China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has issued approvals to the first batch of 13 foreign-invested enterprises in Beijing, Shanghai, and the southernmost island province of Hainan and the tech hub of Shenzhen for pilot operations in value-added telecommunications services.
These companies are permitted to engage in value-added telecommunications activities such as internet access and information services in accordance with the approval, according to the MIIT on Friday.
"Most of the 13 foreign-invested enterprises approved for the pilot program are affiliates of well-known multinationals, such as Airbus, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom and HSBC. The pilot businesses include internet access, internet information services, and the Internet of Things (IoT). These developments will offer Chinese consumers a more diverse range of telecommunications products and services, further stimulating market vitality," said Zhang Chunfei, deputy director of the policy and economic research institute of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).
Data shows that by the end of February 2025, there are over 2,400 foreign-invested telecommunications companies operating in China, marking a 30 percent year-on-year increase.
"The further opening up of value-added telecom services will enable pilot areas to lead in aligning their rules, regulations, management and standards with international practices. It will also accelerate the development of more mature, replicable, and scalable models, advancing the opening-up process in due course," Zhang added.
Last October, the MIIT launched a pilot program to expand opening-up in value-added telecom services in four designated areas in Beijing, Shanghai, Hainan and Shenzhen.
It allows foreign investors to operate wholly-owned businesses, such as internet data centers, and engage in online data processing and transaction processing within designated areas. They can also gain greater access to China's cloud computing service and computing power service markets.
China approves pilot for 13 foreign-invested telecom firms to conduct value-added services
China approves pilot operations in value-added telecom services run by 13 foreign firms
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
