Tianjin opens Luban Workshop exhibition, showcasing global skills ahead of SCO summit

The Luban Workshop Exhibition opened to the public in Tianjin on Saturday ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit 2025, spotlighting China's latest vocational education achievements from Luban Workshops worldwide.

As a flagship project of China's international vocational education, Luban Workshops offer more than 400 international courses covering intelligent manufacturing, railway, transportation, and new energy technologies.

Saturday's exhibition presented many of these signature courses, with one of the highlights being a high-speed train simulator.

"This cockpit simulator replicates a real high-speed train at full scale. It features real route scenarios and enables over 20 types of skill training, such as simulated driving and fault handling. Right now, I am accelerating, and the train is at 180 km/h. It can reach up to 350 km/h. The speed of China's high-speed rail impressed foreign trainees most," said Song Mingrui, teacher at Tianjin Railway Vocational Technical College, which has hosted multiple international training programs under the Luban Workshop project.

In addition to China's well-known leading sectors such as transportation, infrastructure, and new energy industries, the Luban Workshop has also been exploring AI and robot courses, sharing China's latest technological development. For example, by learning to code themselves at the workshops, trainees can explore new application scenarios of the Chinese-made robots to meet their domestic needs.

The robots, a big hit in workshops in Russia and Kenya, are also brought to the exhibition, showcasing how Luban Workshop empowers global partners.

Since the first Luban Workshop was launched in Thailand in 2016, China has established 34 such centers globally, including 10 in SCO member states, bridging teachers and students for cultural exchange and fresh opportunities.

From Sunday to Monday, the largest-ever SCO summit in history will take place in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin, where leaders from Asia, Europe and Africa will gather together to chart the blueprint for the bloc's next decade of development.

Tianjin opens Luban Workshop exhibition, showcasing global skills ahead of SCO summit

A Japanese lawmaker has raised concerns over Japan's push to expand its military and its nuclear policy.

Responding to some politicians' dangerous tendency towards possessing nuclear weapons, Takara Sachika, a member of Japan's House of Councilors, said that Japan's push to strengthen its military, combined with what she called a misguided nuclear policy, not only heightens regional tensions but also directly threatens regional security.

"I think this is completely unacceptable. Japan is a country that has suffered atomic bombings and is one of the nations most aware of the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Yet such a country is openly discussing the issue of possessing nuclear weapons and even attempting to revise the principle of not allowing the introduction of nuclear weapons, one of the Three Non-Nuclear Principles. This is an extremely serious problem," Takara said.

Takara said the Japanese government's tendency to expand its military capabilities is completely contrary to the Constitution.

"From the perspective of Japan's Constitution, Japan should never have adopted a policy of ensuring security by strengthening military capabilities. Yet today, enormous effort is being poured into military expansion, and that in itself is a serious problem," said the lawmaker.

At a Diet meeting in early November 2025, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said that what she described as the Chinese central authorities' "use of force on Taiwan" could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, and suggested the possibility of armed intervention in the Taiwan Strait, drawing strong criticism worldwide.

Takara urged Takaichi to retract her erroneous remarks as soon as possible.

"I think there is a very big problem with making such remarks that provoke other countries. It is necessary to thoroughly examine the facts as soon as possible and withdraw the relevant remarks," she said.

Japanese lawmaker criticizes nuclear weapons remarks as threat to regional security