Laura Bicker

Chinese authorities have flooded the area with many rescuers, 14,000 rescuers. They come from the army, they come from the police, they come from the fire brigade, and there are also very many trained search and rescue teams who have experienced earthquakes in the past. They have all made their way to this remote mountainous region of Tibet to try to search for survivors.

When you see the picture from the drones that they have put up, which show the extent of the damage, you see these low-level, kind of one-level houses that have simply just crumbled, many of them to dust after that quake. We've also heard that there have been more than 500 aftershocks in the last 24 hours alone.

So you can imagine the kind of challenges for rescuers and also those survivors who are now trying to find shelter in tents. The Chinese government says that they have relocated 40,000 people. So that gives you an extent of how many people need to find shelter over the next few months as either the rebuilding starts or they try to find somewhere else to go.

Thank you.

Thousands of rescuers are digging through the rubble of remote mountain homes after a strong and shallow quake rattled through the foothills of Mount Everest. They're searching for survivors, even in the dark, as temperatures overnight dip to minus 18 Celsius. China's response has been swift.

Dozens of trained search and rescue teams have arrived in the region and are moving from building to shattered building, listening for signs of life as local villagers cradle one another in shock.

President Xi Jinping called for all efforts to be made to minimise casualties. The Chinese Air Force launched an unmanned drone across the Himalayan plateau to identify the worst-hit areas, as many roads are impassable after being split by the shifting ground. The People's Liberation Army has also arrived to set up makeshift camps, as this captain explained to Chinese state media.

Earthquakes are common in this region, which lies in a major geological fault line. But this has been one of China's deadliest in recent years.

Tommy Tang is CEO of Sense Robot that makes the chess playing bot. Now, before artificial intelligence, this robot could cost around $40,000 because of the mechanical arm. But they've used artificial intelligence in the manufacturing process and that has reduced the cost to around $1,000. She's not happy with me. LAUGHTER

Do you think one day we will have such a robot that will be able to read our emotions? Do you think that's possible?

As companies plan their next move, President Xi continues to invest heavily in AI, in robots and advanced tech, in preparation for a race against the US that he hopes China will eventually win. Thanks for the game, but you've made great progress. I look forward to our next game.

Head in hands, eight-year-old Timmy mutters to himself as he tries to beat a robot powered by artificial intelligence at a game of chess. This is not an AI showroom or an AI lab. This is a middle-class living room in Beijing. It's like a little teacher or a little friend, he says, as the mechanical arm moves another chess piece.

China is embracing AI in its bid to become a global leader in technology by 2030. And Timmy's mum, Yan Xue, wants to be ahead of the curve. This is an inevitable trend. We will coexist with AI. Children should get to know it as soon as possible. This is what the Communist Party hopes to hear as it pushes AI development to revive the economy.

At an exhibition in Shanghai, you get a glimpse of the kind of developments they're looking at. So I'm watching two teams of robots play one another at football. Now, it's not perfect when they fall over. They do need a little help getting back up. One's just tumbled there. Humanoid robots also walk among us, alongside back-flipping dog-like bots made by a rising star in China called Unitree.

But there's one name on everyone's mind.

DeepSeek was a breakthrough Chinese chatbot that caught the world's attention in January. It was seen as proof that Chinese companies can overcome US export controls on advanced chips. Can you make the dinosaur move? Interest in AI is now fostered at an early age in China. What you can hear is a moving brick dinosaur built by an eight-year-old.

He's also learning to code to make it move forward and back and, of course, roar. These bots are sold to children as young as three across the world, but made here in China. Abbott Liu is the vice president of Whalesbot.

China has more graduates in science, technology, engineering and maths than anywhere else in the world, giving it an edge. The game is abnormal. I'll restore it. You cannot cheat.

What we have seen are a number of new pictures that come from us from the worst hit areas. We've seen rescuers combing through the rubble brick by brick searching for survivors. We've We've seen a number of injured people who are out on the street, many of them elderly, many of them young people. We've also seen that the army has arrived. Now, they seem to be constructing a number of tents.

Just on the back of what you've just heard about the weather, we are told that the temperature in the region is going to dip down to minus 18 degrees Celsius overnight. So that is a real challenge for rescuers. We've also seen the infrastructure, the roads collapsed. have been split in half, many of them, by the shifting ground. So many of them are impassable.

And the Air Force launched this unmanned drone, and it's given us footage of the whole region. And from there, you get an idea of both the region itself, which sits at the base of Mount Everest, but also the challenges ahead, because not only is it remote, these are scattered communities, and their homes really have been shattered recently. by this powerful quake.

Yes, the reason we're reporting from Beijing, I'm the China correspondent, but I cannot visit Tibet without permission and a permit from the government. Therefore, it is not easy for me to report on this. I'm totally relying on what we're hearing and seeing from Chinese state media.

What they're saying is that the rescue effort has been swift, that 1,500 trained search and rescue personnel have been sent along with the army. and that President Xi himself has called for an all-out effort to rescue people, minimise casualties and resettle those whose homes have been damaged.

When we arrived at the scene, the view was quite disturbing, as you imagine. We saw that the number of casualties was very high.

There has been a lot of coal construction, in fact, about 95 gigawatts of power within the early half of 2024. Now, that's the most coal-fired power plants that China has built since 2015. However, this report also notes that there has been an unprecedented surge in renewables, in wind and solar in particular. In fact, the report notes

that China has installed more in wind and solar in almost one year than the United States has done in total since records began. And what this analysis seems to suggest is that they are concerned that the solar and wind capacity is being layered on top of coal production. It's not being installed instead of.

And they fear that the net zero target President Xi has pledged that China will be net zero by 2060 might slip away from China unless that changes.

What inspired you to try and track down everybody in the old school photograph in the first place?

You're a braver man than I am, Alistair, because you wanted to cheer your dad up. It could have gone really badly wrong. He could have been the last man standing.

He sounds really fit and strong, and so does Betty.

Are they keeping in touch? Are they going to stay in touch?

China's state-run Global Times newspaper said the countermeasures will likely target US agricultural and food products. China remains the biggest market for US agriculture products even after Beijing slapped tariffs of up to 25% on soybeans, beef, pork, wheat and corn in 2018 in retaliation for duties on Chinese goods imposed by President Trump.

Analysts believe Beijing still hopes to avoid an all-out trade war and negotiate a truce with the Trump administration. But so far there has been no sign of a deal between the two economic giants.