China's automotive market, already the world's largest, is experiencing an accelerating shift to smart mobility and digitalization, as some of the country's leading electric vehicle makers increasingly form partnerships with the information and communication technology (ICT) sector to equip their cars with the latest cutting-edge in-vehicle tech.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, more than 60 percent of the new passenger cars sold domestically come complete with some level of driver assistance, indicating growing customer demand for intelligent and internet-connected vehicles.
This trend is being driven by the growing cross-industry collaboration between Chinese car manufacturers and ICT firms, which has seen the automakers differentiate not necessarily on engine size or body style, but on the digital technology that powers their vehicles' mechanics from the inside.
The Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA), an alliance backed by Chinese technology giant Huawei and established two years ago, recently announced that it had already surpassed the milestone figure of one million passenger vehicle deliveries. The alliance currently features five car brands using Huawei's HarmonyOS operating system and autonomous driving system.
In November alone, the alliance delivered over 80,000 units, reaching an all-time high for a single month.
"Assisted driving has changed people's driving habits. The Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance has seen its driving-assisted vehicles log more than 5.2 billion kilometers in combined mileage. It has a 94-percent customer engagement rate," said Yu Chengdong, executive director of the board at the Huawei Consumer Business Group.
Industry experts say that different from the days when a car was mostly defined by its engine, gearbox and chassis, today's Chinese automakers have pivoted to electrification, intelligence and connectivity -- technologies that are rewriting the rules on how people travel and how the very road network operates.
"We have started to explore and conduct cross-industry cooperation over the last five years, aiming to give full play to the clear division of labor along the entire industrial chain and leveraging each party's strengths," said Zhang Xinghai, founder of SERES Group which was the first Chinese EV maker to team up with Huawei in the development of the car brand AITO.
In another exemplary cross-industry cooperative partnership, Shangjie, a new automotive brand jointly developed by Huawei and China's largest automaker SAIC Motor, announced on Tuesday that it achieved 10,000 deliveries of its H5 SUV (sport utility vehicle) just 43 days after its market launch. The brand has plans to bring at least two new car models to the market in 2026.
"Today's cars are no longer like those from fossil fuel-powered era. Their intelligent driving assistance technology, such as smart cabins, are becoming more and more important for our young customers, which is why we attach great importance to cross-industry cooperation with other companies," said Wang Xiaoqiu, president of the Shanghai-based SAIC Motor Corporation.
These developments come as China's auto industry has continued its strong growth momentum throughout the year, with the latest data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers on Thursday showing that auto sales had exceeded 31 million units in the first 11 months of 2025, representing a year-on-year increase of 11.4 percent.
Meanwhile, China's sales of new energy vehicles during the same period hit 14.78 million units, surging by 31.2 percent year on year, the data showed.
China's car market accelerates shift to digitization, smart mobility
"Last Daughters", a documentary produced by the China Global Television Network (CGTN), traces the destinies of "comfort women" in the Philippines during World War II and charts the struggles of their descendants in the decades that have followed.
The Japanese military's "comfort women" system was a state-enforced regime of sexual slavery during World War II, victimizing over 400,000 women across Asia.
Treated as consumable "supplies" alongside weapons, countless girls - many underage - were brutally assaulted, left infertile, and later forced into silence under post-war stigma.
Among them in the Philippines was survivor Estelita Dy, who passed away last year at 94. Abducted at 14 from a sugarcane field, she endured repeated assaults by soldiers. After decades of silence, she came forward in the 1990s with the support of Lila Pilipina, an organization that helps Filipina survivors of Japanese wartime sexual slavery demand accountability from Japan.
The victims' stories are fading as the number of survivors dwindles, but Estelita's daughter Elizabeth Atillo vowed to keep fighting at her mother's grave.
"My mother, Estelita Dy, is buried here. She was 94 years old when she passed away [on November 24, 2024]. We didn't even know why she kept running out back then. We didn't know she was a 'comfort woman.' We found out when we saw her rallying. We saw her on TV. 'Nanay was a comfort woman? What?' I said. I couldn't believe it. My mother, a 'comfort woman'? She said, 'Believe it. That's how it was during the Japanese time.' Then she told me, 'I was raped,'" said the daughter.
The abduction and brutal violation by the Japanese traumatized Estelita severely and changed the course of her life.
"After that, every day when she remembered what had happened, my grandmother would say, 'Go back to school.' She tried to study, but she couldn't continue. She was still in elementary school then. She wasn't able to finish her studies, and eventually, she went to Manila and just started working. She got up as early as 5:00 every morning. She went to the church to sell rice cakes and stayed until evening. She wouldn't quit until every last rice cake was sold. If she had to, she would even stay up until dawn, so we could have more money. My mother would stop at nothing to provide us with food and clothing. She worked desperately because our father had abandoned us. There were six of us kids, so she worked hard to support us all," said Atillo.
She said her mother was later encouraged by Maria Rosa Luna Henson, the first "comfort woman" victim in the Philippines, to publicly share her war-time tragedy.
"Before, yes, my mother was ashamed. Because of what happened to her, my mother didn't even want to get married. She never told my father that she was raped during the Japanese occupation. She didn't even want to come forward. But then she saw others come forward, especially Grandmother Rosa, right? She was the first one to speak up. Eventually the news about the 'comfort women' came out. That's when my mom started joining Lila Pilipina," she said.
Sharon Cabusao-Silva, executive director of the Lila Pilipina organization, explained in the documentary how difficult it was for the victims to speak up at that time.
"There's this whole stigma about being a rape victim. It's even more difficult to say that I have been gang-raped by so many Japanese soldiers. Immediately after the war, the Filipinos were enraged against the Japanese. So, it was very hard to say that you were with the Japanese. You could be seen as a traitor. You were hiding two things. One, that you were a victim of gang rape; and two, that you could be accused of being a traitor to your country. That's why it was so hard to say it, and so hard to say, 'I was raped in turns by the Japanese,'" she said.
"One time, she [Estelita Dy] told me, 'I actually don't believe that I will achieve justice in my lifetime, but what I only want is that the young people do not experience what we experienced.' I admire her personal qualities, you know, quiet, humble, and also discerning, but at the same time, very, very committed to the struggle for justice. Until her deathbed, actually, she always wanted to join activities," she added.
Atillo said the whole family joined her mother to rally for the rights of the "comfort women", and has repeatedly called for a formal and sincere apology from the Japanese side.
"I supported my mother by joining the rallies. We'd support her. We'd go with her. If she said, 'We have a rally,' we would join. Sometimes I'd even bring my grandchildren. They're grown up now. What we really want is for them to issue an official apology for what they did and to include the 'comfort women system' in historical records, and to ask for forgiveness from the women they abused during the Japanese occupation," she said.
CGTN documentary reveals tragedies of Philippine "comfort women"
