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Hong Kong is exploring the creation of a specialised mediation panel to handle international commodities disputes, as the city steps up efforts to position itself as a regional hub for metals trading, yuan-denominated commodities products and physical gold storage, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said on Thursday. The proposed panel would focus on resolving disputes across the commodities supply chain – from mining and production to trading, warehousing and delivery – and would be developed......

Midea Group plans to raise HK$17.2 billion (US$2.2 billion) from selling convertible bonds, as China's biggest household appliances maker taps the debt market to expand its overseas business. The Guangdong province-based company would sell the bonds in two tranches at an amount of HK$8.62 billion for each, with the first one maturing in May 2027 and the second one due in May 2033, Midea said in a statement to the Hong Kong exchange on Thursday. The bonds have zero coupon rates and do not bear......

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics said on Wednesday it would end sales of all home appliance products in mainland China, retreating further from a consumer market increasingly dominated by domestic rivals as the group doubles down on its far more profitable semiconductor business. Samsung's home appliance portfolio in China includes televisions, monitors, air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, vacuum cleaners and air purifiers. In a notice published on its official......

Hong Kong stocks jumped on Thursday, led by technology shares, as easing tensions in the Middle East and a drop in oil prices boosted sentiment after overnight gains on Wall Street. The benchmark Hang Seng Index opened 1.2 per cent, or 317 points, higher at 26,531, recovering the 26,500 level, while the Hang Seng Tech Index gained 2.4 per cent to 5,089. Tech heavyweights led gains, with Alibaba Group Holding rising nearly 4 per cent and Baidu advancing almost 5 per cent. Oil producers fell as......

Chloe Wang, a 26-year-old fund employee in Shenzhen, said she “definitely wouldn't” pay for a subscription to Doubao, Chinese tech giant ByteDance's artificial intelligence chatbot, at its proposed price. “I'm willing to pay for AI tools, but I don't think it's worth that much – even though I find Doubao relatively easy to use among domestic AI products,” said Wang, who uses the app occasionally for work-related queries. “If I had to pay for an AI tool as a productivity aid, I'd probably rather......

Profit trajectories between automotive assemblers and electric vehicle (EV) battery producers in China are set to diverge further due to lacklustre car sales and buoyant demand for energy-storage systems. Leading players, including China's EV battery king Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL), would continue to attract buying interest in their shares, spurred by improved profitability, according to analysts. They added that flat vehicle prices, coupled with a dip in new car sales, had......

While the world's largest memory-chip makers are reaping record profits from the artificial intelligence boom, traders in Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei electronics market are being left to deal with the fallout of a speculative frenzy that has sharply reversed, wiping out much of the value of their inventories since late 2025. “The market surge last year became so frantic that everyone from shoemakers to fishmongers piled into memory-chip speculation,” a trader surnamed Liu said from his cramped stall......

The release of DeepSeek's latest large language model, V4, has been followed by a wave of adoption among domestic semiconductor manufacturers and artificial intelligence chipmakers, with firms racing to support the model on local hardware platforms. The shift comes amid rising geopolitical tensions over advanced semiconductors. Here are some of the key players enabling the model's deployment on domestic hardware. Huawei Huawei Technologies was among the first to act, with the V4 fully adapted to......

China-made humanoid robots are beginning to gain traction in Japan, with models from Chinese firms Unitree and UBTech being deployed by Japan Airlines for baggage and cargo handling, highlighting the growing adoption of Chinese robotics technology as Japan grapples with acute labour shortages. Japan Airlines said last week that it would launch a two-year trial using humanoid robots for ground-handling operations at Tokyo's Haneda Airport through a partnership with GMO AI & Robotics. Tasks in the......

The competition could intensify at tenders for Hong Kong's residential plots as developers replenish their land banks amid a recovering property market, with the tug of war testing their financial discipline as they bid for parcels at a “noticeable premium”, according to S&P Global Ratings, though some analysts believe that the return of confidence is warranted given robust demand for housing units. The credit-rating agency also forecast a relatively modest residential market recovery, which......

Companies listed in mainland China have reached a historic milestone in their global operations. Total overseas revenues hit a record, with electronic and automobile giants such as Foxconn Technology Group and BYD among the top performers. Total overseas revenues of A-share companies approached 12.4 trillion yuan (US$1.8 trillion) last year, accounting for nearly 17 per cent of their total income – both figures representing all-time highs, according to data from state-backed newspaper Securities......

CK Hutchison Holdings' disposal of its investment in UK's biggest mobile phone operator has spurred speculation that the Li Ka-shing family-controlled conglomerate may channel part of the investment gain into dividends for shareholders. The sale of its 49 per cent stake in VodafoneThree would fetch a net gain of HK$4.7 billion (US$600 million), and if CK Hutchison reserved 40 per cent of the proceeds for payouts – as it has done on similar occasions – it would boost dividends by HK$0.50 per......

Kuala Lumpur is gaining ground as a leading financial hub, climbing three spots in the Global Financial Centres Index 39 to rank second in Asean last year. As competition intensifies across the region, the question for global business is no longer about whether to expand, but where to base that growth. At the heart of Malaysia's shift is Tun Razak Exchange (TRX), a purpose-built international financial centre developed to support the country's financial ecosystem and global ambitions. “TRX is a......

China and the United States are taking divergent paths to developing artificial intelligence (AI), putting their technology ecosystems increasingly at odds. This divergence was on show on April 24 when start-up DeepSeek launched its next-generation V4 AI models that were optimised for use with the Ascend chips and associated software tools of tech giant Huawei Technologies. China has for years been pursuing technological self-reliance, a policy reiterated by the Communist Party's Politburo at......

For German consumer Erik Böhme, a first visit to the Beijing auto show was an eye-opener – the world's largest car exhibition showcased a vast array of electric vehicle (EV) brands, many already gaining traction in Europe. “I think there will be more Chinese brands coming and being successful in Europe,” said Böhme, a freelance automotive consultant who spent two days at the event, which ran through May 3. Böhme was among 250 foreign media, clients and social media influencers invited by Geely......

China's chip champions channelled a larger proportion of revenue into research and development (R&D) than their US peers, first-quarter earnings show, as Beijing presses ahead with its tech self-reliance drive amid an artificial intelligence boom. Beijing-based Moore Threads spent half of its revenue on R&D in the quarter ended March 2026, while Shanghai-based MetaX spent 45 per cent over the same period, according to exchange filings. By contrast, US chipmakers such as AMD and Intel have......

Stocks in the Chinese mainland and across Asia rose on Wednesday morning, after US President Donald Trump said he would hold off on a contentious escort operation in the Strait of Hormuz and several US tech giants reported strong earnings. The markets on the Chinese mainland reopened trading after the Labour Day holiday, with the CSI 300 Index climbing 0.7 per cent as of 9.32am local time and the technology-heavy Star Market in Shanghai surging 5 per cent. Other major Asian markets all edged up.......

Canadian Solar, one of the industry's most exposed players to US-China tensions, is expanding the role of its Hong Kong operations as it reshapes its global business to weather a deepening downturn and rising geopolitical pressure, positioning the city as a hub for financing, talent and technology development, according to its board director. The Nasdaq-listed group, founded in 2001 by Chinese entrepreneur Shawn Qu, has been grappling with increasingly stringent compliance requirements from......

Investor frustration is growing with Hong Kong's technology index, as the benchmark's prolonged slide contrasts sharply with the soaring share prices of several Chinese AI firms that recently went public in the city. The Hang Seng Tech Index – a gauge of Hong Kong-listed tech companies that was once seen as China's answer to the Nasdaq – has come under pressure in recent months, and the index's poor performance has drawn even more scrutiny amid the wider surge in Chinese artificial intelligence......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] The enterprise software landscape is undergoing a structural reckoning. According to recent market data, AI-native spending has surged by 94% year-on-year (YoY), nearly double the growth rate of hybrid tools and dramatically outpacing traditional SaaS, which has cooled to just 8%. Amidst this shift, omnichannel leader Omnichat today announces its definitive evolution into an AI-Native Agentic Customer Experience (CX)......