Earlier this month, PwC China launched its AI Innovation Center in Shanghai. The center helps clients chart practical roadmaps for AI adoption and navigate the many complexities associated with digital transformation. A recent PwC study places China in the top tier globally for AI deployment effectiveness in the real economy. According to Liu Yaxiao, who heads the new center, a growing number of overseas clients are now voluntarily adopting China's open-source AI ecosystem when upgrading their digital operations. The PwC findings are borne out by cosmetics giant L'Oréal. In its Suzhou smart fulfillment center, the group's first such facility globally, smart sorting systems and AI-powered packaging optimizers help the hub process 7,000 consumer parcels per hour, and ensure that 99 percent of its orders are processed within 48 hours.

Once stereotyped as a landscape of billowing smoke and grueling manual labor, China's steel sector is undergoing a profound digital metamorphosis. Inside the smart operations center of Nanjing Steel Group Co., Ltd. in east China's Jiangsu Province, giant screens now display real-time data on converter temperatures and steel grades. Powered by a specialized large language model developed in partnership with Huawei, a renowned tech giant, the system utilizes thousands of internal sensors to dynamically predict furnace conditions. With the accuracy of temperature trend prediction consistently exceeding 90 percent, the AI acts as "X-ray vision" for the furnace, boosting the first-grade rate of hot metal by over 10 percentage points and slashing energy consumption per unit of output by 12 percent.

China will raise retail gasoline and diesel prices by 685 yuan (about 100.89 U.S. dollars) and 655 yuan per tonne, respectively, effective from Saturday, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). These adjustments follow a rise in international crude prices amid escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, said Liu Bingjuan, an oil industry analyst. Under China's current pricing mechanism, domestic gasoline and diesel prices are adjusted every 10 working days in line with changes in international crude oil prices.