Manufacturing

China's domestically developed large fixed-wing drone, the FP-985 "Taurus," completed a long-distance logistics flight across the high-altitude regions between Sichuan and Xizang on Wednesday.

Loaded with local specialties including butter tea and yak dairy products, the Taurus flew over 1,100 kilometers from Nyingchi city in Southwest China's Xizang autonomous region to Beichuan Qiang autonomous county in Sichuan province, marking the success of the country's first logistics validation flight for a large drone in a plateau environment.

In 2025, China's automotive industry demonstrated strong resilience with sustained momentum, supported by the continued implementation of policies aimed at promoting large-scale equipment upgrades and consumer goods trade-in programs. A range of key indicators hit record highs.

Annual automobile production and sales reached 34.531 million and 34.4 million units, respectively, up 10.4 percent and 9.4 percent year on year. Both figures set new historical records, making China the world's largest auto producer and market for the 17th consecutive year.

New energy vehicles emerged as the market driver. NEV production and sales totaled 16.626 million and 16.49 million units in 2025, each posting year-on-year growth of nearly 30 percent. NEVs accounted for more than half of domestic new car sales. China has now ranked first globally in NEV production and sales for 11 consecutive years.

China has made a new breakthrough in quantum computing, as its superconducting quantum computing prototype "Zuchongzhi 3.2" achieved quantum error correction below the fault-tolerance threshold on a surface code with a code distance of seven, according to a report by Science and Technology Daily.

The breakthrough demonstrated that logical error rates drop significantly as code distance increases, marking a key milestone for China in achieving quantum error correction that improves once the threshold is crossed.