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China Vanke failed to secure bondholder approval to extend by one year a bond payment due on Monday, a filing showed, increasing the risk of default for the developer and renewing concerns about the crisis-hit property sector. The setback for state-backed Vanke, one of China's highest-profile developers with projects in major cities, renews concerns about the property sector, where some of the country's best-known developers have defaulted in recent years. The rejection in a three-day vote that......

Humanoid robot maker Unitree Robotics has teased what it calls the world's first humanoid robot “app store”, a developer platform designed to bring embodied intelligence into everyday life by allowing users to access and control robots directly through their smartphones. The Hangzhou-based robotics unicorn unveiled a centralised programme, dubbed the Unitree Robotics Developer Platform, offering functions such as datasets and remote control programmes for humanoids. Unitree called it the......

Chinese demand for foreign luxury cars is waning as customers opt for more affordable Chinese brand models, often sold at big discounts, catering to their taste for fancy electronics and comfort. That is bad news for European carmakers like Porsche, Aston Martin, Mercedes-Benz and BMW that have long dominated the upper reaches of the world's largest auto market. A prolonged property downturn in China has left many consumers with little appetite for big purchases. Meanwhile, the well-to-do are......

While humanoid robots from China and the US have captured the imagination of people for their skill at serving drinks, taking part in boxing matches and running marathons, and entertaining through dance moves on stage, their counterparts in Japan – the long-time leader of the robotics world – are mostly confined to factories. Japan's early forays into humanoids date back to the 1960s, so what happened along the way? At the 26th International Robot Exhibition (IREX), a four-day, biennial industry......

With temperatures falling and holidays approaching, ski resorts across northern China are experiencing a surge in visitors from the south, a trend that is cheering airlines as well as resort operators including Malaysia-based Genting Group. Since the ski season opened on November 15, the Changbai Beautiful China Resort in the northeast province of Jilin, a complex owned by China Green Development Group, has welcomed more than 110,000 visitors, marking a nearly 40 per cent year-on-year increase.......

Shanghai's luxury retail market is set to become increasingly competitive, fuelled by a citywide shift as prime malls embrace experiential concepts to differentiate themselves. Hong Kong developer Hang Lung Properties on Friday said that it had secured a 20-year lease for the No 1038 West Nanjing Road commercial project – formerly known as Meilong Town – in partnership with Shanghai Join Buy Group. The project would be transformed into a mixed-use complex integrating retail, hospitality and......

China's leading battery makers for electric cars – Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) and Gotion High-tech – are adding momentum to the country's efforts to build new-energy vessels, with their latest products supplied to large ocean carriers amid an accelerated decarbonisation drive. Chinese-made pure electric-powered container vessels were also set to extend Beijing's lead over global rivals in shipbuilding, according to industry officials and analysts. CATL, the world's largest electric......

US start-up OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT on November 30 three years ago sent China's technology industry scrambling to get up to speed on the latest artificial intelligence developments. Chinese government authorities sent urgent requests to various experts, including professors from Tsinghua University, to provide briefings on the implications of generative AI technology, according to people with knowledge of the matter. China's Big Tech firms and ambitious start-ups rushed to roll out their own......

A record 32,000 entrepreneurs took part in the 2025 African Business Heroes summit in Rwanda on Saturday, in the seventh annual edition of the largest event for start-ups of its kind on the continent. The event, organised by the Jack Ma Foundation since 2018 and sponsored by Alibaba Philanthropy, aimed to recognise 100 outstanding entrepreneurs over the course of 10 years. Applications came from across 54 African nations, while the finalists were selected from applicants from Cameroon, Egypt,......

A residential project in Yau Tong triggered buying euphoria on Saturday, with all 150 units snapped up by midafternoon amid heightened expectations for a recovery in Hong Kong's home market next year. The flats at One Park Place, priced between HK$4.23 million (US$543,684) and HK$9.51 million, were in high demand after developers Sino Land, CSI Properties and MTR Corporation offered discounts of up to 15 per cent to lure buyers. The strong homebuying interest came a day after New World......

China's airlines are encountering severe turbulence over their growing use of extra charges like seat selection fees, as passengers, state media and a consumer protection watchdog slam the practice as a violation of customers' rights. The controversy reflects the difficulties Chinese airlines face as they try to strike a delicate balance between profitability and service quality, with an industry insider cautioning that companies may not be able to scrap extra fees completely. Seat selection......

When US tech giant Meta Platforms released its flagship Llama family of artificial intelligence models in February 2023, they were open-sourced, a move that singled it out among global AI model developers at the time. That September, one of the many derivatives of Llama was announced: Alibaba Cloud's Qwen. The first generation of Qwen adopted Llama's training process and cited Meta's seminal research findings in its accompanying technical report. Out of deference, the Chinese researchers even......

McDonald's Hong Kong was voted Company of the Year at the 2025 Business Awards organised by SCMP Live, a highlight for the company as it marks half a century of operating in the city. The restaurant chain's CEO Randy Lai and chairman Zhang Yichen received the award from SCMP's CEO Catherine So during a lunch ceremony in Hong Kong on Friday. The toned-down ceremony replaced the black-tie gala dinners that traditionally capped the annual awards since their establishment in 1990, as a sign of......

Chinese autonomous-driving technology firm Pony.ai is betting on an “asset-light” strategy and newer generations of low-cost driverless cars to drive growth for its robotaxi operation as the company expects to break even by 2030. Under the asset-light model, Pony.ai would team up with third-party companies – such as taxi operators or ride-hailing platforms – that would fund the deployment of its robotaxi fleet, according to Leo Wang Haojun, chief financial officer. Instead of taking on the full......

Manulife (International), one of the biggest life insurers and pension providers in Hong Kong and Macau, has finished moving its domicile to Hong Kong from Bermuda, making it the first insurer to successfully complete the process under a new regime, according to a statement on Friday. The insurer said the redomiciling was a “strategic milestone” that underscored its confidence in Hong Kong's role as a leading international financial centre and reinforced the company's long-standing commitment to......

Hongkong Land is set to launch what it expects to be the largest private real estate fund in Singapore, with more than S$8 billion (US$6.2 billion) in assets under management, including prime commercial projects in the waterfront Marina Bay district. At inception, the Singapore Central Private Real Estate Fund (SCPREF) would include one-third stakes in One Raffles Quay and Marina Bay Financial Centre Towers 1 and 2, the Hong Kong-based commercial landlord and developer said in a statement on......

Alipay and artificial intelligence glasses maker Rokid have jointly unveiled a smart glasses payment solution on the Rokid Lingzhu AI development platform, giving developers an easy path to build payment functions into their applications. Based on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open-source standard that connects AI applications to external systems, the service allowed developers to easily integrate pre-built capabilities, such as receiving payments, by adding plug-ins, according to a......

Huawei Technologies is doubling down on foundation models with a newly formed unit, heating up the race for dominance among Chinese tech giants in the artificial intelligence sector. The AI foundation model unit was established under Huawei's 2012 Laboratories, the company's strategic research and development arm that covered domains ranging from wireless technology to AI, according to a report by Chinese media outlet China Star Markets this week. The department was actively recruiting AI......

Hong Kong will need to attract global champion firms across different sectors to raise funds to strengthen the city's role as an international financial centre over the next 10 years, according to a concept paper issued by the Financial Services Development Council (FSDC) on Friday. “Global markets do not stand still,” said Benjamin Hung Pi-cheng, chairman of the FSDC, at a media briefing where the council outlined a wide range of ideas to bring the city's capital market to the next level. “Hong......

A more than eight-fold surge in the share price of Chinese graphics processing unit (GPU) maker Moore Threads Technology has prompted the newly listed company to warn investors that the gains may have run ahead of fundamentals. The Beijing-based chipmaker said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Friday that its shares could face the risk of declines after the rapid rally. There was no catalyst that needed to be disclosed and no material change in the company's fundamentals, it......