China News

Chinese self-driving technology firm Pony AI has started mass production of a robotaxi co-developed with Toyota, taking an important step forward in commercialising autonomous cabs worldwide. The Guangzhou-based company said on Monday that 1,000 driverless cabs of this kind would roll off the production line this year, to be deployed in top-tier mainland Chinese cities. The cars will reinforce Pony AI’s plan to operate a total robotaxi fleet of more than 3,000 units in various mainland and...

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China’s AI sector is bracing for a monumental week, with a flurry of new models – including a potent “stealth” contender – emerging as domestic tech giants prepare to unveil their flagship products. The race to release new models ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday underscores the intense global competition between frontier companies for users’ attention amid a rapid acceleration of AI progress at the start of 2026, following high-profile releases from US heavyweights Anthropic and OpenAI. On...

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Chinese onshore investors raised their investments in Hong Kong-listed drug makers through the cross-border trading link over the past week, as a wave of out-licensing deals between Chinese pharmaceutical firms and global partners rolls on. The Hang Seng Southbound Connect Hong Kong Innovative Drug Index, which tracks around 40 of the largest Hong Kong-listed Chinese drug manufacturers, biotech researchers and AI-driven drug developers by market capitalisation, rose about 9 per cent between...

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Stock exchanges in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing – the three major bourses in mainland China – announced a package of measures on Monday to fast-track fundraising for cutting-edge firms amid the country’s self-reliance push in tech. The three operators said they would shorten waiting periods for listed technology firms filing for refinancing or post-initial-public-offering (IPO) fundraising activities, cutting the refinancing interval to as little as six months, according to state news agency...

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China’s first home-grown large cruise ship has now handled 1 million passengers since its commercial debut two years ago, a sign of progress as Beijing strives to boost household spending on services and cultivate new growth drivers. The operator of the Adora Magic City announced the news via its website on Sunday, saying it aimed to propel the growth of China’s cruise economy and establish a “Chinese benchmark” for the global cruise industry. Construction of the company’s second domestically...

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As the Lunar New Year holiday approaches, the Chinese government has summoned Meituan, Alibaba Group Holding, Didi Chuxing, SF Express and other logistics firms to ensure the welfare of the tens of millions of gig workers who keep the country running during the rush. The “employment administrative guidance” session, held recently by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, in coordination with six other government agencies, called on 16 major Chinese platform and logistics operators...

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Mathematician Ngo Bao Chau, who made history in 2010 as the first Vietnamese recipient of the prestigious Fields Medal, will join the science faculty at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) as a chair professor in June 2026. Ngo, 53, currently distinguished service professor and chair of the University of Chicago’s mathematics department, is a pre-eminent figure in Vietnamese mathematics. HKU announced his new appointment on Thursday. Born in Hanoi in 1972, Ngo showed early brilliance, winning gold...

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Taiwan has conducted a series of shallow-water submerged tests of its indigenous submarine prototype over the past two weeks, marking a key step towards potential navy delivery as early as June. The Hai Kun, or Narwhal, is part of the island’s Indigenous Defence Submarine programme, a project widely seen as central to its efforts to boost asymmetric naval capabilities amid increasing military pressure from Beijing. Surface navigation tests began last year, with undersea trials and weapons...

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China surpassed Argentina in January to become Brazil’s largest exporter of vehicles, solidifying Chinese brands’ dominance in the region’s biggest car market and undercutting a long-standing Argentine trade advantage within Mercosur. According to industry figures reported by Autoweb on Monday, Chinese vehicles sent to Brazil reached 16,800 units in January, versus 13,400 from Argentina. It underscores the erosion of Argentina’s decades-long grip on Brazil’s import market, after China first led...

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In the world of tick-borne illnesses, Lyme disease gets the headlines. For example, Greg Yang, one of the 12 original co-founders of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence start-up xAI, said in late January that he was stepping back from the company after being diagnosed with the disease, saying that accidentally eating the wrong food would leave him “extremely tired”, requiring days to recover. But there is a more dangerous condition transmitted by the ticks that a team at a Chinese university...

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The South China Sea continues to act as a lightning rod for competing claims among regional powers. In the first of a three-part series, Laura Zhou examines how a new conservation framework is being leveraged to advance territorial ambitions within these highly contested waters. Amid simmering tensions in the South China Sea, a likely new legal and diplomatic battlefield has emerged. Two decades in the making, the High Seas Treaty, also known as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction...

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We have put together stories from our coverage on science from the past two weeks to help you stay informed. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing.

1. How old is Chinese civilisation? A scholar says it really dates back 8,000 years A noted archaeologist is challenging conventional wisdom on one of the world’s oldest cultures, arguing that Chinese civilisation has a recorded history stretching back 8,000 years – three millennia beyond the widely accepted...

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Russian oil tankers are increasingly listing Singapore as their official destination, signalling ‌a shift in export flows from India to ‍China and growing concerns over Western sanctions, traders said and LSEG shipping data shows. LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group) data shows tankers carrying about 1.4 million metric tons of ⁠Russian crude departed for Singapore in January, the highest monthly volume in recent years. Singapore does not import Russian oil amid sanction risks but its nearby waters...

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Luuk van Middelaar is the director of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics, a think tank he co-founded in 2022. A political theorist and historian by trade, he has written several books and was in the cabinet of the first European Council president Herman Van Rompuy. Van Middelaar is widely read and cited across Europe for his analysis of the EU’s political evolution, with his books translated into many languages and awarded major European literary prizes. He writes regularly for leading...

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Robot vacuum maker Dreame Technology promoted its products at the Super Bowl on Sunday night, becoming the latest Chinese brand after Temu to leverage the game’s influence to crack the North American market. Its 30-second commercial, aired across NBC’s local affiliate network, which exclusively broadcasts the game, showcased Dreame’s ecosystem, from robot vacuums and lawnmowers to a concept hypercar unveiled at the CES trade show in Las Vegas last month. The campaign follows budget shopping site...

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Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s landslide victory has raised concern in China that she may seek to change the country’s pacifist constitution. Beijing would regard any change to the constitution, which renounces the use of force to settle international disputes, as a threat to regional stability and is likely to react strongly to any changes. Takaichi has previously suggested she wanted to change Article 9 of the constitution, imposed after Japan’s defeat in World War II, which...

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An international organisation responsible for monitoring global nuclear testing has denied allegations by the United States that China has conducted secret nuclear tests. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), the global body tasked with detecting nuclear explosions, said its monitoring system “did not detect any event consistent with the characteristics of a nuclear weapon test explosion” at the time of the alleged Chinese test. Robert Floyd, the body’s executive...

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President Xi Jinping has toured a hi-tech park in Beijing to assess China’s progress in information technology innovation, underscoring the country’s intensifying focus on high-level development amid a global race to dominate future industries. Xi inspected the National Information Technology Application Innovation Park in Beijing’s Yizhuang area on the capital’s southern outskirts, where he met business leaders, including Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun, state media reported. The visit highlighted China’s...

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Luckin Coffee, mainland China’s largest coffee chain by store count, marked its milestone 30,000th outlet on Sunday in Shenzhen, with plans to boost global supply chain integration by sourcing premium beans from top producing regions worldwide. Headquartered in Xiamen, southeast China’s Fujian province, Luckin’s store network spans more than 300 cities nationwide, and its international footprint is expanding fast, with operations in overseas markets like Singapore, Malaysia and the US. It...

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In a world first, Chinese researchers have flight-tested new streamlined thrust technology in a high-speed drone, capping nearly two decades of research in the area for the lead scientist. The lighter and simpler aerodynamic thrust vectoring system abandons the complex mechanical parts of elite fighter jets like the F-35B and Su-37 to redirect engine exhaust to make the aircraft more manoeuverable. Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics announced last month that a team led by...

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In a sign of warming China-Canada ties, Beijing has reversed a Canadian citizen’s death sentence and ordered a new trial, calling the judicial ruling “independent”. The Supreme People’s Court, China’s highest judicial organ, on Friday overturned a death sentence against Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, who was detained in 2014 on suspicion of drug trafficking. Addressing the ruling during a press conference on Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian stated that judicial authorities...

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TikTok parent ByteDance’s pre-release of its latest artificial intelligence video model, Seedance 2.0, over the weekend has sent ripples across the tech and video production sectors as competition among Chinese tech titans’ AI apps intensifies. The model – still in beta and available to select users of Jimeng AI, ByteDance’s AI video platform – delivered enhanced lifelike video outputs that blurred the boundary between AI content and reality, offered smoother camera movement and improved visual...

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China has showcased a range of uncrewed platforms – including a drone for anti-submarine warfare – at the World Defence Show in Saudi Arabia, as demand grows in the region for autonomous systems. More than 770 exhibitors from 76 countries are taking part in the defence show in Riyadh, which opened on Sunday and runs until Thursday. China has one of the biggest pavilions at the show, and a full-scale model of the Wing Loong-X unmanned aerial vehicle is among the Chinese drones drawing...

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Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi won a landslide election victory, and the nation’s first single-party supermajority since World War II, after a campaign centred on cutting taxes and boosting defence spending amid a dispute with China. Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was on track to win 316 seats in the 465-seat lower house of parliament, according to public broadcaster NHK, clearing the two-thirds threshold needed to override the upper chamber. The Japan Innovation Party, an LDP...

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China has been working to cut the use of soybean meal in animal feed – the primary end-use of imported soybeans – as part of its strategy to reduce external dependence, but the latest industry data suggests these efforts have made limited headway. Last year, the proportion of soybean meal in domestically produced feed stood at 13.4 per cent, unchanged from the previous year, according to data released by the China Feed Industry Association (CFIA) last week. This indicates that the goal set by...

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