Days after Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine used drones and missiles to strike a Russian oil refinery. Zelensky had previously said that restrictions on attacking Russian refinements had been lifted.
On the eve of the Chinese Communist Party's 20th Central Committee Fifth Plenary Session, Beijing and surrounding areas entered a wartime state, with reports of harsh security measures including bans on drones, restrictions on radio frequency bands, and the temporary sealing of street-facing windows in high-rise buildings.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officially released economic data for September and the third quarter, showing exports hitting a record high in a single month, PPI rising 5% year-on-year, and new aggregate financing of 3.55 trillion yuan, presenting a recovery narrative; however, at the micro level, new household loans stood at zero, and profits of mid- and downstream firms were severely eroded by the scissors gap.
Large-scale protests broke out across France, with more than 500,000 people taking to the streets to condemn the rising cost of living and poor school conditions. During the protests, the Louvre was blockaded, a city hall building was set on fire, and shops were looted; the clashes led to more than 2,500 arrests.
Facing large-scale protests and violent clashes, French President Macron delivered a televised address calling for an end to violence, while Prime Minister Lecornu ordered curfews in some areas; Macron also stressed the need to determine whether there were law-enforcement failures and to review police tactics.
A US warship directly entered the waters near the Nansha Islands for the first time to take up a station, after which the Southern Theater Command issued a statement on the matter.
The Chinese Communist Party has announced that starting in October it will crack down hard, using big data to recover social security contributions from entities and individuals who failed to pay them in accordance with the law, with violators facing fines.
At the Financial Street Forum, Pan Gongsheng announced the adjustment of the policy rate tenor, the establishment of liquidity support tools for non-bank institutions, the push to link large corporations' loans to the overnight repo rate, and the exit from the deposit and lending benchmark rates, turning intraday firefighting facilities from temporary tools into standing tools.
At the large-scale celebration held to mark the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Long March, Hu Chunhua, a leading figure of the Tuanpai faction who ranks high in the CPPCC, was suddenly absent, sparking outside speculation about his political fate.
According to sources, most of Xi Jinping's family members, including his elder sister, the third generation and other relatives, have left China, mainly heading to Australia and New Zealand.
Kim Jong-un rarely visited Dandong alone and was received by Wang Huning; analysts believe this may involve military cooperation between China and North Korea and plans for a special economic zone.
The Chinese Communist Party held a plenary session at the Jingxi Hotel in Beijing. Outside reports said vehicle checks entering the city were strict during the meeting, the session was run under closed-off management, and senior officials faced a sweeping purge and a choice between life and death.
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th CCP National Congress was convened at Jinxi Hotel, with the Central Guard Bureau, troops and police deployed both inside and outside the venue, keeping the situation tense.
Based on calculations using multiple economic data points and the financial reports of listed real estate developers, the analysis points out that the current rebound in corporate deposits is mainly driven by credit bill arbitrage, and that the resulting gap in banks is ultimately filled by suppressing interest payments on households’ deposits nationwide.
Within two days before the opening of the Fifth Plenary Session, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) replaced the Party secretaries and governors of Hunan, Yunnan, Fujian, Qinghai, Hebei, Jiangxi and other provinces, with a large number of officials who were not Central Committee members or who came from propaganda and discipline inspection systems rising to power.
A high-level source within the CPPCC revealed that Hu Chunhua suddenly disappeared on the eve of the meeting commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Long March victory. He was actually controlled by Xi Jinping and the CCDI, but was only able to attend the Fifth Plenary Session several days later after being released due to pressure from the military and various factions within the Party.
Statistics from JPMorgan at the end of October showed that multiple offshore bonds of Huafa fell by an average of 54 points, causing Huafa Shares' stock price to hit the daily limit and sparking widespread market concern over its debt crisis.
The federal debt has officially surpassed the $40 trillion mark, with the federal deficit reaching $1.99 trillion for this fiscal year.
According to a Financial Times report on October 1, as of June 2026, Japanese companies operating in mainland China fell to 10118, a net decrease of 2916 companies or 22.4% compared with 2024, and a drop of nearly 30% from the 2012 peak.
On October 1, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that over recent weeks the U.S. Department of Commerce has slowed approvals of export licenses for aviation parts to China, restricting the number of parts that COMAC is allowed to import in order to prevent stockpiling, hoping to trade this for concessions on rare earths and other issues.
On October 1, the G20 trade ministers' meeting was held in Milwaukee, the United States, where they agreed to condemn the use of food trade as a tool of coercion, but failed to reach a consensus on condemning forced labor in supply chains and addressing structural industrial overcapacity. U.S. Trade Representative Greer did not name the opposing countries, while China denied overcapacity and accused the West of protectionism.
According to a Bloomberg report on October 1, Xinxin Financing Lease, led by the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund and with shareholding by local state-owned assets, provided financing over the past year for Hongjing Technology to purchase more than 700 servers, totaling over 3 billion yuan, of which at least one deal involved 32 servers equipped with NVIDIA B300 Blackwell chips subject to U.S. export controls, most of them deployed at China Mobile's Ningxia Zhongwei data center. Xinxin subsequently revised its filing documents to delete server model information.
The National Defense Mobilization Law of the People's Republic of China officially took effect on October 1, stipulating that male citizens aged 18 to 60 and female citizens aged 18 to 55 shall legally undertake national defense service duties, including supporting and safeguarding military operations, preventing and relieving the disasters of war, and assisting in maintaining social order.
After the controversy over Kevin Tsai appearing at a Taiwan independence activist's campaign rally escalated, brands such as Leapmotor severed ties overnight and deleted all of their materials. His Weibo account with more than 30 million followers was emptied overnight, the platform imposed a full traffic throttle, and his commercial partnerships on the mainland were wiped out overnight.
Officials announced that the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th CCP Central Committee will run from October 26 to 29, breaking with the usual convention that the fifth plenum focuses on the economy, with the theme being comprehensive and strict Party self-governance.
On October 1, 2026, as the rights-defense video of "CC Who Takes Phones" trended across the entire internet, a number of authoritative mainstream media outlets, including Sina Technology, Tencent News, My Drivers (Quick Technology), and China Youth Daily, followed up with in-depth reports and special investigations. Legal scholars and senior criminal lawyers, in interviews with the media, made clear that using generative AI technology (DeepFake) to synthesize fake, indecent photos and videos of others is by no means an ordinary civil infringement of portrait rights or reputation, but a serious illegal and criminal act that crosses the bottom line of the law: a person who uses AI to generate obscene image collections and sells them across platforms for profit is already suspected of constituting the crimes of "insult," "defamation," and "profiting from disseminating obscene materials" under criminal law; combined with malicious doxxing (human flesh search box-opening) behavior, this further raises suspicion of the crime of "infringing on citizens' personal information." The legal community is calling on judicial authorities to step up the crackdown and sever the black-and-gray industrial chain that uses open-source technology to fabricate pornographic rumors for profit.
The Chinese government has issued the "National Tax Administrative Penalty Discretionary Benchmarks (2026 Edition)," which for the first time incorporates social security contributions into the unified national tax administrative penalty discretionary system, effective November 1. Netizens are concerned that rising labor costs for enterprises may lead to the shifting of social security costs onto employees, resulting in wage cuts and exacerbating deflation and employment difficulties.
China's births in 2025 totaled only 7.92 million, a decrease of 1.62 million from 9.54 million in 2024, hitting the lowest level in decades.
A Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was attacked by the co-pilot during the flight, who maneuvered the plane into a dangerous dive; the crew and passengers worked together to subdue him and landed safely in Saudi Arabia.
US President Trump met with tech executives including Elon Musk and Jensen Huang at the White House, signed an executive order establishing the America.gov superintelligence platform, and made clear that the United States will not cooperate with China in the field of superintelligence.
U.S. Central Command announced that U.S. troops and equipment have withdrawn from the Erbil base in northern Iraq, marking the official end of the military mission against ISIS that began 12 years ago.
Russian forces used nearly 190 drones and ballistic missiles to strike Kyiv and surrounding energy facilities, killing 5 people, including a child, and injuring 14.
At the National Day reception on September 30, the supreme leader did not, as is customary, announce the upcoming Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee, and in his remarks on Taiwan he once again mentioned the "peaceful development of cross-Strait relations."
US Secretary of War Hegseth announced the creation of a new four-star autonomous warfare command and the launch of the Meridian Program, led by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich, to study the future of war.
On a Dubai flight, the first officer stabbed the captain with a knife, sending the plane into a steep dive. Through a combination of coincidences and the joint efforts of the crew and passengers, the crisis was ultimately resolved.
The U.S. Department of Defense announced the formal end of its military mission in Iraq to counter ISIS and an orderly withdrawal, as Iraq welcomes its Day of Sovereignty.
On September 30, 2026, "Shou Shouji de CC" officially released a rights defense recap video titled "I've been a victim of AI-generated pornographic rumors for 2 months, and I've called the police!" on platforms including Bilibili and Douyin. Holding the case acceptance receipt issued by the police, the vlogger, teary-eyed but firm, fully exposed the entire journey and truth behind the events—from the graphics card recycling dispute in July and the satirical comics in August, to being targeted by black-market AI face-swapping for pornographic rumors and malicious doxxing in September. The vlogger stated firmly in the video: "All pornographic images, private photo sets, and videos circulating online are 100% fake. I have completed the notarization of all evidence and will never settle!" Within 24 hours of its release, the video surpassed 3.21 million views, quickly topping the trending lists on Weibo and Bilibili, and triggering a strong public condemnation of AI face-swapping rumors and cyberbullying.
On September 30, according to official media reports, the Supreme People's Procuratorate made an arrest decision against Yi Huiman, former chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), on suspicion of accepting bribes, and designated the Qingdao Municipal People's Procuratorate to review and prosecute the case. Recently, an indictment was filed with the Qingdao Intermediate People's Court, accusing him of illegally accepting huge amounts of property by exploiting the privileges of his positions at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the CSRC.
On September 30, Tang Ho-wing, founder of the Hong Kong independent online media "Boom News - Afro," was arrested by the Hong Kong police on suspicion of "publishing false information to incite" on August 31, when he was reporting on a rally commemorating the anniversary of the 2019 crackdown on protests. The Hong Kong Journalists Association said he is the first journalist arrested on suspicion of incitement since the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance took effect, and Reporters Without Borders condemned the weaponization of national security procedures.
On September 30, CNBC published an investigation: a man calling himself Hummin Lee met Rogers, a former senior adviser to the Federal Reserve, in Shanghai in 2013, helped his Chinese girlfriend obtain a divorce, organized a wedding, and arranged for him to teach in China, using these favors to demand internal materials such as Federal Reserve economic forecasts, interest rate policy, and discussions on tariffs toward China.
On September 30, the UK's MI5 rarely issued an independent espionage alert, pointing out that China's General Technology Research Institute has close ties with the Ministry of State Security and has funded more than 100 British scholars to research AI, cybersecurity, covert communications and steganography, warning that those who continue to cooperate could be prosecuted under the National Security Law. The Chinese Embassy in the UK denied the allegations.
A Kyodo News report on September 30 said that internal military documents obtained by Japanese scholar Takashi Suzuki record that Wei Liang, then political commissar of the Guangzhou Military Region, argued in a document dated November 2, 2014 that military operations should be prepared in response to Hong Kong's "extreme situation" during the 2014 Umbrella Movement. The military ultimately did not carry out a armed crackdown, and it is unclear whether the proposal was approved.
Before the top-level meeting between China and the United States in Beijing, the two sides had already completed substantive negotiations on trade and economic terms including the agriculture working group, financial services market access, and the artificial intelligence dialogue, and released a timeline.
On September 29, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Krishnamoorthi separately wrote to the Secretary of War, expressing concern over F-35 fighter jet parts that went missing in transit and fell into China's hands.
On September 29, US Ambassador to China David Perdue reposted a graphic and text from the embassy dated the 27th, saying that China has imposed export licensing on rare earths and magnets since April last year, extended it worldwide in October last year, and now makes it illegal for companies to relocate out of China, allowing for arrest and prosecution, seizure of assets, and exit restrictions.
On September 29, the Ministry of Finance, the central bank, and the National Financial Regulatory Administration jointly announced that starting October 1, eligible first-home mortgages will receive fiscal interest subsidies, with an implementation period provisionally set at one year — the first time the central fiscal budget has subsidized individual housing mortgages. The subsidy applies to newly purchased first-home loans for properties with an area of no more than 120 square meters and a total price of no more than 1.5 million yuan, providing an annualized interest subsidy of 1 percentage point on loans of up to 1 million yuan, for a maximum of five years.
On September 29, Human Rights in China (HRIC) released a report stating that, as confirmed by lawyers, all five people arrested at the protest scene in Washington, D.C. on September 24 were anti-Xi Jinping activists. Pi Qiaohai was subsequently transferred to ICE custody, and the reason for the transfer was not disclosed.
A Chinese human rights report reviews incidents of attacks at multiple protest sites in Washington from September 23 to 25, saying protesters had their signs snatched, were pepper-sprayed, surrounded and beaten, and demanding that U.S. law enforcement identify the attackers and their organizational ties.
A Chinese human rights report quoted Students for a Free Tibet and others as saying that police told them at least one person involved in the assault was not detained because he had diplomatic immunity; lawyer Samuel Bickett said police indicated that this person was part of the diplomatic delegation for Xi Jinping's visit.
On September 29, days after the Trump-Xi meeting ended, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on 10 individuals and entities, including Tabatabai, the Iranian defense sector's procurement representative in Beijing, Hong Kong company EC Mojo Technology, and its China-based representative Li Fen, accusing them of supporting the procurement of weapons systems, dual-use components, and electronic components for Iran within China. The assets of the sanctioned targets in the United States will be frozen.