From July 17‑20, Shanghai hosted the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference alongside a high‑level meeting on AI governance. Over 1,100 companies from China and abroad filled more than 100,000 sq m of exhibition space, showcasing everything from cutting‑edge research to street‑level humanoid robots directing traffic. International experts praised China’s proposals to steer AI development toward safety, fairness and inclusivity, especially its efforts to help developing nations build AI capacity and close the technology gap. German AI research director Hans Uszkoreit noted that China now ranks among the world’s leaders in AI papers, patents, large‑scale model research and real‑world applications. The event also unveiled several flagship projects: the “Shusheng·Duanyan” platform that streamlines scientific discovery, the “Aocang·Technology Corpus” that supplies a massive, industry‑specific knowledge base, and “Fenghe,” the world’s first open‑source, billion‑parameter language model designed for weather forecasting. Together, these initiatives signal a strong, coordinated push to keep AI development healthy, secure and globally beneficial, positioning China as a key player in shaping the future of artificial intelligence.
Read moreAt just 28, Zeng Guoyang has become one of China’s most celebrated AI pioneers. In 2020, while most researchers were still exploring the possibilities of GPT‑3, the 22‑year‑old spotted a bigger opportunity: building a generative language model in China. Backed by the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, he led the creation of CPM‑1, the country’s first large‑scale language model, demonstrated on a simple “typewriter‑style” web page that completed sentences in real time. Four years later, as co‑founder and CTO of ModelWall Intelligence, Zeng steered the company away from the industry’s race to ever‑larger cloud models. Instead, he championed “intelligence density” – packing more capability into smaller, on‑device models that run locally on phones, cars, drones and other gadgets. This approach cuts energy use, lowers costs and improves security, making AI as ubiquitous as electricity. His vision earned him the coveted “AI Person of the Year” award at the 2026 China AI Summit, where he praised the shift from sheer scale to efficiency and pledged to keep pushing AI closer to everyday users. Zeng’s story illustrates how a single visionary can reshape an entire field, turning cutting‑edge research into practical tools that benefit everyone.
Read moreJiangsu province is sprinting ahead in China’s next‑generation 6G race, aiming to turn cutting‑edge research into real‑world industry power. At a recent conference, experts highlighted that 6G will do far more than faster data – every base station will also sense its surroundings and run powerful computing tasks, delivering three services at once: communication, sensing and intelligence. Since 2018, the province’s Zishan Laboratory has treated 6G as a top priority, securing national projects and unveiling a field‑test network that blends wireless links with ultra‑low‑latency control loops, achieving microsecond‑level response times. This platform is already being trialed in high‑end manufacturing, steel plants, ports, rail transit and other sectors, showing how 6G can shift networks from pure data pipes to active managers of machines and processes. Meanwhile, standards work is progressing worldwide, and Jiangsu plans to adopt a “platform‑centric, intelligent, integrated” architecture that embeds security at its core – from post‑quantum encryption to dynamic digital identities. The province will roll out customized 6G services for factories, low‑altitude logistics, riverside and coastal communities, and everyday life, turning its research edge into economic muscle. In short, Jiangsu is weaving theory, testing and industry together to make 6G the backbone of a smarter, greener future.
Read morePhysicist Shen Jie leads a pioneering team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Physics, where they operate one of the world’s coldest and most magnetic research stations. The facility can chill samples to below 10 millikelvin (just a whisker above absolute zero) and generate magnetic fields up to 12 tesla—about 100,000 times Earth’s field—creating a playground for fragile quantum states to survive long enough for study. Starting from a modest doctoral stint in 2013, when a breakthrough on the quantum anomalous Hall effect sparked her confidence, Shen Jie has built a full‑cycle platform that grows exotic materials, measures their properties, and turns them into functional devices. In 2023 her group unveiled a new topological compound, Ta₂Pd₃Te₅, which exhibits a rare “Luttinger‑liquid” behavior. By wiring this material to superconducting contacts they created a novel Josephson diode that works with low magnetic fields, consumes little power, and stays stable under microwaves—features ideal for future superconducting quantum circuits. The team’s latest triumph is a “topological thermometer” that leverages the same material’s unique physics to measure temperature across a wide range with high precision. Their work, published in journals such as *Nature* and *Science*, has attracted collaborations with over 90 institutions worldwide, positioning the Huairou extreme‑conditions lab as a key hub for next‑generation quantum computing research.
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