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NEWS IN CHINA

• China calls for international cooperation on AI safety and governance at the AI Safety Summit in the UK: The Chinese delegation at the AI Safety Summit held in the United Kingdom emphasized the importance of international cooperation on artificial intelligence (AI) and international governance issues. The delegation talked about China’s Global Artificial Intelligence Governance Initiative launched at the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held in Beijing on the 18^th of October. They highlighted the importance of AI governance and how it needs to be addressed by all countries. Further, the delegation emphasized the need for AI development to be people-oriented and for it to work towards the betterment of society on the framework of mutual respect, equality, and benefit. China also encouraged countries to increase the representation of developing countries in global AI governance to help bridge the intelligence and governance capacity gap. They asked all participating countries to follow a path of vision that is common, cooperative, and sustainable and to balance out development and security for the safe development of AI. The delegation further expressed China’s willingness to work with other nations to strengthen communication and exchanges on AI safety governance and partake in developing an international mechanism that would work through universal participation and a governance framework with broad consensus. Furthermore, they also expressed their willingness to work and help implement initiatives like the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI) and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) to promote AI as a technology that works for the benefit of humanity and a better future for all.
  
  
• China takes the rotating presidency of the UNSC: For November, China has assumed the rotating presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the UN emphasized that the UNSC will be focusing mainly on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the most important agenda for the UNSC this month. Zhang stressed that China will work together with the relevant parties and the international community to ensure timely, responsible and meaningful collective actions as the rotating president of the UNSC. Zhang Jun informed how China will continue to work to ensure a ceasefire and will focus on responding to the latest attacks in the Gaza strips on the refugee camps. He expressed his disappointment about the deadlock among the council members regarding the recent draft resolutions and not being able to reach a common ground regarding the conflict. Furthermore, the UNSC will be addressing other issues this month, including Syria, Yemen, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The UNSC will also hold an open debate on the theme of "Common Development Promotes Lasting Peace" on November 20 upon China’s initiation.
  
  
• Public welfare academic platform launched by the Chinese Academy of Sciences:  A public welfare academic platform named Pubscholar has been launched by China at the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The platform will provide basic services like academic resource searching, content acquisition with an aim to serve as a high-quality public welfare academic resource. Being in its initial phase, the platform integrates its resources from the CAS, including science and technological achievements, publishing, and academic exchanges. The platform collects open-access and authorized academic resources and helps to provide approximately 170 million resources, with around 80 million of the full-text resources being available for free including journals, dissertations, patents and scientific data. The Vice President of the CAS, Ding Chibao, in his speech expressed how he hopes the platform will help develop a new academic exchange system that will enhance knowledge and stimulate the potential of the public to develop innovation ideas.
  
  
• China inaugurated its largest LNG storage tank to help boost natural gas supply in North China: China has unveiled its largest independently developed Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) storage tank in Qingdao, Shandong Province that will help increase the supply capacity of natural gas to northern China. The storage tank has a capacity of 270,000-cubic-meter, a diameter of 100.6 meters and a height of 55 meters. Wu Bin, the general manager of Sinopec Qingdao, a state-owned enterprise engaged in crude oil refining and the production of various petrochemicals, boasted how 95 percent of the equipment had been domestically produced and its high degree of localization. The new storage tank has increased the annual handling capacity of the Qingdao LNG terminal to 11 million tons and the gas supply capacity to 16.5 billion cubic meters. This is of great importance as the Qingdao LNG terminal is the only available terminal in Shandong Province and serves as the main gas supply source for provinces in North China, including Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Hebei, and Henan.
  
  
• Straw burning causes severe pollution in northeast China: The National Joint Research Center for Tackling Key Problems in Air Pollution Control revealed that the recent increase in pollution in Northeast China, a heavy PM2.5 pollution level, has been due to straw burning. Later satellite data identified huge numbers of open straw burning points concentrated in the Jilin province, central Liaoning and southern Heilongjiang. The experts explained how the daily burning of straw for three to four hours led to massive pollution accumulation, which was then transported by the air currents in the region. All this led to the fall of the air quality by several degrees in the northeast region of China. Furthermore, the experts predicted that the incoming cold air would help improve the quality of the region.
  
  
• China monitored US and Canadian warships sailing into the Taiwan Strait: The Chinese military closely monitored the activities of the United States Rafael Peralta and the Canadian HMCS Ottawa that had sailed into the Taiwan Strait amid tensions in the region. Colonel Shi Yi, a spokesman for the PLA Eastern Theatre Command said that the transit was “publicly hyped” and the army in the region is still on high alert. The US Navy’s 7th Fleet responded by stating how they were on their regular passage for transit and were consistent with the international law and highlighted the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific region. While the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) are yet to release a statement about the same. US and Canada have been carrying out such transits recurrently and are causing further increase in tensions in the ongoing Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. Furthermore, China sees Taiwan as its own territory and expressed dissatisfaction with the US having an informal alliance with Taiwan. Although the US and Canada do not recognize Taiwan as an independent state, they are still opposed to any unilateral changes in the cross-strait status quo through the medium of force.

SOCIAL MEDIA CHATTER

• Chinese woman asks colleague to return wedding cash gift becomes hot topic on social media: A recent story from China has been making rounds on Chinese social media platforms about a woman, surnamed Huang from Sichuan province, who invited her ex-colleague to attend her wedding to get back a cash wedding gift worth 400 yuan that she had gifted him when he got married.  The man declined her wedding invite that she had sent him through WeChat as he did not know if it was authentic or not which led the woman to argue that he should return the cash gift no matter what and that how one can be absent from the wedding but not from sending the gifts. Netizens called Huang disrespectful on social media platforms and said that her dignity had been turned to dust. One user asked if a cash gift at a wedding required a return, would blessings require a return or not. Some users sympathized with the man as they could understand why he did not attend the wedding since the invite in the first place did not seem genuine. Gifting cash as a wedding gift to newlyweds is a longstanding tradition in China which has recently been changing because of the younger generation who have started coming up with their own marriage gifts.
  
  

INDIA WATCH

• Both India and China have strong AI power and are continuously working towards more advanced research and innovation to develop it further. China’s New Generation Artificial Plan that was released in 2017 focuses on increasing China’s global position in AI development and increasing national security with the help of AI. It aims to increase China’s leadership in technological research, and innovation and help the AI industry to flourish in the global market. Similarly, India defined a national policy on AI called the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence that was strategized by the NITI Aayog, a government think tank. The policy mainly aims to spread Indian made AI solutions to the rest of the world and to make the life of people easier and better.  At the AI Safety Summit taking place in the UK, China called out for international cooperation whereas the Indian Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, said that India looks at AI with a “prism of openness, safety, trust and accountability” at the summit. He further added how India believes in maintaining international collaborations and conversations to seize the opportunities that technologies are providing the world with. He also addressed the potential dangers of letting technological interventions outpace regulatory measures and emphasized on the importance of combating misinformation and internet weaponization especially with the growth of social media. He warned countries about how letting unchecked innovations into their regulations could lead to the growth of toxic online environment. Furthermore, Chandrashekhar discussed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of forming an international coalition of nations to work with a collaborative approach towards shaping the future of technology for the betterment of mankind through a path of sustainability and cooperation. India recently proposed a “Framework for Responsible Human-Centric AI governance” at the G20 Summit with the aim of AI serving the global community and safeguarding it from misuse.