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China's supply chain is stepping up investments in liquid cooling technology as the global AI build-out pushes data centre power densities to levels that air cooling can no longer efficiently handle. Dozens of Chinese listed companies have in recent months announced plans to expand into, or ramp up, liquid-cooling systems as demand surges for technology that uses circulating fluids to keep racks of AI chips from overheating. Among them are HVAC specialist Sanhua Intelligent Controls, electronics......

China's top market regulator has summoned the country's leading tech companies to demand an end to “involutionary” competition, at the time when the companies are pouring billions of yuan into a Lunar New Year promotional blitz to win over users for services including artificial intelligence apps. The companies summoned on Friday were Alibaba Group Holding, ByteDance's Douyin, Baidu, Tencent Holdings, JD.com, Meituan and Taobao Instant Commerce, Alibaba's on-demand delivery unit, the State......

As Hong Kong, mainland China and several other Asian markets usher in the Year of the Horse on Tuesday, the region's commercial real estate sector is expected to draw increased cross-border capital, with certain segments set to outperform as mega-deals make a comeback, analysts said. Asia-Pacific was set to be a focus among global investors, with data cited by global commercial real estate consultancy Colliers showing that capital raised for the region's property markets had surged by 130 per......

The highest-paid independent non-executive director (INED) of a Hong Kong-listed company in 2024 made US$1.67 million, nearly 2,000 times what the lowest-paid INED received, drawing attention to a potential disconnect between pay and the responsibilities of the role. The lowest-paid INED received 6,000 yuan (US$867.94) in 2024, according to a survey by the Hong Kong Independent Non-Executive Director Association (HKINEDA), which was based on the 2024 annual reports of more than 2,600 listed......

Local government support has lifted sentiment in China's struggling property sector ahead of the spring sales season, but analysts remain divided on the outlook as structural pressures persist. New and existing home prices across 70 major mainland cities fell at a slower pace month on month in January, while annual declines widened, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday. New home prices in the four tier-one cities dropped 2.1 per cent year on year, 0.4......

Artificial intelligence (AI) is eroding the very capabilities young professionals need to remain valuable in a machine-automated era. That is the real challenge facing graduates entering the workforce. It is not simply a case of AI destroying jobs – though it is – but that it is undermining our cognitive and interpersonal skills. The numbers are starting to confirm what we suspected. Hong Kong graduates in 2025 found 55 per cent fewer job opportunities than the year before. Over 12 per cent of......

Artificial intelligence is already reshaping industries and markets, even though artificial general intelligence (AGI) – a still theoretical form of AI capable of humanlike reasoning across many tasks rather than single specialised functions – has yet to be achieved. That was the message of a recent essay posted on X by start-up founder Matt Shumer, titled “Something Big Is Happening”. He likened the current moment to the period just before the Covid-19 pandemic, arguing that the disruption......

Around a decade ago, aboard a train winding through China's landscape, Wang Ning, the founder and chairman of Beijing-founded international art toy brand Pop Mart, shared with designer Kenny Wong Shun-ming the story of his early attempts at entrepreneurship. As a fresh graduate, Wang struggled to sell affordable men's suits sourced from Yiwu in Zhejiang province, eastern China, experimenting with small-scale arbitrage and learning first-hand how difficult it was to connect products with......

A viral AI-generated video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting atop a building is causing a stir online. The 15-second video comes from the latest AI video-generation platform, Seedance 2.0. The platform was launched this week by its owner, ByteDance, the same Chinese parent that oversees TikTok. As the video circulates online, the Motion Picture Association and other industry stakeholders have called out the video for its unauthorised use of copyrighted works. MPA's CEO, Charles Rivkin, wrote......

China's food delivery giant Meituan on Friday warned that it expected to post a loss of up to 24.3 billion yuan (US$3.5 billion) for 2025 due to “intense industry competition”, with the slump likely to persist this year. The sharp reversal from 2024, when the company posted a profit of 35.8 billion yuan, comes on the back of one of China's most intense price wars last year between Meituan, Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com in local e-commerce and food delivery, which only subsided after......

In the latest sign of China's push to channel private capital into infrastructure, several local governments have begun actively seeking private investors for two major ultra-high-voltage power line projects – the first schemes of their kind to open up to non-state funding since a Beijing directive encouraging the practice last November. China is building a series of vast power lines to funnel clean energy from its resource-rich but sparsely populated western regions to power-hungry industrial......

AstraZeneca's former China head has been formally charged with medical insurance fraud, illegal trading and unlawful collection of personal information, more than a year after he first came under investigation – casting a shadow over the Swedish-British drug maker's expansion in its second-largest market. The pharmaceutical giant confirmed to the Financial Times and Reuters that Leon Wang was one of two individuals indicted, as referenced in its latest earnings report published on Tuesday. The......

The global frenzy around embodied intelligence is still in its infancy and could ultimately surpass the impact of the mobile internet, according to the founder of Chinese robotics pioneer Unitree Robotics. Wang Xingxing, the company's CEO, told state broadcaster CCTV in an interview scheduled to air on Saturday that the sector remained in a “climbing phase” rather than nearing a peak. He said a definitive breakthrough in large-scale artificial intelligence models for robotics could trigger a......

Electric-vehicle battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), copper miner CMOC Group and gold jewellery retailer Laopu Gold will join the Hang Seng Index next month following the latest quarterly review, as the compiler of the city's stock benchmark pushes ahead with its plan to boost the number of constituent stocks after Hang Seng Bank withdrew its listing status. The three companies will be added to the gauge after the market close on March 6. Chinese car dealer Zhongsheng Group was......

As the cryptocurrency market faces mounting pressure, Standard Chartered on Thursday cut its forecast for bitcoin, flagging a further drop to US$50,000 before the world's largest cryptocurrency stabilises. The digital currency was trading at around US$66,300 at 1pm Hong Kong time on Friday, a decline of nearly 50 per cent from a historical high of US$126,000 in October. Ether slid slightly to US$1,940 at 1pm on Friday. The world's second-largest digital token has lost 60 per cent of its value......

A director of Hong Kong-based Prince Jewellery and Watch has sold a flat in Kowloon and upgraded to a two-storey unit in the same neighbourhood, with an analyst saying that wealthy homeowners are taking advantage of improving sentiment to swap their dwellings. Tang Yick-ki, a director at Prince Jewellery and Sky Regal Properties, completed both deals in just over a month. Tang also serves as a director in many other companies including Just Gold, Peonia Diamond and Peonia Holdings, according to......

Subscribers: The Daily Pulse will not be published from February 16 to 19 as China celebrates Lunar New Year. We will resume publication on Friday, February 20. Kung hei fat choi! A global shortage of memory chips that has seen prices for makers of consumer devices rise by more than 600 per cent in a year is likely to be prolonged, China's Lenovo Group, the world's biggest personal computer producer, warned this week. The shortage, driven by demand from artificial intelligence (AI) data centres,......

The subject of artificial intelligence (AI) has become so prevalent in global discourse that the recent World Economic Forum in Davos reportedly had more than 200 sessions for corporate leaders to discuss AI from multiple angles. The conversations focused on five key themes: AI and technology's role in geopolitical rivalry; AI as a productivity and growth driver; AI as a job disrupter; ethics and governance for generative AI and robot systems; and AI's environmental footprint. Underlying these......

China dominated the Mercedes-Benz annual results conference in Stuttgart on Thursday, with managers of the German luxury car giant fielding questions about its lacklustre performance in the world's largest auto market, and what it was going to do about it. Chinese market sales “will remain below 2025 [levels]” this year, said Mercedes China chief Oliver Thöne, as the group reported a 19 per cent decline in its China sales and a 28.6 per cent overall drop in revenue for last year. At the group......

Running and cooling the data centres that power computer networks requires a lot of energy and water, and the world needs a lot more of them with the roll-out of artificial intelligence (AI). What if they could be powered and cooled more sustainably – installed deep underwater, placed high in the mountains, or fired into space where solar power is free and limitless? China has done all three, and it's just getting started. Five years after Microsoft abandoned an experimental underwater data......