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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......

Huawei Technologies' newest Ascend 950PR and 950DT chips enjoyed “day zero” adaptation to DeepSeek's latest V4 model, the Shenzhen-based tech giant said in a livestream on Friday, just hours after the model's release. The hardware-software collaboration between the two Chinese firms underscores the progress China has made in tech self-reliance, a top national priority for Beijing amid US efforts to block its access to advanced semiconductor chips and chipmaking equipment. During the livestream......

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers at the Beijing auto show are shifting their focus to overseas markets, banking on opportunities from the Middle East crisis to boost profitability amid weak sales at home. “Going global has become a top choice for Chinese EV builders as they struggle to break even,” said Phate Zhang, founder of Shanghai-based data provider CnEVPost. “The Middle East crisis is acting as a strong catalyst to bolster their overseas deliveries.” Nearly all major EV assemblers......

Amid the artificial intelligence boom, the world has been laser-focused on technologies like graphics processing units and memory chips. However, a quieter miracle has been unfolding in the mainland stock market. Optical modules, which allow ultra-fast communications in data centres, have minted a new class of industrial upstarts. In the past year, shares in Shenzhen-listed Zhongji Innolight, the world's largest optical module producer, jumped tenfold. Smaller peers Eoptolink Technology and......

Chinese toymaker Pop Mart said it plans to develop more of its Pop Land theme parks on the mainland and overseas, and is in talks with several cities to expand beyond its sole existing venue in Beijing. Jeffrey Hu, head of Pop Land and vice-president of Pop Mart, said on Friday that the company had established solid park operations capabilities, and planned to replicate this model whenever suitable opportunities emerged. “We also plan to develop an integrated resort blending theme park......

China's industrial giants are rapidly scaling up the use of AI-powered robots to operate vital infrastructure, with the country's main grid operator unveiling a blockbuster plan to deploy thousands of bots to handle a range of roles – from inspecting remote substations to performing maintenance on ultra-high-voltage power lines. The State Grid Corporation of China has earmarked 6.8 billion yuan (US$1 billion) for the procurement of embodied intelligence – or artificial intelligence-enabled......

China will allow qualified overseas investors to trade government bond futures contracts, as policymakers step up the opening up of the nation's capital markets to boost foreign participation. Foreign traders, approved under the qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) programme by the financial regulators, could buy and sell government-bond futures starting on Friday, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said in a statement on its website. The trading could only be carried......

The wind industry smells opportunity in Europe. At an expo in Madrid this week, the convention floor was abuzz as hundreds of European, American, Japanese and Korean exhibitors vied to pitch their products, knowing the continent urgently needs to shore up its energy security amid the US-Israel war on Iran. But there was one glaring absence: not a single company operating a booth was Chinese, with China's participants only networking from the sidelines. At a time when many in Europe seek a rapid......