The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that global financial stability risks have increased significantly, driven by tighter global financial conditions and heightened trade and geopolitical uncertainty.
In its latest Global Financial Stability Report released on Tuesday, the IMF said that the tariff announcements made by the United States since February 2025, especially the surprising magnitude of tariffs rolled out on April 2, had triggered a large-scale, global repricing of risky assets and significantly increased volatility in the stock, currency and bond markets.
Major geopolitical events, especially military conflicts, have also exacerbated market stability risks, according to the report.
"Financial conditions have tightened globally and that is to first order driven by the higher level of uncertainty, policy uncertainty around the world. So market volatility has shot up and with the higher market volatility, risk asset prices have declined, meaningfully in equity markets and bond markets. So the tighter financial conditions, the more subdued outlook in terms of real activity and the higher uncertainty means that financial stability risks have increased. And so we do detect the meaningful increase in those downside risks," said Tobias Adrian, director with the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the IMF.
The report emphasized that during this period full of uncertainties, all countries must remain highly vigilant to prevent small-scale pressures from evolving into widespread systemic crises.
IMF warns global financial risks have increased significantly
China aims to achieve secure and reliable supply of key core artificial intelligence (AI) technologies by 2027, with its industrial scale and empowerment level remaining among the world's forefront, according to a recent government action plan.
The plan, jointly issued by eight departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Cyberspace Administration of China, and the National Development and Reform Commission, outlines an ambitious push to deeply integrate AI with the manufacturing sector, foster new quality productive forces and comprehensively empower new industrialization. By 2027, the plan targets the deep application of three to five general-purpose large AI models in manufacturing, the development of specialized, full-coverage industry-specific large models, the creation of 100 high-quality industrial datasets, and the promotion of 500 typical application scenarios.
It also aims to cultivate two to three globally influential ecosystem-leading enterprises, a batch of specialized and sophisticated small and medium-sized enterprises, and a group of enabling service providers proficient in both AI technology and industry know-how.
Furthermore, China plans to build a world-leading open-source ecosystem, enhance security governance capabilities, and contribute Chinese solutions to global AI development.
The document outlines measures including promoting the coordinated development of AI chips' hardware and software, supporting innovations in model training and inference methods, fostering key industry-specific large models, and deeply embedding large model technology into core production processes.
The plan also emphasizes making breakthroughs in key technologies such as security protection for industrial model algorithms and training data protection.
China aims for secure, reliable supply of AI core tech by 2027
