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Physical artificial intelligence (AI) – the marriage of advanced machines with “brains” that allow them to interact with their environment – is expanding rapidly in China. It's fuelling the development of smarter robots, drones and driverless cars that are appearing on roads and factory floors, in the skies and even on stage. Delivery drones have taken flight over cities like southern China's Shenzhen, while delivery bots are riding city subways. The first autonomous vehicles are plying public......

China's solar giant Sungrow Power Supply has filed a fresh application to list in Hong Kong, reviving plans initiated last year, as a wave of mainland companies seeks offshore funding to support overseas expansion. The Shenzhen-listed solar inverter and energy storage system maker submitted its latest application proof to the Hong Kong stock exchange after an earlier filing in October lapsed, according to exchange disclosures late on Friday. Sungrow, one of the world's largest suppliers of......

In the third of a three-part series on Anthropic's powerful Mythos AI model, we look at how China is responding to the growing threat of AI-powered cyberattacks and what it means for the country's cybersecurity. China is not immune to any fallout that might result from AI-powered cyberattacks, according to experts, although a sense of panic may not be as high due to the country's strict scrutiny of its artificial intelligence industry. In the weeks since US start-up Anthropic announced its new......

China's recycling platform Zhuanzhuan is preparing to expand into Europe and the US by the end of the year, betting that demand for second-hand goods will continue to rise amid economic uncertainty despite geopolitical tensions. Backed by tech giants Tencent Holdings and Xiaomi, the Beijing-based company plans to export its model – which combines advanced quality inspection technology with door-to-door services – to get a slice of overseas markets. A dedicated international website was expected......

Moore Threads Technology, one of China's challengers to Nvidia, swung to a profit in the first quarter of 2026, as domestic graphics processing unit (GPU) champions capitalised on surging computing demand amid Beijing's push for chip self-sufficiency. The Beijing-based firm reported a net profit of 29.4 million yuan (US$4.3 million) for the January to March period, compared with a net loss of 112.5 million yuan a year earlier, according to a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange on......

The Middle East war has created new opportunities for family offices and private banking businesses in Hong Kong and Asia, as wealthy investors in the region seek to diversify their investments away from the conflict zone, according to industry players. Ida Liu, CEO of HSBC Private Bank, said some affluent Middle Eastern customers were diversifying into Asia. The bank is the largest wealth manager in Asia with US$1.05 trillion in wealth balances in Asia last year, up 16.3 per cent from a year......

Hong Kong is known for its speed. Now it is set to move even faster, with plans to shorten stock settlement times from next year – a shift that could strengthen its standing as an international financial centre. The city's stock market has operated on a T+2 settlement cycle for more than three decades, meaning trades are completed two days after they are executed. That may soon change. Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) is consulting the market on a proposal to move to a T+1 cycle, under......

Li Auto, one of Tesla's major rivals in mainland China, has set its sights on the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, with its premium intelligent models poised to take on petrol car brands such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The Beijing-based electric vehicle (EV) maker, which is actively building a sales network abroad, expected overseas deliveries to account for 30 per cent of its total by 2030, according to president Ma Donghui. “It is inevitable that we will compete against BMW, Benz and Audi, which......

OpenClaw has adopted DeepSeek's new V4 Flash as the default model for the popular artificial intelligence agent, while the global tech community scrutinises the implications of the Chinese AI firm's major update optimised to run on Huawei Technologies' chips. In an update on Sunday, OpenClaw said it had expanded its catalogue to include DeepSeek's V4 Flash and its flagship V4 Pro models, and had integrated other capabilities such as Google Meet into the agent. OpenClaw also optimised how......

Inside the busy aisles and booths of the Fair Plus robotics trade show in Shenzhen this week, the usual stunt spectacle was replaced by practical tasks: robots sorting supermarket stock, serving popcorn and transporting oversized boxes. Among them, Shenzhen-based X Square Robot showed the real-world ability of its wheel-based humanoids, using the firm's self-developed Wall-A embodied foundation model to pick up rubbish from the floor and place it in a bin. Currently deployed in on-demand......

Hong Kong's sales of luxury homes more than doubled in the first quarter from a year earlier, helped by a buoyant stock market and attractively priced assets that drew the attention of wealthy investors including mainland Chinese buyers, according to analysts. The segment was likely to record another increase in the second quarter, they added. “With the wealth effect from accumulated gains in the stock market over the past two years, both local and mainland Chinese capital have seized the......

Shenzhen's residential inventory has fallen to a seven-year low, putting the southern technology hub ahead of other first-tier Chinese cities in clearing excess housing stock – a condition investors see as essential for a broader property market recovery. While inventory had declined across major Chinese cities, analysts said the recovery remained uneven after five consecutive years of weakness in the housing market. A broader rebound across city tiers and property types is likely to take......

A two-speed recovery is emerging in Central's top-tier offices, prompting landlords to adopt a more hands-on leasing approach, including hiring asset managers, as rental performance diverges. While much attention has focused on firms taking advantage of lower rents to move back into Central, widening the gap with other districts, data from CBRE showed another divide was widening within the business district itself. In the first quarter, vacancy in Central's grade A offices eased to about 9.6 per......

Amid geopolitical tensions, China's Tianqi Lithium has decided to skip Africa and will stick to domestic salt lakes to secure the supply of a battery mineral, according to its president Frank Ha Chun-shing. The move comes as the oil shock stemming from Middle Eastern conflicts is driving up global demand for electric vehicles (EVs) and battery energy storage systems (BESSs). Lithium, which can be extracted from hard rock and salt flat brines, can be processed into lithium carbonate, a raw......

Hong Kong developers released nearly 300 new flats to the market amid enthusiastic demand from potential homebuyers as the latest official data show completion of private residential units is set to decline this year and next. As of 3pm, 138 out of 218 units at the One Victoria Cove Phase I in Hung Hom, jointly developed by Henderson Land Development, Hysan Development and Empire Group, were sold, while at the Pavilia Farm III atop Tai Wai station in Sha Tin by New World Development (NWD) and......

DeepSeek's long-awaited flagship V4 model has fallen short of its domestic and US rivals, according to a new analysis, as the Chinese artificial intelligence firm struggles to replicate the market-shaking success of its earlier R1 release. The company's most advanced system, V4 Pro, ranked second among the world's leading open-source models, behind Beijing-based Moonshot AI's Kimi K2.6, benchmark firm Artificial Analysis said in a report on Friday. While V4 Pro marked a clear improvement on its......

Xpeng, the Chinese electric vehicle start-up often cast as a key rival to Tesla, has set an ambitious goal to surpass the US carmaker's self-driving capabilities in China by August, according to co-founder, chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng. The target highlights an intensifying technology race in the world's largest car market, where manufacturers are increasingly leaning on advanced software to drive growth as government subsidies are phased out. Although Tesla's full version of its Full......

Li Bin, a doctor at the First Hospital of Lanzhou University, was among the wave of Chinese consumers who snapped up Apple Mac Mini computers during the country's frenzied adoption of the OpenClaw artificial intelligence agent earlier this year. The young surgeon from Lanzhou, the capital of northwestern China's Gansu province, bought one to run the open-source program, using it to develop an app to extract and organise information from doctor-patient conversations and lab report photos into......

In the southern tech hub of Shenzhen, a simmering rivalry between DJI and Insta360 has transformed their shared neighbourhood into a high-stakes corporate battleground. Both companies have long been hailed as the city's poster children for Chinese innovation. DJI dominated the skies as the world's undisputed leader in consumer drones, and Insta360 captured the niche market of panoramic cameras. Now they find themselves locked in a crosstown struggle for market supremacy that some say could......

The administration of Donald Trump has threatened action to shield the US artificial intelligence industry from being “distilled” by Chinese rivals, in a move analysts say could weed out weaker players in China's AI sector within a year. In a memo released on Thursday, Michael Kratsios, the science and technology adviser to the US president, warned that “surreptitious, unauthorised distillation campaigns” were enabling foreign entities – mainly in China – to release models that appear to match......