Hong Kong will deepen ties with emerging economies worldwide, expanding connections with the Middle East and belt and road countries, from finance to innovation and technology, according to the finance chief. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po also said the city aims to build “networked and institutionalised” connectivity with the Global South – a broad term…
Chinese President Xi Jinping called on Global South countries to jointly defend the rule of law in international affairs and reject the principle that “might makes right”, as he urged BRICS nations to push for a more equitable global order. Addressing the second session of the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on Sunday, Xi…
Humanoid robots demonstrate picking and sorting abilities during the 2026 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai, East China, July 19, 2026. (PHOTO/XINHUA) Establishing exclusive groupings or engaging in geopolitical calculations are not conducive to technological development and progress of the Global South, which includes Latin American and Caribbean nations,…
When it comes to bad prognostication, no one can beat Fortune, which came up with the mother of all “Hong Kong is doomed” narratives. In June 1995, the magazine ran its infamous “The Death of Hong Kong” cover story, predicting its demise following the 1997 handover to China. Stephen Roach, veteran China watcher and former…
Seventy years after a group of young scholars first coined the term “artificial intelligence” at the 1956 Dartmouth Conference, the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) concluded in Shanghai this month at what may prove an equally defining moment. In his keynote address, President Xi Jinping articulated a vision of AI developing in a direction…
Nearly three decades after its return to Chinese sovereignty, Hong Kong is once again at an important crossroads. The recent decision by the United States not to renew “The President’s Executive Order on Hong Kong Normalization” has once again focused international attention on the city’s future. For some, it represents another chapter in the geopolitical…
Add ThinkChina as a preferred source A humanoid robot by Robotera during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on 18 July 2026. (Hector Retamal/AFP) When representatives of 29 governments signed the agreement establishing the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) in Shanghai on 16 July, the event marked a new stage in China’s…
5 min readNew DelhiJul 20, 2026 07:40 AM IST Since 2018, the World AI Conference (WAIC) has been held annually in Shanghai to showcase Chinese advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). What has largely been an industry event has attracted global attention this year, thanks to the participation of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Several heads of…
Last week, while preparing a lecture on the visual culture of the Global South, I caught Google’s Gemini in a double hallucination. Cross-referencing a historical event between English and Chinese data sets, I found the English AI to be authoritative but inventing citations. In Chinese, the fabrications vanished but so did global context, replaced by…
China’s five-year plan responds to “great changes unseen in a century”, prescient words used by President Xi Jinping since 2018. Chinese policymakers have anticipated headwinds in the world system, underscored by the upending of the “rules-based world order” by US President Donald Trump’s “law of the jungle” and a world increasingly threatened by climate change….