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Around a decade ago, aboard a train winding through China's landscape, Wang Ning, the founder and chairman of Beijing-founded international art toy brand Pop Mart, shared with designer Kenny Wong Shun-ming the story of his early attempts at entrepreneurship. As a fresh graduate, Wang struggled to sell affordable men's suits sourced from Yiwu in Zhejiang province, eastern China, experimenting with small-scale arbitrage and learning first-hand how difficult it was to connect products with......

A viral AI-generated video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting atop a building is causing a stir online. The 15-second video comes from the latest AI video-generation platform, Seedance 2.0. The platform was launched this week by its owner, ByteDance, the same Chinese parent that oversees TikTok. As the video circulates online, the Motion Picture Association and other industry stakeholders have called out the video for its unauthorised use of copyrighted works. MPA's CEO, Charles Rivkin, wrote......

China's food delivery giant Meituan on Friday warned that it expected to post a loss of up to 24.3 billion yuan (US$3.5 billion) for 2025 due to “intense industry competition”, with the slump likely to persist this year. The sharp reversal from 2024, when the company posted a profit of 35.8 billion yuan, comes on the back of one of China's most intense price wars last year between Meituan, Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com in local e-commerce and food delivery, which only subsided after......

In the latest sign of China's push to channel private capital into infrastructure, several local governments have begun actively seeking private investors for two major ultra-high-voltage power line projects – the first schemes of their kind to open up to non-state funding since a Beijing directive encouraging the practice last November. China is building a series of vast power lines to funnel clean energy from its resource-rich but sparsely populated western regions to power-hungry industrial......

AstraZeneca's former China head has been formally charged with medical insurance fraud, illegal trading and unlawful collection of personal information, more than a year after he first came under investigation – casting a shadow over the Swedish-British drug maker's expansion in its second-largest market. The pharmaceutical giant confirmed to the Financial Times and Reuters that Leon Wang was one of two individuals indicted, as referenced in its latest earnings report published on Tuesday. The......

The global frenzy around embodied intelligence is still in its infancy and could ultimately surpass the impact of the mobile internet, according to the founder of Chinese robotics pioneer Unitree Robotics. Wang Xingxing, the company's CEO, told state broadcaster CCTV in an interview scheduled to air on Saturday that the sector remained in a “climbing phase” rather than nearing a peak. He said a definitive breakthrough in large-scale artificial intelligence models for robotics could trigger a......

Electric-vehicle battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), copper miner CMOC Group and gold jewellery retailer Laopu Gold will join the Hang Seng Index next month following the latest quarterly review, as the compiler of the city's stock benchmark pushes ahead with its plan to boost the number of constituent stocks after Hang Seng Bank withdrew its listing status. The three companies will be added to the gauge after the market close on March 6. Chinese car dealer Zhongsheng Group was......

As the cryptocurrency market faces mounting pressure, Standard Chartered on Thursday cut its forecast for bitcoin, flagging a further drop to US$50,000 before the world's largest cryptocurrency stabilises. The digital currency was trading at around US$66,300 at 1pm Hong Kong time on Friday, a decline of nearly 50 per cent from a historical high of US$126,000 in October. Ether slid slightly to US$1,940 at 1pm on Friday. The world's second-largest digital token has lost 60 per cent of its value......

A director of Hong Kong-based Prince Jewellery and Watch has sold a flat in Kowloon and upgraded to a two-storey unit in the same neighbourhood, with an analyst saying that wealthy homeowners are taking advantage of improving sentiment to swap their dwellings. Tang Yick-ki, a director at Prince Jewellery and Sky Regal Properties, completed both deals in just over a month. Tang also serves as a director in many other companies including Just Gold, Peonia Diamond and Peonia Holdings, according to......

Subscribers: The Daily Pulse will not be published from February 16 to 19 as China celebrates Lunar New Year. We will resume publication on Friday, February 20. Kung hei fat choi! A global shortage of memory chips that has seen prices for makers of consumer devices rise by more than 600 per cent in a year is likely to be prolonged, China's Lenovo Group, the world's biggest personal computer producer, warned this week. The shortage, driven by demand from artificial intelligence (AI) data centres,......

The subject of artificial intelligence (AI) has become so prevalent in global discourse that the recent World Economic Forum in Davos reportedly had more than 200 sessions for corporate leaders to discuss AI from multiple angles. The conversations focused on five key themes: AI and technology's role in geopolitical rivalry; AI as a productivity and growth driver; AI as a job disrupter; ethics and governance for generative AI and robot systems; and AI's environmental footprint. Underlying these......

China dominated the Mercedes-Benz annual results conference in Stuttgart on Thursday, with managers of the German luxury car giant fielding questions about its lacklustre performance in the world's largest auto market, and what it was going to do about it. Chinese market sales “will remain below 2025 [levels]” this year, said Mercedes China chief Oliver Thöne, as the group reported a 19 per cent decline in its China sales and a 28.6 per cent overall drop in revenue for last year. At the group......

Running and cooling the data centres that power computer networks requires a lot of energy and water, and the world needs a lot more of them with the roll-out of artificial intelligence (AI). What if they could be powered and cooled more sustainably – installed deep underwater, placed high in the mountains, or fired into space where solar power is free and limitless? China has done all three, and it's just getting started. Five years after Microsoft abandoned an experimental underwater data......

Mainland China's new and existing home prices posted a smaller month-on-month decline in January, but the annual drop widened, indicating a housing market that has yet to find a clear floor, analysts said. Commercial residential prices across 70 major cities fell at a slower pace from December on a monthly basis, while new-home prices in the four tier-one cities dropped 2.1 per cent year on year, 0.4 percentage points steeper than the previous month, according to data released by the National......

China has banned carmakers from selling new vehicles for less than it costs to make them, including through discounts and subsidies, as regulators continue trying to smother a persistent price war that has sent hopes of profitability up in smoke for most producers. In “pricing guidance” released on Thursday, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) listed a series of tactics that would result in below-cost pricing for new vehicles, warning that carmakers using any of them would face......

Chinese foundry Hua Hong Semiconductor said the global memory shortage was an opportunity to raise prices on its logic chips, as it reported record revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025. On its earnings call on Thursday, Hua Hong chairman and president Bai Peng said the memory supercycle was “a positive thing” as it gave the company room to raise prices on logic chips. “Memory certainly is in high demand nowadays, and that will reduce the supply on the logic side,” Bai said, adding that “if the......

Deepa Jivan has always had a strong creative drive. The London-born founder and CEO of J.Gordhan & Co has used that talent to build a successful business that specialises in designing and developing safe and sustainable arts and crafts products, stationery, lifestyle and educational products, including knitting and crochet kits, craft-themed gifts, stickers, painting-by-numbers and children's party essentials. Her Hong Kong-based company creates new designs in-house and works with more than 80......

Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company MiniMax has released a new model “designed for real-world productivity”, hot on the heels of new releases from its domestic rivals in a frenetic week for China's AI industry. The update to its M2 large language model comes as investor interest in smaller Chinese AI companies hits new heights, with global investors looking to capitalise on China's rapid progress in AI beyond the traditional tech giants. Citing in-house benchmark scores, MiniMax said on......

Hong Kong stocks fell on Friday, trimming a weekly gain, after a sell-off resumed on Wall Street on renewed concerns that artificial intelligence would disrupt business models across multiple industries. The Hang Seng Index slid 1.1 per cent to 26,728.14 as of 9.48am local time. The Hang Seng Tech Index dropped 0.7 per cent. On the mainland, the CSI 300 Index and the Shanghai Composite Index both retreated 0.4 per cent. Search engine operator Baidu slumped 3.9 per cent to HK$143.80, Alibaba......

Hong Kong could see another cinema shut down in a prime retail district after the management of IFC Mall began informally sounding out potential tenants for the roughly 20,000 sq ft (1,858 square metres) occupied by Palace IFC, whose lease expires at the end of the year, according to people familiar with the matter. Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP), which manages the mall in Central, had been reaching out to select industry contacts to explore options as the struggling cinema business had......