China

Intelligence for Better Decision Making

Shanghai Robotics Summit Showcases Breakthroughs in Humanoid Automation and Industry Investment
Dec. 11, 2025 | Technology & Innovation

The 2025 Global Developers Pioneers Summit and International Embodied Intelligence Skills Competition will gather industry leaders in Shanghai from December 12 to 14 to showcase and evaluate cutting-edge robotics in simulated real-world scenarios.

**The summit features six major tracks and 17 distinct events centered on embodied intelligence, with challenges spanning industrial production and life skills.**
Industrial tasks include moving goods and tightening screws, while life skill scenarios require robots to arrange flowers, fold clothes, and make coffee. These activities unfold in homes, hospitals, and disaster-relief environments, with judges assessing both technical performance and humanistic care.

**Aoyi Technology will supply 30 high-performance dexterous robot hands—critical for humanoid robots operating in complex urban and industrial settings.**
Aoyi’s technical team will provide on-site support as the hands undergo intensive testing, feeding operational lessons directly into future product iterations.

**Humanoid Robot (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. will enter its full-size general-purpose humanoid robot, Qinglong, in the home service track.**
Built on open-source hardware and software platforms, Qinglong will tackle tasks such as folding clothes and tidying tableware to reveal challenges in model generalization and robustness across varied domestic environments.

Shanghai Zhuoyide Robot Co., Ltd. will challenge its precision motion-control systems in the flower-arranging event, using performance data from the competition to advance research and development in high-precision robotic manipulation.

**In the industrial sector, Shanghai Kepler Robot Co., Ltd. will deploy its “blue-collar humanoid robot” team to demonstrate autonomous, flexible logistics handling.**
Key capabilities include dynamic environment adaptation, heavy-load management, dual-arm coordination, and extended operation hours supported by proprietary components and algorithms. Kepler views the competition as a stress test for its technology’s commercial viability.

**Qinglang Intelligent will present its XMAN-R1 service robot, backed by extensive deployment experience.**
In 2024, Qinglang holds a 22.7% share of the global commercial service-robot market, with over 100,000 units operating in more than 600 cities. The firm will use the competition to validate its robots’ reliability and practicality in complex, realistic scenarios.

**Rongtai Electric Material announced a USD 77 million investment to build a factory in Thailand producing insulation components for new energy vehicles and robotic parts by end of 2026.**
The facility will manufacture 14,000 tons of mica paper, 4,500 tons of mica products, and seven million sets of robotic components annually. After the announcement, Rongtai’s shares rose over 7% in early trading before closing up 1.1%, outperforming the Shanghai Composite Index. Rongtai already supplies mica insulation to Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz, and in June acquired a 51% stake in Shanghai-based Dizi Precision Machinery—specialists in planetary roller screw products used in humanoid robots—positioning itself to enter the precision transmission component market for robotics.
China’s Chip Export Surge Drives Foreign Trade Rebound amid US Tariffs
Dec. 11, 2025 | Technology & Innovation

China’s chip industry is fueling export growth as broader foreign trade rebounds amid tensions with the United States.

**In November 2025, China recorded a 5.9 percent year-on-year increase in exports to USD 330.3 billion, reversing October’s 1.1 percent decline.**
Strong shipments of integrated circuits and automobiles, alongside a lower comparative base from the previous year, drove this export rebound. Imports rose 1.9 percent to USD 218.7 billion, bringing total foreign trade to USD 549 billion, a 4.3 percent year-on-year gain.

**Integrated circuits led sectoral growth with a 34 percent jump in export value, while car exports surged 53 percent compared with November 2024.**
Analysts attribute these gains to China’s ongoing manufacturing transformation and a global upswing in investment linked to artificial intelligence technologies.

**Exports to the United States plunged 28.6 percent to USD 33.8 billion, widening from October’s 25.2 percent drop, as US tariffs averaging 31 percent continued to curb shipments.**
By contrast, China expanded exports to other major markets: the European Union bought 14.8 percent more, Japan 4.3 percent more, and South Korea 1.9 percent more.

**Exports to ASEAN countries rose 8.2 percent to USD 58.1 billion, though growth slowed from October’s 11 percent increase.**
Observers link this deceleration to reduced re-exports following US tariff hikes on certain ASEAN member exports.

**In the first eleven months of 2025, China’s total foreign trade grew 2.9 percent to USD 5.7 trillion.**
Over the same period, exports climbed 5.4 percent to USD 3.4 trillion, while imports edged down 0.6 percent to USD 2.3 trillion.

Monitored Intelligence for China - Dec. 12, 2025


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极端天气四问

Four Questions About Extreme Weather

Xinhua | Local Language | News | Dec. 12, 2025 | Extreme Weather Events

From the night of December 10th to the 13th, China will experience the largest-area cold wave this winter, affecting the country from west to east with strong winds, significant cooling, and rain-and-snow weather. The China Meteorological Administration has issued a level-four emergency response for major meteorological disasters, including cold waves, strong winds, and heavy snow. So far this winter, there have been three cold waves with warnings, characterized by widespread strong winds and temperature drops, intense precipitation, and low-temperature freezing that impact energy supply, agriculture, transportation, and human health.

Extreme weather events in China have increased notably in frequency and intensity, particularly high temperatures, droughts, heavy rain and floods, and typhoon impacts. Typhoon landfalls in China have become more frequent and shifted northward, with recent examples including super typhoon Doksuri in 2023 causing severe floods and super typhoon Mojie in 2024 being the strongest autumn typhoon to hit mainland China. The summer of 2024 saw a prolonged heatwave lasting 74 days with numerous temperature records broken, signaling a trend of more frequent, intense, and prolonged extreme weather phenomena.

New characteristics of extreme weather in China include an increase in compound events where multiple weather hazards occur simultaneously or in succession, such as combined high temperatures, drought, heavy rain, floods, storm surges, and astronomical high tides. These compound disasters heighten risk complexity and make forecasting and mitigation more challenging. The geographic scope of extreme heavy rainfall and floods has expanded beyond southern China to northern and western areas, with increased typhoon risk in northern regions demonstrated by multiple typhoon impacts in the Northeast in 2020.

To build a strong defense against meteorological disasters, China is shifting from simple forecasting to risk-based disaster warning systems. Measures include improving institutional mechanisms, establishing dense observation networks, enhancing integrated early warning systems, and elevating disaster resistance of infrastructure. Scientific research and public communication on climate risk and disaster mitigation are being prioritized to improve society’s overall preparedness and responsiveness to the escalating challenges posed by climate change and extreme weather.

CCUS seen as smoother path to CO2 goals

China Daily | English | News | Dec. 12, 2025 | Climate Change

China is advancing its carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technology to reconcile sustained economic growth with its goal of carbon neutrality by 2060. Facing an energy system heavily reliant on coal and heavy industry, the government and state-owned energy companies are shifting from pilot projects to large-scale industrial CCUS clusters. Beijing has incorporated CCUS into its national 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) and updated its technology roadmap, stressing CCUS as essential for the low-carbon use of fossil fuels and overall carbon neutrality efforts.

The National Energy Administration (NEA) has promoted CCUS to transition from experimental stages to industrial demonstration and scaled production through enhanced policy support and technological innovation. The oil and gas sector is operating over 90 CCUS projects, including more than 10 enhanced oil recovery (EOR) initiatives, with annual CO2 injection reaching 4 million tons. As of the end of 2024, China had 126 planned or operational CCUS projects, capable of capturing 6 million tons of CO2 annually, led by energy conglomerates.

Sinopec operates the first million-ton scale CCUS project at its Qilu petrochemical plant, capturing 1 million tons of CO2 per year and injecting it for EOR at the Shengli oilfield. This project provides key engineering experience to support nationwide CCUS expansion. Sinopec views CCUS as critical to upgrading traditional industries and fostering new productive forces, and it aims to collaborate internationally on technology breakthroughs and cluster development. Meanwhile, China National Petroleum Corporation is developing major CCUS hubs in Heilongjiang, Gansu, and Tianjin, integrating emissions from nearby industrial sources.

Globally, CCUS is gaining momentum as an important tool in the energy transition. Although much captured CO2 is currently used for EOR, Chinese state firms are increasingly exploring geological storage in deep saline aquifers, especially near coastal regions, to secure long-term carbon sequestration.

Mainland slams Taiwan's DPP for challenging one-China principle

Xinhua | English | News | Dec. 12, 2025 | Geopolitical Conflict and Disputes

A spokesperson for China's State Council Taiwan Affairs Office condemned Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for challenging the one-China principle and distorting historical and international legal interpretations. The spokesperson accused the DPP of using the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which China considers invalid, to promote a secessionist narrative and mislead the public.

The spokesperson emphasized that multiple international legal documents, including the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation, affirm China's sovereignty over Taiwan. The shift from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China represented a change in government, not a change in China's legal status, maintaining Taiwan's status as part of China.

China also reiterated its position that the San Francisco Peace Treaty, drafted without China's involvement, holds no authority over Taiwan's status or China's territorial rights. China has consistently refused to recognize the treaty from the beginning.

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