Xi stresses sustained efforts to expand, strengthen advanced manufacturing

China opened the Pinglu Canal on Wednesday, giving its landlocked southwest a shortcut to the coast and overseas markets, particularly those in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the country's largest trading partner.

At 8 a.m., in Beijing's Chaoyang district, a resident surnamed Wang scanned a QR code to unlock a shared bicycle. He mounted his phone on the handlebars using a navigation app and began cycling the six kilometers to his pet shop. "Cycling gets me to work while fitting in some exercise at the same time. It's an efficient two-in-one solution," Wang said.

A Russian tourist takes photos on a pedestrian street in Heihe, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Sept. 15, 2026. Cross-border tourism and people-to-people exchanges between China and Russia have become more active since the introduction of optimized visa-free policies in 2025.

Zhang Zhaoyang (L), new media manager of the Urumqi Bonded Exhibition and Trading Center, and Datkaiym Alparova introduce honey from Kyrgyzstan at a livestream studio of the Urumqi Bonded Exhibition and Trading Center in Urumqi, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Sept. 10, 2026. Datkaiym Alparova, who hails from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, is majoring in international economics and trade at Xinjiang Normal University.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is heading to New Delhi for this year's BRICS gathering just over a week after he took part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek. The two back-to-back multilateral engagements converge on a single, defining theme: galvanizing solidarity and cooperation across the Global South.