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China's electric vehicle (EV) king BYD posted its first annual profit drop in four years as it faced intensifying competition from domestic rivals in a cutthroat market. The Shenzhen-based company reported a net profit of 32.6 billion yuan (US$4.72 billion) for 2025, down 18.97 per cent from a year earlier, according to a filing to the Hong Kong and Shenzhen stock exchanges. That missed a consensus forecast of 35.4 billion yuan in a Bloomberg survey of analysts. Revenue grew 3.46 per cent to......

China's ambition to cut its reliance on foreign semiconductor technology achieved a notable milestone this week, with the launch of two powerful chips based on the open-source RISC-V architecture. Xiangshan, a high-performance processor unveiled by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) at the Zhongguancun Forum in Beijing on Thursday, is the latest effort to push the boundaries with RISC-V architecture. With the central processing unit (CPU) core achieving a score of 16.5 points/GHz under SPEC......

Rising fuel costs triggered by the Middle East crisis are emerging as an unexpected tailwind for China's electric vehicle (EV) makers, as consumers increasingly pivot towards battery-powered cars to avoid surging petrol bills. With Brent crude climbing past the psychologically significant US$100-a-barrel mark – and now trading above US$110 – mainland buyers are turning away from petrol vehicles, according to dealers and analysts. “It's a no-brainer for me now,” said Wang Wenbo, a 25-year-old......

The recent nationwide frenzy to adopt OpenClaw, an open-source artificial intelligence agent, has pushed token use to new levels and given fresh momentum to China's booming AI sector, according to industry experts at a state-backed conference on Friday. “Since late January token consumption [on my company's platform] has been doubling every two weeks, and by now it has increased roughly tenfold,” said Xia Lixue, co-founder and CEO at Infinigence, a Beijing-based AI computing service provider,......

The organisers of a leading artificial intelligence conference have apologised after a new policy that appeared to bar US-sanctioned entities from participating sparked a backlash in China, saying the ban was more limited than initially indicated. The apology came after several major Chinese professional bodies urged domestic researchers to boycott the event, amid concerns that prominent tech groups such as Huawei Technologies would be excluded. In a statement on Friday, the Conference on Neural......

Hong Kong developers on Friday released 222 new flats in Kowloon, the city's largest batch of units on a single day since buyers were warned about the uncertain direction of interest rates. K&K Property launched 122 one-bedroom units at foto+, a single residential tower in Mong Kok close to Olympic station, while Wang On Properties put 100 units up for sale at the Connext project in Wong Tai Sin. By 7pm Friday, 103 of the foto+ units had found buyers, and seven Connext flat were taken, according......

Beijing Tong Ren Tang Healthcare Investment, a provider of healthcare services based on traditional Chinese medicine, postponed its Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) on Friday, citing “prevailing market conditions” and other factors. The company was one of six trading debuts slated for Monday, including an exchange-traded fund (ETF) and firms involved in AI and robotics. The firm had aimed to raise up to HK$897.7 million (US$115 million) by offering 108.15 million shares at between HK$7.30......

Hong Kong's lived-in home prices rose 1.6 per cent in February, marking the 11th straight month of positive movement for the residential property segment, as the city's rents scaled another peak, according to official data. Since reversing a downward trend in April, second-hand home prices had climbed nearly 8 per cent so far, bringing the official index to a 22-month high, according to data released on Friday by the Rating and Valuation Department. The latest monthly increment was also larger......

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) launched an action plan to enhance its current businesses and seek new growth in 2026, as the largest contract chipmaker in China aims to solidify its role as the backbone of the country's self-sufficiency drive. Released alongside its annual report for 2025, the plan outlined a commitment to “optimising existing stock and digging for new increments”, the company said in a stock exchange filing on Thursday. The company said two trends would......

China's airlines are expected to add nearly 2,900 more China-Europe flights to their summer schedules compared with last year, analysts said, as the US-Israel war on Iran hands them an even greater competitive advantage over other global carriers. Unlike many Western airlines, Chinese carriers can fly directly through Russian airspace to Europe rather than taking a lengthy detour, allowing them to offer quicker flights, save on fuel and avoid sending planes over the Middle East. The number of......

For Gary Liu, the most profound shift in commerce today is not about faster checkouts or new wallets. It is about who, or what, sits between merchants and consumers. “There's only one thing that's fair to everyone - you only have 24 hours a day,” says Liu, CEO of Antom and Senior Vice President of Ant International. “Whichever service occupies the most consumer time, that's where commerce should be.” Increasingly, that time is being spent not browsing websites, but interacting with AI......

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA) is lagging behind China's national average in basic research, despite showing strong potential in sectors such as semiconductors and smart manufacturing, according to Deloitte. The cluster of cities in southern China, which included Shenzhen, spent about 28.9 billion yuan (US$4.2 billion) on basic research in 2024, accounting for just 5.67 per cent of total spending in research and development (R&D), the consulting firm said in a report......

Germany's chemical giant BASF has launched operations at its China production base – its largest overseas investment to date – with a total outlay of €8.7 billion (US$10 billion), and the country's first wholly foreign-owned large-scale Verbund site. The company on Thursday inaugurated the world-scale complex in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, designed to run entirely on renewable electricity. A Verbund site is an integrated chemical complex where plants, energy use and materials are......

A new artificial intelligence algorithm developed by Google that could reduce demand for memory chips triggered a slump in global memory stocks, but analysts said it presented an opportunity for investors to “buy the dip”. Shares in memory giants including Samsung and SK Hynix fell after Google said in a blog post on Tuesday that TurboQuant reduced the memory demands of key-value (KV) caches – a crucial component of how AI models are served to users – by six times through “extreme compression”......

China's DJI announced its first 360-degree drone on Thursday, directly challenging domestic rival Insta360 in a nascent market segment that is now at the centre of an escalating patent war. The new product, the DJI Avata 360, marks a significant expansion for the company beyond traditional aerial photography. The drone features a front-mounted omnidirectional camera capable of capturing high dynamic range (HDR) images at 8K resolution and 60 frames per second, according to official......

China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the country's largest producer of offshore crude oil and natural gas, aims to further boost production this year amid geopolitical tensions and rising oil prices. The plan came after the state-backed company reported an 11.5 per cent drop in net profit to 122.08 billion yuan (US$17.7 billion) in 2025, owing to low oil prices during the year, even though it produced record-high volumes of the commodities. Its revenue in the period also dipped by......

Hong Kong retained its position as Asia's top financial centre and ranked third globally, while also leading in fintech, banking and insurance, according to the latest Global Financial Centres Index released on Thursday. The twice-yearly report assessed the competitiveness of 120 financial markets. Hong Kong scored 756 points, just one point behind London and two points shy of top-ranked New York, while edging Singapore by a single point. The index is compiled by Z/Yen Group and the China......

Chinese computer scientists and researchers have been urged to boycott a major artificial intelligence conference after its organisers barred submissions from US-sanctioned institutions, including leading Chinese tech groups such as Huawei Technologies. The move by the China Computer Federation (CCF) is the latest flashpoint in deepening US-China tensions over AI, a fast-evolving field with far-reaching economic, social and military implications. The influential professional body said on......

Chinese self-driving technology firm Pony AI plans to launch robotaxi services with partners Uber Technologies and Verne in Zagreb, Croatia, spearheading commercialisation of autonomous cabs in Europe amid an accelerated go-global drive. The three companies aimed to operate a fleet of thousands of robotaxis in various European cities over the next few years after achieving consistent performance and safety, Guangzhou-based Pony said on Thursday. Neither the starting date for the service nor the......

Volkswagen will withdraw its mass-market car brand Skoda from mainland China after years of lacklustre sales, as international marques continue to lose their appeal in the world's largest automotive market. “Skoda Auto has realigned its global strategy to focus on growth markets such as India and the Asean region,” a Volkswagen spokesperson said on Thursday in a written response to the South China Morning Post, without denying earlier reports that the Czech brand would cease selling new vehicles......