The 32nd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Ministerial Meeting was held in Guangzhou in south China's Guangdong Province on Friday.
The meeting, themed "innovation-driven development for win-win cooperation," brought together SME officials from APEC economies, representatives of the APEC Secretariat, and other guests, and focused on technological innovation, digital empowerment and inclusive development.
China has established 22 bilateral and multilateral SME cooperation mechanisms, covering approximately 50 countries, and has invited all parties, including APEC economies, to jointly build a regional AI-powered SME development cooperation center, based in Guangzhou.
China will host the 33rd APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in south China's Shenzhen City in November this year, the country's third hosting of the event following Shanghai in 2001 and Beijing in 2014.
This year marks the APEC "China Year," with the theme of "Building an Asia-Pacific Community to Prosper Together." Approximately 300 APEC-related meetings and events will take place in different Chinese cities throughout the year.
2026 APEC SME ministerial meeting held in Guangzhou
Congratulating a popular national children's radio program on its 70th anniversary, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged professionals in children's culture to redouble efforts in nurturing a new generation of capable young people for the socialist cause.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the call in a congratulatory letter sent Friday to China Media Group's program named Xiaolaba, or Little Trumpet. He praised the program's 70-year commitment to "telling good stories to children," which have accompanied generations of young listeners as they grew up. Xi called on the program's team and professionals in children's culture to fulfill the mission of fostering virtue through education, keep pace with the times, tap deeply into the rich cultural resources, and devote themselves to creating more excellent and popular works that promote the true, the good and the beautiful for children.
He urged greater efforts to nurture a new generation of capable young people with sound moral grounding, intellectual ability, physical vigor, aesthetic sensibility, and labor skills, who will be able to contribute to and carry forward the socialist cause.
Li Shulei, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, read Xi's congratulatory letter at a symposium held in Beijing the same day to mark the 70th anniversary of the program.
Participants at the symposium said that Xi's congratulatory letter fully demonstrated the CPC Central Committee's care for the nation's children and focus on the development of cultural and artistic programs for young audiences.
They called for fulfilling the fundamental task of fostering virtue and cultivating talent through education, adding that greater efforts should be made to carry forward China's fine traditional culture and use new technologies including artificial intelligence to produce more children's cultural and artistic works that are both meaningful and engaging, and provide the best spiritual nourishment to safeguard the healthy growth of the young generation.
Launched on Sept 4, 1956, Xiaolaba is the first radio program in the People's Republic of China dedicated to preschool children. It has since grown into a flagship program spanning radio, television, new media and in-school broadcasting.
Xi urges greater efforts to nurture capable young people for socialist cause
