10 h. ago Dutch minister admits he was blindsided by China in Nexperia chip crisis

Export controls may have been the economic weapon of choice in 2025, but the Dutch minister at the centre of the Nexperia crisis has admitted he was blindsided by Beijing when it blocked the company’s chips from leaving China. His concession raises fresh questions over how much planning went into the decision to reach for a Cold War-era law to intervene in the Chinese-owned, Dutch-headquartered chipmaker in September, a move that triggered a supply chain shock in the global automotive...

Politics

6 d. ago Beyond DeepSeek: Moonshot and MiniMax step up as China’s new frontier AI labs

Chinese artificial intelligence start-ups Moonshot AI and MiniMax have emerged as China’s strongest contenders to rival US frontier labs in 2025 – even as DeepSeek has stolen the spotlight as the poster child for the country’s AI ambitions. Moonshot AI, founded by 33-year-old Yang Zhilin, has sharply raised its profile in China’s AI ecosystem with the launch earlier this month of Kimi K2 Thinking, an upgraded reasoning model. The system outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet...

Politics

9 d. ago Journalist investigating Malaysia’s football forgery scandal attacked

A Malaysian journalist investigating a high-profile football document-forgery scandal was assaulted by three men in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday in an attack that has raised fresh alarm over media intimidation in the country. Haresh Deol, co-founder and editor of independent news site Twentytwo13, was attacked at about 3.30pm in Bangsar, a busy commercial district south of central Kuala Lumpur, shortly after leaving a meeting. As he walked towards his car, two men confronted him while a third knocked...

Events

2 w. ago Beijing’s Long Record of Economic Coercion against Japan Raises Fresh Concerns over Rare Earths, Visa Waiver

Beijing’s Long Record of Economic Coercion against Japan Raises Fresh Concerns over Rare Earths, Visa Waiver  The Japan News

Economics

2 w. ago China AI unicorn Moonshot raising fresh funds at $4 bln valuation

China AI unicorn Moonshot raising fresh funds at $4 bln valuation- WSJ  Investing.com

Politics

2 w. ago China’s Moonshot AI Raising Fresh Funds That Could Value It at About $4 Billion

China’s Moonshot AI Raising Fresh Funds That Could Value It at About $4 Billion  The Wall Street Journal

Economics

2 w. ago What BJP’s dominance means for India’s democracy and fragmented opposition

A sweeping election victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Bihar has raised fresh questions about the future of India’s political opposition. Analysts say the landslide outcome – which defied predictions of a close race – highlights an increasingly lopsided political landscape, with a dominant BJP facing a fragmented opposition, particularly a Congress party struggling with internal drift and unresolved leadership issues. The BJP, its main regional ally,...

Politics

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 Why new model of China’s Moonshot AI stirs ‘DeepSeek moment’ debate

A new reasoning model developed by a Chinese artificial intelligence start-up – with its performance exceeding OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 in a number of metrics – has fanned fresh debate about another DeepSeek moment and the trajectory of America’s AI supremacy. Beijing-based Moonshot AI, a start-up valued at US$3.3 billion and backed by Chinese tech giants like Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings, has presented another David-vs-Goliath story after creating an...

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

last month China’s WeRide drives for ‘ubiquitous’ robotaxis after Hong Kong listing

Chinese self-driving technology firm WeRide, fresh off raising HK$2.39 billion (US$307 million) in a Hong Kong share sale, plans to rev up commercialisation of autonomous taxis and expand into markets like the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Japan. Tony Han, founder and CEO of the Guangzhou-based company, said WeRide would deploy 10,000 robotaxis worldwide over the next few years, adding that its fleet could eventually grow to hundreds of thousands in line with the ultimate goal of “supplying...

Politics