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China's hunt for semiconductor talent has intensified as Beijing aims to achieve artificial intelligence breakthroughs amid deepening tech rivalry with the US, but the plans have triggered fresh probes by Taiwanese authorities into talent poaching by mainland Chinese firms in what analysts describe as a “quiet tech war” over the human capital. A total of 11 new mainland Chinese firms were put under investigation for allegedly poaching semiconductor and other hi-tech talent, according to Taiwan's......

Gold is likely to stabilise and resume its record-setting uptrend once Middle East tensions recede and new leadership at the US Federal Reserve adopts a policy of monetary easing, according to global financial institutions. The yellow metal would quickly rebound above US$5,000 an ounce as long as crude oil slipped back to between US$80 and US$85 a barrel, according to a report by William Blair, the US investment banking and wealth-management company. Lombard Odier, the Swiss private banking and......

Rents in Hong Kong's luxury housing market are rising as supply tightens, with returning overseas professionals heating up the competition to secure prime homes. The rebound is most evident in traditional upscale districts such as The Peak and Southside, where leasing activity has picked up sharply this year. Transactions reached 108 in the first quarter, with more than 40 per cent involving monthly rents above HK$100,000 (US$12,760), according to Midland Realty. At the centre of the surge is......

Traditional corporate culture and hierarchies are slowing down artificial intelligence adoption in Chinese enterprises, leaving them trailing their US peers, even as China's savvy consumers embrace AI agents at a breakneck pace, says Zack Kass, former head of go-to-market at OpenAI. China has a very “techno-centric consumer”, while the US has a very “techno-centric enterprise”, Kass told the South China Morning Post in a recent interview. Highlighting this contrast, Kass said typical Chinese......

Facebook owner Meta Platforms has recruited a Chinese industry veteran with experience across artificial intelligence, humanoid robots and extended reality to lead a new hardware team in its superintelligence unit. Xu Rui, a former product manager at Tencent Holdings and TikTok owner ByteDance, would lead a team developing AI devices separately from Meta's Reality Labs division, which was responsible for the company's popular smart glasses and virtual reality headsets, US outlet Business Insider......

A proposed cap on the ground rents paid by leasehold homeowners in England and Wales is seen as favouring foreign property investors, including those from Hong Kong and mainland China, but another measure tightening rules in setting rents is dampening demand ahead of its implementation, according to analysts. An estimated 203,000 homes in England and Wales are registered to owners with an overseas address. Hongkongers hold 14 per cent, making them the largest group of foreign investors in the......

Chinese ride-hailing company CaoCao, backed by Geely, is betting on a heavy-asset strategy to emerge as a leading robotaxi operator, with plans to deploy 100,000 autonomous vehicles by 2030 as competition intensifies and self-driving technology matures. In an interview with the South China Morning Post, CEO Gong Xin said the future of robotaxis hinged on an asset-management model built around a closed-loop “trinity” of vehicle manufacturing, autonomous driving technology and fleet......

China is undergoing a profound demographic shift, with its population ageing at a pace and scale unprecedented globally, and the trend has opened up significant opportunities for elderly care and insurance sectors. “This massive and rapidly expanding elderly population should be a major consumer of healthcare services and therapeutics,” Citi Research analyst John Yung said in a report in late March. “The healthcare demands are rigid, long-term and diverse.” Age-friendly products are rapidly......

Japanese retailers are scaling back in north China as fierce competition and weak pricing power erode profitability, forcing store closures in major cities and prompting calls for a sharper localisation strategy. Groups such as Aeon and Ito-Yokado have closed outlets in Beijing and Tianjin in recent years, highlighting mounting pressure from domestic rivals and shifting consumer habits in the region. Aeon said it closed three supermarkets in Tianjin and one in neighbouring Hebei province after......

A century on, T.S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men strikes a disturbingly ominous note: This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper. With the way things are going at present, we could be about to find out which of these endings it will be. The hope is that the Iran-centred conflagration in the Middle East will not turn into a nuclear apocalypse and that the “whimper” will be merely a cry from the depths of global economic recession. But either scenario is possible while the Trump......

Taiwan's dominance in semiconductors is no longer just reshaping global technology supply chains – it is also redrawing the island's financial landscape, as international banks move to capture the wealth being created across the chip ecosystem. From first-generation chip entrepreneurs setting up family offices to retail investors pouring money into exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the capital generated by Taiwan's technology boom is spreading across multiple layers of the economy. Global lenders......

There was a surprise guest speaker at Nvidia's widely watched GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, last month: Yang Zhilin, the founder of Beijing-based Moonshot AI, the developer behind the Kimi family of foundational artificial intelligence models. Amid heated rhetoric about US-China AI competition, which some have likened to an “arms race”, the participation of a Chinese AI start-up's CEO at the flagship event of American chipmaking giant Nvidia might have struck some as......

Chinese companies engaging in artificial intelligence activities are required to set up internal “AI ethics review committees” under new rules released by Beijing on Thursday, effective immediately. The notice comes as policymakers look to ensure that fast-paced AI progress can continue in a “healthy” manner amid growing consumer and enterprise adoption. Jointly released by 10 government bodies and institutions including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, National Development......

Tencent Holdings has launched a new OpenClaw tool for enterprises that promises easy deployment of the artificial intelligence agent as part of the Chinese internet giant's efforts to capitalise on the “lobster” frenzy in the country. ClawPro, launched in public beta by Tencent's cloud unit on Thursday, works as an AI agent management platform for enterprises, allowing them to deploy OpenClaw templates, select models and agents, track token consumption and manage security settings. Tencent said......

Xiaomi has raised prices on several smartphone models, joining a broader wave of increases across China's handset makers as surging memory chip costs ripple through the global consumer electronics supply chain. The company said on Friday that prices for three models would rise by about 200 yuan (US$29), with the adjustments taking effect next Saturday. The move follows similar increases by domestic peers including Oppo, Vivo and Honor in March. Xiaomi attributed the hike to “continued sharp......

China is rolling out a campaign to sharply cut artificial intelligence computing costs for small businesses, as demand for processing power surges alongside a fresh round of price increases by domestic providers. The country plans to build an “inclusive computing service network” – offering broad coverage, lower costs and improved service quality – to reduce barriers for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) seeking access to computing resources, according to a notice published by the......

Manulife, HSBC Holdings and Barclays are among the big financial firms that have announced plans to boost their adoption of artificial intelligence, in line with the Hong Kong government's efforts to promote the use of the technology. Manulife last week said it had relocated Mark Czajkowski, chief AI officer for Asia, to Hong Kong from Singapore, and had appointed Liu Hongjuan as chief AI and data officer of Manulife Hong Kong and Macau, a newly created post, on March 9. HSBC Holdings, the......

Tesla has regained the global pure electric vehicle (EV) crown for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2024, after its deliveries rose 6.5 per cent year on year in the three months ending March. The modest increase was enough for the US carmaker to beat China's EV king BYD, which posted a 25.5 per cent drop in sales during the first quarter of 2026. Tesla's deliveries worldwide between January and March hit 358,023 units, it said in a statement on Thursday. Tesla builds only pure electric......

Chinese toymaker Pop Mart remains under pressure despite carrying out six share buy-backs over the past few days following a sell-off after its results, raising questions over whether the weakness reflects concerns about its Labubu-led growth and valuation. The Beijing-based company has stepped up efforts to support its share price through market purchases. Pop Mart bought back 700,000 shares on Thursday at prices ranging from HK$140.90 to HK$142.30, for a total of HK$99.2 million (US$12.6......

As Chinese enterprises pivot from traditional export models to building comprehensive global ecosystems, the strategic road map for this expansion took centre stage in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Gathering at the Island Shangri-La Hong Kong for the 2026 SCMP C-Suite Annual Leadership Summit, CEOs and business leaders from Hong Kong, China and across the region, convened to dissect the “China Inc. Goes Global” phenomenon. The closed-door forum, organised by the South China Morning Post, provided a rare......