Xi, Trump walk out of meeting venue, shake hands

Thursday's meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, in Busan, the Republic of Korea (ROK) concluded after more than one and a half hours.

Xi and Trump walked out of the meeting venue, shook hands, and Trump escorted Xi to his car.

Xi arrived in Busan on Thursday morning to attend the 32nd APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Gyeongju and pay a state visit to the ROK at the invitation of President Lee Jae-myung.

Rapid developments in advanced industries across China, including AI and robotics, were major topics of discussion at open press interviews on Friday with leading researchers and industry executives serving as deputies to the 14th National People's Congress (NPC), currently in its ongoing fourth session.

The NPC, China's top legislature, is holding its annual session from Thursday through March 12.

At a series of open press events, delegations from various parts of the country, including Beijing, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and east China's Jiangxi Province, took questions on how their regions are shaping China's technological progress.

Deng Langni, a deputy to the 14th NPC and vice chairman of Guangxi University of Science and Technology, emphasized that as sources of innovation, universities need to take the initiative and provide strong support for the AI industry's development at the local level.

"The rapid pace of industrial transformation poses serious challenges to traditional disciplines and majors, pushing universities to 'break down walls' and bring classrooms onto industrial chains. Taking Guangxi University of Science and Technology as an example, it has quickly launched a number of AI-related micro-credentials across the campus, enabling students from different majors to gain 'AI thinking' and provide urgently-needed compound talents for industrial upgrading in Guangxi," said Deng.

A deputy from Beijing, Lei Jun, founder of consumer tech giant Xiaomi, offered an optimistic vision on the transformative impact that technological advances will have in manufacturing and industry.

"Sci-tech innovation can accelerate the development of new quality productive forces. Private enterprises have a key advantage in being close to markets and users, responding quickly, and rapidly applying new technologies to real-world scenarios. Humanoid robots have already been deployed in automobile factories, and I believe that, in the coming years, they will enter factories on a large scale," he said.

During the open event hosted by the Jiangxi NPC delegation, deputies said that the province has mapped out six key areas for future industries, including bold new areas such as embodied intelligence, brain-computer interfaces and humanoid robots.

"Many aviation, automotive and equipment manufacturing companies in Jiangxi are using intelligent robots, virtual reality and metaverse technologies to upgrade manufacturing. Workers can remotely operate equipment using immersive interfaces. Over the years, we have been dedicated to researching the key algorithms necessary for the efficient collaboration among embodied intelligent humanoid robots, digital humans and people," said NPC deputy Min Weidong, also the dean of the Metaverse Research Institute at Nanchang University.