China

Global Times | English | News | Dec. 12, 2025 | UndeterminedTech Development/Adoption

China’s Jetank drone, described as an “airborne UAV carrier,” completed its maiden flight in Shaanxi Province. The aircraft is notable for its large size and ability to carry swarms of smaller drones, marking a significant advancement in China’s large unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology. Developed by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the Jetank features a modular mission payload design, enabling flexible applications across civilian and military sectors.

The Jetank drone measures 16.35 meters in length with a 25-meter wingspan, a maximum takeoff weight of 16 tons, and a payload capacity of 6,000 kilograms. It offers a 12-hour endurance and a ferry range of 7,000 kilometers, placing it among the top performers in its class. Its modular payloads allow it to support heavy transport, logistics in remote areas, disaster relief, geographic surveying, and various other national economic uses.

Unveiled at Airshow China 2024 in Zhuhai, the Jetank has eight hardpoints capable of carrying 1,000 kilogram-class guided bombs, air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles, anti-ship missiles, and loitering munitions. Its open architecture permits rapid swapping of mission pods within two hours to fulfill different military and civilian missions, including airdrop, airlift, information support, countermeasures, and strike operations.

A distinctive feature of the Jetank is its isomerism-hive module integrated into the fuselage, designed to house hundreds of loitering munitions or small drones, justifying its “airborne UAV carrier” nickname. Experts highlight the Jetank’s comparable payload capacity to manned fighter jets and fighter bombers, emphasizing its potential as a world-class large UAV system capable of deploying swarms of smaller drones.

China Daily | English | News | Dec. 12, 2025 | UndeterminedEconomic Growth

Global economic growth is expected to slow to 2.6 percent in 2025, down from 2.9 percent in 2024, amid a challenging external environment. However, China is projected to remain a reliable growth engine and a pillar of stability for the world, supported by rapid export market diversification, proactive fiscal policies, infrastructure investments, and an accommodative monetary stance.

A notable "dynamic stability" between China and the United States established in late October reflects a mutual willingness to engage in dialogue and create new trade rules and certainties, providing a positive signal for the global economy. Despite this, global growth is expected to stay subdued in 2026 at 2.6 percent, with some risks from the slowdown after front-loaded imports, though new technologies like artificial intelligence offer potential benefits.

China's GDP growth forecast for 2025 was raised by the IMF to 5 percent and by the Asian Development Bank to 4.8 percent. China recorded a 5.2 percent year-on-year GDP growth in the first three quarters of 2025. Its foreign trade showed resilience with total goods imports and exports reaching 41.21 trillion yuan ($5.82 trillion) in the first 11 months of the year, an increase of 3.6 percent year-on-year.

China’s export competitiveness is increasingly driven by innovation, supply chain resilience, and a strategic shift towards higher value-added sectors, beyond just pricing advantages. The country is actively opening its domestic market and promoting high-quality imports to balance trade growth. Additionally, China continues to foster inclusive development by leveraging its large market to support growth opportunities in the Global South.

开源模式重构产业竞争格局

Guangming Daily | Local Language | News | Dec. 12, 2025 | UndeterminedTech Development/Adoption

As of the end of 2024, China's active open source projects have surpassed 3 million with 2.27 million active developers, creating a large and diverse talent pool. The openEuler community, nurtured by the OpenAtom Open Source Foundation, boasts over 2,100 member organizations, 23,000 global contributors, and over 5.5 million users. By the end of 2025, openEuler OS installations are expected to exceed 16 million, making it a leading digital intelligence platform across key Chinese industries such as telecommunications, government, finance, and energy.

Open source technology is recognized as a key driver of technological innovation and high-quality development, particularly in the AI era with large models. China leads in open source large AI models, including Qwen and DeepSeek, while open hardware architectures like RISC-V are rapidly advancing and expected to enable next-generation AI computing power, fueling China’s independent innovation beyond Moore's Law.

Inspur General Software highlights the maturity of the open source ecosystem, with projects like HarmonyOS and openEuler achieving significant scale and wide industry adoption in areas such as finance and aerospace. The recent open sourcing of 360 Group’s FG-CLIP2 model, which outperformed global tech giants in public AI benchmarks, exemplifies China’s competitive progress in AI foundational models.

The UBML open source project under Inspur supports low-code development by lowering barriers for SMEs to create customized applications, promoting efficient innovation circulation across the industry. Beijing Yizhuang has established a national-level open source ecosystem with strong government support through policies and initiatives like the AI open source root community “Moli Ark,” which hosts thousands of models and datasets to enhance innovation impact globally.

The OpenAtom Foundation advances open source through project incubation, talent development, cultural promotion, and community standardization. Experts project open source will continue to fuel China’s collaborative innovation in AI, chip design, and industrial ecosystems, contributing to global digital transformation. The future evolution of open source communities will hinge on integrating large model capabilities to create intelligent development ecosystems emphasizing collaboration, value feedback, and monetization through commercial applications.