Nigeria Times

By Wei Kai

A recent report jointly released by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the open-source platform Hugging Face showed that Chinese-developed open-source large language models account for 17.1 percent of global downloads over the past year. This marks the first time China’s share has surpassed that of the United States for the first time, reflecting a strategic advancement in the overall strength of China’s AI industry.

According to the latest estimates by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, China’s AI industry reached a scale exceeded 900 billion yuan ($128.87 billion) in 2024, representing a year-on-year increase of 24 percent. By September 2025, the number of AI enterprises in China had surpassed 5,300, accounting for 15 percent of the global total. 

On this basis, the international impact of China’s AI technology is evolving. It is transitioning from primarily leading through open-source contributions to driving global expansion practical applications. Meanwhile, its product offerings are shifting beyond standalone tool-based apps toward an integrated technological ecosystem that spans algorithms, platforms, and industry-specific solutions.

This transformation is closely linked to the in-depth implementation of China’s “AI Plus” initiative. Driven by both supportive policies and market demand, Chinese AI enterprises have gradually developed the capability to deeply integrate technology with application scenarios through long-term practice. 

Early efforts in product globalization efforts, initially focused on internet applications, are now accelerating their expansion into core areas of the real economy. These include urban governance, smart energy, transportation and logistics, and advanced manufacturing. This trend reflects a deepening convergence with worldwide demands for industrial digital transformation.

In the Middle East, Chinese companies are integrating AI and Internet of Things technologies into national strategic projects such as Saudi Arabia’s NEOM and the United Arab Emirates’ Smart Dubai, helping build efficient resource management and urban security systems within challenging desert environments. 

In Southeast Asia, industrial vision inspection and predictive maintenance solutions provided by Chinese AI enterprises have been deployed in electronics and auto parts factories in countries like Vietnam and Thailand. 

The global expansion of Chinese AI companies has transcended mere product or service exports—they are now propelling the intelligent transformation of local industrial chains through technological empowerment.

The global reach of China’s AI technologies represents not only a broadening of application scenarios but also an effective response to practical challenges in production and daily life. 

In regions with dispersed populations or complex terrain, such as southern Europe and Latin America, Chinese industrial drones equipped with AI vision systems have become an important force in forest fire prevention and power line inspection. They have reduced traditional response times from hours to minutes, providing safety guarantee for remote communities. 

Across Africa and South Asia, lightweight AI applications enable smallholder farmers to receive crop pests and diseases via mobile devices, providing immediate diagnostic and treatment guidance. 

These practices not only create commercial value but also elevate quality of life, enhance social resilience, and advance the global implementation of inclusive technological benefits.

China’s competitive advantages in AI extends beyond technological innovation and application promotion to encompass active participation in global governance frameworks. 

In response to governance challenges such as cross-border data flows, algorithm compliance and ethical security, China has consistently upheld principles including people-centered approach, AI for good, fairness, inclusiveness and collaborative governance, and has integrated these concepts into international governance practices. 

The resolution on strengthening international cooperation in AI capacity building, proposed by China and adopted by the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly, reflects recognition of China’s approach by the international community and represents an important milestone in bridging the intelligence divide and promoting inclusive development.

Moving forward, Chinese AI enterprises will engage more deeply in global innovation networks through open collaboration and trustworthy practices. By contributing Chinese insights in areas such as rule-making, risk governance and capacity building, China will work with other countries to advance the building of a peaceful, secure, open, cooperative and orderly cyberspace.

(Wei Kai is the director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.)

By Li Xinping, People’s Daily

For many passengers, reliable internet connectivity has become an essential expectation of modern travel. However, maintaining stable mobile signals remains technically challenging on high-speed railways traversing mountainous terrain with extensive tunnel networks.

This makes passenger Wang Ying’s experience particularly noteworthy. While traveling on the Xi’an-Yan’an High-Speed Railway in northwest China’s Shaanxi province, she enjoyed uninterrupted high-definition videos streaming, video calls, and document transfers throughout her journey..Remarkably, despite over 55% of this railway crossing the Loess Plateau through tunnels, “the signal inside tunnels was even stronger than outside,” she observed.

The secret lies in integrated infrastructure development. During construction of the Xi’an-Yan’an High-Speed Railway, a 5G public network was simultaneously deployed,, achieving full coverage along the entire line. The exceptional tunnel connectivity results from embedding the necessary infrastructure directly into their walls.

Take the New Yan’an Tunnel along the railway as an example. This 16-kilometer tunnel features more than 80 recessed chambers along both sides, with two cable troughs pre-installed for power supply and communication signaling. Of these chambers, 16 are used to house base stations, providing roughly one base station per kilometer throughout the tunnel.

Beyond base station density, uninterrupted signal transmission relies significantly on leaky coaxial cables (radiating cables). 

These cables are designed with periodic slots in their outer conductor. As electromagnetic waves travel along the cables, signals are uniformly radiated through the slots into the tunnel space. The effect is similar to deploying a continuous series of wireless routers inside the tunnel, creating a stable, controllable “signal corridor.”

“All tunnels along the Xi’an-Yan’an High-Speed Railway are equipped with three leaky coaxial cables mounted on the tunnel walls, aligned with the roof of the trains and the upper and lower edges of the carriage windows,” explained Wang Fei, director of the high-speed railway office of the Xi’an communications section under China Railway Xi’an Bureau Group. 

“The cables aligned with the window edges are dedicated to the 5G public network. This height configuration ensures comprehensive signal coverage throughout the passenger cabin,” Wang added.

Installing these cables presented significant engineering challenges.High-speed trains generate intense aerodynamic forces in tunnels, creating substantial wind pressure that tests cable mounting durability.

The design team leveraged wind tunnel data from Central South University’s National Engineering Laboratory for High-Speed Railway Construction Technology. Their simulations calculated transient aerodynamic loads on cable clamps, revealing that in standard 52m² tunnels, each clamp endures approximately 17 newtons of force. As Wang noted: “For a sub-100-gram clamp, this equals dozens of times its own weight — with over 100 daily occurrences.”

Conventional expansion bolts could not meet the installation and fixation requirements. After a nationwide search, the design team ultimately selected a new type of fastening product.

With a tensile bearing capacity of 15 kilonewtons — nearly 900 times the calculated aerodynamic load — the new fastening product offers ample safety margins. It had also successfully passed 2 million cycles of ultra-high-cycle fatigue testing, equivalent to withstanding decades of vibration impacts caused by high-speed train operations. 

High-performance materials alone are not enough; precision construction is equally critical. The Xi’an communications section of China Railway Xi’an Group worked with design and construction partners to build a full-scale, 1:1 simulation communication equipment room.

This facility faithfully replicates the communication equipment configuration of a typical section of the Xi’an-Yan’an High-Speed Railway. Here, technicians conducted system testing and process verification under a range of extreme operating conditions.

Eventually, the design team developed a refined installation plan: drilling depth and diameter tolerances controlled at the millimeter level; hole cleaning performed with high-pressure air to ensure zero dust; adhesive injected using specialized syringes starting from the bottom of the hole to eliminate air bubbles. Every step was executed with surgical precision.

With the toughest challenge — ensuring tunnel signal coverag — successfully addressed, how was signal quality ensured along the rest of the route?

“In open bridge and embankment sections, we adopted conventional base station deployment,” Wang explained. For short tunnels under 200 meters or transition sections between bridges and tunnels, a “continuous leaky cable” strategy was applied. This ensures physical continuity of the radiating cables, preventing handover failures or signal attenuation that could cause call drops or data interruptions.

As a result, the Xi’an–Yan’an High-Speed Railway achieved full 5G signal coverage, enabling passengers to enjoy a smooth and uninterrupted online experience throughout their journey. The full-scale simulation communication facility has also delivered substantial results, generating more than 190 construction standards that have since been extended to multiple other high-speed railway projects currently under development.

By Yang Junfeng, People’s Daily

Yakeshi, a city in the Hulun Buir region of north China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, is entering its peak season with the arrival of a new arctic cold front. 

In recent years, this city — one of China’s key bases for automotive winter testing — has been undergoing a transformation from a specialized testing ground into a comprehensive ice-and-snow industry hub, emerging as a new model for economic development in cold-region cities.

The 2025-2026 automotive winter testing season officially commenced in Yakeshi on the morning of December 7, 2025. With the signal flag raised, a diverse fleet of test vehicles — ranging from electric sedans and high-performance SUVs to luxury sports cars — began traversing the snow-covered tracks.

“The natural ice surfaces and sustained sub-zero temperatures here provide optimal conditions for validating the performance of new energy vehicles,” said Ma Zhanyun, chief engineer in charge of high-altitude, high-temperature, and high-cold tests at Chinese automobile giant BYD. 

Ma was overseeing his team at the Hulun Buir winter test site of the China Automotive Technology and Research Center. Their work focused on critical areas like low-temperature driving range and battery thermal management systems, with each dataset providing vital input for product refinement.

Situated at 49 degrees north latitude, Yakeshi experiences an average winter temperature of minus 24 degrees Celsius, with extreme lows reaching minus 50 degrees Celsius. The freezing period lasts up to six months, snow cover extends for nearly 200 days a year, and ice thickness reaches two to four meters. 

This natural environment offers vehicles full-scenario testing environments, including extreme cold starts, low-temperature endurance, and handling on ice-and-snow-covered surfaces, allowing reliability under extreme conditions to be verified without artificial simulation.

Since automotive testing was first introduced in 2006, Yakeshi has evolved from a single-purpose testing site for conventional fuel vehicles into a site with comprehensive testing system covering more than a dozen categories, including new energy vehicles, intelligent connected vehicles, luxury supercars, and special-purpose vehicles. 

A large number of well-known domestic and international companies have since established a presence there, forming a technology-intensive industrial cluster. To date, Yakeshi has conducted more than 28,000 vehicle test runs, received over 340,000 client visits, served more than 1,400 automakers, and generated total revenue of 1.14 billion yuan ($162.72 million).

As a benchmark base for automotive winter testing in China, Yakeshi is set to reach a new high in testing scale this winter, with an estimated 230 automakers from around the world and more than 2,700 vehicles expected to participate, marking steady growth compared with previous years.

On December 11, 2025, a project to build China’s first all-season ice-and-snow testing base for intelligent connected new energy vehicles, with a total investment of 1.039 billion yuan, was officially signed and launched in Yakeshi. Construction is scheduled to begin in May 2026 and be completed in 2028. 

Once finished, it will become the world’s largest, most comprehensive, and technologically advanced all-season ice-and-snow testing base for new energy vehicles. The project will include the country’s first professional testing facility with indoor snowfall scenarios and China’s only winter testing site for flying cars, enabling extreme low-temperature testing at minus 40 degrees Celsius throughout the year.

While automotive winter testing is accelerating industrial growth, Yakeshi’s ice-and-snow tourism is also constantly reinventing itself.

“Faster! Faster!” Cheers rang out from the snow-slide area at the Phoenix Mountain scenic area. A snow track more than 100 meters long, resembling a white ribbon, winded down a hillside, with a specially designed buffer slope at the end ensuring both excitement and safety.

“It’s so much fun! I want to go again!” said Duoduo, a five-year-old visitor from Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang province.

Yakeshi has moved beyond a single focus on skiing to offer a richer, more immersive ice-and-snow tourism experience.

At a recently launched ice and snow art festival, a “tanghulu tree” — more than 10 meters tall and decorated with over 10,000 skewers of the traditional Chinese candied hawthorn snack — has emerged as a popular attraction for visitors. 

Ice houses built from 2,200 cubic meters of natural ice gleamed with crystalline clarity, while activities such as a 500-meter-long snow slide, snowmobile rides, and a snow maze added to the fun. 

Last winter, the city welcomed 1.3151 million tourists, generating total tourism revenue of 1.587 billion yuan.

Winter testing and winter tourism have together fostered a mutually reinforcing development ecosystem in Yakeshi. The influx of engineers and technical personnel during the testing season has become a stable source of visitors for ice-and-snow tourism, while the steadily improving catering, accommodation, and other supporting services have in turn provided solid backing for the testing industry.

The dividends of this industrial integration are ultimately benefiting local residents. “In the past, winter just meant staying at home. Now winters in Yakeshi are incredibly lively,” said a woman surnamed Wang, who runs a restaurant in the city. She told People’s Daily that during the testing season and peak tourism periods, her restaurant serves over 100 customers a day, with revenues more than three times higher than usual. “This would have been unimaginable more than a decade ago,” she said.

On the extreme cold tracks, rolling wheels are driving industrial upgrading; across the snow-covered landscapes, laughter and joy are unlocking consumption potential. With ingenuity and hard work, this northern Chinese city is turning “cold resources” into a “hot economy,” continuously writing its own chapter of high-quality development.

By Fan Haotian, People’s Daily

Early in the morning, Cai Heng walked into the headquarters building of China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Group Co., Ltd. 

As his footsteps echoed through the lobby, the lights above him gradually activated. Outside the glass curtain wall, sunlight was already illuminating the 14,000 square meters of monocrystalline silicon photovoltaic panels installed on the rooftop and skybridges.

This headquarters building is one of the landmark structures in East Lake High-tech Development Zone, also known as the “Optics Valley of China”, in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei province.

Cai has worked here for many years and knows the building well. Yet since last year, he has begun to notice subtle changes.

Stepping into the elevator lobby, Cai pressed the button for the 15th floor. “The elevator was a little jolty when starting and stopping. Now it runs much more smoothly,” he said. 

The improvement came from newly installed energy-regeneration devices. They not only make elevator operation smoother but also convert potential energy generated during operation into electricity that is fed back into the grid, significantly reducing energy consumption.

Back at his workstation, soft natural light poured through the glass curtain wall and spread across Cai’s desk. In 2024, a special heat-insulating film was added to the building’s glass facade. It preserves a clear view of the scenery outside while greatly improving thermal insulation.

Shi Fei, executive manager of the integrated energy division at City Investment and Operation Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Group Co., Ltd., explained that the film keeps out 72 percent of heat. In summer, it blocks much of the outdoor heat, while in winter it reflects long-wave far-infrared radiation back indoors to retain warmth. This single measure saves an average of 252,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually and reduces carbon dioxide emissions by about 126 tons.

At 10 a.m., Cai’s department held a project coordination meeting. Although more than a dozen people are seated in the small conference room, the air felt fresh and comfortable. 

“Today’s buildings are smart — they can ‘think,'” Shi said. With a self-developed zero-carbon smart operation platform, more than 3,000 parameters from systems such as photovoltaics, charging piles, air conditioning, and lighting are integrated. Using the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, the ventilation system monitors indoor carbon dioxide levels and occupancy in real time, adjusting airflow through variable-frequency fans. This alone cuts carbon emissions by about 87.6 tons per year.

At lunchtime, Cai headed to the cafeteria on the basement level. Passing through the skybridge and the ground-floor lobby, he felt a pleasant warmth in the corridors. “In winter, there used to be a chilling draft here,” he recalled. With better heating now, does that mean higher energy consumption?

The answer is negative. Liu Li, a technical expert at a green and low-carbon technology research institute of China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Group Co., Ltd., explained the secret behind the lobby’s “comfort upgrade.” 

The entrance route and management approach were redesigned, air curtains were installed to block outside air, and in winter the angles of the air-conditioning outlets were adjusted downward while radiant floor heating was activated. In the first winter after renovation, the lobby temperature rose by about 9 degrees Celsius, while heat retention improved and energy losses were reduced.

“Green buildings are not only about energy-saving indicators,” Liu said. “They are also about how people inside them actually feel.”

In the China Construction Technology Industrial Park, where the headquarters building is located, an underground integrated energy station was completed in June 2025. 

“We use sewage-source heat pump technology, turning treated wastewater from a nearby wastewater treatment plant into a second energy source,” said An Ming, head of the energy station. 

During cold and damp winters, the wastewater temperature remains between 12 and 16 degrees Celsius, allowing the system to extract heat for space heating. In summer, the process is reversed, with heat released into the wastewater for cooling. 

Previously discharged directly, the treated wastewater now replaces gas boilers and district steam heating, cutting an estimated 2,300 tons of carbon emissions annually.

Across the industrial park, photovoltaic panels with an installed capacity of 2.1 megawatts generate 2.156 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 1,078.2 tons. 

Lighting systems automatically turn on when people arrive and off when they leave, cutting emissions by 67.5 tons each year. Newly added energy storage systems store electricity during off-peak hours and release it during peak demand, lowering overall energy costs by 23 percent. 

After a series of upgrades, carbon emissions across the entire park have been reduced by 30 percent, while emissions from the headquarters building alone have dropped by 45 percent.

“Working in this building, you can feel every day that green lifestyles are all around you,” Cai said.

By Liu Wenxin, People’s Daily

The deep integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with the real economy is profoundly reshaping models of manufacturing and economic structures, accelerating industrial upgrading. 

On January 7, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, together with seven other departments, released a work plan to deepen the.integration of the manufacturing sector and artificial intelligence (AI).

The document outlines seven priority areas—innovation foundation, intelligent upgrading, product breakthrough, market player, ecosystem expansion, security assurance, and the international cooperation. It also details 21 specific measures to speed up the intelligent, sustainable, and integrated development of the manufacturing sector.

According to the document, China will achieve secure and reliable supply of key AI technologies by 2027, with its industrial scale and empowerment capacity remaining among the world’s leading ranks. 

The document calls for promoting the in-depth application of three to five general-purpose large AI models in manufacturing, launching 1,000 high-level industrial intelligent agents, building 100 high-quality industrial data sets, and promoting 500 typical application scenarios. 

It aims to foster two to three ecosystem-leading enterprises with global influence, nurture a group of specialized small and medium-sized businesses that produce novel and unique products, cultivate a number of application service providers proficient in both AI and industrial development, and establish 1,000 benchmark firms. 

A globally leading open-source and open ecosystem will be established, with comprehensive improvements in security governance, contributing Chinese solutions to global AI development.

In textile workshops, air-conditioning fans are needed to regulate temperature and humidity, purify the air, and ensure ventilation. Traditional products rely heavily on manual adjustment, resulting in low precision and difficulty in predicting equipment failures. 

“By using Inspur Yunzhou Industrial Internet Platform, we installed multiple types of sensors on traditional fans to collect and train data, and developed digital-intelligent fans,” said Wu Zicai, chairman of Shandong Jinxin Air Conditioning Group. 

According to Wu, these digital-intelligent fans can optimize parameters such as air volume in real time based on operating conditions, precisely control workshop temperature and humidity, and reduce equipment maintenance cycles by 40 percent.

“Enterprises need to accelerate full-process transformation and upgrading by deeply embedding large-model technologies into all stages—from research and development (R&D) and pilot testing to production, marketing, services, and operations management—so as to enhance capabilities in assisted design, simulation modeling, production scheduling, and predictive maintenance,” an expert said.

In the R&D and design phase, efforts should focus on promoting intelligent design assistance, software code generation, and pharmaceutical research, creating new R&D models that are more personalized, lower in cost, and higher in efficiency. 

In production and manufacturing, industrial quality inspection technologies such as machine vision and unmanned intelligent inspections should be expanded. This will enhance real-time monitoring of production lines, predictive maintenance, and the precision of equipment fault identification, while enabling early warnings for potential safety risks and incidents in production operations. 

In operations and management, the analytical and generative capabilities of large AI models should be used to enhance enterprises’ management of strategy, human resources, finance, and risks.

To support enterprises using AI in R&D, production, operations, and value-added services, the document provides an additional guidance for AI application in manufacturing.

This application guide provides detailed, step-by-step guidance on conducting intelligent assessments and planning, strengthening foundational digital capabilities, building high-quality data sets, reasonably planning computing power resources, selecting and optimizing models, deploying and integrating models, and ensuring AI application security—offering hands-on pathways and methods for intelligent transformation and upgrading.

From experience-based mining to smart exploration, and from craftsmanship-driven smelting to AI-enabled precision control, China’s non-ferrous metals industry is also advancing rapidly. Recently, the industry large model Kun’an 2.0 was released, further exploring the deep integration of AI technologies across the entire non-ferrous metals industrial chain.

“Over the past year, we have applied AI to key industrial processes and promoted the development of more than 100 application scenarios. From these, we selected and released 52 scenarios and built eight high-quality industry data sets,” said Duan Xiangdong, chairman of Aluminum Corporation of China.

Ge Honglin, president of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, noted that the industry features a wide range of products, complex resources, and highly intricate process flows, and faces challenges in digital and intelligent development in areas such as technology adaptation, data governance, coordination, and talent development. To address such industry-wide challenges, the document clearly call for the development of high-level industry models and the acceleration of AI-enabled applications in key sectors.

“AI applications in manufacturing should be advanced through differentiated approaches, taking into account each industry’s characteristics, technological maturity, and level of digitalization,” said an official with the Department of Science and Technology of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. 

The official added that the document also provides tailored guidance for sectors including raw materials, equipment manufacturing, consumer goods, electronic information, and software and information technology services, supporting industry-specific transformation efforts.