Chinese megacities are seeing a slight decrease in households with assets of at least RMB 100 million ($14.8 million), as the country’s private wealth remains concentrated in three places–national capital Beijing, financial centre Shanghai and southern Guangdong province, a technology and export hub, reports the South China Morning Post.

Beijing and Shanghai had a combined 34,700 ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) households at the start of 2025, accounting for about 27.4% of the countrywide total of 126,500, according to a wealth report jointly released in June by the Bank of East Asia and the Hurun Research Institute.

Beijing contained 18,200 UHNW households and Shanghai had 16,500, both lower than a year earlier, as weaker property prices, volatile markets and slower economic growth weighed on household wealth.

A top theoretical journal of the Communist Party has acknowledged that a stark economic divide exists between China’s booming AI sector and its struggling traditional industries, reports the South China Morning Post.

In a commentary published on its website on Sunday, the journal conceded that there was an obvious “gap in temperature” in the country. “Macroeconomic data serves as the economy’s ‘thermometer’, while micro-level experiences represent the public’s ‘feels-like temperature’. Both are real,” the article said.

The commentary also said that the speed and scale of artificial intelligence adoption had further thrown such a gap into sharper relief, as China establishes itself in the vanguard of a global race to develop and deploy cutting-edge technology.

China’s elderly population has grown by more than 100 million over the past decade, reports Caixin. This pushes the country deeper into a demographic shift that is expected to strain its pension system and reshape the economy.

By the end of 2025, China had 323.38 million people aged 60 and older, equal to 23% of the population, according to figures released Friday by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Office of the National Working Commission on Aging. That compares with 220 million in 2015, underscoring the speed of the country’s demographic transition.

The latest data confirm China’s position as a moderately aging society, a threshold it crossed at the end of 2023 when the share of people aged 60 and older first exceeded 20%. Under commonly used demographic benchmarks, a society is considered moderately aging when that cohort accounts for 20% to 30% of the population, and severely aging when the share rises above 30%. China could enter the severely aging category within the next decade. A 2022 State Council report projected that the population aged 60 and older would reach about 420 million by 2035, or more than 30% of the total. Both the number of elderly people and their share of the population are expected to peak around 2050.

The ​United States has banned imports from 43 more Chinese companies over alleged rights abuses of Uyghur and other minority groups, targeting firms in supply chains ‌from electronics to food and metals, reports Reuters.

The companies were added to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, which creates a presumption that goods made wholly or partly by listed entities are made with forced labor and cannot enter the United States unless importers can prove otherwise.

Those included SDIC Xinjiang Lithium Industry and its parent, SDIC Xinjiang Luobupo Potash, Xinjiang Tianhongji Technology, Hunan Aihua Group and Chacha Food.

US ‌President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he will discuss artificial intelligence ​with Chinese President Xi Jinping ​when he visits the United ⁠States on September 24, reports Reuters.

Xi’s visit ​comes after the pair met during Trump’s ​trip to China earlier this year. While in Beijing, Trump invited the Chinese leader ​to the White House.

“President Xi ​is coming over on September 24th, and ‌we ⁠talked about it (artificial intelligence) when I was over in Beijing, and we’ll be talking about it ​again,” Trump ​said.