Chang'e-6 bags precious lunar sample in Earth-returning vehicle, US alone in 'space race' narrative: observers

 

China spacecraft Chang'e-6 first to collect samples from far side of the moon - BBC News

A picture of the Chang'e-6 lunar probe's lander and ascender vehicles on the surface of far side of moon taken by a mobile camera on June 3, 2024 Photo: Courtesy of the CNSA

Two days after lifting off from the moon's surface, the ascender of China's Chang'e-6 lunar probe completed a rendezvous and docking with the orbiter-returner combination, delivering the world's first lunar samples collected from the far side of the moon to the Earth-returning vehicle on Thursday afternoon.

The Global Times learned from the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Thursday that the rendezvous and docking took place at 2:48 pm Thursday and the safe transferring of lunar samples at 3:24 pm. This marks the second time China has achieved a lunar orbit rendezvous and docking, following Chang'e-5.

After its epic lift-off from the far side of the moon on Tuesday morning, the ascender of Chang'e-6, carrying the lunar samples, entered the lunar orbit and carried out four orbit adjustments, per the CNSA. 

When the ascender was about 50 kilometers ahead and 10 kilometers above the orbiter-returner combination, the orbiter andreturner combination used close-range autonomous control to gradually approach the ascender, completing the orbital rendezvous, according to mission insiders. 

The orbiter's three sets of K-shaped grappling claws aligned with the three connecting rods on the ascender's docking surface, securely connecting the two devices by tightening the claws, precisely completing the docking. 

After that, the container holding the precious samples from the far side of the moon was safely transferred from the ascender to the returner.

The Chang'e 6 orbiter and returner combination will next separate from the ascender and enter a lunar orbit waiting phase, preparing for a lunar-to-Earth transfer orbit control at an opportune time, according to the mission plan. 

After undergoing key steps such as the lunar-to-Earth transfer and the separation of the orbiter and returner, the returner is scheduled to land with the lunar samples at the Siziwang Banner landing site in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Open to cooperation with US

Chang'e-6 completed the world's first-ever mission of collecting samples from the far side of the moon and is on its way home. This is a historic step in humanity's peaceful use of space, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said during a routine press conference on Thursday. 

When commenting on reports of NASA's congratulations on the latest leap in China's decades-long moon exploration, Mao told the Global Times on Thursday that China is always open toward space exchanges and cooperation with the US. 

The two sides established mechanisms such as the working group on Earth science and space science cooperation, and the China-US Civil Space Dialogue. At US request, the competent authorities of the two countries established a mechanism to exchange orbit data on each other's Mars probes to ensure long-term successful mission operation, according to the spokesperson.

There are, however, difficulties in China-US space cooperation at the moment, which are caused by US domestic legislation such as the Wolf Amendment that prevents normal exchanges and dialogue between Chinese and US space agencies, Mao said.

"If the US truly wants to push forward space exchanges and cooperation with China, it needs to take practical steps to remove these obstacles," Mao noted. 

The achievements of China's ongoing Chang'e-6 moon probe mission thus far have evidently become a source of anxiety for the US amid the Western media's fabricated hot saga of the US-China space race, Chinese space observers said on Thursday.

When covering the ascender of Chang'e-6's lift-off from moon surface, US media outlet CNN reported on Tuesday that the successful return of the samples would give China a head start in harnessing the strategic and scientific benefits of expanded lunar exploration - an increasingly competitive field that has contributed to what NASA chief Bill Nelson calls a new "space race."

When asked which country would be the first to have a base on the moon, Keith Cowing, former American rocket scientist and current editor of NASAWatch.com, bluntly said that it might be China. "We (the US) are trying to get there first… but we will land next to them (China), roll down our window and say 'Hi, y'all, where do you want us to park our big lander'."

During the same interview with DW, David Ariosto, an American journalist and founder of Space Watch Daily, said that China has the edge at this point, but that could change.

The anxiety and sour grapes mentality are quite evident on the US side, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

When handling ties with China, the US is desperate to hold an absolute edge over China in all spheres including the space domain to deal with China's rapid development. The obstacles are rooted in this mentality, Li noted. "Strategically, the US is also unwilling to be on an equal footing with China in space. This mind-set is deeply ingrained and traditional, making it difficult to change. This is also an important factor."

US media and the head of NASA have repeatedly tried to stir up the US-China space race narrative, aiming to increase investment in the space sector and accelerating technological progress and related activities in space, Chinese observers said. 

The US wants to create a scenario of mutual confrontation rather than cooperation, which has led to the so-called space race the US desires. However, at present, the conditions for such a race do not exist because China and other countries are not willing to participate. If only the US is invested in it, it can't be called a race. In the end, it becomes a one-sided effort by the US, they said. 

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Xi's China EV dream is coming true

 

In pole position: Sales staff stand near the Seagull electric vehicle from BYD at a showroom in Beijing. The car, launched last year, sells for around US$12,000 in China and rivals US-made EVs that cost three times as much. — AP

HONG KONG: Ten years ago almost to the day, while checking out a handful of luxury sedans from one of China’s largest automakers SAIC Motor Corp, President Xi Jinping gave a pivotal speech that would set China on the course to dominate the electric vehicle (EV) industry.

The path to becoming a strong automaking nation lies in developing new-energy vehicles, Xi said, according to a 2014 Xinhua report.

Claiming a head start, or “high ground,” in this sector is key to the competition globally, Xi said.

In 2014, China sold around 75,000 EVs and hybrids, and exported about 533,000 cars.

The domestic market was dominated by international manufacturers such as Volkswagen AG and General Motors Co, which were allowed to enter by forming joint ventures with local players in the 1980s and 1990s.

This helped China transform from a bike-riding nation to a car-driving one.

Homegrown carmakers and brands that didn’t work with foreign partners were seen as inferior and lagging behind in engine and other automotive technology.

To get ahead and tackle environmental challenges, Beijing bet on fuel efficient and alternative energy vehicles.

The state had published a guideline in 2012 that established ways to develop the industry by setting sales goals, providing subsidies and allocating resources for building charging infrastructure, among other things.

Xi’s speech two years later signalled China’s determination to use this as a way leapfrog traditional Western and Asian auto powerhouses, in particular Japan, home to Toyota Motor Corp.

With the stage set, China needed a catalyst to spur consumer interest in EVs, which in the early 2010s were mostly cheap cars with short ranges.

That ended up being Tesla Inc, which became the first foreign automaker to set up a wholly owned operation in China.

With that special permission, Tesla completed its Shanghai factory in 2019. Its entry into the market motivated local players to come up with better EVs with longer ranges.

Fast forward to 2024, and China has become the world’s largest auto market and sells more electrified vehicles than any other country, with 9.5 million cars delivered last year.

It also controls the majority of the battery supply chain. Homegrown champion BYD Co dethroned Volkswagen to become the best-selling brand in China and in the last quarter of 2023, surpassed Tesla as the world’s largest producer of EVs.

China also overtook Japan as the largest auto exporter, sending 4.14 million units abroad with 1.55 million of them being EVs or plug-in hybrids.

The achievements proved that Beijing’s industrial policy and investments paid off. But they’re also adding to tensions with the West.

China’s success in EVs, which could disrupt traditional auto supply chains that employ millions of people, has become a key source of discomfort in Washington and Brussels.

As a price war at home and slowing growth drives Chinese automakers to search for buyers for its affordable and tech-laden EVs elsewhere, they’re running into trade barriers, especially in the European Union (EU) and the United States, which are meanwhile trying to develop their own EV supply chains.

Both have accused China of exporting its excess capacity.

The United States has quadrupled import tariffs on Chinese cars to more than 100%, while the EU is investigating Chinese EVs to see if there has been an unfair advantage from government subsidies.

Brazil recently removed a tax break on imported EVs and even Russia, arguably Beijing’s strongest ally and the largest destination for Chinese auto exports since the war with Ukraine, has asked Chinese carmakers to consider localising production.

Beijing has threatened to hit back, with the China Chamber of Commerce to the EU on May 22 saying that the import tariffs on cars with large engines may be raised to 25% from 15%.

There’s a June 5 deadline for the EU to inform Chinese EV exporters of preliminary findings and whether tariffs will be imposed.

SAIC, the state-owned manufacturer whose facility Xi visited 10 years ago, happens to be one of the three Chinese automakers, along with BYD and Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co, selected for further scrutiny by the EU in its anti-subsidy investigation.

SAIC owns the British-origin MG brand, which is one of the top selling EVs in Europe.

At an event marking the 10th anniversary of Xi’s speech last Friday, SAIC officials including chief engineer Zu Sijie said they’ve remembered the president’s instructions well, and the company has consistently innovated around technologies like smart driving and connected cars.

Li Zheng, the co-founder of SAIC Qingtao New Energy Technology Co, a battery startup backed by SAIC, took the opportunity to promise executives won’t be complacent as EV competition rises, noting that progress in solid-state batteries, which have a higher energy density and reduced fire risk, will be one way for China to maintain its edge.

“New-energy vehicles have become a strategic industry, fiercely contested by countries around world,” Li said. “They’re a key supporting force to our country’s revitalisation of green sectors.”

A lot can happen in 10 years, but with SAIC having invested about 150 billion yuan (US$21bil) into research and development over the past decade alone, even despite trade wars, 2034 looks bright. — Bloomberg

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Ernie Bot helps Chinese tech giant Baidu double down on AI push

 

Ernie LLM has emerged as China’s leading AI foundation model with the broadest range of applications. — China Daily

SHENZHEN: Chinese tech heavyweight Baidu Inc says its large language model and ChatGPT-like chatbot, Ernie Bot, has garnered more than 200 million users since its debut in March 2023.

The company said it is ramping up efforts to bolster the commercial application of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

On Tuesday, Baidu showcased a suite of AI models and development toolkits to empower individuals with accessible and easy-to-use tools to create AI applications at the Create 2024 Baidu AI Developer Conference in Shenzhen, Guangdong.

Robin Li, co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Baidu, said at the event that the Ernie LLM has now emerged as China’s leading AI foundation model with the broadest range of applications.

LLMs refer to AI models fed with huge amounts of text data for use in a variety of tasks, ranging from natural language processing to machine translation.

Li said the Ernie model has achieved an obvious upgrade with improved performance in code generation, code interpretation, and code optimisation in recent months, and its capabilities have reached a world-leading level.

The inference performance of the Ernie model has improved by 105 times compared with the one launched last March, and its inference cost has been reduced to only 1% of the previous version, he said.

Furthermore, more than 85,000 enterprise clients have used Baidu’s enterprise-level LLM platform, Qianfan, to create 190,000 AI applications.

“AI is catalysing a revolution in creativity. In the future, developing an AI application will be as straightforward as creating a short video. Everyone can be a developer and create,” Li said.

Li also said multimodal LLMs that integrate different types of content like text, images, speech and video into AI models are key to the future development of AI.

This approach has been largely regarded as essential for realising artificial general intelligence, which is a theoretical AI system with capabilities that rival those of a human, Li said.

Charlie Dai, vice-president and principal analyst at Forrester, a research firm, said that as one of the leaders in the AI software market in China, Baidu has made substantial progress in the technological evolution of foundation models, which are becoming critical for next-generation AI applications.

He added that the company was expanding its business ecosystem of generative AI technology.

At the event, Li also noted that “the most significant use for large visual models is in autonomous driving systems”.

Baidu’s goal is not just about teaching AI to create video but also about enabling AI to comprehend real-world dynamics and predict future events, which are critical for driving autonomously.

He said the company has utilised extensive data from over 100 million kilometres of testing on complex city roads in China to develop the visual model for its autonomous driving platform, Apollo.

The multimodal LLM is an undeniable future development direction for generative AI technology, said Lu Yanxia, research director at market consultancy IDC China.

She added that the LLMs necessitate a higher demand for data and knowledge in professional fields and for talent that can fine-tune specialised models based on diverse industrial demands.

Lu said Chinese tech companies should pool more resources into improving computing power, algorithms and the quality of data to gain a competitive edge in the global AI chatbot race.

Pan Helin, a member of the Expert Committee for Information and Communication Economy, which operates under the aegis of the Industry and Information Technology Ministry, said the Ernie model made achievements in some specialised application scenarios like AI programming.

Pan said more efforts should be made to bolster the vertical industrial application of LLMs in a wider range of sectors. — China Daily/ANN

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2023/10/17 Source: Global Times | Author: Global Times | Column: Economy

China’s up on human rights

Majority of countries affirm China's human rights progress ...

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China's human rights record to be examined by Universal 

ON Jan 26 this year, China’s human rights report was unanimously adopted by the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Working Group for the fourth cycle. More than 120 countries spoke highly of China’s remarkable achievements and unremitting efforts in human rights protection.

The concept of “human rights” became known from the West, yet its essential ideas have long existed in Chinese political culture. It was fully embodied in the long-cherished “people-being-first-of-all” political principle.

In the Book of Documents, one of China’s oldest classics written 3,000 years ago, it is written that “People are the foundation of a country. Only when people lead a good life can the country thrive.”

Mencius, the famous Chinese ancient sage, said the same thing: “People are the most important; the state is secondary.”

Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, priority has been given to ensuring and safeguarding the human rights of all Chinese citizens. Seeing both the global trend and China’s unique situation, the Chinese government has successfully pioneered its own way of advancing human rights protection and made historic achievements in various fields.

The following are three major principles. People are always at the centre. President Xi Jinping said: “... to ensure all Chinese people a life of contentment is China’s most weighty human right.”

After eight years of painstaking efforts, China has successfully alleviated nearly 100 million people out of poverty, putting an end to its centuries-long absolute poverty history.

This is an achievement not only for the Chinese people but also, more importantly, a victory for mankind as a whole. By realising the poverty reduction aim of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of time, China has contributed significantly to global poverty reduction and progress in human development.

China has made solid progress in advancing high-quality development and established the world’s largest education, social security and healthcare systems, bringing tangible benefits to people of all ethnic groups.

Human rights are equally enjoyed by all. China is as diverse and as multiethnic as Malaysia. There are 56 ethnic groups living on this vast land. Like seeds of a pomegranate hugging each other closely, people of different ethnic groups in China love and support each other as brothers and sisters do in one big family.

Big or small, all ethnic groups in China enjoy equal social status. Their rights and benefits are legally stipulated and protected, and freedom of religion is ensured to everyone.

Recent years have seen additional “Outlines for Women’s and Children’s Development” adopted, and “Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests” amended to further promote gender equality and all-around development of women and children in China.

The physically underprivileged in China are also given proper support with their medical, educational, occupational and spiritual needs.

In upholding the principles of fairness and justice, China has been cooperating with other countries in the UN Human Rights Council and other multilateral organisations.

China has facilitated the adoption of a series of major international human rights conventions and declarations, and shared its wisdom with the rest of the world by proposing the vision of “building a community with a shared future for mankind”. This vision has been incorporated into a number of UN Human Rights Council resolutions.

Besides conducting human rights dialogues with Malaysia and 30 other countries or regions, China has been promoting exchanges and cooperation in various fields to promote human rights protection.

China has proposed the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative, which are Chinese solutions to addressing the global concerns of development deficits, security predicament and civilisational alienation.

Human rights are not abstract terms. They are specific in denotation, achievable in practical form and evolve with history. There are no fixed standards or one-fits-all models. Therefore, every country’s human rights development path should be allowed and respected, and success or failure can only be judged by its own people.

By undertaking Chinese-style modernisation, China is steadily advancing its cause of national rejuvenation to make it a stronger and more prosperous country.

China will bring better equitability to all its people and promote human rights protection to new heights.

Malaysia is also a diverse and inclusive society protecting human rights under the rule of law. As a good neighbour and close partner, China is willing to work with Malaysia in various fields to jointly contribute to the advancement of human rights development in both the region and the world.

Article 1 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” I believe that with the collective efforts of all, these common aspirations of humankind will eventually become a reality.

By OUYANG YUJING Ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the People’s Republic of China to Malaysia

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