in the development of Uthuru Thila Falhu, an island near the capital, Male, which is part of the two countries' defense cooperation. In 2021, the countries signed an agreement to develop and maintain a coast guard harbor and dockyard at Uthuru Thila Falhu. The island is a point to watch the incoming and outgoing traffic at the main port in Male, which has a highly strategic position.

While security cooperation between the Maldives and India has a long history, from the Maldives' perspective, such cooperation should be based on mutual equality, rather than actions that may infringe on national sovereignty. The strong call for "India Out" in the Maldives does not necessarily equate to "China In" as there has been no "China In" movement thus far. India views the Maldives as a strategic outpost in the Indian Ocean, but it is not necessary to always perceive China as an imaginary enemy. Such behavior only highlights a lack of strategic confidence.

China has long pursued cooperation with neighboring countries based on the principle of mutual benefit. China does not interfere in the domestic affairs and strategic autonomy of other countries. China's cooperation with the Maldives primarily focuses on improving livelihoods and social development, such as upgrading and constructing major international airports in the Maldives and building the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge.

India has maintained a "big brother" mentality in dealing with South Asian affairs, considering the region as its backyard. Whether India can treat South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, as equals has been a question mark for a long time. On the surface, India follows a "neighborhood first" policy and plays a leading role in South Asian affairs. However, in reality, India leverages its geopolitical advantage and size in the region to compel South Asian countries to make choices that favor India on critical issues.

India is eagerly awaiting the "Indian Century." New Delhi has hosted numerous diplomatic events around the G20 summit this year, striving to present itself as a major global power with significant achievements. 

Meanwhile, India has been assertive in handling its diplomatic relationships, such as cracking down on Chinese companies in India and imposing obstacles for Chinese citizens to obtain visas. However, the excessive attention on the Maldivian election result reflects India's self-doubt from another perspective. India needs to adjust its mind-set. Strategic self-doubt and excessive suspicion of China do not benefit India's aspirations for a major global role.

Beijing Daxing International Airport had its fourth anniversary on Monday, having been put into operation on September 25, 2019. It had notched more than 80 million passenger trips as of Sunday, the airport said.

The airport has had a total of 682,900 flight takeoffs and landings, a passenger throughput of 82.48 million trips, and a cargo throughput of 557,300 tons, the airport added.

Daxing airport restarted international passenger flights in January this year, and has made efforts to expand routes to Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea, while continuously expanding into the Southeast Asian and Oceanian markets.

As of the end of August, the airport has opened a total of 202 routes, covering 185 destinations in 18 countries and regions.

The airport conducted 7.94 million passenger trips in the two months' summer travel rush that ended on August 31, up 163 percent from the same period last year and the best performance in the summer travel rush since the airport opened.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China is accelerating the resumption of outbound travel.

The number of international passenger flights per week has recovered to 52 percent of the 2019 level, and the number of countries with passenger flight connectivity has recovered to nearly 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels, the administration said earlier this month.

Editor's Note:

On Tuesday, Bakyt Torobaev, deputy chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of Kyrgyzstan, held a meeting with representatives of many Chinese businesses to boost trade and investment cooperation with China. Following the meeting, the Global Times reporter Wang Cong interviewed Torobaev. The following is an excerpt from the interview.

GT: What are the main goals of your trip to China? And what have been achieved so far?

Torobaev: At the invitation of the vice premier of China's State Council, we participated in the 2023 Global Sustainable Transport Forum. In my speech there, I said that we should further advance cooperation in the transport sector. Transportation is the same as the human blood circulation system. By developing transportation, we can increase trade cooperation. The directions of cooperation with Kyrgyzstan include the construction of railways, the construction of renewable energy power plants, the development of irrigation water technology, the development of education, etc. We hope to have closer cooperation with China in all fields.

GT: What are the top areas that have great potential for China-Kyrgyzstan cooperation?

Torobaev: Priority industries that need development are agriculture, high-tech fields, hydropower, and mineral resource development. We provide all conveniences for Chinese enterprises, and we hope that Chinese goods can be sold to other countries through Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union and has obtained the Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+) with 6,200 products that can be exported to Europe. We hope to become a dry port for Chinese products exported to other countries.

Accompanied by a piercing whistle, the ship Ganghang Runyang 6002 was loaded with 96 TEUs, 2,000 tons of wheat and rice, and set off from Chunjiang Port of Jiangbei Modern Grain Logistics Park in Jining City, Shandong Province. Seven days later, this  high-quality grains will arrive at Taicang Port along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and then be transported to Xintian Port in Wanzhou, Chongqing via the Yangtze River waterway, while the vessel will return to Jining with southern fertilizers and other goods. This marks the official opening of the first container route of "Jining-Wanzhou," and it is also another big step for Jining Port to develop westward. Jining, as the "Canal Capital" and the "Ridge of the Canal", based on the unique advantages of the golden waterway of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, and the staged completion of advanced infrastructure . On the east side of Longgong Port is a customs supervision site still under construction, which is expected to be completed in December this year. After it is officially put into use, Jining will become "an estuary in the doorway." 

Longgong Port is strategically located at the intersection of Longgong River and Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, with a linear distance of only 7 kilometers from Jining West Railway Station. It can realize the combined transportation of public iron and water. The construction and commissioning of Longgong Port is a major initiative in promoting energy transformation in Shandong. The service team of power supply company is at the port construction site. Jining Longgong Port is the first container port in the inland river in China to realize unmanned intelligent duty. By the end of 2023, a total of 10 berths will be built, turning the port into the largest inland river shipping center in the northern China. Jining Power Supply Company of State Grid has set up a service team to guide the construction of special railway lines and ensure that one project and one team can provide full life-cycle services. In order to ensure the normal use of electricity in port construction, the company intervened in advance, followed up the service, completed the construction task of Longgong power supply project, and upgraded the lines involved in the port, transforming 4.9 kilometers of 10 kV lines and 21.4 kilometers of 110 kV lines

A total of 826 million domestic passenger trips were made in China during the 8-day Mid-Autumn Festival & National Day holidays, a year-on-year increase of 71.3%. Holiday tourism generated 753.43 billion yuan ($104.68 billion), up 129.5% year-on-year, official data showed on Friday.

The first convertor transformer using China-made on-load tap changers have successfully been put into operation on Sunday at a crucial west-to-east power transmission project located in South China's Guangdong Province, according to a report published by xinhuanet.com. 

Feng Dong, a senior executive at a subsidiary of the China Southern Power Grid, was quoted by the report as saying that China had completed the technological breakthrough from scratch in field of convertor transformer on-load tap changers, and has achieved full localization of components and other products' industrial chains.

This marks the fact that China has officially broken through the restrictions of this core technology in high-end electric equipment, Feng said.

Previously, long-distance, large capacity and high voltage direct current facilities are required for the transmission of electricity from western to eastern areas in China, and both terminals for transmitting and receiving power need to use the equipment of converter transformer that weighs more than 300 tons.

On-load tap changers of a convertor transformer are used to adjust the voltage, power load and current, similar to the function of a gearbox in a car. 

Deng Jun, a senior technical expert at the aforementioned company, also said that an on-load tap changer of a convertor transformer has about 1,000 components, and is a highly complex and sophisticated piece of equipment.

According to the Xinhua report, this technology used to be grasped by only a few overseas companies, and when technical fault took place previously, Chinese companies had no choice but to replace the products with imported goods of the same model, whose ordering cycle took about three to four months, thus posing challenges to the safety of power operation in the country. 

The report also cited a deputy general manager of the company as saying that the company has established a team in partnership with upper stream and downstream companies along the industrial chains. 

After more than two years' of efforts, the team has broken through vacuum switch tubes and other technical bottlenecks to successfully research the large capacity convertor transformer on-load tap changer with rated capacity of 6,000 kilovolt-ampere, maximum voltage of 6,000 volt and maximum rated current of 1,300 ampere.

Using the domestically made on-load tap changers could save nearly 40 million yuan ($5.56 million) In the building of ultra-high voltage direct current power transmission projects, the manager said. 

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.

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 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.

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.