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Chinese self-driving technology developers continue to expand outside the mainland as WeRide seeks to launch robotaxi services this year in Hong Kong and Singapore, according to an executive. WeRide's planned entry into Hong Kong was set to cover both robotaxis and robobuses, said senior director of public relations and marketing Maeve Zhang in a media briefing on Tuesday, without disclosing the operation areas or a launch date. Meanwhile, the Guangzhou-based company said it planned to launch......

Hong Kong is a stable base for global wealth as rising geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainties prompt wealthy families to rethink where they base their assets, according to Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po. “We are living in a world marked by uncertainty and conflicts,” Chan said at the gala dinner of the Wealth for Good in Hong Kong Summit on Tuesday evening. “The rules-based international order is under strain. Some even say it has been ruptured.” Facing such a situation, investors......

A US move to ban imports of new foreign-made consumer routers aims to pressure Chinese manufacturers to “onshore” parts of their production chain, although that will be a challenge given limited US manufacturing capacity, according to analysts. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Monday that it had updated its Covered List to include consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries, citing concerns that the devices could “pose unacceptable risks to the national security of......

Global trade flows are facing severe disruption amid the US-Israel war on Iran and unpredictable tariff policies. But logistics giant DHL still expects its revenues to soar in the coming years thanks in large part to Chinese companies' rising global ambitions. The resilience of China's outbound trade is a major reason DHL has maintained such an ambitious growth target even amid the Middle East crisis and constantly changing trade barriers, according to Oscar de Bok, CEO of the firm's global......

Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone and electric vehicle (EV) maker, reported that fourth-quarter net profit dropped 27 per cent from a year earlier, as weaker sales cut into margins. Profit fell to 6.5 billion yuan (US$943 million), a 47 per cent plunge from the previous quarter and the lowest quarterly number in a year. It was also the first quarter-on-quarter decline since the second quarter of 2024. Fourth-quarter revenue rose 7.3 per cent from a year earlier and 3 per cent compared with the......

Chinese petrol prices rose the most since 2000, even after unprecedented government intervention, as the war in Iran upends global oil markets. Petrol went up by 1,160 yuan (US$169) per tonne at the end of Monday and diesel prices rose by 1,115 yuan, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The increases would have been about twice as high had the usual pricing rules been followed, it said. The roughly 11 per cent increases, the fifth this year, came after Iran closed......

In recent years, Hong Kong has introduced a wealth of measures to attract well-educated, skilled professionals from around the world to develop their careers in the city. Between late 2022 and the end of last month, the city welcomed more than 270,000 talented professionals – a number of whom also brought along their families as they began a new chapter in their lives. These efforts continue to play a major part in driving Hong Kong's transition to a new economic model, which emphasises the......

Alibaba Group Holding's research arm Damo Academy has unveiled a chip designed to fuel artificial intelligence agents, as the tech giant bets on open-source RISC-V architecture to ride the wave of agentic AI. XuanTie C950, the latest flagship in Alibaba's XuanTie RISC-V series, was introduced at the company's annual ecosystem conference in Shanghai on Tuesday. Designed for high-performance tasks in cloud computing and AI computing, the C950 is a “CPU core” – the fundamental architecture for a......

US biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences agreed to buy Ouro Medicines, which is developing an antibody-based medicine for autoimmune diseases licensed from China's Keymed Biosciences, in a deal worth up to US$2.18 billion. Gilead Sciences is among a group of global drug makers facing patent expirations and turning to mergers, acquisitions and licensing deals to refill their drug pipelines. Under the agreement, Gilead Sciences would pay shareholders of US-based Ouro Medicines US$1.675 billion......

Hong Kong Investment Corporation (HKIC), the government's investment arm, has teamed up with venture capital firm Gobi Partners and the University of Hong Kong (HKU) to launch a fund on Tuesday to invest in technology start-ups spun off from the university's research breakthroughs, according to an HKIC statement. Gobi-HKU Fund I made two investments at its launch: Manifold Tech, which develops spatial intelligence for robotics, and AilsynBio, which focuses on artificial intelligence-driven drug......

The electronic platform of the Mandatory Provident Fund (eMPF) will cut administration fees for 378 investment funds by more than 21 per cent from April 1, the pension regulator said on Tuesday, adding that this will achieve its cost-saving target of HK$50 billion (US$6.4 billion) in less than 10 years. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po approved the reduction, which would lower administration costs from 0.37 per cent to 0.29 per cent of assets under management, representing a 21.6 per cent fee......

New technology is transforming international trade and, with the help of the cloud and artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese firms are increasingly well placed to compete globally. “For Chinese companies going overseas, the requirement has evolved from just providing infrastructure to infrastructure plus AI technology,” says Han Hongyuan, vice-president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group. “They also want to use AI to support their business in overseas markets. “Even before the AI wave, they......

As leading Chinese chip executives predict that autonomous AI agents will trigger an unprecedented explosion in computing demand, Hong Kong is accelerating efforts to expand its artificial intelligence computing capacity. Calling token consumption in the era of AI “far beyond our imagination”, Zhang Jianzhong, founder and CEO of graphics processing unit designer Moore Threads, said at an AI summit in Hong Kong on Saturday that the exponential surge in demand had made it impossible for anyone to......

Hong Kong stocks rebounded on Tuesday on signs of a de-escalation of the US-Israel war on Iran. The Hang Seng Index rose 1.2 per cent to 24,678.33 as of 9.42am local time. The Hang Seng Tech Index gained 0.3 per cent. On the mainland, the CSI 300 Index climbed 0.1 per cent and the Shanghai Composite Index retreated 0.4 per cent. Laopu Gold jumped 11 per cent to HK$619.50 and machine tool maker Techtronic Industries surged 9.4 per cent to HK$112.20. Alibaba Group Holding added 1.1 per cent to......

Country Garden Holdings is expected to return to profit for the year ended 2025 due to the non-cash gain recorded from the completion of the group's debt restructuring. According to its filings to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday night, the group will record “a profit ranging from approximately one billion yuan to 2.2 billion yuan (US$145 million to US$320 million) for the year ended 31 December 2025”. This compared with the loss of about 35.15 billion yuan over the same period in......

Private equity investment in the Asia-Pacific region is increasingly flowing into advanced manufacturing and healthcare, as global uncertainties push investors towards businesses with more predictable cash flow, according to Bain & Co research. The move away from the previously dominant technology, media and telecommunications sector “has been a gradual move, driven by the external environment and uncertainties”, said Elsa Sit, practice vice-president in the Asia-Pacific private equity team with......

Surging oil prices driven by the US-Israel war on Iran could accelerate the global adoption of electric vehicles – a sector that helped China overtake Japan to become the world's largest seller of automobiles last year. “The closure of the Strait of Hormuz could be a game-changer for EVs,” said David Brown, director of energy transition research at Wood Mackenzie, in a report released on Friday. The “eye-watering” 50 per cent surge in global oil prices so far this month would further incentivise......

Last week, Hong Kong Investment Corporation (HKIC) announced the establishment of the Hong Kong RISC-V Alliance. The move follows Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po's earlier pledge to actively promote collaboration among industry, academia and the investment sector to develop the open-source chip technology. In this explainer, the South China Morning Post takes a closer look at RISC-V, why it is important and why HKIC is interested. What is RISC-V technology? RISC-V, an open-standard......

Three Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers have raised prices for some models in response to rising supply chain costs, but analysts say the increases are unlikely to be sustained given weakening domestic demand. Xiaomi became the latest manufacturer to adjust pricing on March 19, announcing that its new-generation SU7 standard version would start at 219,900 yuan (US$31,800) – a 4,000 yuan increase over the previous model. Founder and CEO Lei Jun had attributed the rise to aggressive surges in......

Tencent Holdings is rolling out a “ClawBot” plug-in for China's most popular app WeChat as it seeks to capitalise on the OpenClaw craze, even as authorities continue to warn about risks. The move announced on Sunday will allow WeChat's more than 1 billion monthly active users to command their OpenClaw artificial intelligence agents directly through the app, which is deeply embedded in daily life in China. In recent weeks, almost every Chinese tech giant has announced new offerings based on......