China opposes smearing and stigmatizing Confucius Institutes, Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a press briefing in Beijing on Monday.
He made the statement in response to a media query about U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's reported designation of the institutes as a "threat to U.S. national security."
"We oppose the smearing and stigmatization of Confucius Institutes. Educational exchanges and cooperation between China and the United States help enhance mutual understanding between the two peoples and are reciprocal and mutually beneficial, which should not be disrupted or undermined," said Guo.
China opposes smearing, stigmatizing Confucius Institutes: spokesman
The rare footage of a family of three snow leopards, including a cub playing with a stick, was released recently after being captured by infrared cameras at the Helan Mountain National Nature Reserve in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The footage shows the three snow leopards briefly appeared together on a rocky hillside before the male walked off into the distance. In another clip, the cub played with a stick, walking around and occasionally lying down, while the female watched nearby.
"The cub is now almost the same size as an adult leopard. It is nearly one and a half years old and has adapted very well to the Helan Mountain environment. It is growing up very healthily," said a staff member of the administration bureau of the Helan Mountain National Nature Reserve.
The snow leopard is a first-class nationally protected wild animal in China, and its survival is an important indicator of the health of high-altitude ecosystems.
To protect its habitat, the reserve has continued to track individual snow leopards through field patrols and infrared camera inspections, accumulating rich data for species protection and scientific research.
To date, five individual snow leopards have been monitored in the reserve.
Infrared cameras capture snow leopard family at nature reserve in Inner Mongolia
