HAIKOU, CHINA - Media OutReach Newswire – 9 July 2026 - The IWUF 4th Taolu World Cup successfully wrapped up in Haikou, Hainan, China, on July 8, 2026. The competition featured 11 men's and 11 women's events, covering four major categories, including fist routines, long weapons, short weapons, and duilian. Over two days, a total of 22 gold medals were contested.
Athletes in competition
The Taolu World Cup is one of the six flagship official events of the IWUF (International Wushu Federation) and stands as the highest-level and most influential elite professional competition in the global taolu discipline. This November, wushu will make its historic debut as an official medal sport at the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games, marking the first time this traditional Chinese martial art has been incorporated into the Olympic sports program.
This event marked the first high-level international wushu single-discipline competition hosted by Hainan since the inception of the Hainan Free Trade Port. It attracted 206 athletes, team leaders, and coaches from 29 countries and regions worldwide, including 117 elite competitors. Ultimately, athletes from 18 countries and regions secured medals with their outstanding competitive performances.
Leveraging the unique geographical and policy advantages of the Hainan Free Trade Port, combined with visa-free access for citizens of 86 countries and the 240-hour transit visa-exemption policy, overseas participants, technical officials, and media personnel have enjoyed fast-track customs clearance. Meanwhile, specialized competition equipment has benefited from zero-tariff treatment and simplified cross-border customs clearance procedures.
Hainan boasts a rich and distinctive wushu culture. Through centuries of inheritance and development, it has integrated the essence of various martial arts schools and blended them with local island folklore and regional characteristics to form a unique "Qiong-style" wushu system. Two counties and one city in Hainan, namely Tunchang, Qiongzhong, and Wanning, have been designated as "National Wushu Hometowns," reflecting a deep-rooted local tradition of martial arts appreciation. Indigenous fighting styles such as the Li ethnic group's Li Family Fist, Tunchang Pochen Five-Form Stakes, and Wanning Mazai Kung Fu have been passed down through generations, standing as treasured gems of Hainan's folk culture.
During the event, Hainan concurrently hosted the inaugural Hainan International Wushu Culture Month event, featuring multiple "wushu + tourism" travel routes. These activities allowed domestic and international guests to enjoy Hainan's island scenery and duty-free shopping benefits while taking in high-level wushu competitions.
Looking ahead, Hainan will continue to deeply integrate wushu elements into its sports-tourism product system, developing a range of wushu-themed tourist destinations, study and research bases, and signature events. This will make "spectator travel" a new model for Hainan's cultural tourism. At the same time, Hainan will continue to promote the hosting of various international wushu competitions, training camps, professional development programs, and cultural exchange activities, attracting wushu enthusiasts and professional teams from around the world to compete, train, and study in Hainan, with the goal of establishing the island as a global hub for wushu development and cultural exchange.
Separately, the 43rd Executive Committee Meeting of the IWUF has decided that Haikou City in Hainan Province will host the 12th Sanda World Cup.
Hashtag: #IWUF
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COLOMBO, SRI LANKA- Media OutReach Newswire - 9 July 2026 - On July 4, 2026, the cultural exchange event Encounter & Insight: Dialogue Between Ningbo, China and Colombo, Sri Lanka took place in Colombo.
On July 4, 2026, the cultural exchange event Encounter & Insight: Dialogue Between Ningbo, China and Colombo, Sri Lanka took place in Colombo.
Separated by thousands of miles, the two millennia-old port cities reconnected, leveraging their ports as a bond and cultural exchanges as a cohesive force to hold in-depth talks on integrated port-city development and bilateral economic and trade connectivity.
This cross-Indian Ocean dialogue echoes the ancient Maritime Silk Road while charting a brand-new outbound development path. As a pivotal starting port of the ancient Maritime Silk Road, Ningbo is building a new global trade landscape powered by smart manufacturing.
A thousand years ago, merchant vessels from Mingzhou Port set sail southward loaded with Yue Kiln celadon porcelain, passing through Ceylon to deliver Oriental crafts across the Indian Ocean coasts. Precious gemstones and spices traveled the same sea route back to regions south of the Yangtze River, laying the groundwork for the earliest cultural exchange between the two ports through trade. Today, the cargo carried by giant cargo ships has undergone a dramatic transformation. Beyond traditional daily necessities, intelligent equipment, digital home appliances and industrial robots now dominate shipments.
Official statistics show that Ningbo's exports of intelligent equipment, including mechanical arms and industrial robots, hit 440 million yuan in 2025, surging more than 40% year-on-year. From January to May this year, Ningbo's exports of mechanical and electrical products maintained steady growth, reaching 247 billion yuan, a 4.1% year-on-year increase and accounting for 58.0% of the city's total export volume. The new energy foreign trade sector saw explosive growth, with exports of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products jumping 138.4% year-on-year, with electric vehicle exports skyrocketing 215.9%. Smart manufactured goods are continuously expanding the scope of Ningbo's foreign trade.
Complementing the Colombo forum, an exhibition highlights Ningbo's outstanding going-global enterprises and their products, vividly illustrating the profound shift in Ningbo's trade structure.
Alongside time-honored Maritime Silk Road staples such as celadon porcelain and silk, Ningbo's smart manufactured products—including AI translation glasses, intelligent outdoor gear and digital small home appliances—occupy prominent display spaces across the venue. In Sri Lanka, Ningbo smart water meters are widely adopted nationwide, while handheld cooling fans and intelligent kitchen appliances have entered ordinary households.
Leveraging Colombo Port's transshipment advantages, massive volumes of Ningbo smart manufactured goods are distributed onward to Europe, the Middle East and beyond. What Ningbo exports today is no longer mere commodities, but a complete outbound solution integrating technology, brand value and after-sales services.
Faced with mounting challenges including homogeneous global market competition and rising trade barriers, Ningbo's manufacturing sector has abandoned the old model of low-cost OEM production, relying on intelligent transformation to consolidate its competitive edge in overseas markets.
Over more than a decade of digital transformation efforts, Ningbo has achieved full digital upgrading of all industrial enterprises above designated size. A large number of local factories have built unmanned black-light workshops and flexible production lines, escaping vicious price competition through continuous technological iteration. Represented by five specialized, sophisticated, distinctive and innovative enterprises dubbed Ningbo's "Five Little Tigers"—famous for their core proprietary technologies, including highly sophisticated visual inspection equipment, heat-resistant materials, sun-proof coatings, puncture-proof materials and self-drilling fasteners—these niche manufacturers have developed differentiated technical routes and full-spectrum production capacity, cementing irreplaceable competitiveness for Ningbo smart manufacturing on global markets.
Beyond trade expansion, Ningbo has built a supporting cultural communication system to ensure "products go global, accompanied by local culture".
The launch of Sri Lanka's first "One-Meter Cultural Space" cultural station during the Colombo event marks a tangible milestone of Ningbo's go-global initiative. Built on enterprises' overseas outlets, these miniature cultural exhibition halls integrate intangible cultural heritage crafts, urban stories and smart products, enabling overseas clients to experience cutting-edge manufacturing while gaining insight into Ningbo's profound cultural heritage.
During the twin-city story-sharing session, Ningbo entrepreneurs based in Sri Lanka and local designers blending Chinese and Sri Lankan aesthetics shared stories of bilateral exchanges. Economic and trade ties have evolved into a bond for people-to-people communication, bridging divides in cross-cultural trade.
From Tang-dynasty celadon porcelain sailing across the Indian Ocean to intelligent equipment shipping to every corner of the globe, Ningbo, the ancient Maritime Silk Road port, has preserved its enduring gene of openness. Where exchanges once relied purely on commodity trade, today smart manufacturing underpins a stable, diversified and high-value-added global trade network.
The Ningbo-Colombo dialogue stands as a vivid microcosm of this transformation: the port still links lands and seas, yet the core of its trade has undergone a full intelligent upgrade.
Rooted in its historical legacy as a key Maritime Silk Road hub, Ningbo has consolidated its industrial foundation through a decade of digital development, expanded global market reach via worldwide port networks, and softened trade cooperation through cultural exchanges. This brand-new outbound shipping route forged by smart manufacturing has not only reshaped the city's foreign trade landscape, but also delivered a replicable port-city development model for Chinese manufacturing to go global.
Hashtag: #NingboSmartManufacturing #MaritimeSilkRoad #GlobalTrade
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