The return capsule of the Shenzhou-19 crewed spacecraft, carrying taikonauts Cai Xuzhe, Song Lingdong, and Wang Haoze, touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on 13:08 pm on Wednesday, marking the complete success of the mission.
The three taikonauts are in good health, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).
The Shenzhou-19 was successfully launched on October 30, 2024. During the mission, Chinese taikonauts completed three spacewalks and conducted six payload operations. They set a world record for the longest single spacewalk by a taikonaut — at nine hours — and broke the national record for the most spacewalks performed by a Chinese taikonaut.
According to CMSA, the three taikonauts spent 183 days in orbit, completing tasks such as the installation of space debris protection devices for the space station, multiple cargo transfer missions, and carrying out installation, commissioning, inspection, maintenance, and repair of both internal and external equipment. These efforts contributed valuable data and experience for the station's long-term, stable operation.
While in orbit, the crew, working closely with ground-based researchers, conducted a wide range of space science experiments and tests in fields such as microgravity physics, space materials science, space life sciences, aerospace medicine, and aerospace technology.
Faced with a substantial extravehicular workload, Chinese taikonauts demonstrated outstanding professionalism and technical skill, Wang Yanan, chief editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times.
The tasks performed during spacewalks demand exceptional precision and meticulous attention to detail, and successfully completing such extended extravehicular activities is a remarkable achievement, said Wang, "This underscores the formidable teamwork and resilience of the Chinese taikonaut corps."
Wang added that the achievement also reflects China's strong confidence in its spacesuit design and technology, which are engineered to withstand prolonged exposure to the harsh environment of space.
Wang noted the Shenzhou missions have evolved into a highly stable and routine operation. "Many tasks are continuous, with experiments unfinished by Shenzhou-19 seamlessly passed to Shenzhou-20. Completed experiments are returned to Earth, while new experimental equipment is launched, ensuring a smooth transition within a cohesive work team."
As time progresses, such updates may become increasingly routine to the public, said Wang.
Cambodia is becoming a "hidden gem" destination in the eyes of Chinese travelers, Global Times reporters learned from a number of local tourism industry insiders on Thursday. With improvements in Chinese-language services, the rise of customized travel packages, and the strengthening of digital payment systems, Cambodia is becoming ever more attractive for Chinese tourists.
Walking through the streets of Phnom Penh, Global Times reporters saw Chinese characters everywhere - on billboards, LED screens and storefront signs. From the airport to the city center, familiar Chinese brands, such as Mixue Ice Cream & Tea and Haidilao Hotpot, lined the roads. Locals greeted Chinese visitors with warmth and sincerity, and many could easily exchange a few words in Putonghua - small gestures that made the welcome feel all the more genuine.
According to the latest report released by Cambodia's Ministry of Tourism, the country welcomed over 1.26 million international visitor trips in the first two months of this year, marking a 27.9 percent year-on-year increase. Among them, Chinese tourists accounted for 184,300 arrivals, representing a sharp 67.6 percent year-on-year growth. China has now become Cambodia's third-largest source of international tourists, following Thailand and Vietnam, the Cambodia China Times reported.
Zhou Yingping, general manager of China Southern Airlines Company Limited Phnom Penh office, highlighted Cambodia's Angkor Wat as a major draw for Chinese travelers - the country's most iconic attraction, a UNESCO World Heritage site and a symbol of Cambodia.
Other key destinations include the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, a sacred site where generations of kings practiced Buddhism; the Koh Rong Island near Sihanoukville, ranked by CNN as one of the world's most beautiful beaches; the Tonlé Sap Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia and often referred to as Cambodia's "lake of life"; and the Elephant Valley Project in Mondulkiri.
"As Chinese-language services improve, along with the rise of customized travel packages and enhanced digital payment systems, Cambodia is becoming ever more attractive for Chinese tourists," Zhou said.
As one of the earliest airlines to establish an air route between China and Cambodia, China Southern Airlines launched its first regular round-trip flight between Guangzhou and Phnom Penh in 1999. Today, the airline operates three daily flights on this route. Leveraging its Guangzhou hub, China Southern offers connections to over 100 international destinations worldwide, as well as all major airports across China. This extensive network has maximized overall connectivity between the Cambodian capital to the world, Zhou said.
With the rise of social media platforms like Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, and China's major short-video platform Douyin, more travelers are sharing detailed itineraries and travel tips online, which has gradually influenced the way Chinese tourists plan their trips abroad.
In the China-Cambodia tourism market, there has been a noticeable shift from traditional group tours to independent travels, Zhou said. Classic travel routes - such as entering through Phnom Penh and departing from Siem Reap, or starting in Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam and ending the trip in Siem Reap - have become especially popular among backpackers seeking more flexible and immersive experiences.
Dong Xiaoyan, a visitor from Jiaxing, East China's Zhejiang Province, shared her experience with the Global Times. "My husband has been working in logistics here for 11 years, so I brought my parents and the whole family to visit. We went to Siem Reap, Angkor Wat, Koh Rong Island in Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh. The travel experience was fantastic - the Cambodian people are simple, kind and welcoming, and it's very safe here, nothing like some of the negative things you see online."
She added, "I would definitely recommend Cambodia to my family and friends, especially during the Khmer New Year. The water festivals and all kinds of celebrations create such a relaxed and joyful atmosphere and make everyone feel really immersed in the joy and just live in the moment."
Hun Dany, Secretary of State and spokesperson for Cambodia's Ministry of Tourism, said during a recent forum that under the framework of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Cambodia and China, tourism has become a key pillar of bilateral cooperation. "China has long been one of Cambodia's most important sources of international tourists," she said. "We will take the opportunity of the 2025 Cambodia-China Year of Tourism to further improve tourism services, aiming to surpass pre-pandemic levels."
Dany said the ministry will introduce a series of measures, including the diversification of tourism products to attract more Chinese visitors, adding that Cambodia is expected to attract over 1 million Chinese visitor trips in 2025.
Cambodian Minister of Tourism Huot Hak said in January that the growing number of Chinese tourists presents a significant opportunity for Cambodia, not only for the development of its tourism sector but also for creating new investment prospects in other areas of the local economy. He emphasized that the future of Cambodia's tourism industry is closely tied to the continued inflow of Chinese tourists and investors, China News Service reported.
Regarding a media inquiry over the new US Ambassador to Japan who landed in Japan on Friday claimed that the US and Japan need to work together to align their defense forces to "push back against a country like China," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian responded that the duty of a diplomat is to foster friendly ties between countries rather than vilify other countries, sow discord and stoke confrontation.
China has always been a force for peace, stability and progress in the international community. The world sees very clearly who is flexing muscles, inciting confrontation and threatening peace, Lin said on Friday's routine press briefing.
According to Reuters on Friday, Glass told reporters at Haneda airport that "We sit with Japan in a very tough neighbourhood. You have Russia, you have China, and you have North Korea," claiming that the allies needed to "push back against a country like China."
Xiang Haoyu, a research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times on Friday that the US' persistent hype of the so-called "China threat" to Japan is a strategic move to bind Japan to its anti-China chariot, in a bid to ease trade frictions between the two countries.
This is not the first time Glass has smeared China. During his previous ambassadorial stint as envoy to Portugal during US president Donald Trump's first term between 2017 and 2021, Glass had warned of China's growing influence in Portugal and criticized Lisbon for allowing Chinese investment in telecommunications and other strategic sectors, Kyodo News reported earlier this month.
But he faced a backlash from Portuguese political leaders after he pressured the European country to choose the US over China or risk the consequences, said the Kyodo News.
Glass, a businessman from Oregon with a background in investment banking and real estate, was confirmed as ambassador to Japan by the US Senate last week.
In addition to the ambassador, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte have also been among those who have hyped the so-called "China threat" during their visits to Japan.
During Rutte's visit, Japan released its annual government foreign policy report, which stressed the importance of Tokyo deepening ties with Washington while also reiterating its policy of promoting a "mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests" with China.
The US is intensifying pressure on Japan in areas such as trade, market access, currency policy, and defense spending, leaving Japan under significant internal pressure and forced into difficult compromises.
At the same time, the current US government's view of alliance relationships as transactional is eroding the strategic trust between the two countries. This has led to hidden cracks beneath the seemingly close Japan-US alliance, exposing increasingly pronounced structural tensions between strategic dependence and national interests, according to Xiang.
Previously, Glass said he was "extremely optimistic" that a deal will be reached between the US and Japan in negotiations over US-imposed tariffs, Kyodo News reported Friday.
However, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said Monday that Japan will not make compromises for the purpose of quickly concluding upcoming tariff negotiations with the US. "We do not intend to make one compromise after another to conclude negotiations swiftly," Ishiba told a session of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, according to the Kyodo News.
"After experiencing a series of recent changes, Japan seems to hold a conflicted mindset toward its relationship with the US," Xiang said. He further noted that despite Japanese companies having already made significant investments in the US, the current US government remains unsatisfied. If Japan is forced to relocate more of its industries, it could face a serious risk of "industrial hollowing-out."
Blindly yielding to US pressure could undermine Japan's economic sovereignty and long-term interests, the expert said, questioning whether Japan would once again repeat the mistakes of the Plaza Accord signed 40 years ago.
"What Japan needs is to strengthen its strategic resolve and its ability to formulate an independent policy toward China," he added.
Elon Musk, a key adviser and political donor, has made direct appeals to US President Donald Trump to reverse sweeping new tariffs, the Washington Post reported, as some Wall Street billionaires and other Republicans voiced concern and opposition to the tariffs over the past few days.
These emerging voices lay bare the US' internal divisions over the new tariffs and represent a mounting sense of insecurity and instability as globalization, which fueled US prosperity and global economy for decades, is in danger of being damaged due to the latest US move, some Chinese observers said on Tuesday.
Musk's attempted intervention, confirmed by two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks, has not brought success, the Washington Post reported. Washington Post report described this is the highest-profile disagreement between the president and one of his key advisers.
On Monday, Musk posted a video to X in which the late conservative economist Milton Friedman promoted the benefits of international trade cooperation with the example of a simple wooden pencil, per the Washington Post.
Trump administration so far showed no sign to change its tariff stance.
Politico reported on Monday that the Trump administration is threatening to veto a bipartisan Senate bill to give Congress the ability to review new tariffs, protecting US President's claim of unfettered power in the early stages of a trade war that is sinking financial markets.
A handful of Senate Republicans have signed onto a bipartisan bill that would allow Congress to end any tariff at any time. "If passed, this bill would dangerously hamper the president's authority and duty to determine our foreign policy and protect our national security," per a White House statement.
Multiple Republicans including Texas Senator Ted Cruz have spoken out about the risks of US' tariff policy.
If the tariffs stay in place long term it could increase inflation, hurt job growth and possibly put the US into a recession, which Cruz said would result in a "bloodbath" for the Republican Party in the 2026 midterm elections, ABC News reported.
Cruz also said that Musk was one of the "angels" based on recent comments the tech billionaire made about his hope for lower tariffs and "complete freedom of trade between the US and Europe."
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky wrote on X last week that "Tariffs are taxes and Americans are paying the price." He also spoke on the Senate floor criticizing the tariffs, "One person can make a mistake and guess what - tariffs are a terrible mistake," Paul said, ABC News reported.
Former vice president Mike Pence, who served alongside Trump during his first term, warned about the economic and political risks of the sweeping "reciprocal tariffs," calling them the "largest peacetime tax hike in US history."
Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times the emerging different voices on the US' "tariff war" is a manifestation of the conflicts and divisions of different interest groups inside the US.
Supporters of protectionist tariffs are people representing traditional industries in the US, but they fail to realize that the US' real economic advantage lies in its technology and financial sectors, the expert said.
Influential Wall Street voices raised concerns. JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon warned about the effect of tariffs on growth and prices, and said that it will "weaken America's standing in the world," while BlackRock's Larry Fink said CEOs he talks to say we are probably in a recession now, per media reports.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who endorsed Trump's 2024 presidential bid, warned on Sunday that going ahead with the new tariffs was tantamount to launching an "economic nuclear war," CNN reported on Monday.
Wang Huiyao, founder and president of nongovernmental think tank the Center for China and Globalization, said the market performance demonstrates damage to investor confidence, which relies heavily on certainty and stability.
The US argument to impose tariffs to rebalance its trade in goods has lost sight of the big picture that the US' comparative advantage lies in fields such as trade in services and the global dollar system, Wang told the Global Times on Tuesday.
The US policies have already triggered turmoil and harmed economic globalization. At this moment, it is important for other countries to join hands to withstand the US' detrimental move. China, by consistently upholding opening-up, is playing the invaluable role of reassuring and stabilizing the world, Wang said.
AI, digital life, space travel … The future is coming at an unimaginable speed.
At this crucial juncture when China has embarked on a new journey to comprehensively build a modern socialist country, such rapid development and transformation not only bring vast opportunities and prospects, but also unpredictable challenges and problems.
These challenges and problems, ranging from the future of human survival, the transformation of local development, to the life and death of a family or a stray animal, could be key topics that trigger social discussion. Each debate surrounding these topics is an inevitable pain point on China's path to pursuing high-quality development.
Against this backdrop, the Global Times has launched the Deep Focus series, focusing on specific issues in current social development. Through detailed investigation and research, we aim to uncover the root causes behind these problems, seek solutions, and engage with relevant parties and sectors to find keys to unlock these complex issues. "It is QQ! It is back! Like we travel across time to when it was still young. I will grow up with it once again!"
"When I see the familiar face, and sense the familiar smell, I know my Bo Bo is back!"
"It is back!" is the most said sentence by the people in the videos a service agent of Sinogenetic Biotechnology Co., Ltd (Sinogene), who is surnamed Liu, sent to the Global Times, which record the touching moments when its customers meet the clones of their deceased pets. Sinogene is one of the first companies to provide pet clone service in China.
In the videos, the owners recall how their pets were there for them through the good and tough times, how sad they were during the period their pets were gone and how moved they were when meeting the pets again.
Along with the booming number of pets in recent years, Chinese pet owners are becoming increasingly willing to invest significant amounts of money in their pets.
According to the 2025 Chinese Pet Industry White Paper released by China's leading pet industry data platform Petdata.cn, the pet dog and cat consumption market size in China in 2024 had reached 300.2 billion yuan ($40 billion), showing a year-on-year grow by 7.5 percent. The number of pet dogs and cats in the country exceeded 12,400 in the same year, the white paper said.
To express their deep love, Chinese pet owners are buying high-quality food and fashionable clothing to make sure their pets enjoy a happy and delicate life. When pets inevitably approach the end of their lives, some even begin to seek new ways to bring them back and resume their journey. Pet cloning is one such option.
In 2024, the scale of China's pet cloning market reached 300 million yuan. At the same time, the global pet cloning market neared 1 billion yuan and is projected to grow to 7.4 billion yuan by 2030, according to forecasts from the Chinese consulting firm Market Monitor.
However, the service is not without controversies. Under the videos Liu posed on WeChat, a few people questioned about the high cost (128,000 yuan is the price Liu offered to the Global Times) of the service and potential abuse of animals during the cloning process.
Experts and lawyers also pointed out legal gaps, ethical and moral risks and consumption disputes regarding the commercialization of cloned animals.
To bring you back
According to materials Sinogene sent to the Global Times, pet cloning is a biotechnological process that utilizes the principles of asexual reproduction. It involves transplanting the somatic cell nucleus of a pet into an enucleated egg cell. After a series of complex procedures, a clone that is genetically identical to the original pet is cultivated.
"Our technicians will come to your house to take cell samples, collecting three small pieces of skin tissue about 2-3 millimeters from the pet's inner thigh. The samples will be very thin and small, and there will be no bleeding," Liu said.
The sample collecting service costs another 3,500 yuan, according to him.
Then, the samples will be cultivated in labs for 30-40 days before they can be used to construct embryos in vitro. The embryo, once constructed, will be implanted into the body of a surrogacy animal. After the clones are born, they will undergo a two-month observation, including receiving body check and vaccination, in the company before being officially delivered to the customers, according to Liu.
The time required for the process varies according to the quality of the cell samples and the difficulty to clone the animal. Taking cloning pet dogs as an example, it usually takes as quickest as six months, according to Sinogene.
The biggest concern of customers is the similarity between the clones and the original pets, in both terms of appearance and temperament. According to the materials of Sinogene, from a genetic perspective, the relationship between cloned pets and the pets they are cloned from is similar to that of identical twins born at different times. They share the same genetic material, which makes their similarity as high as 99 percent.
However, the formation and development of temperament are influenced by the environment in which they live, so there may be some certain differences in temperament between cloned pets and the original ones they are cloned from.
Regarding the health and reproductive capabilities of cloned pets, a relevant representative from Sinogene told the Global Times that based on existing technology, cloned animals can have the same lifespan and reproductive abilities as ordinary animals under normal conditions.
Scientists have confirmed that cloned animals possess the same vitality as those bred normally, showing no significant differences in lifespan, reproduction, or physiological conditions, the representative noted. Potential tech
Nearly 30 years have passed since the cloning of the sheep Dolly in 1996. During the period, cloning technology has been successfully applied to various mammals, including mice, cattle, pigs, rabbits, horses, deer, ferrets, and monkeys. The applications of the technology are becoming wider and wider, including breeding selection, the production of transgenic livestock, the propagation of high-quality livestock breeds, accelerating the breeding process, and rescuing endangered and rare protected species.
On Monday, Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas-based biotech company, announced that, with cloning and gene-editing technologies, they had resurrected dire wolf that died out some 12,500 years ago.
The animals include two males, Romulus and Remus, born in October, and one female, Khaleesi, whose name is a reference to the TV series Game of Thrones, in which fictional dire wolves play a part, according to MIT Research Review.
In the future, the company plans to use similar techniques to bring back the Ice Age woolly mammoth in 2028, editing living cell nuclei from Asian elephants - the mammoth's closest living kin - to express mammoth traits preserved in nearly 60 sets of Ice Age remains, according to Time Magazine.
Also on Monday, two Yanbian cattle cloned from somatic cells were born in Bozhou, East China's Anhui Province, a significant breakthrough in yellow cattle conservation and breeding, scientists from Jilin Agricultural University announced that day.
In the Harbin Polarland in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, the world's first cloned Arctic Wolf Maya has attracted huge popularity, which makes people see a ray of light in the cloning technology to save endangered species.
In 2006, the park introduced two wild Arctic wolves from Canada, one of which was named Maya. In 2020, as Maya entered her senior years, the park decided to tackle a groundbreaking project - cloning Arctic wolves. After more than two years of effort, the world's first cloned Arctic wolf, also named Maya, was born and made her debut at the park.
Arctic wolf is a species originated 300,000 years ago and has been listed as an endangered species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. According to the IUCN website, among the 169,420 species the union had assessed, 47,187 were defined as threatened species.
Cloning technology has also been widely used in breeding special working dogs, for example police dogs, in order to effectively preserve genes of some outstanding police dogs, which, to some extent, help to reduce training costs.
In November 2019, six four-month-old clones of two Belgian Malinois officially entered service in Beijing. A police officer told the Beijing News that, after systematic training, the six clone dogs' capabilities had already reached the ability level of six-month dogs in advance.
Controversial industry
When clone technologies are used on pets, it is more of a method for pet owners to continue their emotional bond with their beloved animals.
In 2017, Chinese scientists successfully cultivated the first domestically cloned dog, Long Long, using gene editing and cloning technology. Two years later, the first domestically cloned cat, Da Suan, was born in China. Previously, the core technologies for cloning dogs and cats had been in the hands of scientists in South Korea and the US. The world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, was born in 2005 in South Korea.
However, some netizens and experts questioned the necessity of cloning pets. "Clones are just animals looking like the original pets. As a pet owner, what I love is exactly the originally one, not everyone looking alike," one WeChat user commented under a video Liu posed on his WeChat video account.
Controversies surrounding issues of animal ethics and animal protection also exist regarding commercial pet clones.
"Pet owners should fully understand the technical risks, economic risks, and animal health risks associated with the service before deciding to use it or not," said World Animal Protection scientist Sun Quanhui.
According to Sun, cloning animals has always been a subject of ethical debate, primarily because the process requires the use of surrogate animals, which can hurt them.
From an animal protection perspective, allowing healthy animals to endure unnecessary suffering could lead to animal abuse. "The animals used for cloning should not have to face the surgical risks of egg retrieval and embryo implantation, nor should they bear the health risks associated with surrogacy and childbirth," Sun said.
"Vertebrates such as cats and dogs are sentient beings, and whether in scientific research or commercial projects, we should fully consider the potential harm and adverse effects that the cloning process may cause to animals," Sun told the Global Times.
In response to such concerns, Liu said that, during the cloning service Sinogene provides, each surrogate dog would only be used for surrogacy twice. Regarding the question if there have been failed cloned animals being abandoned, he emphasized that the number of clones is strictly regulated based on customer requirements.
In China, there are clear regulations regarding the use of animals for scientific research, but these do not extend to the commercial sector. For example, the regulations on the management of experimental animals of China and the guiding opinions on treating experimental animals well both have explicit requirements for the management and use of research animals, with the core emphasis on protecting animal welfare.
Guo Peng, Director of the Centre for Animal Protection Studies at Shandong University, noted that commercial clone should also complies with these regulations regarding the handling of experimental animals.
She believed that commercial pet clone is in fact a form of deception built on misleading advertising, which take advantage of consumers' love for their pets. "If what the customers actually suffer is the psychological trauma of losing a pet, then what they need is psychological interventions," she said.
Guo called for the formulation of industry access standards for pet cloning companies, improvement of animal ethics regulations, and enhanced supervision of related commercial activities to prevent the misuse and abuse of animal cloning technology. It is also essential to implement policies that safeguard consumers by mandating companies to disclose crucial information, including the success rates of cloning procedures, potential health risks, and their responsibilities regarding after-sales support, she noted.
Cloning technology has demonstrated its irreplaceable role in various fields of life sciences, including animal husbandry, biomedicine, and the conservation of endangered species. Regarding the commercialization of the technology, it is essential to fully respect laws and adhere to the principle of "technology for good" to ensure the healthy development of the industry, experts noted.
From April 5 to 6, the Japanese fishing vessel Tsurumaru illegally entered China's territorial waters around the Diaoyu Dao, Chinese Coast Guard vessels took necessary control measures in accordance with the law and issued warnings to drive it away, Liu Dejun, the spokesperson of the China Coast Guard, said on Sunday.
The Diaoyu Dao and its affiliated islands are China's inherent territory. We urge the Japanese side to immediately stop all illegal activities in this sea area. The China Coast Guard will continue to carry out rights protection and law enforcement activities in the territorial waters around the Diaoyu Dao to safeguard national territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, said Liu.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theater Command has completed all designated tasks of the joint exercises carried out from Tuesday to Wednesday, Senior Colonel Shi Yi, spokesperson of the PLA Eastern Theater Command, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The exercises tested the troop’ integrated joint operations capabilities, Shi said, noting the troops of the theater command remain on high alert at all times, and will continue to strengthen combat readiness with intensive training, resolutely thwarting any separatist activities seeking “Taiwan independence.”
On Tuesday, Shi announced the PLA Eastern Theater Command started to conduct joint exercises, organizing its army, navy, air and rocket forces to close in on the Taiwan island from multiple directions. These drills mainly focus on sea-air combat-readiness patrols, joint seizure of comprehensive superiority, assault on maritime and ground targets, and blockade on key areas and sea lanes so as to test joint operations capabilities of its troops. It is a stern warning and forceful deterrence against “Taiwan Independence” separatist forces, and it is a legitimate and necessary action to safeguard China’s sovereignty and national unity, Shi said.
