This policy push comes as the coastal province seeks to shift from a major power consumer to a growing source of clean electricity.

The move marks a shift from developing the Xingshu Project itself toward building a broader industrial ecosystem around space-based computing.

Instead of only subsidizing rent or providing cash, cities could increasingly help startups by covering part of their AI usage costs.

The initiative reflects an effort to move from investing in individual biotech projects to building an ecosystem around them.

The decision to hold the finals in Hangzhou comes as the global AI open-source ecosystem becomes increasingly fragmented.

The push comes as the global silicon-photonics industry shifts from technology validation to manufacturing, testing, deployment and scaling.

The concept originated in Europe, where countries including the Netherlands and Belgium introduced similar schemes in the 2000s.

The development has drawn attention partly because Geng does not fit the conventional profile of an academic or science communicator.

The trend reflects a broader shift in Zhejiang from “follower” innovation toward technology-led competition.

The initiative is the latest in Hangzhou’s effort to lower the cost of starting and running small technology businesses.

The shift reflects a broader change in China’s robotics industry: humanoids are moving from perform for audiences to doing real work.

The designation puts Pudong in charge of exploring standards and practices that could eventually be adopted across the country.

The city has built an “one core, two wings” industrial layout centered on Pudong, with Lingang and Jiading as the two supporting hubs.

It will serve as a public-service platform and cooperation gateway for Zhejiang companies seeking to enter African markets.

The city is now among the country’s first to combine dedicated legislation with an accompanying industry action plan.

The “Solar Valley” will comprise three zones covering scientific research, industrial support and startup incubation.

For international investors, the plan offers a relatively clear picture of where Shanghai expects its next wave of industrial growth to come from.

Once completed, China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor IV is expected to compete with projects such as the US-based SPARC and the UK’s STEP.

The event will also bring together Hangzhou’s “Six Little Dragons” and the “New Eight Stallions” for the first time.

The move addresses a new question for embodied AI: who will train, operate and manage robots once they enter the workplace.

The plan focuses on expanding investment opportunities, strengthening financial support and improving the policy environment.

Jiangsu is positioning its manufacturing base to become a key part of China’s commercial space supply chain.

By 2030, Zhejiang aims to establish a BCI technology and industrial innovation hub with strong international competitiveness.

The facility is the first reusable launch vehicle assembly base and research center established by a commercial rocket company in Lingang.

Suzhou Industrial Park’s milestone offers a glimpse into how AI is changing the geography of global manufacturing.

The province will build a core industry worth 20 billion yuan ($3 billion), with related industries exceeding 50 billion yuan.

The city has built 14 public drone takeoff and landing hubs, more than 600 terminal landing points and nearly 350 operational routes.

The new framework aims to clarify which industries deserve priority attention and which require more cautious evaluation.

The fund’s launch comes as Shanghai moves to implement its industrial strategy for the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030).

High-tech industries accounted for a record 68.1% of the city’s newly utilized foreign investment, 25.7 percentage points above the national average.

The surge reflects the rapid overseas expansion of Chinese EV manufacturers, as global demand for affordable electric vehicles continues to rise.

Zhejiang’s new standard offers an early institutional framework for what many see as the emerging AI-powered “solo entrepreneur” economy.

For international observers, the Changzhou project offers an early example of China’s emerging “power-compute integration” strategy.

The initiative reflects a broader shift in seismology from human-supervised workflows to AI-driven real-time analysis.

The announcements came as WAIC reached its largest scale to date, spanning more than 100,000 square meters across four exhibition venues in Shanghai.

The rollout comes as China explores new ways to make access to large AI models as ubiquitous as utilities such as electricity and water.

Among professionals aged 16 to 34, it has become one of the most attractive destinations outside China’s top-tier cities.

The fund will primarily invest through specialist venture capital managers while reserving a limited allocation for direct investments.

This marks the first comprehensive market regulation initiative dedicated to supporting the Shanghai International Science and Technology Innovation Center.

Traditional robot insurance policies that cover only hardware failures are falling short of the industry’s evolving needs.

Investment activity recovered strongly in 2025, with both deal value and transaction volumes reaching record highs after a slump in 2024.

The release came one day after Hangzhou unveiled a three-year action plan to become China’s leading hub for AI-powered one-person companies.

The launch comes as Chinese developers accelerate work on drones, eVTOL aircraft and other next-generation aircraft.

The initiative marks the first time Nanjing University has directly contributed capital to a market-oriented venture fund.

Mirroring China’s vocational education system, the robot school has established a standardized training pathway.

BCI is also seen as an area where Zhejiang is well positioned to establish a competitive advantage.

Growth was increasingly driven by the city’s “three leading industries,” meaning integrated circuits, AI and biomedicine.

Anhui has also become a national leader in automotive production, with both combustion and electric vehicle output now ranking first in China.

Industrial output generated by firms with annual main-business revenue of 20 million yuan ($2.94 million) and more grew 5.0% year-on-year.

The two-day event transformed the central plaza of Hangzhou Children’s Park into an immersive open-air technology showcase.

Consumer spending showed signs of a shift toward higher-value technology products.

Part of the momentum has been supported by changes to China’s tariff classification system.

The rollout comes as authorities seek to curb unauthorized drone activity amid the rapid growth of the low-altitude economy.

Despite making up less than 4% of the country’s land area, the five regions contribute more than one-fifth of listed firms.

Provincial officials said insurance funds already deployed in the province had exceeded 500 billion yuan by 2025.

The draft sets ambitious targets: by 2030, Anhui aims to rank among China’s top tier in humanoid robot output and place industrial robot production among the national leaders.

Chinese productions accounted for more than 70% of total revenue, maintaining a dominant position in the global market.

Electromechanical goods accounted for more than 70% of exports, while high-tech products recorded the fastest growth.

Within the province, Suzhou continued to anchor external trade activity, recording 1.48 trillion yuan in imports and exports, up 37.5% year-on-year.

In May alone, exports to ASEAN reached 68.49 billion yuan, surpassing the European Union to become the province’s largest overseas market.

Officials described the initiative as a closed-loop model linking dormant assets, recovered funds and new productive investment.

The move signals Ningbo’s ambition to transition from a manufacturing hub into a leader in high‑end marine industries, advanced maritime services, and ocean‑based innovation.

The standard divides OPC capabilities into three broad categories — learners, builders and creators — and nine levels, from L1 to L9.

The park said it hosts 74 listed companies, with several of them having crossed the 100-billion-yuan market-cap level.

“Opportunities in this era are unprecedented, but those who fail to advance will fall behind,” Zhou, former provincial science and technology chief, said.

The evaluation places Hangzhou ahead of Ningbo and Wuhan, which ranked second and third respectively across the first batch of 30 cities selected under the program launched in 2023.

Zhejiang’s cross-border e-commerce exports reached 267.8 billion yuan ($39.58 billion) in 2025, up 24.9% from a year earlier and ranking second nationally behind Guangdong.

The platform now allows merchants to apply for labels such as “delivery-only,” “dine-in available” and “open kitchen.”

The initiative, launched in late 2025, forms the centerpiece of Hangzhou’s effort to build new industrial growth engines.

Authorities described the facility as a “super AI laboratory” for the sector, intended to shift AI applications from academic research into real-world use cases across tourism, museums and cultural production.

The facility fills a regional gap in testing capabilities for full robot systems and key components, authorities said.

The 13-point agreement covers pricing, merchant treatment, rider protections and platform governance.

Through its “Qinghe Cloud Recruitment” initiative, the city organizes more than 800 global recruitment events online each year and offers around 1 million job opportunities.

Selected companies span sectors including general AI, brain-inspired computing, synthetic biology, low-altitude aviation and frontier chip technologies.

The platform has begun pilot operations in Nanxing subdistrict, one of Shangcheng’s grayest communities, where residents aged over 60 account for 44.4% of the population.

The platform also automatically matches companies with eligible policy support programs, reducing paperwork and repeated applications.

Since 2018, the city has released annual reform packages to improve its business environment, rolling out a cumulative 955 measures over eight years.

Teaching will combine in-house interdisciplinary faculty with external mentors from Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and major technology companies.

The broader ecosystem around the China (Wenzhou) Data Security Harbor has already attracted 1,215 data-related companies, according to the conference.

Private-sector industrial firms remained the main engine of growth in the January-April period, with output rising 7.9% and contributing nearly 80% of total industrial expansion.

The moves come as Hangzhou intensifies efforts at the start of its “15th Five-Year Plan” period (2026-2030) to position itself as what officials call China’s “top city for AI innovation and development.”

Liu said the platform “cannot become a showcase that is built but unused,” calling for bolder experimentation and business models capable of generating sustainable revenue.

The plan lays out “1 overall goal, 8 key areas and 17 priority tasks,” targeting design, construction, management and service operations across the city’s built environment.

The city identified three priorities for the coming five years: open-source AI, embodied intelligence and institutional reform.

Brazil was the largest overseas market for Ningbo’s NEV exports in April, with shipments valued at 2.92 billion yuan, up 361.6% year on year.

The rollout of the four new funds came on the heels of two smaller vehicles unveiled on May 15, sized at 1 billion yuan and 500 million yuan, respectively.

On the financial side, many Zhejiang exporters are primarily settling cross-border trade directly in yuan, circumventing dollar-denominated wire transfers.

Under the system, carbon accounts function like digital ledgers for emissions generated by companies and individuals.

By the end of 2025, the three funds had approved investments into 392 sub-funds and 4,614 projects, with total committed capital reaching 143.3 billion yuan.

They include a 1 billion yuan low-carbon development fund and a 500 million yuan secondary, or S, fund focused on private equity share transfers.

The center combines commercial demonstrations with data collection, skill training and R&D collaboration functions.

Local officials are also leveraging the competition as a platform to court broader industry participation.

Teams were required to guide self-developed underwater robots through a full sequence of search, positioning, retrieval and return tasks across the lake’s thousand-acre natural water area.

The launch comes as embodied AI startups face mounting bottlenecks around fragmented computing resources, limited access to training data and a lack of standardized testing environments.

This year’s competition focuses on industrial, service and special-use applications, with all tasks derived from practical pain points identified by leading companies rather than abstract benchmarks.

The sector aims to reach an annual output of 8 billion yuan by 2027, with 30 takeoff and landing sites, 40 drone routes, and low-altitude flight hours climbing from 5,000 to 75,000 annually.

The latest policy expands the number of sectors open to private capital from seven to nine by adding offshore wind and urban infrastructure projects.

This event comes as local governments and companies increasingly shift attention from flashy demonstrations toward practical industrial deployment.

The policy calls for public-sector buyers to prioritize new-energy and methanol-powered vehicles across public transit, sanitation, driving schools and postal delivery fleets.

Exports of mechanical and electrical products — Zhejiang’s largest export category — rose 5.9% to 661.8 billion yuan, accounting for 47.4% of total outbound shipments.