The "Youth Innovation Beijing"2026 "Challenge Cup" CapitalCollegeStudentsEntrepreneurship Competition concluded on June 10. Students and faculty from the Central University of Finance and Economics, or CUFE, made significant breakthroughs — winning awards for 53 projects, including2special prizes(with1namedasthe "Champion of theLeaderboard"),4first prizes,8second prizes and 39 third prizes.

The "Smart Pet Connection" project from the CUFE's School of Management Science and Engineering won the special prize in the main competition. Targeting the expanding pet market, this project creates a health management platform that integrates intelligent diagnoses, cost estimations and a pet community by using a lightweight AI framework — helping pet owners to makeinformed decisions and reduce anxiety. The "Journey to the West: Secret Realm of the Southern Heavenly Gate" project from the CUFE's School of Culture and Communication claimed the title "Champion of the Leaderboard" in the special competition. The team creatively combined the Chinese classical novelJourney to the Westwith local resources — using a "HeavenlyTalismans" collection system to link a "one axis and five rings" immersive line. The aim of the project is to galvanize rural cultural heritage and provide a replicable, sustainable innovation model for rural revitalization in the suburbs of Beijing.

The competition was hosted by the Beijing Municipal Committee ofthe Communist Youth League of China, Beijing Municipal Education Commission, Beijing Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security, Beijing Association for Science and Technology, Beijing Youth Federation andBeijing Students Federation, and organized by Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Its theme"A Promising Youth, A New Journey" truly resonated with students, being in tune with the requirements of the15th "Challenge Cup" Chinese College Students Entrepreneurship Competition — building a "One Cup, Eight Competitions" system closely linked to the capital's development strategy and its industrial upgrading needs. The competition attracted the participation of over 200,000 young students. Going for it, the CUFE submitted 88 entries — with 17 projects recommended for the main competition and 37 for the special competition.

The CUFE regards the "Challenge Cup" series as an important platform for enhancing the sci-tech innovation capabilities of its students — establishing a collaborative preparations mechanism. This year, the CUFE Committee of the Communist Youth League of China launched the "Digital Intelligence and Golden Ideas" Youth Scientific InnovationRepository initiative. This created a dual-engine ("artificial Intelligence +" and "rural revitalization +"), multi-field collaborative "1+1+N" campus competition system. It also set up a three-tier project library for the tiered cultivation of key projects, the precise cultivation ofselected projects and the tracking and incubation of promising projects. By integrating internal and external expert resources for guidance, the CUFE aims to continuously improve students' innovation abilities and competition levels through tiered project selections, cultivation and refinements. Moving forwards, plans are to continue to focus on the capital's high-qualitysocial-economic development and the CUFE's "Double First-Class" construction goals. This will help deepen the integration of learning, teaching and innovation through competitions — to comprehensively improve the academic literacy and innovation capabilities of students.

Reviewers: LI Yanjun, XUE Xue, MIAO Tian

Editors: WANG Xinyu

Approvers: HUO Xiaoran