Residents inspired by Xi in tree-planting event

Residents who participated in a tree-planting event with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday said they were inspired by the president, and vowed to contribute more to China's environmental efforts.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, was joined by residents and other Party and state leaders in Beijing's Changping District for the event, which is part of a tree-planting campaign that has been running in China for the past 45 years.

Xi waved to the crowd to extend his greetings before picking up a shovel to plant different types of saplings. While planting the trees, he asked the children at the site about their studies and daily lives, their participation in labor and sports, and their involvement in tree-planting activities. He stressed the importance of setting great goals at a young age, fostering a love of learning, work and nature, and striving to become pillars of society.

Talking to officials and residents, Xi said that China has seen sustained increases in both forest area and tree stocks, as well as continuous reduction in desert areas. This has made China the country with the largest and fastest increase in greening in the world.

Afforestation is an important task in building a Beautiful China, Xi said, urging sustained and solid efforts to advance the initiative.

Participants at the activity said they had been greatly inspired by Xi's words and deeds, vowing stronger devotion to building a beautiful China.

"I'm very excited to participate in this activity today. The general secretary was planting trees in a very serious manner. He took every shovel seriously, and then, he was meticulous and serious when patting the soil flat," said Li Ruixin, Party branch secretary of the local Baishan Village.

"Participating in this tree-planting activity makes me very happy. During the activity, I have experienced the joy of perseverance. It requires patience to do something well, just like filling the pits with soil little by little when planting trees." said Shi Manyu, a student at Changping School of Tsinghua University Primary School.

"Through this tree-planting activity, I have not only learned about more trees, but also experienced the joy of labor. While watering the trees, Grandpa Xi said to me, 'Be careful, don't have your hand pinched.' I think he is a very kind and good-natured grandpa," said Yu Wanruoshi, another student at the primary school.

"The general secretary is quite knowledgeable about tree planting. He said we should plant the types of trees that can adapt to local conditions to ensure their survival. Through this continuous work of voluntary tree planting, we can see the Party and the country's great confidence and determination in ecological conservation," said Yang Yang, Party branch secretary of the Xingshou Town Vegetable Planting Association.

"The fact that we have conducted this activity for so many years demonstrates to the world the perseverance of the Chinese people. Planting trees itself is an act that benefits both the present and future generations. I believe it's also the most responsible thing we can do for our future, for our children, and for our future home," said Wang Man, a researcher at the Beijing Aircraft Technology Research Institute of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China.

"While planting trees, the children would say, 'We are contributing our share as the tree grows little by little.' As the saying goes, it takes ten years to grow a tree, but a hundred years to cultivate people. I think the process of planting trees is also a process of nurturing children to grow from generation to generation," said Sun Weiwei, a teacher of the primary school.

"As Grandpa Xi once said, planting trees is to plant the future. We should also grow strong and healthy like this little red pine, eventually becoming towering trees and builders of a beautiful China," said Lv Zekai, another student.

"Today, we are sowing seeds of green hope with every shovelful of soil. The essence of tree-planting and afforestation is to create a better ecological environment, enabling people to live a more wonderful life. This is a very important goal of building a beautiful China," said Wang Zhide, an engineer at the National Institute of Clean and Low-carbon Energy of China Energy Investment Corporation.

"I want to be an environmental researcher when I grow up, using my knowledge to protect our green home and to make the sky bluer, the water clearer, and our lives better," Shi said.

"This year marks the 45th anniversary of the nationwide voluntary tree-planting campaign. After returning from this activity, I will definitely lead more farmers to continuously add greenery based on my experience in ecological agriculture, so that our 'tree of agricultural development' will become more and more lush," Yang said.

"I think we should begin by doing small things in our daily lives and raise our awareness of environmental protection to contribute to the building of a beautiful China," said Liu Jianwei, Party branch secretary at the primary school.

Residents inspired by Xi in tree-planting event

A full-chain open ecosystem for embodied intelligence has taken initial shape in Beijing, centered on a national-local jointly established innovation platform. The Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center is working to break down technology barriers and data silos by open-sourcing key robotics frameworks and AI models.

After its "Tiangong Ultra" humanoid robot won the world's first humanoid robot half marathon in Beijing last year, the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center has accelerated efforts to open-source its core technologies, aiming to help the industry move faster toward real-world applications.

In the world's first humanoid robot half-marathon held in April 2025 in Beijing, Tiangong Ultra claimed championship by completing the 21.0975-kilometer race in 2 hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds. Soon after, the center open-sourced its motion-control framework, followed by the release of multiple embodied AI models, including VLM, VLA and world models.

"First, our technology must be leading and earn everyone's recognition. Second, the technology really has to serve everyone well. Some companies do have good technology, they may do well on one specific aspect, but they don't open-source it, so others can not have access to it. But we are a fully open-source platform. Last year's marathon was a very good application scenario to test the stability and reliability of a robot's hardware. At that time, robots from three companies finished the race. Ours completed the whole race, and we were more than one hour ahead of the second place," said Xiong.

The results, he said, demonstrated that Tiangong's hardware platform and motion-control capabilities are among the industry's leading technologies.

Since the platform was made open-source, the center said its latest technologies have been downloaded more than 2 million times across China.

This year's humanoid robot half-marathon is scheduled for April 19, featuring a more demanding route including urban slopes, undulating roads and ecological sections inside parks.

The upgraded course is expected to pose greater challenges for robots' terrain adaptability and motion-control algorithms.

"This year, we have actually made all of our robots fully open-source and open. Now it is no longer just us that are using Tiangong technology to participate in the competition. Instead, more than 20 universities, research institutes and some enterprises in the industry are competing in the race by equipping the robots with their own algorithms. Some have even made modifications and improvements based on Tiangong, and then joined the competition. This is how the value of our platform is brought into play," said Xiong.

The center announced the launch of an ecosystem development plan for open-source embodied intelligence, which it described as the world's first full-chain ecosystem initiative centered on a national-local joint innovation platform.

The plan aims to break down technology barriers and data silos while linking upstream and downstream segments of the industrial chain.

"The current robots are still far from mature enough if they truly work in real-world situations, like on production lines, in some dangerous scenarios by replacing humans to do some specific work. We need to open-source all these technologies to the industries, so that everyone can use these technologies and improve rapidly, instead of engaging in low-level competition," said Xiong.

China now has more than 100 robotics companies, but many still focus mainly on building robot bodies, while capabilities such as motion performance, environmental perception, task planning and AI decision-making remain relatively weak, Xiong explained.

With open-source platforms and stronger foundational technologies, these companies could shift toward higher-value entry points in the market.

"We hope that the open-source technologies we release can serve as underlying technologies, so that they can innovate in vertical fields. For example, some may be in the power industry, some in the petrochemical industry, some in elderly care, and some in household services. Because the market is actually big enough, so everyone can use its own strengths, its understanding and insights into the industry to achieve better results in that vertical field, rather than doing repetitive work," Xiong noted.

Full-chain embodied AI ecosystem takes shape by leveraging national-local innovation platform