16 h. ago China’s Xiaomi says returns from AI investments ‘far exceed expectations’

Chinese tech firm Xiaomi reaped returns from its artificial intelligence spending in 2025 that “far exceeded expectations”, the company’s president Lu Weibing said in a recorded video posted on Chinese social media platform Douyin. Lu said the Beijing-based company was pivoting to embodied AI after heavy investment in general AI over the past few quarters. The Beijing-based company’s efforts to apply AI in electric vehicles (EVs) and robotics are similar to Elon Musk’s plan of using the advanced...

Politics

52 h. ago A Chinese firm attempts to bring a rocket stage back to Earth

A Chinese firm attempts to bring a rocket stage back to Earth  The Economist

Events

3 d. ago China’s ‘dirt cheap’ missiles could shake up global defence market: state media

Chinese aerospace firm Lingkong Tianxing unveiled a hypersonic glide missile last week that has a range of up to 1,300 km (800 miles) and a top speed of Mach 7. The YKJ-1000 has been nicknamed the “cement-coated” missile for its use of civilian-grade materials such as foamed concrete in its heat-resistant coating. According to slides widely circulated online, the unit production cost of this missile, already in mass production after successful combat trials, may be as low as 700,000 yuan (around...

Events

3 d. ago Chinese autonomous driving firm Momenta files for Hong Kong IPO, sources say

Chinese autonomous driving firm Momenta files for Hong Kong IPO, sources say  Reuters

Economics

3 d. ago China’s DeepSeek challenges Google DeepMind with new AI model

Artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has unveiled its most powerful model variant, DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale, which is said to match Google DeepMind’s new Gemini 3 Pro model in certain tasks, despite the Chinese firm having limited access to advanced semiconductor chips. The achievement by the open-source lab has sparked extensive discussion within the AI research community as it coincides with the prestigious annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, or NeurIPS. In its...

Politics

4 d. ago Mainland Chinese miner Zijin’s founder who built US$100 billion firm retires

Mainland Chinese miner Zijin’s founder who built US$100 billion firm retires  South China Morning Post

Economics

5 d. ago Doubts on China’s robotics strength a result of lacking ‘understanding on manufacturing capabilities,’ Chinese firm responds to US peer’s fake video claim

Doubts on China’s robotics strength a result of lacking ‘understanding on manufacturing capabilities,’ Chinese firm responds to US peer’s fake video claim  Global Times

Economics

6 d. ago ‘It is fake’: why US industry leader refused to believe China’s robot march clip

On November 14, Chinese robotics firm UBtech released footage showing hundreds of Walker S2 humanoid robots standing in precise formation inside a warehouse. The machines turned their heads in unison, waved their arms and marched into shipping containers – a scene so visually arresting it evoked sci-fi blockbusters like I, Robot. Brett Adcock, founder and CEO of leading US robotics company Figure, responded with disbelief. He immediately took to social media to suggest the footage was...

Politics

9 d. ago ‘Turning point’: South Korea’s largest satellite launched on Nuri rocket

South Korea launched its largest satellite yet on its nationally developed space rocket early on Thursday, the fourth of six planned launches through 2027. The three-stage Nuri rocket lifted off from the country’s spaceport on an island off the southwestern coastal county of Goheung. Aerospace officials said the rocket placed a 516kg (1,137-pound) science satellite and 12 microsatellites into a target orbit about 600km (372 miles) above Earth. The Korea Aerospace Administration said the main...

Events

1 week ago Chinese civilian firm starts mass production of Mach 7 missiles at low cost

A private Chinese aerospace company has become the first in the world to start mass production of a low-cost, high-performance hypersonic missile, suggesting a seismic shift in military technology and defence industrial dynamics. On Tuesday, Beijing-based Lingkong Tianxing Technology released a video on its official social media account showcasing the YKJ-1000 hypersonic missile in flight and how it struck a real target in a desert testing range. A company representative said the missile was...

Events

1 week ago Netherlands’ Nexperia blunder shows it has forgotten its own history

The Netherlands has discovered that it could end up hemmed in by its technological prowess. A day after the United States tightened export controls on Chinese companies on September 29, the Dutch government moved to take control of Nexperia, a Chinese-controlled chipmaking firm. This coordinated act of carrying out US containment policy triggered a cascade that exposed the cost of the Netherlands being indispensable but not impartial. It likely prompted China’s decision to use rare earth...

Politics

2 w. ago Top Democrat demands probe into 4 Chinese firms potentially supplying Nexperia

A senior US Democrat is urging the Commerce Department to investigate four Chinese semiconductor firms potentially tied to Dutch chipmaker Nexperia, warning they could threaten the safety and reliability of components used in cars across the US and its allies. The request marks the latest twist in the turmoil surrounding the Chinese-owned firm, which has become a flashpoint in broader disputes involving China, Europe, and the US, following months of internal conflicts, regulatory intervention...

Politics

2 w. ago Top Democrat demands US probe into Chinese firms potentially supplying Nexperia

A senior US Democrat is urging the Commerce Department to investigate four Chinese semiconductor firms potentially tied to Dutch chipmaker Nexperia, warning they could threaten the safety and reliability of components used in cars across the US and its allies. The request marks the latest twist in the turmoil surrounding the Chinese-owned firm, which has become a flashpoint in broader disputes involving China, Europe, and the US, following months of internal conflicts, regulatory intervention...

Politics

2 w. ago Chinese SOEs ask workers to cancel their Japan holidays amid diplomatic row

Amid a heated diplomatic row between Beijing and Tokyo which has shown no signs of cooling off, several employees of China’s state-owned enterprises have been advised to scrap their immediate travel plans to Japan, they told the Post on condition of anonymity. One of them, an engineer at a state-owned firm in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, received an unexpected phone call on Tuesday. It was his company’s administrative office, urging him to cancel his coming holiday. Like employees at many...

Politics

2 w. ago Singapore says Chinese firm’s electric buses not equipped with remote tech

Singapore has 20 electric public buses by Chinese manufacturer Yutong Group, and none of these vehicles support any remote control functions, the Land Transport Authority said on Monday. LTA’s response came after Norway’s public transport operator Ruter found that Yutong had access to the buses’ control systems for software updates and diagnostics. This could allow the manufacturer to turn them off remotely. The discovery has also raised cybersecurity concerns, with Ruter saying earlier this...

Science

3 w. ago AI firm claims Chinese spies used its tech to automate cyber attacks

AI firm claims Chinese spies used its tech to automate cyber attacks  BBC

Events

3 w. ago China’s chief space contractor readies plans for tourism programme

As companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin make headlines for sending non-astronauts into space on pricey private tours, a Chinese state firm is expected to unveil its own space tourism programme this week, joining other domestic enterprises as they attempt to make headway in the rapidly emerging – and US-dominated – market. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), the primary contractor for the country's space programme, will unveil details of its inaugural tour at the China Hi-tech...

Events

3 w. ago China’s Moonshot claims to build models with fewer AI chips than US rivals

Chinese artificial intelligence firm Moonshot AI continues to develop AI models with fewer high-end graphics processing units (GPUs) than what its US rivals use, according to the Beijing-based start-up’s executives. In a three-hour-long “ask me anything” session on Reddit on Monday evening, a Moonshot AI representative with the handle “ppwwyyxx” – the same moniker used by co-founder Wu Yuxin on X – said the company was “outnumbered” by rival US firms in terms of “high-end GPUs” used for AI model...

Politics

3 w. ago Rising China robotics star AgiBot restructures in potential bid to join IPO race

Chinese robotics firm AgiBot has rejigged its corporate structure, a move seen as laying the groundwork for an initial public offering (IPO), amid a wave of domestic humanoid robot makers racing to list their shares. The Shanghai-based company restructured from a limited liability company to a joint stock limited company last week and was renamed Zhiyuan Innovation (Shanghai) Technology, according to records shown on Chinese business registry platform Tianyancha. The legal shift is an essential...

Politics

4 w. ago China’s Moonshot AI launches new model lauded as No 1 among open

Chinese artificial intelligence firm Moonshot AI has released a new reasoning variant of its open-source Kimi K2 model that has outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 in several benchmarks, eliciting high praise from industry experts on social media. The Beijing-based start-up on Thursday said Kimi K2 Thinking was now accessible via Kimi.com and the model’s application programming interface (API), allowing developers and enterprises to use the model’s functionalities into...

Politics