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China is often described today as having “overcapacity” in manufacturing. Its dominance in solar panels, batteries and wind equipment, for example, has left many observers baffled. How did a country once dismissed as undeveloped become, within a generation, so technologically developed that its success now unsettles global markets? Part of the answer lies in how we frame China's development. What is often described as excess capacity is better understood as the outcome of an energy-centred......

Chinese chip designer Moore Threads Technology has unveiled a suite of new products, including its next generation of chip architecture and artificial intelligence chips as it looks to challenge US chip-making heavyweights Nvidia and AMD. The Beijing-based firm, hailed as China's “little Nvidia”, introduced two forthcoming chips Huashan and Lushan, named after two famous Chinese mountains, at a developer conference in the Chinese capital on Saturday. The Huashan chip, designed for AI training......

Landlords in Hong Kong and Singapore are expected to continue allocating space to flexible office operators as multinational corporations reshape the sector's risk profile and fuel long-term demand, according to industry experts. A major driver behind this shift is the rapid change in who uses flexible workspaces. Global companies now represented 41 per cent of Asia-Pacific flex office users, the highest proportion worldwide and nearly triple North America's 14 per cent, according to Piers......

Catch up on some of SCMP's biggest stories about China's soft power this year. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Labubu, soft power of a stealthy 'ugly-cute' sort, takes on America The Chinese-made dolls, a playful global megahit, give Beijing an opportunity to make inroads into deep US distrust. 2. 'Huge shift': why learning Mandarin is losing its appeal in the West Available figures suggest enthusiasm for learning Mandarin abroad is waning after......

Stand-alone flagship stores with distinctive architectural facades, long prevalent in global metropolises like Tokyo, Seoul and New York, are gradually gaining traction in China, as the country's retail landscape undergoes a broader shift from enclosed malls towards open-air and street-facing formats. More luxury brands are setting up such flagships in places like Beijing's Taikoo Li Sanlitun North, a trendy open-air commercial block developed and operated by Hong Kong's Swire......

China has pulled far ahead in the race to build humanoid robots, issuing five times as many related patents as the United States over the past five years, Morgan Stanley said in its latest Robot Almanac. In “Robot Almanac, Volume 3: Humanoids & Industrial Robots”, released on Tuesday as part of a six-volume series, Morgan Stanley said China recorded 7,705 humanoid patents over the past five years, compared with 1,561 in the US. Japan ranked next with 1,102, followed by the World Intellectual......

Vanke Hong Kong, a unit of distressed mainland developer China Vanke, sold only seven flats from the latest batch of its Le Mont project in Tai Po on Saturday, a muted result that brokers said was expected given the development has been on the market for months. The developer released 165 flats in the latest batch, with sizes ranging from 270 to 662 sq ft. The offering included 28 one-bedroom, 28 two-bedroom, eight three-bedroom units and eight special units, as part of a six-tower residential......

Beijing-based ByteDance has raised pay and sweetened incentives as the TikTok owner steps up efforts to retain and attract talent globally, as it makes progress on settling the future of its US business. In an internal letter released to all staff on Friday and seen by the Post, the social media giant said it would lift both the upper and lower limits of compensation packages for staff across all ranks. For its full-year 2025 performance cycle – with reviews starting on January 15, 2026 –......

Chinese artificial intelligence firm Zhipu AI has moved a step closer to a Hong Kong initial public offering to raise US$300 million after passing a listing hearing and filing its documents with Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing on Friday. The Beijing-based start-up, officially named Knowledge Atlas Technology Joint Stock Company Limited and marketed overseas as Z.ai, is widely seen as one of China's “new AI tigers”. The prospectus did not disclose a fundraising target or timetable, but brokers......

If pharmaceutical drug patents are an hourglass turned over on the day of approval – with the approaching loss of exclusivity known in the industry as the “patent cliff” – then Big Pharma is currently watching the final grains of sand slipping through the neck of the glass. At the bottom of the hourglass awaits an unforgiving world of generic and biosimilar competition. Between 2025 and 2030, the patent cliff is set to be one of the biggest since 2010 by revenue at risk, according to......

China's robotics industry is turning into a humanoid arms race as start-ups – fresh from big funding rounds – are rolling out new robots in a bid to beat tech giants to real-world deployment. Beijing-based Noetix Robotics this week unveiled Hobbs W1, a service humanoid with a lifelike female face, a black bob and dexterous hands, as a new wave of venture-backed companies pushes into increasingly humanlike designs. Noetix billed Hobbs W1 as its most humanlike robot to date. The humanoid pairs a......

Chinese supercomputer maker Sugon has launched an advanced artificial intelligence infrastructure for data centres that is expected to rival similar high-performance platforms from Nvidia and Huawei Technologies. Beijing-based Sugon, listed in Shanghai as Dawning Information Industry, on Thursday unveiled its scaleX platform at an event in Kunshan, a city in eastern Jiangsu province. The company claimed that it was China's first 10,000-card AI supercluster, designed to deliver in excess of 5......

Ant International, the Singapore-based affiliate of Chinese fintech giant Ant Group, on Friday announced a partnership with the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) team New York Liberty. The multi-year initiative would see the company's Alipay+ fintech platform become an “official sponsor” and “innovation partner for sustainability” of the team, to “jointly support community programmes designed to advance community empowerment, environmental sustainability and youth development”......

China's reported development of its own extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine to make advanced semiconductors for artificial intelligence and high-performance computer systems could provide a “massive” boost to the country in its tech rivalry with the United States, according to analysts. Scientists at a high-security Shenzhen laboratory earlier this year built “what Washington has spent years trying to prevent”: a prototype EUV lithography machine, according to a Reuters report on......

China's video game industry revenue grew 7.7 per cent to a new high this year, as domestic titles from the likes of Tencent Holdings and NetEase continued to expand globally and bets on artificial intelligence paid off, according to data released on Friday by the country's semi-official gaming industry association. The country's gaming market posted total sales of 350.8 billion yuan (US$49.8 billion) for the year, breaking the previous record of 325.8 billion yuan set last year. The numbers were......

China Vanke's senior executives have no plans to reduce their personal shareholdings, according to the distressed mainland developer, which is seeking to extend the repayment of its onshore debt to avoid a default. The Shenzhen-listed developer on Thursday was responding to queries from investors on the exchange's interactive platform, saying it had not received any notification from the executives regarding stake sale plans. Under the exchange's rules, senior management were required to......

BeOne Medicines, a global drug company that originated as a research and development (R&D) firm in Beijing, promoted Wang Lai to the newly created role of co-president, marking a leadership expansion as the company advances its late-stage pipeline and globalisation efforts. The 48-year-old has served as the company's global head of R&D since April 2021. Effective January, Wang would take the helm of an expanded portfolio, retaining his R&D responsibilities while also overseeing business......

Alibaba Group's logistics arm Cainiao and online grocery business Tmall Supermarket are teaming up to expand fulfilment infrastructure and speed up deliveries, as the Chinese e-commerce giant ramps up its efforts in China's fast-growing instant commerce battle to fend off rivals such as JD.com and Meituan. Cainiao will launch new or expand instant commerce warehouses for Tmall Supermarket across 31 mainland Chinese cities by the end of January 2026, it said in a statement on Thursday. Alibaba......

More Chinese artificial intelligence firms and chipmakers are turning to Hong Kong for fundraising, testing the appetite of global investors following stellar onshore debuts of graphics processing unit (GPU) developers Moore Threads Technology and MetaX Integrated Circuits. GigaDevice Semiconductor is a step closer to its Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) after passing a listing hearing, according to bourse operator Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX). The company is expected to......

US President Donald Trump's ‌administration has launched a review that could result in the first shipments to China of Nvidia's H200 chips, five sources said, making good on his pledge to allow the controversial sales. Trump this month said he would allow sales of Nvidia's H200 chips to China, with the US government collecting a 25 per cent fee, and that the sales would help keep US firms ahead by cutting demand for Chinese-developed chips. The move drew fire from China hawks across the US......