Executives of leading Chinese private enterprises vowed to break new ground in developing private economy and better serve the country's 1.4 billion people after attending a symposium on private economy held in Beijing on Monday.
President Xi Jinping delivered an important speech at the symposium.
In his speech, Xi urged efforts to promote the healthy and high-quality development of the country's private sector.
The private sector enjoys broad prospects and great potential on the new journey in the new era. It is a prime time for private enterprises and entrepreneurs to give full play to their capabilities, Xi said.
In exclusive interviews with China Central Television (CCTV), entrepreneurs who attended the symposium said they have been inspired to make greater contributions to the country.
"I think this time we are reassured so that we can roll up our sleeves and go all out to work. I could personally feel the General Secretary's sincere care for us private entrepreneurs and private enterprises, which once again ignited my passion for pioneering," said Qi Xiangdong, chairman of Qi-Anxin Group, a leading Chinese cybersecurity company.
"The promising prospect for the development of private enterprises he talked about encouraged us greatly. I think confidence is more valuable than gold. I believe that in the new situation, the development of private enterprises will surely step up to a new height, and our company will be down to earth to perform what we should do," said Liu Yonghao, chairman of the agricultural conglomerate New Hope Group.
Peng Fan, chairman of the KOCEL Group, an iron and steel foundry in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, spoke about navigating the specialized field in the industry and taking new challenges.
"We will spare no effort to pool our strength and transform and upgrade our entire enterprise, advancing to intelligent, high-end, and green development. All we think is how to propel our own growth while leading the industry forward, so as to contribute to the country's equipment manufacturing," said Peng.
"After we go back, we will seize every second to put our ideas into action. We will stay rooted in our industry, make our core business prominent, and give back to the society to the best of our ability, so as to take more farmers on the industrial chain to get richer," said Leng Youbin, chairman of Feihe Dairy from northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.
"The General Secretary has urged us all to steadfastly focus on our core business through innovative development, to pioneer new ventures, and to go global. He has laid out many specific requirements, which has inspired private enterprises and entrepreneurs to bolster their fighting will to make new contributions to promoting the country's private economy," said Nan Cunhui, chairman of Chint Group, a leading Chinese smart energy solutions provider.
Symposium on private economy inspires Chinese entrepreneurs
Symposium on private economy inspires Chinese entrepreneurs
Honor's humanoid robot, Lightning, which swept the 2026 Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon on Sunday, is a natural extension of years of accumulation in consumer electronics technology, said its developers.
A leading smart device provider in China, Honor independently developed the model, which dominated the podium at the event as it was used by all three teams whose autonomous navigating robots ran the fastest times.
At the Honor factory in Pingshan District in Shenzhen City, south China's Guangdong Province, where robotics engineers developed Lightning. They said the robot's body design incorporates a simulation system that, through artificial intelligence algorithms, can iterate nearly 30,000 design schemes of varying sizes over three months. Complete and mature systems are also in place for battery, communication, and reliability verification.
"We built a simulation lab from scratch. For the robots, we digitize the entire design and put it into a computer. We have our own material library, which can meet the force, thermal, and chemical property demands for each component, under different environments and speeds. We've accumulated about 1000 kinds of materials. For example, if there's a risk with the robot's neck, we just need to change the material code from 001 to 002. Now, through our simulations, we only need one day to perform parallel calculations on 10 different designs, before creating a mold and verifying it in the lab," said Li Zheng, a senior engineer at Honor.
An autonomous robot capable of completing a half-marathon involves a complete industry chain, with core components including high-precision sensors, LiDAR, motors, operating systems, and control algorithms. The development of robotic marathoners have driven an increasing number of component enterprises to get involved.
Manifold, a tech firm established by newly-graduated PhDs, has developed a 3D spatial memory module, which can model an environment in real time and transform it into images that robots can understand. They said several robots running the half-marathon this year adopted their solution.
"Our device can operate within a one-kilometer tunnel with an error margin of only tens of centimeters. For robots, especially in the absence of GPS, this allows them to accurately determine their location. The underlying technology is a multi-sensor fusion technology that we developed in-house," said Qin Youming, CEO and founder of Manifold.
The Beijing Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center set up a training camp for the marathon event. Many university students came a month ahead of the event to develop and debug their technologies and algorithms based on open-source robot bodies, databases, and training platforms.
"These high-quality databases and highly open-source control algorithms are actually very helpful to us. We no longer need to build the house from the ground up, but can skip the most basic part," said Sun Jingyu, a student from Shandong University.
"Through this racing event, I believe we can make our robots more reliable and stable, while also supporting high-dynamic, high-load movements. This is crucial for robots' future application in both industrial, commercial and domestic scenarios," said Guo Yijie, head of the innovative humanoid department and the Marathon project of Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center.
Engineers share development story behind Beijing humanoid half-marathon champion model
