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French luxury brand Louis Vuitton has recently launched a watering can-shaped handbag in China targeting male customers, helping the brand stay in the public eye. The men's bag is shaped like a gardening watering can and is priced at 36,000 yuan (US$5,217), while a matching watering can ornament retails for 7,750 yuan. The item sparked discussion on Chinese social media platforms, with consumers noting that Louis Vuitton frequently released such whimsical, quirky designs. The brand's customer......

Chinese companies including Alibaba Cloud and Zhipu AI have opted not to open-source some of their latest artificial intelligence models as they look to capture the full value of their usage through official revenue generating channels. While none of the companies have said that they are moving away from their open-source strategies, the development reflects an industry trend where the most powerful models are growing in size, making them increasingly difficult to host on local hardware. This......

Less than a year after US artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic called out China as an “adversarial nation” and vowed to restrict the country's access to its technologies, the company inadvertently released coding secrets, triggering a frenzy among Chinese developers. The leak occured after an Anthropic employee accidentally included the modified source code of Claude Code, the company's sensational AI coding tool popular among developers worldwide, in a file within a software package......

Hong Kong's New World Development (NWD) has shelved plans to acquire the remaining stakes in three commercial sites in Causeway Bay, signalling continued caution among developers despite signs of improving demand in the core office market. The company, which has been selling assets to reduce debt, said it would “exercise prudence as appropriate, having regard to cost and efficiency, as well as overall market supply and demand, with a view to delivering reasonable returns”. NWD, which reported......

OpenClaw, the open-source autonomous artificial intelligence agent, is stepping up efforts to tap into China's user base as it works more closely with Chinese tech giants including Tencent Holdings and ByteDance. A version update of OpenClaw released on Tuesday included Tencent's QQ, making the long-standing messaging app the first Chinese social media platform to be natively integrated with OpenClaw's official platform. QQ bot, a versatile bridging service that connects the popular messaging......

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers posted a strong rebound in sales last month, shaking off the weak start to the year as local government subsidies and aggressive financing incentives drew in first-time buyers. Momentum is expected to carry through the coming months, with dozens of new models set to debut at the Auto China show in Beijing, likely to stimulate fresh demand. “The sweeping improvement in deliveries revived hopes for a steady [EV] market after a woeful performance in January and......

CAS Space, a leading Chinese commercial rocket maker, has filed for a listing on Shanghai's tech-focused Star Market, joining a growing queue of private space companies seeking capital as Beijing steps up support for the sector. Founded in 2018 and incubated by the Institute of Mechanics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the start-up plans to raise 4.18 billion yuan (US$600 million) to fund research and development of reusable heavy-lift rockets, spacecraft and liquid-fuel engines,......

As global supply volatility intensifies, Premier Li Qiang has called for faster development of a “new-type power system” to accelerate the green transition and expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the sector. During a three-day visit to the southwestern province of Sichuan, Li stressed the need to expand green electricity supply and optimise the energy mix to bolster security and support economic growth. He urged market players to explore new grid architectures, improve system-wide......

Mainland Chinese investors extended their buying spree of Hong Kong stocks in March, looking past the turmoil triggered by the US-Israel war on Iran and betting that Chinese assets would be able to withstand the oil shock. Onshore traders bought HK$61.4 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city's stocks through the cross-border exchange link programme last month, marking a third consecutive month of net inflows, data from the Hong Kong stock exchange and Bloomberg showed. The buying came even as the......

Chinese e-commerce major JD.com has priced a 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) dual-tranche offshore bond offering, as issuers from mainland China return to the currency amid improving funding conditions. The Beijing-based e-commerce giant said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Thursday that the dim sum bond – yuan-denominated notes issued outside the mainland – comprises 7.5 billion yuan of five-year senior unsecured notes carrying a 2.05 per cent coupon, and 2.5 billion yuan of......

This article was first published on April 3, 1986. By Jerry Norton Debut-day is full of contradictions Considering the historic nature of yesterday's share market trading, a strong rally might have seemed appropriate. Instead, the first session in the new unified stock exchange saw prices finish sharply down from Thursday's close. But most brokers still described themselves as well satisfied with the performance, despite the Hang Seng index closing the morning-only trading session 22.67 points......

Hong Kong's property transactions crossed 7,000 for the sixth consecutive month in March – the first time in four years that monthly volumes stayed above this level – amid rising demand, according to estimates compiled by leading real estate agencies. The value of transactions for offices, shops, new and second-hand homes, industrial spaces and car parking slots amounted to nearly HK$64 billion (US$8.16 billion), according to separate estimates by Centaline Property Agency and Ricacorp......

Chinese artificial intelligence start-ups Zhipu AI and MiniMax have shown early signs of sustainable commercialisation of their AI models, analysts said, as investors continue to pump up their Hong Kong stocks despite widening losses. That assessment comes as the companies reported their first earnings since their respective initial public offerings in early January, providing a glimpse into the business models of an industry still in its infancy globally. The South China Morning Post takes a......

Veteran Hong Kong sports administrator Lawrence Yu Kam-kee is selling his Kowloon Tong home of over 50 years for about HK$190 million (US$24.2 million), after waiting patiently for market conditions to improve. “I had wanted to sell for a long time but waited until the market improved a bit to get a better price,” Yu told the South China Morning Post. He added that he had moved out of the house about a year ago as it was too large for a single occupant. The sale agreement had been signed and a......

China's third-largest chip foundry, Nexchip Semiconductor, filed for a Hong Kong listing on Tuesday as domestic wafer fabs race to expand production capacity amid surging artificial intelligence demand and Beijing's push for greater chip self-sufficiency. Nexchip, a smaller rival to SMIC and Hua Hong Semiconductor, is seeking a dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong, signalling the state-backed foundry's latest effort to strengthen its position in China's mature-node chipmaking sector. The move......

The breakdown of Chinese tech giant Baidu's autonomous driving vehicles in Wuhan on Tuesday evening affected services and left many passengers stranded on highways with heavy traffic for hours, hurting the company's autonomous driving ambitions as it moves to expand its robotaxi business globally. Phone calls for help from affected customers to the traffic police line in Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province, surged from 8.57pm, after many Apollo Go robotaxis stopped in the middle of the......

A burst of 16 new and refiled initial public offering (IPO) applications on Tuesday – including Miniso-backed toy retailer Top Toy – signals a renewed push by companies to tap Hong Kong's capital markets, as the city looks to cement its standing as a leading global listing venue despite intensifying competition and lingering headwinds. The filings, disclosed by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) on March 31, span a range of sectors, though hard-tech firms dominate the pipeline. Companies......

Prime office supply in mainland Chinese cities and Hong Kong is estimated to peak this year, while demand remains hampered by an economic slowdown and global uncertainties, according to Cushman & Wakefield. At the end of 2025, premium office inventory in 21 major cities in Greater China – including Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, as well as Taiwan – amounted to 99.2 million square metres (1.07 billion sq ft), up 4.6 million square metres or 8.4 per cent from a year earlier,......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Hong Kong, Mar 30, 2026 - Huatai Securities Co., Ltd. (the “Company”; stock codes: 601688.SH, 6886.HK, HTSC.L), a leading technology‑driven and fully integrated securities firm in China, announced its consolidated financial results for the year ended December 31, 2025. Annual Highlights: In 2025, the Company recorded total revenue of RMB 47.22 billion and net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 16.38......

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. The Iran war could widen China's EV lead over its global rivals. Here's why 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......