On the shores of the East China Sea, the megacity of Shanghai stands as China's pacesetter in reform and opening-up and a trailblazer in innovative development.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, on Wednesday made an inspection tour of the city.
Covering an administrative area of 6,340.5 square kilometers, Shanghai is home to 24.85 million permanent residents by the end of 2025. In the first quarter of this year, Shanghai's gross domestic product reached 1.35 trillion yuan (199.4 billion U.S. dollars), up 5.9 percent year on year, outpacing the national average.
As China's largest economic hub, Shanghai continues to elevate its status as an international economic center through high-quality development.
Long a vanguard of opening-up, the city has reaped substantial gains in building itself into an international trade hub. Its container throughput has ranked the first globally for 16 consecutive years, and Shanghai has risen to second in global shipping center rankings. Led by the National Innovation Center par Excellence, the city is accelerating toward becoming a globally influential hub of science and technology.
At the same time, Shanghai is also deeply committed to the philosophy of "people's city," advancing urban governance with painstaking precision. It is forging a new path for the modernization of megacity governance with Chinese characteristics.
With the overarching goal of building itself into a modern, socialist, international metropolis with global influence, Shanghai is fully leveraging its leading and exemplary role in advancing Chinese modernization.
Shanghai stands as beacon of reform, innovation, high-quality development
Rally participants gathered in the Japanese capital on Aug 9, which also marked the 81st anniversary of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, to voice strong opposition to the government's push to boost defense spending and revise the war-renouncing Article 9 of the national Constitution.
Holding anti-war placards, chanting anti-war slogans, protesters warned that remilitarizing the nation would betray its pacifist ideals and endanger future generations.
"Defense spending keeps increasing. Based on Article 9 of the Constitution, Japan pledged never to wage war again, yet it keeps strengthening its military. I find this extremely dangerous. They are also trying to revise Article 9. So I believe that for the sake of future young people and children, Article 9 must never be revised. Japan decided never to repeat the mistakes of waging a war after its defeat in WWII. I think we should continue to safeguard that commitment," said a rally participant.
For many in the crowd, the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains a powerful moral compass as they believe that militarization offers no path forward for a nation that knows the devastation of war firsthand.
"Japan is the only country in the world to have suffered atomic bombings. Yet now Japan is going to deploy missiles. I believe Japan must never possess nuclear weapons," said another rally participant.
"I believe Japan has no future if it goes down the path of militarization. Nuclear weapons are absolutely bad for Japan," said a third woman, also a rally participant.
Beyond moral objections, some demonstrators said that Japan's economic vulnerabilities articulate that saber-rattling is a luxury the country cannot afford.
"I can't help but wonder what on earth a country with only a 36 percent food self-sufficiency rate would be fighting with. I have always been opposed to war, and I'm deeply dissatisfied with what the Takaichi administration is doing now," said another rally participant.
Other rally participants said that seeing revision of the Constitution could unleash unchecked military expansion, stripping away the very safeguards that have kept Japan at peace for eight decades.
"Article 9 of the Constitution is the key. If the nature of the Self-Defense Forces is elevated to a level beyond collective self-defense, which is explicitly written into the Constitution, it will allow the authority of the Self-Defense Forces to expand without limit. So no matter what, I want to prevent this from happening," said one more rally participant.
Japanese citizens rally against Takaichi's military expansion, constitutional revision
