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[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.]   Cancer is not only a health emergency, but also an economic scourge. In the coming decades, its impact is projected to strip trillions from the global economy. The disease does not discriminate: a diagnosis can force both top executives and everyday employees to put their careers on hold. For many families, it means suffered emotional turmoil, drained savings, disrupted plans, and futures rewritten. Multiply this......

High-Flyer Quant, co-owned by DeepSeek founder and CEO Liang Wenfeng, recorded a return of 56.6 per cent last year to rank second among China's 10 top-performing large hedge-fund firms. According to the ranking published on Monday by data provider Shenzhen PaiPaiWang Investment & Management, High-Flyer only trailed behind Lingjun Investment, which posted a return of 73.5 per cent in 2025. All the top performers were quantitative hedge funds, underscoring the popularity in China of using complex......

China's industry regulator has pledged to provide more fiscal support for small-scale innovative firms in specialised industries – such as the country's “little giants” – as part of a basket of measures designed to boost the country's technological self-reliance and upgrade key industries. Li Lecheng, the head of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told Xinhua that central authorities would implement a fresh round of fiscal support policies for small and medium-sized firms......

Britain's media regulator launched an investigation into Elon Musk's ‌X on Monday to determine whether sexually intimate deepfakes produced by its Grok AI ‍chatbot violated its duty to protect people in the UK from content that could be illegal. “There have been deeply concerning reports of the Grok AI chatbot account on X being used to create and share undressed images ⁠of people – which may amount to intimate image abuse or pornography – and sexualised images of children that may amount to......

The global memory-chip crunch has forced a mainland Chinese smartphone manufacturer to pull the plug on the launch of a new handset, making it one of the first cancellations affecting the wider industry due to surging prices of the key component. DreamSmart Group said that its Meizu smartphone brand had cancelled the release of Meizu 22 Air, a slim handset similar to Apple's iPhone Air. “The sharp rise in memory prices since the fourth quarter has not only impacted [production] costs, but also......

Major financial institutions, including Citi and Bank of America, are increasingly optimistic about Hong Kong's residential property market this year, as lower mortgage rates and strong leasing demand change buying behaviour. Citi raised its home price forecast to 8 per cent this year, up from 3 per cent in October, citing a faster-than-expected rebound last year. “[There will be] further acceleration in 2027 under a multi-year upcycle,” said Griffin Chan, head of Asia-Pacific property research......

Aridge, the affiliate of Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng formerly known as AeroHT, is likely to spearhead a listing bonanza of flying car businesses in Hong Kong as its share offering plan edges closer to the runway. The Guangzhou-based company, controlled by Xpeng co-founder and CEO He Xiaopeng, confidentially filed an initial public offering (IPO) plan with the Hong Kong stock exchange and hired JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley to underwrite the share sale, according to two people with......

Ant International, the Singapore-based spin-off of Chinese fintech giant Ant Group, has teamed up with Google on standards for artificial intelligence agents that complete online shopping tasks for users, as AI continues to transform the e-commerce sector. Ant International said in a statement on Monday it would endorse the US search and AI giant's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard that powers agentic commerce. “By leveraging our leading payment capabilities, Ant International......

China's efforts to rein in cutthroat price wars in the solar industry have had the unintended result of creating risks of alleged price rigging, highlighting what analysts describe as an “uneasy balance” between the government's anti-involution campaign and anti-monopoly policies. The photovoltaic industry has been among the hardest hit by vicious price wars – known as involution, or neijuan-style competition – that have affected several sectors in China in recent years, squeezing companies'......

A strengthening Chinese yuan has added to a flurry of catalysts driving stocks in mainland China and Hong Kong to solid starts in 2026, with history suggesting the uptrend could hold. The CSI 300 Index of yuan-denominated onshore equities and the Hang Seng Index have risen more than 3 per cent this year after the currency breached the key 7 per US dollar level, a point not seen in two and a half years. Historical data indicates that a stronger yuan bodes well for Chinese stocks. HSBC Qianhai......

Alibaba Cloud's flagship Qwen family of artificial intelligence models surpassed 700 million downloads as of January on the developer platform Hugging Face, which made it the world's most widely used open-source AI system. According to research published on Friday by consultancy AIBase, citing data from Hugging Face, estimated Qwen downloads as of December alone exceeded the combined total of the next eight most popular models on the platform globally, including those from Meta Platforms and......

Ares Management, one of Asia's largest alternative investment managers, is doubling its real estate footprint in Hong Kong, a move that aligns with a broader expansion by financial firms and demand for office space in the core Central business district. The Los Angeles-based asset manager would add about 12,500 sq ft of space in Gloucester Tower, where it has been a tenant since 2017, according to a statement from the landlord Hongkong Land on Monday. The new lease will be effective in......

China's artificial intelligence efforts are unlikely to catch up with the United States in the near term despite making significant headway in recent years, according to the country's leading AI researchers. The comments at a major industry conference in Beijing on Saturday underscored the gap between the two countries in semiconductor chips and chipmaking equipment, key resources for building out the infrastructure needed for developing cutting-edge AI models. Lin Junyang, technical lead of......

Hong Kong stocks edged higher on Monday, lifted by gains in technology and biopharmaceutical shares that helped push the benchmark index up. The Hang Seng Index rose 0.3 per cent to 26,308.4 as of 9.45am, the Hang Seng Tech Index rose 0.7 per cent. On the mainland, the CSI 300 Index was little changed and the Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.2 per cent. Chinese delivery giant Meituan led the tech share gains by rallying 4.2 per cent to HK$102.60. Kuaishou Technology, the short-video platform......

Mainland China's retail and retail property sectors have suffered another blow amid a fresh wave of store closures by foreign and Hong Kong brands. “The series of closures come as a combined result of their outdated business models and profound changes in the macroeconomic environment,” said Wang Tianshi, an analyst at Shanghai-based LeadLeo Research Institute. “Compared with emerging mainland retailers, Hong Kong and foreign brands often remain under a 'selling on the mainland' phase, rather......

High-dividend yielding Hong Kong and mainland banking stocks are likely to attract investors looking to park some of the HK$106.16 billion (US$13.6 billion) windfall from the Hang Seng Bank privatisation deal, according to analysts. They tipped Bank of China (Hong Kong) and HSBC to be among the biggest beneficiaries these investors seek as dividend-paying replacements. About 15,000 Hang Seng Bank shareholders are expected to receive their payout cheques by February 4 in exchange for their......

Hong Kong has started 2026 with a wave of IPOs driven by artificial intelligence (AI), led by the recent listing of Chinese chipmaker Biren Technology. Beyond the revival of market activity, the surge points to a clearer strategic direction. China is increasingly using Hong Kong as an offshore capital platform for funding priority technologies – at a time when geopolitics is reshaping where innovation can be financed and how international capital can be accessed. This repositioning aligns......

Jensen Huang took the stage at the CES trade show in Las Vegas this week to make the clearest pitch yet for Nvidia's autonomous driving technology. In doing so, the CEO's vision for vehicles that can drive themselves edged into the terrain of major customers like Tesla and its boss, Elon Musk. Huang's remarks sparked a widely watched – if notably polite – indirect multiday exchange between two of the most influential figures in technology. It also sharpened a central question about autonomous......

Social media platform X will open its new algorithm to the public in seven days, Elon Musk said on Saturday, including the code used to decide what posts and advertisements are recommended to users. “This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed,” Musk, who owns X, said in a post on the platform. The billionaire did not say why X was making its algorithm open source. He and the company have clashed several times with regulators over......

In a premium supermarket in Shanghai one recent weekend, 33-year-old information technology specialist Zhao Wenyu paused in front of the health food aisle, comparing protein content and ingredient lists on imported granola and organic milk – rather than checking discounts. Zhao now spends around 3,000 yuan (US$420) a month on organic food, nutritional supplements and functional beverages, up from about 1,200 yuan three years ago. “I don't mind paying more if I am satisfied with the product's......