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China's “big tech” giants – including Alibaba Group Holding, ByteDance and Tencent Holdings – released preliminary figures showing impressive gains for their new flagship artificial intelligence offerings during this year's Spring Festival Gala marketing blitz. While red packet giveaways and extensive advertising campaigns have been a fixture of past Lunar New Year holidays, this year's multi-billion-yuan competition surrounding a crop of new artificial intelligence products was so intense that......

I travelled to Zurich, Switzerland, last month to attend the Asia Leaders Series, a forum designed to foster candid exchange between Europe and Asia, offering policymakers, economists and business leaders a trusted setting to engage seriously with global challenges. The event took place on the eve of the World Economic Forum meeting. I was asked to moderate a session on a topic that was hardly novel: US-China rivalry. I approached the event with modest expectations. Strategic competition between......

Rising battery costs and a cooling car market are likely to tilt China's electric-vehicle race in favour of hybrids this year, as budget-conscious consumers turn away from fully electric models, analysts say. Material cost inflation is expected to slow momentum for battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), allowing plug-in hybrids to regain market share after years of rapid electrification in the world's largest car market. “A loss of pure electric car sales can be expected this year due to consumers'......

Chinese tech companies from Tencent Holdings to AgiBot have named Millennials and even Gen Z talent as chief scientists to lead cutting-edge research into artificial intelligence and robotics. The most watched is Vinces Yao Shunyu, who turns 28 this year. He is a former researcher at OpenAI and joined Tencent in December as chief AI scientist under the CEO's office, reporting directly to president Martin Lau Chi-ping. A graduate of Princeton University and Tsinghua University, Yao was a core......

Producers across the world are likely to ramp up output of commodities such as copper and lithium, limiting the kind of runaway price gains seen in gold even as markets anticipate a prolonged rally in raw materials, Goldman Sachs said. Gold has surged to record highs, while a range of other commodities have also climbed, as governments and investors seek the perceived “insurance” value of hard assets amid geopolitical tensions and policy uncertainty, the US bank said in a report addressing what......

The family behind one of Mongolia's largest mining conglomerates has bought a detached house in Hong Kong's upmarket Southern district for HK$247 million (US$31.5 million), with the buyer intending to use it as a “retirement residence”. Land Registry records showed Tisara Holdings, whose director is Tselmuun Nyamtaishir, signed a provisional agreement on January 29 to acquire House 5 in One Stanley at 128 Wong Ma Kok Road. Nyamtaishir is the president and CEO of Mongolyn Alt (MAK), a......

Moonshot AI, the Chinese start-up behind the powerful Kimi artificial intelligence models, has added at least another US$700 million to its war chest after launching another funding round that could value it at up to US$12 billion. The new round, which comes just over a month after its last one, could almost triple Moonshot's previous valuation of US$4.3 billion amid exploding investor interest in China's AI enterprises. It was jointly led by existing investors including Alibaba Group Holding,......

Consumer interest in robots has surged in China since several leading models appeared on stage at Monday's Spring Festival Gala, with delivery dates pushed as far back as late April. This development follows the featuring of robots from four domestic firms – Unitree Robotics, Magiclab, Galbot and Noetix – at the event after they signed partnerships reportedly worth around 100 million yuan (US$14 million). One of the biggest beneficiaries was Hangzhou-based Unitree, whose G1 humanoid robots......

A surge in drug research in China has driven the cost of a laboratory monkey to about 140,000 yuan (US$20,260), a sum that exceeds the country's average annual wage. Official government procurement records showed that prices had doubled in the last five years for such monkeys, which are widely used in the preclinical stage to check whether a drug is safe and how it is absorbed, broken down and cleared by the body. Analysts said the soaring cost was underpinned by a flood of drug-licensing deals......

Owning a white vehicle in China may mean lower car insurance premiums because it is less likely to get in an accident, according to an executive from SunCar Technology Group, which uses artificial intelligence from ByteDance to personalise services. “This is what we found based on our massive data,” said SunCar chief strategy officer Breaux Walker in an interview with the South China Morning Post. Other factors also affect premiums, including car usage, commuting routes and driving habits.......

We have put together stories from our coverage on electric and new energy vehicles from the past two weeks to help you stay informed. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China becomes Brazil's biggest vehicle exporter in January, surpassing Argentina China surpassed Argentina in January to become Brazil's largest exporter of vehicles, solidifying Chinese brands' dominance in the region's biggest car market and undercutting a long-standing Argentine......

Bitcoin extended a four-week slide as investors returned to a more cautious macro backdrop. The token dropped as much as 3.2 per cent to US$66,604 on Tuesday, before paring the decline. Bitcoin, which has traded like a high-beta tech proxy in recent months, mirrored an earlier move lower in US equities, but failed to keep pace when stocks edged higher. “Sentiment is clearly bleak in crypto markets,” said Noelle Acheson, author of the Crypto is Macro Now newsletter. “There is strong progress in......

The world's two largest brewers faced starkly diverging realities in China in 2025 and rather than it being about taste or popularity, the contrast appears to largely boil down to a shift in the nation's drinking habits, sparked – in part – by the economic downturn. During the year, Budweiser Brewing APAC, the Asian subsidiary of the Belgian beer giant Anheuser-Busch InBev, posted its biggest decline in profit growth since 2020, with the company's CEO Yanjun Chen stating last week, “Our......

Ford Motor is out to prove that it has not retreated entirely from the electric vehicle (EV) race, despite the US$19.5 billion retrenchment it revealed in December. In doing so, it's gearing up for next year's debut of a budget-priced EV line to contend with China. The carmaker engineered its next-generation EV to be lighter, sleeker and more electrically efficient so that it can go farther on a charge and still start at US$30,000, some US$20,000 cheaper than the average new car in America. In a......

China's more than 100,000 home furnishing companies - most of which are micro businesses - have entered a tumultuous phase as a property slump and persistent deflationary pressure prevent them from making profits. With no property resurgence in sight, the industry, which employs millions of labourers across the country, was likely to see thousands of players expelled from the highly competitive market this year, according to company officials and analysts. “Involution is the name of the game in......

China's Unitree Robotics plans to ship as many as 20,000 humanoid robots this year, up from about 5,500 in 2025, according to chief executive Wang Xingxing, after the company drew global attention with its appearance at Monday night's Spring Festival Gala. Speaking to domestic tech outlet 36Kr after the show, Wang said global humanoid robot shipments could reach “tens of thousands” this year, with Unitree accounting for roughly 10,000 to 20,000 units of that total. The projection follows another......

In the run-up to Lunar New Year, Chinese consumers were busy choosing gold jewellery, a traditional gift with deep cultural connotations, as strong market sentiment overshadowed sharp fluctuations in gold prices and assessments of the sector's outlook by investment banks remained upbeat. Jewellers offered small discounts to boost holiday sales. For example, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group, China's largest retailer by store count, launched an 80 yuan (US$12) discount per gram on gold items in its......

Chinese memory firms GigaDevice Semiconductor and Montage Technology have emerged as new heavyweights in the domestic semiconductor industry, as these companies founded by US-returned Chinese engineers capitalise on the global memory supercycle. Since the two Shanghai-listed companies completed their dual listings in Hong Kong recently, investors have driven up the shares of GigaDevice and Montage by 151 per cent and 97 per cent, respectively. The companies' listings in January and February......

US warehouse retailer Sam's Club has gained traction among Chinese shoppers by strengthening localisation and launching more China-tailored products, continuing to expand even as many foreign retailers have scaled back their mainland operations or exited the market. Instead of replicating its US model, Walmart-owned Sam's Club has introduced products catering to local tastes, including copper gourd ornaments, ginseng and some traditional food items in the days leading up to the Lunar New Year......

This Lunar New Year, Hongkongers can gift friends and family digital gold tokens, a new way of blending the city's tradition of giving gold for good wishes with the convenience of blockchain technology. HSBC added this new transfer feature earlier this month to its retail gold token, which represents fractional ownership of physical gold stored in a secure vault and is the only retail-focused gold token approved by Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission. The bank's enhancement to its gold......