On Thursday Aug. 20, Shanghai Gold Exchange gold T+D rose 3.11% to 973.28 yuan/gram in early trade; silver T+D gained 5.15% to 16,204.0 yuan/kg.

MOFCOM spokesperson He Yadong said at a routine briefing on Aug. 20 that a recent US report titled "Massive Transshipment Scam: Rise, Scale and Cost" is factually false and improperly brands normal trade and investment as a "scam" and a "shadow transshipment network." He said high, discriminatory US tariffs—not Chinese trade—are the fundamental threat to global supply‑chain security, and urged the US to stop making irresponsible accusations and taking measures that disrupt China‑US economic and trade ties. He reiterated China will continue to abide by international trade rules and pursue equal, mutually beneficial trade cooperation to help maintain global production and supply‑chain stability. (Xinhua)

On Aug. 18 at a Tongji Hospital–Tianqin Bio signing event in Wuhan, six brain–machine interface (BCI) R&D platforms were inaugurated, including provincial BCI innovation and proof‑of‑concept centers, Tongji Hospital’s BCI institute and joint translational lab with Tianqin Bio, and two laboratory animal centers. A package of projects was launched, led by a National Data Bureau BCI high‑quality dataset project with total funding of 122 mln yuan and a 24‑month build window to create multimodal datasets across 10 disease categories (stroke rehabilitation, spinal‑cord injury, Parkinson’s, epilepsy, etc.). Hubei health authorities also greenlighted translational projects for closed‑loop neural modulation BCI key technologies and a Optics Valley BCI data and compute platform.