Three fluffy panda cubs born this year were spotted lying on their backs, with their tiny bellies facing the sky, footage from the Star Giant Panda Nursery House in the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in southwest China's Sichuan Province shows.
In the newly released video, keepers gently roll the chubby cubs over so they're facing up. The baby bears wiggle their paws and kick their little legs in the air, looking adorably clumsy and full of life — a perfect dose of panda joy from Chengdu.
The Chengdu base is a world-renowned center for the ex-situ conservation of giant pandas. It also serves as a hub for scientific research, public education and ecotourism. The institution is internationally recognized for its efforts to protect and breed giant pandas, red pandas and other endangered wildlife species native to China.
3 adorable panda cubs melt heart at Chengdu breading base
3 adorable panda cubs melt heart at Chengdu breading base
Chinese universities must evolve from "innovation parks" into "engines" to drive industrial development, a national political advisor said on Saturday in Beijing.
Zhang Qiao, president of Soochow University, a prestigious university in east China's Jiangsu Province, was speaking to the press in a group interview along with other members of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top political advisory body.
His view coincides with the country's greater emphasis on self-reliance in science and technology to boost high-quality growth during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030).
According to Zhang, close collaboration between Chinese academic institutions and the industry is crucial for driving this growth, as academic institutions are where innovation thrives, and the industry has the resources, practical knowledge and infrastructure to make innovation fruitful.
Zhang said that during this year's fourth session of the 14th CPPCC National Committee, he has proposed building corporate labs on university campuses and moving university classrooms into companies, thus deepening university-industry collaboration.
He highlighted the achievements in academia-industry collaboration since the joint establishment of the regional university-industry technology transfer center by the Ministry of Education and Jiangsu Province, the first national-level center of its kind, since September 2024.
"During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, and let me take Jiangsu for an instance, the Ministry of Education and Jiangsu Province jointly set up the first regional technology transfer center among China's universities. Over the past year, the center hosted 32 public transfer platforms, actively fostered partnerships with over 100 top universities nationwide, gathered as many as 5,742 sci-tech outcomes, of which 344 transferred to the industry, and incubated 164 new businesses," he said.
Looking ahead, Zhang said Chinese universities must play a better role in driving scientific and technological innovations and industrial development in emerging fields.
"Looking ahead to the 15th Five-Year Plan, we must not only become 'innovation parks' that provide inspiration, but also 'engines' that drive development. We must stay focused on the sci-tech frontiers to break through the boundaries of human knowledge, while remaining rooted in the fertile soil of the industry to help solve the practical problems for enterprises," he said.
National political advisor on closer academia-industry collaboration
