As the G7 summit and a key EU leaders' meeting draw near, a series of communication signals has emerged in China-EU economic relations, even as Brussels weighs tougher trade tools against China and some European politicians sharpen their rhetoric on the bloc's second largest trade partner.

The European Commission said on Thursday that contacts with Beijing "continue at various levels", while making clear that securing results from dialogue with the Chinese government remains its "priority", according to media outlet EFE, citing Olof Gill, deputy chief spokesperson of the commission.

Gill's remarks were made in response to a Financial Times (FT) report claiming that China had recently canceled two planned high-level diplomatic meetings with the EU in Beijing this month in protest against measures being considered by Brussels.

The same week, Chinese and German officials met in Berlin to discuss China-Germany and China-EU economic and trade relations, while Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, addressing a France-hosted video summit, called for economic cooperation, inclusive growth and a free and open trade environment.

Analysts said the mixed signals show that dialogue is a practical need for both sides. If the EU wants results from engagement with China, they said, it should not allow new protectionist tools and negative political rhetoric to erode the trust needed for those results to emerge.

Channels remain open

In response to a question regarding the cancellations reported by FT, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a press briefing on Thursday that "as we've learned, China and the EU are in communication on relevant dialogue."  

China's Vice Minister of Commerce Ling Ji, also the deputy China international trade representative, met with Ditte Juul Jorgensen, director-general of the Directorate-General for Trade and Economic Security of the European Commission on Tuesday. The two sides held in-depth and comprehensive discussions regarding the preparations for the establishment of a China-EU trade and investment consultation mechanism, according to a statement on China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) website on Wednesday.

The statement came after the Global Times learned from a source who is familiar with the situation, Ling is visiting the EU headquarters from June 9 to 14 to discuss with European officials the relevant arrangements for establishing the China-EU Trade and Investment Consultation Mechanism.

This move demonstrates China's willingness in implementing the consensus of China-EU leaders and properly handling differences and frictions through dialogue and consultation, according to the source, who declined to be named.

Ling also held talks in Berlin on Thursday with senior German officials on economic and trade issues, MOFCOM said on Friday. Ling said China has consistently advocated resolving differences through dialogue and consultation, and urged the German government to play a constructive role within the EU.

The German side said it opposes trade wars and supports China-EU dialogue and consultations to properly address each other's concerns and prevent an escalation of economic and trade frictions, while expressing willingness to strengthen communication with China on economic and trade policies.

Jian Junbo, director of the Center for China-Europe Relations at Fudan University's Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times on Friday that the recent communication signals are important because they show that both China and pragmatic voices in Europe still see dialogue as necessary, even as Brussels hardens its trade and economic-security approach toward China.

"The bloc faces internal divergence, declining industrial competitiveness and weakening growth momentum. Turning such anxieties into restrictive tools will not solve Europe's structural problems but could instead add uncertainty to China-EU cooperation," Jian said.

In an exclusive video interview with the Global Times on Thursday, Esko Aho, former Finnish prime minister and chairman of the board at the China Office of Finnish Industries, said Europe's challenges are linked to its capacity to create competitiveness and to invest in science, technology and innovation, while stressing that Europe also needs to create a better-functioning internal market, where weaknesses still remain.

Against the backdrop of Europe's internal challenges and growing global fragmentation, Aho said the EU and China share an interest in ensuring "a rules-based economic and political system," adding that challenges and risks also present opportunities.

Complexity remains

The recent pragmatic signals are unfolding at a difficult and complex moment for China-EU economic ties, as Europe ramps up pressure to impose trade restrictions, and weighs broader "economic security" tools seen as directly affecting China.

Reuters has reported that Brussels is weighing rules to cut reliance on single suppliers - notably in China - as part of a broader review of trade-defense tools.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday that the EU must defend itself against unfair trade practices, signaling greater openness to recent European Commission proposals for a tougher approach to China, Politico reported. 

Without mentioning China specifically, Merz said EU leaders meeting next week in Brussels will discuss ways to better equip the bloc's trade "toolkit" as it looks to reset its trade relationship with China, according to Bloomberg.

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, described by news website Euractiv as being "at the forefront of the debate about China's impact on the European economy", has urged European leaders to develop a "serious strategy" against what he claimed was China's drive for economic domination, Euractiv reported on Tuesday.

Industry insiders warned that the EU's "economic security" toolbox targeting China is gradually moving from concept to implementation, with related policy frameworks taking shape at a faster pace, from supply-chain diversification to upgraded trade-defense measures.

Chinese authorities have repeatedly made clear their firm position on the EU's moves. After the European Commission's May 29 discussion on relations with China, MOFCOM said that "if the bloc insists on unilaterally introducing new trade tools and adopting discriminatory restrictions, China will firmly counteract them and take effective measures to safeguard its legitimate interests."

Aho said Europe has realized the need to avoid excessive dependence in critical areas, but the real challenge is where to draw the line between legitimate national interests and limits on global trade. "There are many areas where we can work together without feeling restricted," he added.

As generative artificial intelligence technology moves further into education, the annual gaokao season, China's college entrance examination period, which will kick off on Sunday, is also seeing new changes.

For some students and teachers, AI may have begun to move beyond the role of a simple answer-finding tool. In certain study scenarios, it can be used to help students review mistakes, understand knowledge points, polish essays or receive revision suggestions. But this may also raise new questions for schools during the exam preparation period.

On Friday, the Ministry of Public Security's cyber police bureau said in a WeChat post that police in Yichun, Jiangxi Province, had handled a case in which a suspect used videos of so-called "gaokao exam paper bags" to claim he had access to "leaked 2026 gaokao questions and answers." The suspect allegedly attempted to sell the fake papers for 2,000 yuan ($281) each, and the account was shut down, according to the post.

China's Ministry of Education issued a warning on June 2, reminding students and parents to be alert to false advertising such as "famous teacher predicted exam questions" and "AI predicted exam questions," the China News Agency reported.

At the same time, several AI platforms in China have announced or indicated corresponding adjustments during the gaokao period to prevent the technology from being used for exam cheating, media reports said.

The discussion around AI and the gaokao has just begun.

AI use on campus

In daily exam preparation and classroom tutoring, some teachers and students in China have already begun exploring how AI technology can be used in practice.

In Shanghai, where educational resources are highly developed, frontline teachers are beginning to test the practical boundaries of AI in language teaching, while also seeing its limitations.

Wu Xinyi, an English teacher at a high school in Shanghai, told the Global Times that AI can be used to revise essays.

"I think it is acceptable to use AI to polish an essay. You can input a specific prompt, and it can make the language sound more advanced. In fact, some teachers now also use AI to assist with essay grading," Wu told the Global Times.

"Sometimes, we deliberately compare essays written by AI tools with those written by students. You can see that it does have some very good, even impressive parts, but many parts appear rigid and formulaic," she said.

Compared with discussions in more developed regions over AI-generated text, compliance and depth of thinking, the application of such technology in less-resourced grassroots schools faces more basic thresholds.

Xiao, a teacher at a county-level high school in East China's Shandong Province, told the Global Times that AI has been included in some teaching-related tasks, and relevant departments have been actively advocating its use. But in actual grassroots teaching, implementation remains difficult.

A document Xiao showed the Global Times about an AI competition organized by local education authorities suggested that local schools are being encouraged to explore AI-related teaching practices.

"Every step is a hard threshold, from improving teachers' understanding and changing their mindset to upgrading the school's overall hardware facilities, especially for rural county-level schools with limited resources like ours," Xiao said.

Meanwhile, overreliance on AI in relation to gaokao has also drawn warnings.

China's Ministry of Education issued a warning on June 2 for the 2026 gaokao, reminding students and parents to be alert to false advertising such as "famous teacher predicted exam questions" and "AI predicted exam questions," to take the exam with integrity and strictly observe legal boundaries, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The ministry said gaokao questions have continued to undergo reform in recent years, with directions and exam content constantly changing and innovating. Relying on AI or "experts" to predict questions in order to obtain high scores is unrealistic, the ministry said.

Fairness in the exam room
As AI is increasingly used in daily learning, how to prevent it from being used to cheat in a gaokao exam has become a matter of public concern.

Sichuan-based Red Star News recently reached out to several AI platforms in China. For instance, Doubao customer service said that Doubao could be used normally during the gaokao period, but photo-based question answering and similar functions would be unavailable, with specific arrangements subject to the actual page display during the exam.

A Tencent staff member said that, during last year's gaokao, Tencent's Yuanbao had made clear that it would not answer exam-related questions. An iFlytek staff member also said there was no definite information yet, but that large models would likely have their limits. Baidu's relevant business department said it had not yet received notice of restrictions on some Wenxin functions during the gaokao period, the report said.

According to a report by Xiaoxiang Morning Herald based in Central China's Hunan Province, in 2025, some users posted online that Tencent Yuanbao could not be used normally during the gaokao period.

After users sent image-recognition summary requests, Yuanbao replied that "this function is unavailable during gaokao hours." Other common AI tools such as Kimi, DeepSeek and Doubao also had related arrangements during the gaokao period.

The Ministry of Education reminded candidates that bringing a mobile phone, smart watch or bracelet, smart glasses and any other banned device into an exam room constitutes cheating, even if the device is switched off.

In April, the "AI + Education" action plan was issued by the Ministry of Education and other government departments, requiring in particular that AI applications be safe, trustworthy and controllable, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

The report quoted Xie Yongjiang, director of the Institute of Internet Governance and Law at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, as saying, "If there is even the smallest loophole in the organization of the exam, AI tools could magnify it infinitely and cause incalculable negative consequences. Restricting AI answering functions is meant to block the possibility of AI-assisted exam-taking and ensure absolute fairness in the exam."

From the perspective of international comparison and academic ethics, Estelle Qiu, a young scholar based in Australia, said AI is challenging intellectual property and human thinking while offering convenience.

Qiu told the Global Times that at the Australian university where she works, undergraduate students are allowed to use AI. In principle, the school allows them to first complete their own writing and then use AI for polishing, but students must clearly declare such use.

"However, there are two major pain points in AI use. First, it may undermine confidentiality to some extent. Second, when it comes to deeper academic papers, AI still cannot really get how the human mind works," she said.

The Beijing News said in a recent commentary that AI is evolving rapidly, with computing power and algorithms constantly improving and technological dividends being released. "But the faster it develops, the more necessary it is to respect rules and uphold bottom lines," the commentary said.

A viral stress-relief toy known as "Natasha" has sparked widespread controversy in China after videos showing users smashing, stomping on, piercing and otherwise "abusing" the baby-shaped toy spread across social media platforms.

According to the China Youth Daily, a growing number of primary and secondary schools across the country have issued notices banning the toy from campuses. As of Saturday, several major e-commerce platforms had removed promotional videos that marketed the product with violent content. However, some sellers were still using images of clenched fists and violence-oriented slogans to advertise the toy.

Sun Hongyan, a researcher at the China Youth & Children Research Center, a national institution specializing in youth and adolescent work research, warned that based on observational learning theory, children and adolescents could internalize behaviors by observing and imitating others. Violent ways of playing with the toy may be perceived by youth as entertaining and could normalize aggressive behaviors among young people, Sun said.

Sun noted that the toy's baby-like appearance amplifies its potential negative impact. Baby dolls symbolize vulnerable lives that deserve care and protection. As minors are still developing moral judgment, marketing messages such as "the harder you throw it, the more stress you relieve," combined with social media algorithms rewarding increasingly extreme content, may lead some young people to believe that bullying the weak is acceptable, gradually blurring their moral boundaries, according to Sun.

Yu Xukun, Executive Director of Beijing Children's Legal Aid and Research Center, also cautioned that repeated exposure to simulated violence in interaction with such toys could become psychological preparation for real-world aggression under certain circumstances.

"In cases we have handled, some children who suffered domestic violence came to believe that violence could solve problems and later directed such violence toward others, eventually facing legal consequences," Yu said.

Fang Zengquan, professor at School of Journalism and Communication at Beijing Normal University and director of the Center for Minors' Digital Literacy, criticized the marketing strategy behind the toy.

"Linking a baby-shaped toy directly to stress relief and promoting it with slogans such as 'Squeezing a baby is more stress-relieving than raising one' essentially turns the image of an infant into a gimmick," Fang said. "It encourages users, particularly adolescents, to derive pleasure from physically squeezing, pinching and deforming the toy, treating babies as objects for emotional release or entertainment."

Fang warned that repeatedly associating infant imagery with destructive behavior could weaken young people's empathy and protective instincts toward real babies and, in extreme cases, foster unconscious aggressive impulses toward living beings.

On June 1, the China Consumers Association (CCA) stated that violent and sexually suggestive marketing videos related to the toy may violate the law. According to the association, some sellers have posed the toy in sexually suggestive positions and paired it with ambiguous captions or adult-themed props, while others have used violent treatment of the toy to attract traffic and attention.

The CCA said such practices use vulgarity and violence as marketing gimmicks, run counter to core socialist values, violate the principles of common moral code, and can breach laws and regulations including the Cybersecurity Law and the Advertising Law.

The CCA urged businesses, platforms, schools and families not to allow "stress relief" to become a cover for violence or permit internet traffic to reward vulgar content.

Stress-relief toys are fundamentally products for emotional and self-oriented consumption, the CCA said, adding that all parties should work together to foster healthy and sustainable emotional-consumption environments. Online platforms should fulfill their gatekeeping responsibilities by removing and banning content involving violence, pornography and other materials that violate public morality. Manufacturers and sellers should abide by laws and regulations, ensure their products are both entertaining and safe. Meanwhile, families and schools should help minors develop healthy ways to manage stress and identify harmful online content.

The waters slated for "delimitation" by Japan and the Philippines lie east of China's Taiwan island. Their proposed so-called "delimitation negotiations" gravely infringe on China's maritime rights and interests, run counter to international law and the basic norms governing international relations, and are entirely illegal, null and void, Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office said on Wednesday. 

Zhu noted that compatriots across the Taiwan Straits belong to the Chinese nation. They must uphold their national stance, stand for the fundamental interests of the nation, and jointly safeguard China's sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as the overall interests of the Chinese nation. 

Should the DPP authorities collude with external forces to betray national interests, they will surely be spurned by compatriots on both sides of the Straits and punished by history, the spokesperson said. 

A fossil from a new species of dinosaur is helping to bridge a crucial 20-million-year gap in tyrannosaur evolution.

The key fossil is a 90-million-year-old, grapefruit-sized partial skull from Uzbekistan’s Bissekty Formation. This tyrannosaur braincase, the first well-preserved one found from the mid-Cretaceous period, shows that, although still small, tyrannosaurs of the time already had brain and ear features of later tyrannosaurs. Researchers have dubbed the in-betweener Timurlengia euotica, meaning “well-eared.” They describe the new species in a paper to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The braincase sheds light on a long-standing mystery: how tyrannosaurs evolved in the gap from 100 million to 80 million years ago from an “average Joe” horse-sized predator in the Early Cretaceous to the huge apex predators they became in the Late Cretaceous. “Our study is the first to show that the sophisticated brain and hearing of big tyrannosaurs evolved in smaller-bodied species, long before tyrannosaurs got giant,” says study coauthor Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh. These advantages, he adds, may have helped tyrannosaurs become such successful — and eventually enormous — predators.
Analyzed against a database of other tyrannosaur skulls, the braincase shows that Timurlengia’s brain and ear “are almost identical to T. rex, just smaller,” Brusatte says. In particular, the dinosaur’s long cochlea, a part of the inner ear, is a signature of bigger, badder Late Cretaceous tyrannosaurs. “The long cochlea would have meant better sensitivity to low-frequency sound,” Brusatte explains. That sensitivity would have enabled Timurlengia to detect very subtle or distant sounds, giving the dinosaur clear advantages over other predators.

“Timurlengia fills an important gap in both time and evolution,” says Lawrence Witmer, a paleontologist at Ohio University in Athens who was not involved in the study. “Charles Darwin couldn’t have scripted it any better.”

The next step is to determine if the braincase is typical of a mid-Cretaceous tyrannosaur, or just one oddball data point. “We’ve analyzed the heck out of each scrap of Bissekty tyrannosaur bone,” Brusatte says, “so the thing that could move us forward is the discovery of new specimens in other middle Cretaceous rock units in other parts of the world.”

Danger in ‘swimming hole’  — As warm weather approaches, the old swimming hole will again beckon boys and girls in farm areas. But disease germs lurk in waters exposed to cattle and other animals…. One “swimming hole disease” called leptospirosis is caused by water-borne Leptospira pomona…. Warm summer temperatures are ideal for maintaining leptospiral organisms in water, and heavy rains may transport the organisms downstream.  — Science News, May 14, 1966

UPDATE
An estimated 100 to 200 people get leptospirosis annually in the United States. The disease, which can cause fever, headache and vomiting, is most common in tropical and rural regions worldwide. Summertime swimming is also haunted by another single-celled terror that thrives in warm freshwater: the so-called “brain-eating” amoeba, Naegleria fowleri. The amoeba caused 35 reported infections in the United States from 2005 to 2014. If N. fowleri enters a person’s nose, it can travel to the brain, where swelling triggered by the immune system kills most victims (SN: 8/22/15, p. 14).

In many realms of science today, “statistical wisdom” seems to be in short supply. Misuse of statistics in scientific research has contributed substantially to the widespread “reproducibility crisis” afflicting many fields (SN: 4/2/16, p. 8; SN: 1/24/15, p. 20). Recently the American Statistical Association produced a list of principles warning against multiple misbeliefs about drawing conclusions from statistical tests. Statistician Stephen Stigler has now issued a reminder that there is some wisdom in the science of statistics. He identifes seven “pillars” that collectively provide a foundation for understanding the scope and depth of statistical reasoning.
Stigler’s pillars include methods for measuring or representing aggregation (measures, such as averages, that represent a collection of data); information (quantifying it and assessing how it changes); likelihood (coping with probabilities); intercomparison (involving measures of variation within datasets); regression (analyzing data to draw inferences); design (of experiments, emphasizing randomization); and residual (identifying the unexplained “leftovers” and comparing scientific models).

His approach is to identify the historical origins of these seven key pillars, providing some idea of what they are and how they can assist in making sense of numerical data. His explanations are engaging but not thorough (it’s not a textbook), and while mostly accessible, his writing often assumes a nontrivial level of mathematical knowledge. You’ll have to cope with expressions such as L(Θ)=L(Θ)|Χ and Cov(L,W)=E{Cov(L,W|S)}+Cov(E{L|S}, E{W|S}) every now and then.

While Stigler defends statistics from some of the criticisms against it — noting, for instance, that specific misuses should not be grounds for condemning the generic enterprise — he acknowledges that some issues are still a source of concern, especially in the new era of “big data” (SN: 2/7/15, p. 22). Using common statistical tests when many comparisons are made at once, or applying tests at multiple stages of an experimental process, introduces problems that the seven pillars do not accommodate. Stigler notes that there is room, therefore, for an eighth pillar. “The pillar may well exist,” he writes, “but no overall structure has yet attracted the general assent needed for recognition.”

Overuse of antibiotics in livestock can spread drug-resistant microbes — via farm workers or even breezy weather. But there’s more than one reason stay upwind of drugged cattle.

Dung beetles (Aphodius fossor) make their living on cattle dung pats, which are rich in nutritious microbes. To investigate the effects of cattle antibiotics on this smaller scale, Tobin Hammer of the University of Colorado at Boulder and his colleagues studied the tiny communities around tetracycline-dosed and undosed cows. Compared with untreated cows’ dung, microbes in dung produced by treated cows were less diverse and dominated by a genus with documented resistance, the researchers report May 25 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Beetles typically reduce methane gas wafting off dung, but pats from treated cows showed a 1.8-fold increase in methane output. How this might figure into greater cattle methane production remains to be studied, but Hammer and company speculate that the antibiotics may wipe out the bacterial competition for microbial methane factories.

Editor’s note: On May 3, 2017, Science retracted the study described in this article. Based on findings from a review board at Uppsala University, Science cites three reasons for pulling the study: The experiments lacked ethical approval, the original data do not appear in the paper and questions emerged about experimental methods.

Microscopic pieces of plastic rule Earth’s oceans, with numbers in the billions — possibly trillions. These tiny plastic rafts provide homes to microbes (SN: 2/20/16, p. 20), but their ecological effects remain murky.
In a lab at Uppsala University in Sweden, researchers exposed European perch (Perca fluviatilis) larvae to a microplastic called polystyrene to see how they might react. The exposure triggered a slew of potentially negative effects: Fewer eggs hatched, growth rates dropped and feeding habits changed, with some larvae preferring polystyrene to more nutritious food options. Exposed larvae were also sluggish in responding to scents that signal approaching predators in the wild, the team reports in the June 3 Science.

European perch, a keystone species in the Baltic Sea, have recently experienced a population dive. Because the drop has been linked to juvenile feeding issues, the researchers argue that microplastics could be to blame.

WASHINGTON — To human thinking, songbird nests now seem to have evolved backwards: The most distant ancestor probably built complex, roofed structures. Simple open-top cup nests came later.

More than 70 percent of songbird species today build some form of that iconic open cup, evolutionary biologist Jordan Price said August 18 at the North American Ornithological Conference. Yet looking at patterns of nest style across recent bird family trees convinced him that the widespread cup style probably isn’t just a leftover from deepest bird origins.
Old bird lineages thought to have branched out near the base of the avian family tree tend to have plentiful roof-builders. Price, of St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and coauthor Simon Griffith of Macquarie University in Sydney reconstructed probable nest styles for various branching points in the tree. That reconstruction suggests that open cups showed up independently four times among songbirds, such as in bowerbirds and honeyeaters, the scientists conclude. Also, here and there, some of the earlier cup builders reverted to roofs.

Price said he began musing about nest history while reveling in Australia’s birds during a sabbatical with Griffith. Evolutionary biologists have proposed that the broader Australasia region was probably the starting point for the rise of songbirds. Price said that it isn’t clear what drove a switch from protective roofs to what looks like the quick and dirty alternative of open cups.