The 2025 China-Germany Human Rights Development Forum was held in Beijing on Thursday, bringing together 30 experts from both countries to discuss aligning international development cooperation with humanitarian assistance either online or in person.
Amid rising global challenges, participants called for genuine multilateralism and development-driven solutions to address the root causes of crises and strengthen global human rights governance.
"The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025 shows that 800 million people around the world still live in extreme poverty, and billions of people are in want of safe drinking water and hygiene services. The advancement of human rights worldwide faces severe challenges, urgently requiring the international community to unite in addressing them. As the world's second and third largest economies and major countries in the world, China and Germany should all the more shoulder greater responsibilities," said Li Hongkui, vice chairman and secretary general of China Foundation for Human Rights Development.
Herta Daubler-Gmelin, former German minister of justice, attended the forum via video link.
Humanitarian aid and development cooperation are two pillars of global solidarity, she said, adding that development assistance strengthens resilience and capacity in recipient countries.
The forum was hosted by the China Foundation for Human Rights Development and the Germany Friedrich Albert Foundation.
Since launching dialog in 1999, the two institutions have built a long-term partnership, jointly hosting multiple forums to deepen mutual understanding and people-to-people exchanges.
China-Germany Human Rights Development Forum held in Beijing
China-Germany Human Rights Development Forum held in Beijing
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
