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Hong Kong homebuyers continued to show strong demand for new residential launches over the weekend, potentially pushing primary market transactions to a five-month high, according to agents. By 3.30pm on Saturday, about two-thirds of the 108 units released at Park Seasons – a Lohas Park project in Tseung Kwan O developed by Wheelock Properties and the city's subway operator MTR Corp – had found buyers, agents said. On Friday, all 60 units on offer at K. Wah International's Kabitat Tin Hau......

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has begun his latest trip to China, visiting the chipmaker's Shanghai office at a time when Beijing is expected to allow imports of the company's H200 artificial intelligence chips, according to media reports. Huang met Shanghai-based staff to review Nvidia's milestones for 2025 and discuss its product pipeline for the year ahead, although the H200 was not mentioned in the discussion, Tencent Holdings' news portal reported on Friday. The report included a photograph of a......

The plans of Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu to list their semiconductor design units could intensify competition with other domestic artificial intelligence chip developers to unseat Nvidia as the country's top supplier of high-performance AI processors, according to analysts. The two Chinese internet peers' initiatives reflected the strong investor appetite for AI chip firms and growing demand for alternative computing resources in the domestic AI sector, as Beijing pushed for greater......

The US-China tech rivalry is no longer confined to the laboratories, fabs and boardrooms of the industry's biggest names – the artificial intelligence battlefield has now expanded into the capital markets, where ambition is priced in real time. As Washington and Beijing push rival technology ecosystems, initial public offerings and listings are becoming a high-stakes referendum on who gets funding, credibility and, most of all, the runway to scale. Across the Pacific, the contest has been......

Chinese regulators are targeting one of the world's biggest travel platforms in an anti-monopoly probe after complaints it had hurt travellers and travel operators in China's expansive tourism market, analysts said. Unlike the broad legal actions against Chinese tech firms and cram schools five years ago, the investigation into Trip.com is seen as a relatively isolated case – yet one that might precipitate others – in response to issues over commissions, exclusivity and the sophisticated use of......

DJI, a dominant force in the global drone and camera-stabiliser markets that has come under siege from fierce competition and a protracted trade war, is navigating an unprecedented situation: as it grapples with expanded US tariffs and tightened scrutiny, products bearing striking resemblances to its own designs are emerging in the market under other brands. The next “clone” may be a wearable action camera – the Xtra ATTO – which is expected to enter the US market in the first half of the year.......

TikTok has officially launched a US joint venture tasked with “safeguarding the American content ecosystem”, with commercial activities such as e-commerce, advertising and marketing remaining under the company's existing US entities. The arrangement has been widely compared with Apple's 2018 move to transfer mainland Chinese iCloud user data to Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD), according to Chinese media. GCBD is a project owned by the Guizhou provincial government-backed company AIPO Cloud......

Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings cited data privacy risks after its request to remove open-source WeChat export tools from GitHub sparked an online backlash. Some of the projects claiming access to WeChat chat records have used reverse engineering, among other techniques, to crack local database keys, bypassing the app's encryption mechanisms, according to Tencent. “These actions compromise user privacy and data security and could be exploited by malicious actors,” Tencent said in a statement......

Life insurance sales in Hong Kong rose 56 per cent in the first nine months of last year to another record as affluent customers continued to buy policies in the city for wealth transfer, protection and medical needs. The industry wrote HK$264.5 billion (US$34 billion) worth of new policies from January to September, compared with HK$169.6 billion a year earlier, according to data from the Insurance Authority on Friday. It was the highest figure for the corresponding period since the authority......

China will probably lower its economic growth target this year, the Post reported, as domestic challenges weigh on the nation's two-speed economy (see SCMP Plus factsheet). Policymakers may set a target range of 4.5 per cent to 5 per cent, the Post said, citing three unidentified people briefed on the matter. That compares with a goal of “about 5 per cent” in each of the last three years. The potential cut reflects a focus on “high-quality” development and a shift away from assessing local......

Zhipu AI, known internationally as Z.ai, is restricting sign-ups for its new flagship artificial intelligence coding product, as existing users face performance issues amid a computing crunch that continues to beset Chinese AI firms. On Wednesday, the Beijing-based firm announced in a WeChat post that it would limit new sign-ups for its GLM Coding Plan to 20 per cent of existing levels and crack down on “malicious” use. This issue reflected the challenge faced by a growing number of Chinese AI......

A Nomura Holdings banker has bought a detached luxury house at Villa Rosa in Hong Kong's Southern District for HK$75 million (US$9.6 million), highlighting the gradual return of foreign professionals and senior executives to the city's high-end residential market as prices soften. Sachin Tulshyan, a Hong Kong-based managing director for equity products at Nomura, acquired the four-bedroom house in Tai Tam on December 5, according to Land Registry records. House 16 at Villa Rosa, has a saleable......

China is moving forward with the initial public offering (IPO) plans of four private rocket makers this month, as Beijing pushes to build up its commercial space industry amid intensifying competition with Elon Musk's SpaceX. The Shanghai Stock Exchange has issued questions on LandSpace Technology's IPO application, according to an update late on Thursday, advancing the company's plan to raise 7.5 billion yuan (US$1 billion) on the tech-focused Star market. IPO preparations also advanced at......

Shares of Labubu maker Pop Mart surged on Friday, extending this week's gain to 23 per cent, after its CEO appeared in a high-profile state media interview and a newly launched product went viral amid growing investor appetite for consumer stocks. In a documentary interview released by Xinhua news agency at noon, founder and CEO Wang Ning reflected on the company's entrepreneurial journey and outlined his long-term vision, offering rare public remarks that investors viewed as a signal of......

The board of Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical approved the spin-off and Hong Kong listing of its vaccine unit, aiming to bolster the business as biotechnology shares continue to outperform in the city's stock market. The board cleared the proposed spin-off of Fosun Adgenvax (Chengdu) Biopharmaceutical for a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) on Thursday, according to a late filing by Fosun Pharma, whose shares are listed in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The filing did not disclose the planned IPO......

China's central bank has strengthened the yuan's daily fixing rate to break through the psychologically important level of 7 per US dollar for the first time since May 2023, as the American currency weakens amid concerns over recent US attempts to gain control of Greenland. The People's Bank of China set the yuan's midpoint rate – also known as the daily fixing rate – at 6.9929 to the US dollar on Friday, after weeks of keeping the benchmark just on the weaker side of the 7 mark. The move came......

Major international marques, from Tesla to Volkswagen, continued to lose market share in mainland China, as consumers increasingly favoured new domestic electric vehicle (EV) models equipped with hi-tech features. But in 2026, foreign carmakers are expected to stage a comeback when they launch models with innovative technologies, which are expected to attract buyers in spite of sluggish consumer demand, according to industry officials and analysts. “Finally, foreign OEMs [original equipment......

Hong Kong stocks rose for a third day on Friday after China's central bank signalled more room for policy easing and strong US data reinforced a solid outlook for global equities. The Hang Seng Index gained 0.7 per cent to 26,806.85 as of 9.41am local time. The Hang Seng Tech Index gained 0.6 per cent. On the mainland, the CSI 300 Index slipped 0.1 per cent and the Shanghai Composite Index added 0.2 per cent. Pop Mart International Group rallied 8 per cent to HK$222, and Alibaba Group Holding......

As Chinese biotech and pharmaceutical firms gain importance on the global stage, foreign investors from sovereign wealth funds to industry players are securing strategic stakes in their future success. International institutional investors have built up significant positions in Chinese biotech firms over the past decade. These positions often approach, and in some cases exceed, the 5 per cent disclosure threshold for substantial shareholders in Hong Kong. BlackRock, the world's largest asset......

Alibaba Group Holding is paving the way for a listing of its wholly owned chip design unit T-Head, as a renewed frenzy to fund semiconductor development in China gathers pace, Bloomberg reported. T-Head, founded in 2018, is set to be first restructured into a separate business partly held by employees, followed by Alibaba exploring an initial public offering (IPO), Bloomberg reported citing sources, adding that the timing remained unclear. Alibaba owns the Post. Alibaba's US-listed American......