China holds border disengagement talks with India, while signaling stronger ties with Indonesia and Russia

Here’s what else you need to know about China today:

Top story: China and Japan held formal security talks for the first time in four years in a bid to stabilize deteriorating relations. Beijing’s growing military might has pushed Tokyo to beef up its defenses, but Tokyo still has to balance its security allegiances to the U.S. with its ties to its large-and-in-charge Asian neighbor. Scroll down for a summary or click through for the whole thing.

India and China discussed disengagement along their contested border, also known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC), in a meeting in Beijing today. A clash between Chinese and Indian troops in December had renewed tensions along their shared Himalayan border, and although the latest round of talks yielded no breakthroughs, it marked the first in-person meeting since July 2019.

Indonesia wants deeper economic ties with China under the Belt and Road Initiative to build out its high-speed railways, a green industrial park, and even its new capital, Nusantara. The pledge for deeper cooperation comes as China’s new foreign minister, Qín Gāng 秦刚, arrived in Jakarta on Tuesday to kick off his first Southeast Asia tour since his appointment in December.

Xi plans to visit Russia, in the latest sign that China intends to strengthen ties with its northern neighbor despite Western pressure over Putin’s war in Ukraine. The news comes while China’s top diplomat, Wáng Yì 王毅, is in Moscow to round out his weeklong tour to woo European countries: Just days earlier, he had urged for a resolution to the Ukraine war at a security conference in Munich, but failed to read the room.

The prestigious Fudan University launched a Chinese version of ChatGPT called MOSS. It immediately went viral and the Shanghai-based school’s server crashed. Baidu’s AI chatbot, Ernie Bot, will be released in March, and it should be well funded: Baidu reported 2022 revenue of 123.67 billion yuan ($17.99 billion) and a net profit of 20.68 billion yuan ($3 billion), a year-on-year increase of 10%.

The financials benefited from strong performances by its Baidu AI Cloud division, and its autonomous driving service, Apollo Go, which Baidu claims is the world’s largest autonomous driving service provider, with a cumulative 2 million orders. Click through for more details from today’s Chinese business press.