The 2024 China Open tennis tournament concluded in Beijing on Sunday, with Coco Gauff from the U.S. claiming the title with a lopsided 6-1, 6-3 victory over Czech player Karolina Muchova in the final.
The tournament, which ran from September 23 to October 6 at the National Tennis Center in Beijing, saw attendance of 380 players from 48 countries and regions, who performed a total of 469 matches, exceeding the previous edition of China Open. "As of October 5, around 140,000 Chinese tennis fans and more than 13,000 foreigners have come to Beijing to watch the games. This year's total box office revenue has exceeded 80 million yuan (about 1.14 million U.S. dollars), up 60 percent year on year to a record high for China Open ticket sales," said Chen Jie, deputy director of Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sports at a press conference on Sunday.
Chinese athletes shined at this year's tournament. Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen made it to the women's singles semifinal, tying the best record of Chinese female players at the China Open jointly held by Li Na and Wang Qiang.
Meanwhile, 35-year-old veteran Zhang Shuai reached women's singles quarterfinals following a four-match winning streak.
Buyunchaokete, a rising star in Chinese men's tennis, made history at the tournament, upsetting top players to reach the semifinals.
China Open tennis tournament concludes in Beijing
China Open tennis tournament concludes in Beijing
More than 1,000 coal mines in China have adopted intelligent systems, as their application expands from pilot projects to large-scale deployment, the China National Coal Association said recently.
Statistics show that by the end of 2025, a total of 1,066 coal mines nationwide have introduced smart systems, with such technologies now supporting more than 65 percent of the country's coal production capacity. The number of autonomous mining trucks in operation surpassed 4,000 units, roughly doubling on an annual basis.
The rapid adoption of smart mining is driven by robust domestic capabilities in intelligent equipment and technology. In Beijing, a newly deployed underground Internet of Things (IoT) precision positioning and management system links workers, positioning cards and operating zones, while also enabling health monitoring. Its core technologies and components are fully domestically developed and have been applied in coal mines and coal preparation plants. "This underground positioning system we've developed has a positioning deviation of less than 20 centimeters when a person or device is stationary. Even when a person or device is moving at high speeds, the margin of error remains minimal. A single device can cover a radius of 800 meters," said Wu Fengdong, general manager of China Coal Beijing Coal Mining Machinery Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Coal Group Corporation.
Since the start of the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021–2025), cumulative investment in smart mining has exceeded 107.1 billion yuan (about 15.6 billion U.S. dollars), with intelligent technologies now widely applied, accelerating the shift from traditional mining to modern, technology-driven extraction.
Over 60 pct of China's coal production capacity uses smart technology by end of 2025
