Smartphone shipments in China plunged 21.8 per cent year on year in May to 23.7 million units, the biggest decline this year, according to the latest data from a government-run research institute. Foreign brands, including Apple’s iPhone, saw shipments drop by 9.7 per cent in May from a year earlier, outperforming local brands. Domestic manufacturers, including Huawei Technologies and Xiaomi, saw their shipments fall a combined 24.2 per cent, according to data released on Friday by the China...
A humanoid robot from the Chinese firm Shenzhen Dobot successfully cooked a steak – even sprinkling salt with its fingers – while being remotely controlled by an operator 1,800km away using a virtual reality (VR) headset. A video of the feat, published on Friday on the company’s official WeChat account, showcased its latest technology – which could eventually disrupt how humans perform housework, conduct surgeries, inspect nuclear plants and even explore outer space. The cooking was performed by...
Hong Kong’s ambition to create an artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem is bearing fruit, with more than 90 per cent of the city’s flagship supercomputing centre at Cyberport now in use, according to officials. The AI Supercomputing Centre, which began operations in December, is a cornerstone of the government’s strategy to foster a vibrant local AI ecosystem. Authorities have earmarked HK$3 billion (US$418.6 million) in subsidies to support AI model development and applications. Cyberport said...
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek has posted a flurry of new job openings on the professional networking site LinkedIn over the past week, coinciding with Meta Platforms’ aggressive hiring blitz amid an intensifying global race for AI talent. The Hangzhou-based company listed 10 new positions online, including two internships focused on large language models. Other roles include deep learning researchers, core systems engineers, front-end developers and full-stack engineers,...
The French government has fined online retailer Shein €40 million (US$47 million) for “deceptive marketing practices” and incomplete information about the environmental impact of its products. The penalty was announced just days after a European Union official said on Monday that he was “deeply concerned” about the millions of small parcels entering the region every day, many from Chinese-founded platforms like Shein and Temu. The fine by France’s Ministry of Economy followed investigations...
Hong Kong could benefit from Singapore’s recent move to oust unlicensed cryptocurrency companies, according to analysts, potentially leading to a significant injection of liquidity. On May 30, the Monetary Authority of Singapore instructed cryptocurrency firms incorporated in the city and offering services abroad to acquire a licence or leave the country. Singapore’s central bank subsequently set a June 30 deadline for crypto service providers in the city state to stop offering digital token...
Meta Platforms’ announcement that several prominent Chinese names working in artificial intelligence (AI) would be joining the company has triggered an outpouring of admiration back home, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg races to fill his new Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) with top industry talent. Zuckerberg announced the formation of MSL in a memo on Monday, tasking it with developing Meta’s next-generation models, and emphasised the company’s vision of delivering “personal superintelligence”...
Alibaba Group Holding plans to raise HK$12 billion (US$1.5 billion) via exchangeable bonds to fund its cloud business and international e-commerce operations, the company said on Thursday. The bonds will not pay interest but will allow bondholders to exchange them for shares of its subsidiary, Alibaba Health Information Technology. “Alibaba Group intends to use the net proceeds from the bond offering for general corporate purposes, including investments to support the development of our cloud...
Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker Xpeng launched its G7 SUV on Thursday, sending another contender into a fierce battle in the premium SUV segment of the world’s largest EV market, where it joins Xiaomi’s recently introduced YU7 in taking on Tesla’s market-leading Model Y. Dubbed Xpeng’s first “Super AI [artificial intelligence] car”, the G7 starts at 195,800 yuan (US$27,325), with the top-of-the-line model selling for 225,800 yuan, the Guangzhou-headquartered company said during a launch...
Alibaba Group Holding’s open-source Qwen artificial intelligence (AI) model has enabled the agentic framework DeepSWE to outperform rival systems in this growing segment, according to the software platform’s developers. Jointly developed by open-source initiative Agentica and San Francisco-based start-up Together AI, DeepSWE was trained on the Qwen3-32B large language model (LLM) – part of Alibaba Cloud’s third-generation family of AI models. It topped the leaderboard of the latest...
Demand for Apple’s iPhone in mainland China is expected to encounter headwinds in the second half of 2025, after sales of the device received a strong boost in recent months on the back of promotions in the world’s biggest smartphone market. In the second half, “iPhone sales in China will stumble amid weak consumer spending and an ageing iPhone 16 cycle, while tepid iPhone 17 upgrades won’t spark demand”, Counterpoint Research senior analyst Ivan Lam said on Thursday. He added that efforts by...
A Hangzhou-based artificial intelligence (AI) start-up specialising in enterprise AI agents has secured over 100 million yuan (US$14 million) from investors led by Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud unit, as Chinese companies strive to leverage the technology to raise business efficiency. BetterYeah AI, a prominent player in China’s enterprise AI sector founded by former Alibaba executives, said on Wednesday it had completed its latest financing round with contributions from Alibaba Cloud and venture...
The US said on Thursday it had lifted export controls on certain chip design software to China, according to statements from Cadence Design Systems, Siemens and Synopsys. Three of the world’s largest electronic design automation (EDA) software developers have been informed by the US government that sales of their products to China would no longer require special approval, signalling a further easing of bilateral tensions. San Jose, California-based Cadence said in an email that the US Bureau of...
A Beijing-based fintech services provider, which has provided billing systems for China’s digital yuan, has signed a strategic partnership with a Hong Kong firm to tap stablecoin and virtual asset business opportunities, in the latest sign of mainland interest in the city’s recent moves to license cryptocurrency issuers. Shenzhen-listed North King Information Technology said on Wednesday that it had struck a deal with Hong Kong-listed GoFintech Quantum Innovation to develop infrastructure to...
Baidu, one of China’s artificial intelligence (AI) champions, said it is using the technology to upgrade and make the most significant changes to the company’s core internet search service in a decade. Beijing-based Baidu has now enlarged the mobile app’s search bar and turned it into a “smart box” that supports long text input and handles more tasks than simple text-based queries and information retrieval, according to the company’s statement on Wednesday. This search box is capable of handling...
Mainland China is on track to surpass Taiwan in semiconductor foundry capacity by 2030, according to a report from Yole Group, underscoring Beijing’s progress in its push for chip self-sufficiency amid ongoing US tech restrictions. The mainland’s share of global foundry capacity is projected to reach 30 per cent by the end of the decade, up from 21 per cent in 2024, the French market research firm said. Taiwan is currently the market leader with a 23 per cent share last year, while mainland...
Honor, the Chinese smartphone maker spun off from Huawei Technologies, has unveiled what it touted as the world’s “thinnest and lightest” foldable smartphone, boasting built-in agentic artificial intelligence (AI) as competition heats up among Chinese handset brands. The Magic V5 smartphone, with prices starting at 8,999 yuan (US$1,256), measures just 8.8 millimetres thick when folded and weighs 217 grams, the company said during its Wednesday launch event. The device is Honor’s first flagship...
A day before the controversial military parade in Washington celebrating the US Army’s 250th anniversary (which, coincidentally, fell on President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday), a more discreet yet significant event took place. On June 13, the US Army swore four C-suite technologists into its reserve ranks with the launch of Detachment 201, its executive innovation corps. The newly commissioned lieutenant colonels are Shyam Sankar, Palantir Technologies’ chief technology officer; Andrew...
Alibaba Group Holding’s instant commerce service announced on Wednesday a substantial subsidy programme totalling 50 billion yuan (US$7 billion) over the next 12 months for both consumers and merchants, intensifying the fierce competition in China’s on-demand delivery sector, where JD.com and Meituan are also major players. Consumers using Taobao’s in-app Shangou service, the instant commerce business of Alibaba, will enjoy significant incentives, including cash vouchers, free purchase coupons,...
A slew of mainland-listed Chinese technology companies are speeding up fundraising plans in Hong Kong to capitalise on the upbeat market sentiment. Hong Kong’s equity market has been buoyed by mainland investors’ record buying of HK$731.2 billion (US$93.1 billion) of stocks in the first half of the year, according to Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) data and Bloomberg on Monday. The buying spree, driven by attractive valuations and a re-rating of China’s technology sector, has led to a...
Social media giant ByteDance, owner of TikTok and Douyin, has launched a Yelp-like artificial intelligence (AI) assistant that recommends restaurants and provides summarised food reviews based on a user’s prompts. The chatbot called Tanfan, which translates to “discover meals” in English, is only accessible via the Chinese short video app Douyin, where users are also able to book restaurants and order dishes from certain eateries. As of Wednesday, Tanfan had registered about 35,000 users,...
The global frenzy around China’s Labubu, the candy-coloured monster character with the mischievous smile adorning bags, desks, streets and social feeds worldwide, is often hailed as a triumph of Chinese soft power. But Labubu’s success reveals something deeper: the unmatched sophistication of China’s integrated platform economy. Pop Mart, Labubu’s retailer, started with a small shop in Beijing in 2010 but has leveraged China’s unique digital ecosystem in recent years to build a global...
China’s leading electric vehicle (EV) makers from BYD to Geely Auto sustained their strong sales last month as big price cuts lured new buyers, helping boost their market share and heaping pressure on smaller, unprofitable rivals. BYD, the world’s largest EV builder, delivered 382,585 vehicles in June for its best month this year, the Shenzhen-based company said in a filing on Tuesday. While deliveries were little changed from May, they jumped 12 per cent from a year earlier. Geely, China’s...
Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing services and artificial intelligence (AI) arm of Alibaba Group Holding, unveiled plans to launch new data centres in Malaysia and the Philippines, as it expands infrastructure investments to meet the growing demand for AI in the region. In a statement on Tuesday marking a decade of operations in Singapore, Alibaba Cloud said it had launched its third data centre in Malaysia, and planned to open a second one in the Philippines in October this year. The latest...
Danielle Popov / South China Morning Post: TikTok launches TikTok Shop in Japan, marking the e-commerce platform's 17th market, following launches in the US, the UK, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and more — TikTok has launched its e-commerce platform in Japan, enabling users to directly buy products featured in videos …
Huawei Technologies is set to open-source its self-developed programming language, Cangjie, marking the latest step in the company’s pursuit of technological self-sufficiency. First unveiled a year ago, Cangjie will be open-sourced and accessible to all developers starting July 30, Huawei announced during its annual developer conference in June. Open-sourcing allows public access to a software program’s source code, enabling third-party developers to modify or share its design, fix issues, or...
TikTok has launched its e-commerce platform in Japan, enabling users to directly buy products featured in videos, as the app continues to face an uncertain future in the US. TikTok Shop’s launch in Japan on Monday confirms the Post’s earlier report that the popular short-video app is seeking to diversify its global footprint while reducing its reliance on the US market, as President Donald Trump has demanded the app’s US operations be sold to American investors. Trump said in an interview with...
Chinese social media giant ByteDance, the owner of TikTok and Douyin, has ramped up recruitment of fresh talent for robotics development, as a growing number of artificial intelligence (AI) engineers are being lured by high pay to work in the fast-evolving sector. The more than 10 job vacancies recently posted on ByteDance’s website included two directors responsible for robot products and for hardware-embedded AI models. The Beijing-based unicorn also posted vacancies for roles involving “robot...
Hong Kong needs more professionals focused on cybersecurity due to persistent threats and a limited talent pool, according to a recent report from the Hong Kong China Network Security Association. The group said demand for cybersecurity professionals in Hong Kong was expected to grow steadily over the next three to five years, with a particular focus on skills related to cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) security. The report said attackers, armed with AI, drove the number of security...
Chinese tech giant Baidu on Monday marked its entry into the highly competitive field of Chinese open-source artificial intelligence (AI) systems, by making its flagship Ernie 4.5 models available for download on AI site Hugging Face. Baidu open-sourced 10 variants from its Ernie 4.5 multimodal model family, from the 0.3 billion parameter lightweight models to the heavyweight 424 billion parameter ones, according to a statement. Beijing-based Baidu, one of the earliest tech firms in China to...
Chinese chipmaker Sophgo has adapted its compute card to power DeepSeek’s reasoning model, underscoring growing efforts by local firms to develop home-grown artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and reduce dependence on foreign chips amid tightening US export controls. Sophgo’s SC11 FP300 compute card successfully passed verification, showing stable and effective performance in executing the reasoning tasks of DeepSeek’s R1 model in tests conducted by the China Telecommunication Technology...
The expertise of Chinese researchers in artificial intelligence (AI) is in the spotlight, as US tech giant Meta Platforms has recruited four leading scientists from OpenAI to enhance its competitive edge in the global AI race. Meta’s hiring of Zhao Shengjia, Ren Hongyu, Yu Jiahui and Bi Shuchao, reported by US tech news outlet The Information, was partially confirmed by Alexandr Wang, head of Meta’s AI unit and former CEO of Scale AI, in a social media post over the weekend. Wang expressed...
US chip giant Nvidia has hired two prominent artificial intelligence (AI) experts who hail from China, underscoring the rising global recognition of talent from the mainland and their key contributions to the field’s advancement. Zhu Banghua and Jiao Jiantao, both alumni of China’s Tsinghua University, said on their respective social media accounts that they joined Nvidia, sharing photos of themselves with Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of the company. Zhu, who received his bachelor’s degree...
China still lags behind the US in artificial intelligence (AI) chips, but the country is rapidly catching up in algorithms amid an intense technological race between the world’s two largest economies, according to renowned computer scientist Harry Shum Heung-yeung. AI competition encompassed three key aspects: chips, algorithms, and applications – and the US was “clearly” still “far ahead” in chip technology, said Shum, council chairman at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, at...
In 2007, a Chinese PhD student at the University of Cambridge launched a start-up with a former classmate focused on using speech recognition technology to help foreigners learn Chinese. A year later, Yu Kai and his team returned to China, aiming to draw on the country’s vast market and deep talent pool to propel their nascent company’s development. Swapping Cambridge for Suzhou – a city in eastern China then more famous for its picturesque gardens and canals than its tech sector – may have...
Alibaba Group Holding has launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) model, Qwen VLo, said to be capable of generating and editing images with a finesse akin to that of a human artist, intensifying the competition in multimodal models as the tech giant seeks to redefine itself as an AI leader. Released on Friday, Qwen VLo was a “comprehensive upgrade” from previous models like QwenVL and Qwen2.5 VL, the company said. It could better understand input and create more precise images, accommodate...
China already has de facto stablecoins in the form of WeChat Pay and Alipay, a top economist at the country’s leading investment bank has argued – amid growing calls for Beijing to quickly adapt to the global rise of digital assets. “From an economic perspective, money based on third-party payment platforms functions much like stablecoins – and China holds a comparative advantage in this area, having already built a relatively mature regulatory framework,” said Peng Wensheng, chief economist at...
The rain and gloomy skies during the SNEC PV Conference – the biggest in China’s solar-panel manufacturing industry – summed up the mood in the market, whose major players congregated in Shanghai earlier this month for the four-day annual event. The scale was noticeably smaller this year. Several leading companies opted out for a variety of reasons, including tight budgets. More tellingly, CEOs from major producers Longi Green Technology and Tongwei – keynote speakers last year – gave it a...
Chinese smartphone and electric-vehicle (EV) maker Xiaomi has been flooded with orders for its YU7 SUV, with analysts saying the car could challenge the dominance of the Tesla Model Y, the bestselling SUV on the mainland. The company said that it received 200,000 pre-orders for the YU7 in just three minutes after bookings opened at 10pm on Thursday, with the number rising to 240,000 by 4pm on Friday. The 240,000 bookings for the YU7, priced from 253,500 yuan (US$35,366) to 329,900 yuan, are...
Chinese robotics company Shenzhen Dobot has developed a new product that can deliver a high payload at record speed. The CR 30H series, consisting of three models, is a six-axis robotic arm that can lift as much as 30 kilograms at speeds of 300 degrees per second, the fastest in the industry for such a payload, according to a company statement on Friday. In addition, the machine is able to remain stable, with a vibration range of less than 0.3 millimeters under a full load, allowing it to...
Chinese charging peripherals maker Anker Innovations has forged a strategic partnership with battery maker Amperex Technology Limited (ATL), moving swiftly to secure a new battery cell supplier after jointly recalling more than a million power banks in one of the country’s largest consumer electronics recalls in recent years. The Shenzhen-based gadget maker planned to purchase an initial batch of 45 million lithium-ion batteries from ATL, according to a statement published on Anker’s website on...
Alibaba Group Holding has trimmed its partnership – a key corporate governance body for the e-commerce and artificial intelligence (AI) giant – as it embraces younger business leaders and strives to return to a start-up mindset. Nine executives and company veterans – including former CEO Daniel Zhang Yong, 53, and fellow co-founders Trudy Dai Shan, 48, and Lucy Peng Lei, 51, who started the company with Jack Ma in 1999 – have exited the partnership, according to Alibaba’s annual report released...
A United Nations agency is rallying policymakers, non-government organisations and academics to support its ethics guidelines on artificial intelligence (AI) at a time when the technology is rapidly changing the world. Unesco, the 194-member UN heritage agency that produced the world’s first – and so far only – global AI ethics standards four years ago, hosted a forum in Bangkok this week to drive the adoption of its recommendations. However, there is a long way to go before the recommendations...
Hong Kong is intensifying its bid to become a global digital asset (DA) hub with the release of an updated policy statement focused on accelerating stablecoin use and tokenisation efforts, amid renewed momentum in the US this year. “The government’s highly anticipated Policy Statement 2.0, aimed at establishing Hong Kong as a global digital assets hub, comes at a time when Trump 2.0 is trying to make America the ‘crypto capital of the planet’,” said Andrew Fei, a partner at King & Wood Mallesons...
Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone maker and electric-car start-up, priced its YU7 sport-utility vehicle (SUV) at a 4 per cent discount to Tesla’s bestselling Model Y, a move that is expected to draw a wave of orders in a cutthroat market where even the strongest players struggle to break even. The YU7, Xiaomi’s second production model, starts at 253,500 yuan (US$35,322), compared with 263,500 yuan for the Model Y’s basic edition, the Beijing-based company announced at a launch event on Thursday...
The C919, China’s first indigenous narrowbody jet, embodies Beijing’s progress in pursuing technology self-sufficiency and holds the potential to reshape the global aviation market, but it faces a host of difficulties in challenging established giants Boeing and Airbus. In the latest China Future Tech webinar, Jason Li Hanming, a US-based aviation analyst, along with SCMP reporters Frank Chen, William Zheng and moderator Ralph Jennings, discussed questions surrounding the home-grown Chinese...
European chip equipment giant ASML has launched a project designed to discover and foster key engineering talent in China, in the latest show of its commitment to the market despite intensified US restrictions on advanced chipmaking technologies. The Dutch lithography system maker has launched a science competition aimed at deepening public understanding of lithography – the critical process of etching circuit patterns onto silicon wafers – and fostering new tech talent in the country, according...
Xiaomi debuted its first artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smart glasses on Thursday, marking the Chinese smartphone and electric vehicle (EV) maker’s entry into a rapidly expanding but crowded domestic market. The Beijing-based company has positioned its new eyewear as a “next-generation personal smart gadget”, according to an image posted on its official Weibo account on Wednesday. Co-founder and CEO Lei Jun said the glasses could capture first-person video and respond to voice queries –...
The Hong Kong government has pledged to promote the public adoption of licensed stablecoins, unveiling a broad set of new digital asset (DA) policies as the city seeks to cement its role as a global cryptocurrency hub while serving as a test bed for Beijing’s fintech aspirations. In the “Policy Statement 2.0 on the Development of Digital Assets in Hong Kong” released on Thursday, the government called for market proposals to test stablecoin applications in public scenarios and a legislative...
Alibaba Group Holding unveiled what it says is the world’s first artificial intelligence (AI) model to detect gastric cancer, even in early stages, by scanning computed tomography (CT) images. Known as Grape – a name derived from “gastric cancer risk assessment procedure” – the system is a deep-learning framework that can analyse three-dimensional CT scans to detect and segment gastric cancer, also known as stomach cancer. It was co-developed by Alibaba’s Damo Academy and the Zhejiang Cancer...