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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited China's eastern tech hub of Hangzhou on Thursday and met leading figures including those from Alibaba Group Holding and Unitree Robotics, signalling growing international recognition of the country's robotics and artificial intelligence technologies. Merz had lunch and took group photos with local entrepreneurs, including Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu Yongming and Unitree founder and CEO Wang Xingxing, according to a social media account run by Chinese state......

With domestic profits narrowing and production capacity expanding, China's firms are continuing to widen their overseas footprints in search of new, more lucrative markets. In this series, we examine China Inc.'s next phase of “going global” and the complex, challenging international environment its companies have chosen to enter. It is the middle of the night in Dongguan, one of China's biggest export hubs, but Peng Biao is still editing videos. In the footage, a factory owner from the city......

Hong Kong stocks headed for a monthly decline as jitters about artificial intelligence's potential disruption to traditional industries continued to weigh on investor sentiment. The Hang Seng Index rose 0.6 per cent to 26,545.09 as of 9.45am on Friday. For the month, the benchmark has dropped 3.2 per cent, the steepest since October. The Hang Seng Tech Index gained 0.9 per cent. On the mainland, the CSI 300 Index slipped 0.4 per cent and the Shanghai Composite Index retreated 0.1 per cent. Sun......

The increase in stamp duty on ultra-luxury homes above HK$100 million (US$12.8 million) is unlikely to change buying behaviour, analysts said, as the structural forces underpinning demand from mainland Chinese buyers could outweigh the impact of the rise in transaction costs. The Hong Kong government, in the annual budget on Wednesday, increased the tax rate on residential transactions above HK$100 million to 6.5 per cent from 4.25 per cent amid a surge in demand for high-end property from......

Huawei Technologies is aiming for a major international comeback, with the overseas release of its latest flagship smartphone, the Mate 80 Pro, alongside a new smartwatch and the addition of a “wheelchair mode” to its wearable devices. Powered by the company's self-designed, China-made Kirin 9030 Pro processor, the overseas version of its Mate 80 Pro handsets will run on the Android-based EMUI 15 operating system, Huawei announced at a launch event in Madrid, Spain, on Thursday. While the......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Hong Kong's trade promotion body has opened applications for the 2026 edition of its Start-up Express programme, as efforts are stepped up to help local tech ventures break into overseas markets and secure commercial partnerships. Organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), Start-up Express is positioned as a curated development scheme for early-stage companies offering innovative and tech-driven......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] The recent rout in software stocks has felt like a final reckoning. As Anthropic's industry-specific plug-ins dismantle traditional workflows, the "Software Apocalypse" is no longer a hyperbolic headline—it's a market filter. For legacy SaaS, the AI era was promised as a tailwind; instead, for many, it has become an existential wall. In the shadow of these falling multiples, a new class of "AI-resilient" companies is......

Baidu founder, CEO and chairman Robin Li Yanhong touted the performance and potential of artificial intelligence chips developed by its Kunlunxin semiconductor design unit during the fourth-quarter earnings call, offering a rare bright spot in an otherwise lacklustre quarter. “We're proud to see the market increasingly recognise [Kunlunxin chips'] value and proven performance,” Li said on Thursday. The Kunlunxin chips are built on a proprietary architecture and deliver “stable, high-performance......

Meta Platforms is moving forward with integrating the newly acquired artificial intelligence agent start-up Manus, according to two sources, despite Beijing's probe into the US$2 billion deal. Some members of the Manus team in Singapore had moved into Facebook parent Meta's offices and were granted Meta corporate accounts and other access, one of the sources said. Meta was also offering its employees the opportunity to transfer to Manus, preferring Chinese-speaking staff, a second source......

JD.com is making a renewed push into its online supermarket business with a subsidy programme worth more than 20 billion yuan (US$2.9 billion) over three years, a move aimed at defending its position in China's e-commerce and on-demand grocery sectors. In a statement on Thursday, JD.com said the subsidy would cover products on a dedicated channel called “Billion-Yuan Supermarket”, under its JD Supermarket service. The aim was to help vendors generate an additional 200 billion yuan in sales over......

The value of collateral assets used by banks for commercial property loans is expected to continue declining in 2026, according to S&P Global Ratings, as the sector has yet to find a clear bottom. “More collateral pain is likely this year for Hong Kong banks,” the credit rating agency said in a report published on Thursday, adding that a subset of small banks could face more acute strain. That assessment comes as Hong Kong's commercial property market remains on a sustained downturn that started......

Sun Hung Kai Properties' (SHKP), Hong Kong's largest developer by market capitalisation, reported a 36.2 per cent year-on-year jump in first-half net profit to HK$10.25 billion (US$1.3 billion). Revenue rose 32 per cent to HK$52.7 billion for the six months ended December from a year earlier, while operating income increased 10.7 per cent to HK$13.4 billion, the developer said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Thursday. Underlying profit, which discounts property revaluations,......

Semiconductor designer Hygon Information Technology and supercomputer maker Sugon, two stalwarts of China's tech self-reliance efforts, reported surging revenue for 2025 amid strong domestic demand for home-grown computing systems. The two Shanghai-listed companies' latest financial results reflect a broader trend across China's public and private sectors to increase engagement with domestic technology suppliers, as artificial intelligence development projects in the country......

China logged an overall increase in travel during the just-concluded Chinese New Year break compared with last year's holiday period, but analysts said spending per capita stayed flat. The country saw 596 million domestic trips over the extended public holiday that ended on Monday, a year-on-year increase of 95 million, Xinhua reported. About 17.8 million cross-border trips were logged over the same period, it added. Chinese New Year is a crucial period for the travel sector as hundreds of......

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), which operates Asia's third-largest stock exchange, reported record high annual profit for the second straight year, thanks to higher market turnover and robust listing activity, it said in a stock exchange filing on Thursday. Net profit in 2025 increased 36 per cent to HK$17.75 billion (US$2.28 billion), or HK$14.05 per share, from HK$13 billion a year earlier, which was also a record. The result beat market expectations of HK$17.44 billion. The bourse......

Schneider Electric, a French multinational energy technology company, established Hong Kong as one of its global hubs. From the city, it is helping integrate electrification, automation and digital intelligence across buildings, infrastructure and transport systems. “Hong Kong's location at the heart of Asia, combined with its advanced infrastructure, digital maturity and globally experienced talent pool, provides a strong foundation for a scalable innovation ecosystem,” says Jonathan Chiu,......

Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies has joined hands with US companies OpenAI and Google to advance global open-source standards in the rapidly advancing field of agentic artificial intelligence. The development marks a rare collaboration between a US-sanctioned Chinese heavyweight and its US counterparts in global AI standards setting amid US-China geopolitical and tech competition. On Tuesday, the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) announced Huawei as one of 97 new members joining its ranks,......

Hong Kong stocks rose for a second day as strong results from US chip giant Nvidia rekindled confidence in the artificial intelligence trade. The Hang Seng Index rose 0.3 per cent to 26,839.86 as of 9.49am on Thursday. The Hang Seng Tech Index dropped 0.7 per cent. On the mainland, the CSI 300 Index slid 0.3 per cent and the Shanghai Composite Index retreated 0.2 per cent. Insurer AIA Group gained 3.1 per cent to HK$87.10 and CK Hutchison Holdings added 2.8 per cent to HK$47.98. Hong Kong......

Nvidia has yet to generate any revenue from its H200 chips in China and does not know if any sales will be allowed in the country, the company said, even as the US chip giant reported record quarterly revenue on surging demand for data centre processors. While the Santa Clara-based tech giant remains the primary beneficiary of the global generative artificial intelligence boom, its ability to navigate the US-China tech war has become a challenge, with the pipeline for the H200 – Nvidia's......

A consortium comprising CK Infrastructure Holdings, CK Asset Holdings and Power Assets Holdings has agreed to sell all of its interest in UK Power Networks to French multinational electric utility Engie in a deal worth £10.5 billion (US$14.2 billion). The disposal, under an agreement signed on Wednesday, will enable the group to monetise its investment at an attractive valuation, delivering a significant accounting gain and cash proceeds for future investments or acquisitions, the group of......