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Chinese telecommunications gear giant Huawei Technologies is capitalising on the OpenClaw frenzy with new enterprise agent tools and a series of Kunpeng and Ascend compute offerings, as it bets on surging demand for agentic artificial intelligence services. The Shenzhen-based company announced at its China Partner Conference on Thursday that it would launch AgentArts, an agent development platform for enterprises, on April 30 for public beta testing, followed by the official release of the......

A recession mindset took hold among global investors after strikes on energy infrastructure in the Middle East heightened fears that disruption to production and distribution would keep oil prices elevated for longer, darkening the global economic outlook. Crude prices staged a comeback on Thursday after Iran attacked a liquefied petroleum gas site in Qatar in retaliation for Israel's strikes on its South Pars gas field. Brent futures surged 5.5 per cent to US$113.53 a barrel in London, and......

Hong Kong's market regulator will soon begin inspection of investment banks to assess their roles as sponsors of listing candidates, in its latest effort to uphold the quality of new listings amid a booming market. The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said the inspection would focus on whether banks had complied with its January circular, which outlined expectations on staffing and quality controls when handling initial public offerings (IPOs) in Hong Kong. For example, the SFC expected......

Alibaba Group Holding, China's e-commerce and artificial intelligence powerhouse, on Thursday for the first time disclosed the production progress of its T-Head chip unit, as quarterly results missed estimates. It reported a 2 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue to 284.8 billion yuan (US$40.7 billion) for the December quarter, but missed the 289.8 billion yuan consensus forecast compiled by Bloomberg. The company also “brought its proprietary GPU [graphics processing unit] into production......

CK Hutchison Holdings, one of the flagship companies owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing's family, reported a 7 per cent increase in underlying profit for 2025, as the company predicted its businesses would face “new and perhaps unforeseen challenges” in 2026. The ports-to-telecoms conglomerate said on Thursday that underlying profit reached HK$22.3 billion (US$2.85 ‌billion) last year, compared with HK$20.8 billion a year earlier. Including a one-time ⁠accounting loss, net profit fell......

GLP, a global operator and investor in logistics, digital infrastructure, renewable energy and finance, is deepening its commitment to China's growth, projecting as much as a 50 per cent rise in logistics rental rates, supported by stronger domestic consumption and wider adoption of alternative energies. Angela Zhao, CEO of GLP China, said the country's 15th five-year development plan for 2026 to 2030 would further cement the company's role as a global thematic investor in “new economy”......

As the war in Iran rages and the consequences of the shock to commodity markets become clearer, the vulnerability of Asia's economies tops the list of concerns in the research reports of investment banks. The region's reliance on energy imports from the Gulf has come under scrutiny. The facts speak for themselves. Three-quarters of the oil supplies that passed through the Strait of Hormuz before Iran effectively closed the waterway were destined for China, India, Japan and South Korea. While......

Chinese authorities have renewed their push for stricter oversight of the electric vehicle (EV) market, urging carmakers to move away from aggressive discounting and focus instead on technological innovation. The directive comes as domestic manufacturers struggle with cooling demand and the phasing out of long-standing government subsidies. At a high-level meeting on March 17, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission and the State......

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Hong Kong stocks fell on Thursday alongside other markets in Asia after the US Federal Reserve signalled that the Iran war complicated the inflation outlook, while oil prices remained elevated amid tensions in the Middle East. The Hang Seng Index fell 1.6 per cent to 25,629.06 as of 9.43am local time. The Hang Seng Tech Index dropped 1.3 per cent. On the mainland, the CSI 300 Index slid 0.8 per cent and the Shanghai Composite Index retreated 0.7 per cent. Tencent Holdings tumbled 5.1 per cent to......

China's recent changes to the rules governing its global payment system could pave the way for turning it into a genuine alternative to Western networks, according to a new report. Beijing now appears to be moving towards building the Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) into a global platform compliant with multicurrency settlements and other foreign payment channels, said the study led by Ju Jiandong, a chair professor at Tsinghua University's PBC School of Finance. Beijing recently......

Middle East banks and wealthy investors are poised to increase their investments in Hong Kong amid geopolitical tensions to diversify their risk and capture growing opportunities in Asia, according to the head of InvestHK, the government agency tasked with attracting foreign investment. A couple of Middle East banks were in the process of setting up offices in Hong Kong with the help of InvestHK, said Alpha Lau Hai-suen, its director general. These additions would strengthen the city's ties with......

Chinese toymaker Pop Mart and Sony Pictures Entertainment announced on Thursday a feature film starring Labubu, the company's most popular character. Analysts said the film was a strategic move to extend Labubu's intellectual property (IP) value and support medium-term growth, following the trajectory of global icons like Barbie and Hello Kitty. The film, still in early development, would be a mix of live action and computer-generated imagery, Pop Mart said in a statement. Lung Ka-sing, the......

Hong Kong's monetary authority kept its base rate unchanged after a similar move by the US Federal Reserve, as analysts said that the Middle East conflict has added to the uncertainty over the pace of rate cuts this year. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) maintained the city's base rate at 4 per cent on Thursday. Hours earlier, the Fed also kept its target rate in the range of 3.5 per cent to 3.75 per cent, after the second meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) this......

The first night I installed OpenClaw on my laptop, I didn't dare give it much authorisation. From numerous news reports and warnings, I knew that if it made a mistake, there could be serious consequences, like exposing my bank account password, deleting files or sending an offensive message to my boss. I only asked it to do some research, visit a few media websites, find China-centred topics over the past few months and list them, watch some videos and summarise the content for me. It had the......

Hong Kong's securities regulator on Wednesday recommended strengthening the stock exchange's regulations to better protect investors following a review of 2024 compliance and enforcement cases. The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) submitted its findings after vetting listed companies' internal control reviews, their handling of late auditor resignations and the processes of the Hong Kong stock exchange's listing division. The regulator noted that while thestock exchange “had taken steps......

Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off his first tour of China this year on Wednesday, while the iPhone maker's chief operating officer visited key suppliers, including Foxconn and Sunwoda, in a sign of the company's continued focus on the country's huge market and manufacturing ecosystem. Cook turned up at an Apple Store in Chengdu, the capital of southwestern Sichuan province, in the afternoon as part of the company's 50th anniversary celebrations. He interacted with celebrities and customers,......

Cosco Shipping Ports, a unit of state-owned giant Cosco Shipping, reported modest earnings growth for 2025, as management expects to expand in emerging markets amid rising geopolitical risks to global trade. Net profit rose 1.1 per cent to US$312.1 million, and revenue increased 11 per cent to US$1.67 billion, according to its 2025 results. Total container throughput climbed 6.2 per cent to 153 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). The company's overseas terminals saw strong growth, with......

The cloud-computing units of Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu are raising prices for certain services by as much as 34 per cent, following similar moves by their American peers earlier this year as artificial intelligence demand and infrastructure costs rise. Starting April 18, Alibaba Cloud's services running on its AI chips – such as the T-Head Zhengwu 810E unveiled in late January – would cost between 5 and 34 per cent more, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. The price of its Cloud......

Nvidia is restarting production of H200s, its second-most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) chip, after getting long-awaited approval from Beijing to sell the processors in China. The US chip giant has won licences for “many customers in China” and has received orders from “many” companies, CEO Jensen Huang said Tuesday at a developer conference in San Jose, California. “Our supply chain is getting fired up.” Production of the chip was halted last year. Chinese regulators have opened the......