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WeRide boss Tony Han Xu believes the first fully autonomous cars may arrive on streets by 2035, as global carmakers and tech firms accelerate the application of self-driving technologies despite roadblocks. The latest setback came when Chinese regulators stepped in after an incident in Wuhan on March 31. Authorities scaled back the issuance of new autonomous driving licences after a system failure on March 31 involving Baidu's Apollo Go fleet, which left passengers stranded and disrupted traffic......

In March, Melco unveiled its Dream Entrance art installation by contemporary artist Daniel Arsham at its flagship integrated resort, City of Dreams. This twin-headed, labyrinthine structure explores the boundaries between dreams and reality, encouraging visitors to use their imaginations as a creative tool for innovation. Coinciding with the announcement of Chinese actor Jing Boran as new “Global Brand Ambassador” and ballet artist Tan Yuan Yuan as “Friend of the Brand”, the unveiling marks the......

HSBC, Hong Kong's largest lender, reported broadly flat first-quarter profit as lower interest rates and provisions linked to the Middle East conflict offset solid growth in its wealth management business. Net profit for the first three months of 2026 rose 0.14 per cent year on year to US$6.94 billion, or 41 US cents per share, the London-based bank said in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing on Tuesday. The result missed the US$7.07 billion consensus estimate of 17 analysts polled by the......

CK Hutchison Holdings said on Tuesday it had agreed to exit its 49 per cent stake in UK mobile operator VodafoneThree, in a £4.3 billion (US$5.82 billion) deal that will see it fully divest from the country's largest mobile network by subscribers. The transaction underscores a major shift for the Hong Kong-listed conglomerate, whose telecoms unit CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings (CKHGT) holds the stake, as it monetises its investment in a business with more than 28 million customers in the......

A desk with a laptop and a stack of books. A shirt waiting to be folded. A kitchen counter, a milk-tea stand and pile of building blocks – all in a single room. Robots of different shapes face their tasks with focus, controlled by a human operator. Pick up. Place. Fold. Repeat. This is not a film set, it is a data collection factory for embodied intelligence – a de facto “data foundry”. The facility, in Shanghai's Zhangjiang hi-tech zone, is run by Agibot, a fast-rising robotics company. The......

OCBC, the second-largest banking group in Southeast Asia, has agreed to acquire HSBC's retail and wealth management operation in Indonesia through its subsidiary, PT Bank OCBC NISP Tbk, according to the Singapore lender. The acquisition would add 336,000 customers and S$6.6 billion (US$5.17 billion) in assets under management to OCBC Indonesia, comprising S$4.3 billion of customers' investments in mutual funds and bonds, as well as insurances and customer deposits of S$2.3 billion, Monday......

Robots are beginning to reshape everyday life in China as the country accelerates its embrace of embodied artificial intelligence, handling tasks from cleaning homes and directing traffic to repairing equipment in hazardous factory settings. Embodied AI refers to AI embedded in physical machines, such as robots, that can sense their environment, make decisions and act in the real world. A cleaning service that launched in March on 58.com, a Chinese classifieds platform, pairs a human cleaner......

The war in the Middle East could create an opening for Hong Kong to develop into a regional commodities trading hub, as manufacturers in mainland China and across Asia look to the city to secure more stable metal supplies, according to industry participants. Manufacturers importing copper, aluminium and other industrial metals were increasingly considering Hong Kong as a storage base, while also seeking to tap its financial markets to hedge against price volatility driven by geopolitical......

Chinese self-driving technology firm ZYT is edging closer to mass production of semi-autonomous trucks that can improve fuel efficiency and save logistics costs, likely to benefit the country's manufacturing businesses amid a global energy crisis. The Shenzhen-based start-up, a spin-off from drone maker DJI, has formed partnerships with mainland China's top six heavy-truck makers to produce models fitted with its navigation on autopilot (NOA) systems, with the first deliveries expected as early......

In global discourse, a script has been handed to us: the United States and China are locked in a “tech race”. But this is really a misnomer. True competition requires a level playing field. When one runner trips the other to ensure victory, it's not a competition; it's cheating. So, when Washington deploys an arsenal of sanctions, export controls and diplomatic strong-arming to hamstring China's technological ascent, it is not competing. It is an act of suppression. This reflects a deliberate......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] More than four million users now access OpenAI's coding assistant Codex weekly, a recent uptake of one million users in two weeks proving just how quickly the competitive gap in developer tools is widening. Recognising this urgency, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has brought Codex and the latest artificial intelligence (AI) models to Amazon Bedrock. For CIOs and CTOs, this means capturing the fruits of agentic AI within......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] In an era defined by scientific acceleration, geopolitical complexity and rising expectations for healthcare delivery, one truth has become unmistakable: no country, company or institution can solve tomorrow's health challenges alone. That is why the Asia Summit on Global Health (ASGH) 2026, taking place on 11–12 May, matters more than ever. Recognised as Asia's premier event on health innovation, ASGH convenes global......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] In a bold bid to reshape the future of retail, Siam Piwat Group has unveiled NEXTOPIA at its flagship Siam Paragon, the world's first prototype for a global sustainability platform that turns eco-conscious living into an immersive, everyday experience. Chief Executive Officer Chadatip Chutrakul introduced the project during The Economist's 5th annual Sustainability Week Asia, recently held in Bangkok, positioning......

A Hong Kong government-backed artificial intelligence lab is preparing to launch a new model built on DeepSeek that can run entirely on Chinese-made chips. The Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Centre (HKGAI) plans to unveil its HKGAI-V3 model in the first half of this year as it looks to export its “sovereign AI” capabilities to overseas markets. The system was based on DeepSeek V4 architecture with “full-parameter fine tuning for localisation”, and had been optimised to operate......

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers – including BYD and Geely Automobile – saw their sales stabilise in April, as exports and new technologies continued to help offset weakening demand at home. BYD, the world's largest EV manufacturer, sold 321,123 vehicles last month, a drop of more than 15 per cent compared to a year ago, according to its exchange filing on Sunday. However, compared with March, April's sales figure was nearly 7 per cent higher, while the year-on-year decline was nearly five......

Hong Kong's property market is poised for a broad-based recovery as a strong upturn in the residential segment spills over to the struggling office and retail sectors, according to analysts. Morgan Stanley upgraded its forecast for the city's home prices to a 12 per cent increase this year from 10 per cent previously and anticipated another 5 per cent rise in 2027, it said in a report on Monday. Likewise, the office property segment was likely to see some relief, with Hong Kong's top business......

China and Indonesia have launched a new cross-border QR payment system, marking the latest step in Beijing's drive to build a regional digital payments network as it pushes to internationalise the yuan and reduce dependence on the US dollar. Users can now use domestic mobile apps – such as China's Alipay and Indonesia's QRIS – to scan QR codes and make retail payments in either country using their home currencies. Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region at French......

Earlier this year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang likened artificial intelligence (AI) to “a five-layer cake”. At the top are applications, such as chatbots. The layer below is the software, which includes language models. Further down are infrastructure and memory chips. The bottom layer is the most important. “At the foundation is energy,” Huang said, noting that “energy is the first principle of AI infrastructure and the binding constraint on how much intelligence the system can produce”. Driving......

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has launched a new financing facility aimed at strengthening critical mineral supply chains across the Asia-Pacific region, as a global push to loosen China's chokehold over the sector continues. The initiative is designed to help Asia-Pacific nations move up the critical minerals value chain – moving beyond just mining – by equipping them with the technical capabilities to process and recycle the materials, according to the ADB. “Asia and the Pacific should be......

A court in China has ruled it illegal for a company to terminate an employee on the grounds that an artificial intelligence replacement would be cheaper, affirming limits on AI-driven job displacement amid a wave of anxiety over the technology's potential to fuel unemployment. A 35-year-old worker surnamed Zhou who oversaw AI-generated responses at a fintech firm in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang province, was fired after refusing a demotion and pay cut. The company told him his role......