Bridging China to the World · Issue 2

Let’s break down this issue’s highlights in 5 minutes: from policy pivots to tech-powered ecosystems, from green infrastructure to robot antelopes.

But this is more than a single issue. Bridging China to the World is a living lens into China’s evolving global posture. To subscribe is to stay ahead—of narratives, of shifts, of opportunities. To overlook this publication—even briefly—may mean missing the deeper logic behind China’s transformation, and the opportunity to engage with it constructively.

History doesn’t wait for the hesitant. So let’s dive in.

SCO Tianjin Meeting’s Global Governance Plan: Hitting the “Reset Button” on World Cooperation. Let’s break it down 👉 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1egRd7G2Bxl818k-G1cDp-8Cupy1aQP-X/view?usp=sharing

Let’s Break Down China’s "City Glow-Up Plan" (No Jargon, Just Vibes). Let’s break it down 👉 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j1H6eP0eGFcAWD8007OARbuvrb4N8vd3/view?usp=sharing

China’s Government Goes All-In on “AI+”   Let’s break it down 👉 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pc9G-ubT1JANQPSFfQKS7TaRn6rzaMmy/view?usp=sharing

The Power Planning Institute's 6 Reports: Your No - Nonsense Guide to China's Energy Future. Let’s break it down 👉 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YjK3nwWhQ9kvon8V-L0XVaBPJX4mA-aK/view?usp=sharing

China’s EV Charging Game Is Low-Key Blowing Up

Folks, the numbers from China’s National Energy Administration just dropped—and they’re wild. As of late July, we’ve got a whopping 16.696 million EV charging ports nationwide. Let that sink in: with China’s ~1.4 billion people, that’s roughly 1 port for every 84 folks. And the growth? A crazy 53% year-over-year—like adding 23,000 new ports every single day.

Break it down:

Public ports (the ones at malls or by the road): 4.202 million, up 38% YoY. Now finding a public charger’s easier than scoring a parking spot on a Saturday.

Private ports (the “my spot, my charger” ones): 12.494 million, a 58.8% jump. These days, most EV owners just plug in at home overnight—same vibe as charging your phone.

And the cars? We’ve got 36.89 million EVs on the road (that’s like 3 Beijings’ worth of people driving electric!). This first half of the year alone, 5.622 million new EVs got registered—up 27.86% YoY. Drive around now, 1 out of 5 cars you see is a green-plate EV.

Here’s the real flex: For every 2.2 EVs, there’s 1 charging port. Three years ago, it was 5 EVs fighting over 1 port—now? No more stressing about “where to charge.” No wonder everyone’s ditching gas cars—cheaper to run, easier to charge. The “gas station era”? Yeah, it’s slowly bowing out.

Going Green Low-Carbon? Tech’s the Real MVP Here

Let’s keep it real: if we wanna go green and cut carbon, tech’s gotta be our ride-or-die. Industrial wastewater? We need tech to clean that mess right. Coal? Gotta use it in a way that’s not trash for the planet—tech’s how we pull that off. Car emissions? Can’t just guess if they’re bad—we need data to 盯 (spy on, basically) ’em like a hawk.

Take the Baihetan Hydropower Station, for example—it’s like a giant green energy vending machine, cranking out clean power from the river. Recently, they hooked it up with a super smart bodyguard system: 10,000+ monitors watching 24/7. They track every little thing—if the station’s warping, leaking, feeling too much pressure, or even just overheating. This thing doesn’t just watch, though—it auto-analyzes, judges what’s up, and yells a warning if something’s off. It’s like giving the power station a fancy “smart brain” to keep that green energy engine running smooth and safe. Total game-changer!

Qingdao’s Got a "Zero-Carbon Iron Man Building"—100% Green Power, 2,500 Tons of Carbon Gone!

Move over, Tony Stark—Qingdao just built something even cooler. Standing 117 meters tall and wrapped in solar glass, this futuristic tower isn’t just flexing its looks. It’s the world’s first “super-stage zero-carbon building,” and it’s already walking the talk.

This building doesn’t just sit there looking shiny—it generates its own electricity. The east, west, and south façades are covered in photovoltaic glass that turns sunlight into power. And instead of converting it to AC like most buildings, it runs directly on DC, cutting out energy loss. It’s like giving your building a solar-powered IV drip.

Underneath the building, 14 sets of repurposed EV batteries quietly soak up excess solar power during the day and release it when the grid needs a boost. Think of it as a basement full of energy squirrels hoarding sunlight for rainy days.

And it doesn’t stop there. The building is connected to a virtual power plant that can tap into 300 electric vehicles parked nearby. These cars aren’t just commuting—they’re moonlighting as mobile power banks. Together, they contribute up to 3,000 kWh of green electricity daily.

This isn’t just a pretty building with a solar tan. It’s a prototype for how China plans to decarbonize its cities—combining architecture, mobility, and grid tech into one seamless system. It’s got brains, brawn, and a climate conscience.

So yes, it looks like Iron Man. But it acts like a climate superhero.

AI  World

AI-Powered Government Services: From 20 Days to 10 Minutes

Guangzhou’s market entity scale has reached a milestone — the total number has officially crossed the 4 million mark! In the first seven months of this year, 548,400 new market entities were registered, with a year-on-year surge of 57.3%. This growth rate fully shows the economic vitality of this city as the core engine of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Intelligent transformation is now the engine behind Guangzhou’s booming business scene. The full-process electronic registration system has created a robust digital government ecosystem. At its core: an AI-powered approval system that slashes license processing time from 20 days to just 10 minutes.

A whopping 99% of market entities choose online applications, forming a new government service pattern of "cloud-based registration as the mainstay, offline processing as a supplement".

A deep learning–based self-service name application system has boosted name verification efficiency by 80%. For business scope registration, semantic analysis enables "intelligent matching of standardized expressions", totally bidding farewell to the tedious traditional manual name verification process.

What’s even more groundbreaking is the "integrated license and certificate handling" smart platform — it breaks down data barriers across 31 departments using blockchain technology, allowing simultaneous application and parallel approval of business licenses and operation permits. The reform of "obtaining a business license first, then permits" covers 288 industry fields, making it a common practice for enterprises to "start operations right after getting the license".

Currently, 100% of the whole-life-cycle matters for enterprises, such as changes and cancellations, can be handled online. The intelligent customer service system handles over 20,000 inquiries on average every day. Government services have evolved from simply being accessible to becoming truly intelligent and user-friendly.

This commercial system reform driven by AI technology and digital government services is turning Guangzhou into a "smart benchmark" for the business environment across the country, injecting sustained digital momentum into more than 4 million market entities.Nationwide rollout is already accelerating, with other cities beginning to adopt similar intelligent approval systems.

From AI+ to Data Highways: Inside China’s Big Data Showcase

The Guiyang Big Data Expo wrapped up on August 30, quietly but unmistakably. Over the course of three days, it drew 16,000 guests from across the globe, with 375 Chinese and international enterprises showcasing their latest innovations. A total of 55,000 attendees joined 89 events, and the once-abstract idea of “digital and intelligent empowerment” stepped off the podium and into real life.

Inside the exhibition halls, big data wasn’t just a concept—it was working overtime. Car welding pass rates soared to a staggering 99.98%, while agricultural sensors boosted water-use efficiency by 40% in the arid northwest. And blockchain logistics? That was a whole new level. Every data point for containers traveling from Shanghai to Rotterdam was recorded on-chain, allowing shippers to track their cargo in real time—just like checking a parcel delivery. These weren’t just upgrades; they were full-blown industrial glow-ups.

The AI experience zone felt like a glimpse into tomorrow. Brain-computer interfaces helped ALS patients type using only their eye movements, tripling communication speed. Guiyang’s digital twin system recreated the entire old city in virtual space, predicting waterlogging ten minutes ahead of time. And an AI-powered bank customer service bot? It handled 5,000 clients simultaneously, with a 98.7% speech recognition rate and the ability to detect emotions from voice tone. If AI had a résumé, this would be its “overachiever at work” moment.

Beyond the tech, the expo became a stage for global cooperation. Germany’s Industry 4.0 solutions, Africa’s mineral data needs, and data assets from 31 Chinese provinces all converged. The Guiyang Initiative on Global Data Element Circulation received endorsements from 30 countries. Meanwhile, the massive data light column on the central screen pulsed upward, like a smart network of global data flows weaving itself over Guiyang.

Even after the expo ended, Guiyang’s streets kept the momentum going. Smart taxis and interactive storefronts showed how data is quietly reshaping everyday life. As one academician put it, “Here, you can feel the pulse of industrial change for the next ten years.”

There’s a "Moon Training Ground" Hiding Underground! 

There’s a “Moon Training Ground” hiding underground—and it’s not sci-fi. Back in June, a quietly ambitious “Earth-Moon link” project landed at Jingpo Lake in Heilongjiang. Led by Peking University, the initiative brought together a dream team of research institutions—Zhejiang University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Southern University of Science and Technology—alongside tech players like the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, Longruan Technology, and Digital Green Earth. Together with the Jingpo Lake Administrative Committee, they’ve transformed volcanic lava tubes beneath the lake into a lunar-like underground base for teaching and field training.

Picture this: deep beneath the surface, the lava tubes are dark, winding, and raw. The rock walls bear the scars of ancient eruptions, and the terrain is just as unpredictable as the moon’s underground caves. It’s basically a natural deep-space simulation site. Researchers and students no longer have to wait for a moon landing to practice. They can test how exploration robots navigate tricky terrain, experiment with collecting rock core samples, and even simulate building underground lunar communication systems. Every bit of technical experience gained here is a hard-earned skill, banked for future deep-space missions.

Who would’ve guessed that the mysterious underworld of Jingpo Lake would become an early training ground for China’s moon and Mars ambitions? It’s clever, it’s quiet, and it’s very, very real.

Huge news in the medical circle! 

Big news just dropped in the medical world—and it’s wild. A Chinese team has officially pulled off something that sounds straight out of sci-fi: they transplanted a gene-edited pig lung into a human. Yep, you read that right. And it’s not just a lab experiment—it made it into Nature Medicine, which means the global medical community is paying attention.

Here’s how it went down. The team from Guangzhou Medical University picked a Bama miniature pig that had gone through six rounds of genetic editing. Then they transplanted its left lung into a brain-dead patient. Why a pig? Because the shortage of human lung donors is no joke—every year, thousands of patients wait and wait, and never get the call. But this pig lung? It worked. For nine full days, it ventilated and exchanged gases like a champ. No acute rejection. Even the usual hiccups like edema started to fade.

The lead surgeon called it “a key step toward solving the organ shortage crisis,” and honestly, it’s hard to disagree. The team’s already working on refining the gene-editing process and plans to use their own tube-free tech to reduce lung damage. Just imagine—one day, pig organs could be like spare parts for humans. For people stuck in medical limbo, this could be the lifeline they’ve been hoping for.

Guardian of Lucid Waters and Lush Mountains

The Fifth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has embarked on a bold cross-boundary mission—guarding China’s lucid waters and lush mountains with aerospace-grade tech. By leveraging satellite remote sensing, they’ve built an integrated “air-space-ground” monitoring network: satellites serve as watchtowers in orbit, drones and ground sensors act as scouts, and together they bring forests, farmlands, and rivers under a unified digital health check. Even the “well-being” of tree leaves and the “clarity” of river water can now be tracked in real time with remarkable precision.

How powerful is this system? When monitoring ecological public welfare forests, satellites function as carbon calculators—measuring how much CO₂ each forest absorbs and how much oxygen it releases annually. Fresh air becomes a quantifiable ecological asset, convertible into monetary value. For contracted rural land, the system transforms into a land appraiser, scientifically evaluating the ecological worth of land management rights based on indicators like crop growth and soil fertility. Even the number of frogs in a rice paddy might factor into the assessment.

Its most impressive feature? Pricing ecological products. The once vague “value” of lucid waters and lush mountains can now be instantly translated into hard numbers using satellite data. A forest’s carbon sequestration capacity might equal a specific tonnage of coal; a river’s water purification ability could correspond to a defined amount of ecological compensation. These values are then turned into tradable digital certificates.

This technology is already delivering tangible benefits to forest rangers and farmers across multiple regions—making “earning money by guarding green mountains” not just a slogan, but a reality. It’s no exaggeration to call it an intelligent accountant for ecological protection.

AI-Powered Pastures: Tech Spices Up Grassland Grazing

Gone are the days of herding with horses and whips on the grasslands. Led by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, a dream team of nine research institutions has given traditional pastures a serious tech upgrade—using AI, satellite remote sensing, 5G, and other cutting-edge tools to turn millions of square kilometers of grassland into fully digital pastures. Smart grazing has officially jumped from sci-fi into real life.

Picture this: satellites act as “sky eyes” in orbit, drones double as scouts, and ground sensors serve as listening ears—together forming a top-tier air-space-ground monitoring system. Even a blade of grass curling or a cow taking a step doesn’t escape its watchful gaze. The smart collars worn by cattle and sheep are total social butterflies—they track health data in real time and decode behaviors to read the animals’ moods. For instance, if a sheep loses its appetite, the collar sends out an alert immediately. And those virtual fences? They’re even cooler—using sound waves and gentle electric pulses to mark boundaries, cutting fence costs by 70% while letting livestock roam freely within designated zones.

All this tech feeds into the “Zhimumu” cloud platform—the super brain behind the operation. Herders can sit comfortably in their yurts, swipe their phones, and run cloud-based feeding routines or pasture health checks. The system is already showing its magic in multiple regions, and it’s set to expand even faster. With this, grassland animal husbandry is saying goodbye to “relying on the weather” and stepping into a new era of fingertip grazing.

Interesting tidbits

Did you know that a robot antelope just joined a real herd in Hoh Xil? No kidding—deep in the uninhabited zone near Zhuonai Lake, a “robot Tibetan antelope” has successfully blended into a wild herd and migrated alongside them. This clever invention breaks through the usual limits of human wildlife observation. Instead of watching from afar, researchers can now follow the herd from within—gathering firsthand insights into movement patterns, social behavior, and environmental responses. It even collects biological samples like dung and placentas, helping scientists better understand reproductive cycles and health indicators. Developed by the Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, this high-tech antelope is giving researchers a front-row seat to one of nature’s most elusive migrations. Quiet, smart, and surprisingly social—it’s changing the game for wildlife research.

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