The Chinese-developed underwater robot “Tansuo” conducted its maiden test dive in the South China Sea Monday.

The robot is 3.5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide and can dive to a depth of 4,500 meters. It will conduct 20 hours of collaborative operations with the unmanned submersible “Faxian” in the South China Sea.

Chinese research vessel “Kexue” left the port of Xiamen in eastern China’s Fujian Province Sunday to continue its scientific expedition in the South China Sea.

During the second stage of its mission, the unmanned submersible will carry a domestically-developed device, a raman spectrometer, to measure marine physical and chemical parameters and take camera images of benthos organisms.

The Kexue left Qingdao in eastern China’s Shandong Province on July 10 for a maritime scientific expedition and stopped in Xiamen to resupply Friday after completing the first part of the mission.

In the first stage, a total of 12 Chinese-developed underwater gliders carried out scientific observations in the South China Sea, sending back real-time data. It was the largest group of gliders to perform simultaneous observations in the region.

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North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region held a promotional event to present its socioeconomic and cultural development globally in Beijing on July 21 in the run up to its upcoming 70th anniversary celebration.

The event, co-organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the People’s Government of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, showcased major milestones since the establishment of the region under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1947 through an exhibition including photos, industrial and agricultural products, cultural heritages and ethnic costumes.

In his opening remarks, the Foreign Minister Wang Yi recognized the huge achievement made by the people of various ethnic groups in Inner Mongolia, the country’s first autonomous region of minority nationalities.

Wang particularly mentioned the two “business cards” of Inner Mongolia, i.e. its open trade both historically and in modern times as well as its ecological and green development in the desertification-prone landscape.

He called for people around the world to come and explore the magnificent region.

John McKinnon, New Zealand’s ambassador to China, said that New Zealand has many links with Inner Mongolia as he outlined existing connections and similarities in areas including the dairy industry and animal husbandry.

He also foresees a big step forward in the region’s tourism potential and hopes that the two sides can expand interaction and exchanges under the Belt and Road Initiative.

More than 500 people including diplomatic envoys and representatives in China from almost 130 countries, international organizations, Chinese and foreign experts and scholars, delegates from industrial and commercial sectors, as well as journalists attended the event.

Bordering Mongolia and Russia, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region covers an area of 1.18 million square kilometers of which the majority is grasslands. Its main strength lies in dairy production, animal husbandry, agriculture, tourism, new energy and mineral resources.

More than half of the births in China during the first five months of the year involved a second child – or even additional ones – more than a year after the universal second-child policy was introduced in January 2016, according to China’s top health authority.

The number of births at Chinese hospitals between January and May was 7.4 million, an increase of 7.8 percent over the same period last year, Wang Peian, vice-minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said at an annual meeting of the China Population Association held in Kunming, Yunnan Province, last week.

Of all births in the first five months, 57.7 percent were at least the second child of their parents, an increase of 8.5 percentage points over the same period last year, he said.

The total number of births at hospitals in China last year was about 18.5 million, the highest level since 2000, according to the commission. More than 99 percent of births in China take place in hospitals.

The universal second-child policy has produced good results, and the number of babies born has been increasing significantly despite a drop in the number of women of fertile age, Wang said.

Over the past year, health authorities have been improving measures to support the policy and establish a social environment that encourages childbirth, he said.

With an increasing number of pregnancies, China faces some health challenges in the next few years – for example, a significant number of the mothers are over 35 – according to health officials and doctors. The number of pregnant women over age 35 is expected to remain at about 3 million through 2020.

“Surveys show that many couples from the generation born in the 1970s who were hesitant about having a second child during the initial period when the universal second-child policy was adopted are now hurrying to give birth to a second child so they won’t miss that last chance,” Ma Xiaowei, another vice-minister of the commission, said last week.

In Guilin, in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, more than 28 percent of women who gave birth last year were at higher risk in pregnancy and childbirth, according to a report in Guilin Evening News on Friday. One factor was age.

At Guilin Women and Children’s Hospital, doctors saved 140 pregnant women in critical condition in the first half of the year. The oldest pregnant woman treated so far this year was 56, the report said.

China introduced its family planning policy in the late 1970s to check its soaring population by limiting most urban couples to one child. Couples in rural areas could have a second child if the first one was a girl, and in some ethnic regions couples in rural areas could have more than two children.

A major policy change at the end of 2013 allowed couples nationwide to have a second child if either parent was an only child. That limitation was erased last year.

The Beijing police are hunting for a man who allegedly stabbed five people and committed a hit-and-run that killed one and injured eight others on his way to escape on Sunday.

The suspect hurt five people with a scissor around 3 p.m. in Jugezhuang Township in the suburban district of Miyun and fled on a van. His van then hit nine people, leaving one dead and eight injured, according to the police.

The injured are being treated in hospital. The Miyun police are searching for the suspect who is still at large.