China’s OpenClaw craze has taken an ironic turn, with social media platforms now flooded with paid services offering to uninstall the artificial intelligence (AI) agent after users initially paid to have it installed. On Xianyu, the second-hand marketplace under Alibaba, the keyword “uninstall OpenClaw” was trending on Thursday, based on a search by the South China Morning Post. Records showed that a Shanghai-based seller named “mojito lime water” charged 299 yuan ($43.55) to uninstall the agent...
China’s central bank has called for heightened cybersecurity awareness and caution in the use of artificial intelligence in the financial sector, adding to a chorus of warnings over security risks amid the nationwide buzz surrounding the OpenClaw AI agent. At its annual technology conference in Beijing on Wednesday, the People’s Bank of China called for further efforts to “enhance the resilience of cybersecurity and data security”, according to a readout of the meeting posted on its website. The...
China has issued public guidance on using OpenClaw, and reportedly restricted its use in government agencies, as regulators push back against surging use of the artificial intelligence (AI) agent. Best practices include minimising internet exposure and regularly checking for security updates, China’s top software regulator said on Wednesday. The notice followed two earlier official warnings about OpenClaw, an autonomous AI agent used for tasks such as stock picking, sorting emails and creating...
HSBC and a joint venture led by Standard Chartered are expected to be among the first companies to obtain Hong Kong’s stablecoin licences within two weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. The number of licences and timetable had yet to be finalised and remained subject to change, but sources said a possible date was March 24. The two banks declined to comment. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) last month revealed that a small number of stablecoin licences would be granted...
A wave of caution is sweeping through China’s financial and state institutions over OpenClaw, the open-source artificial intelligence (AI) agent that has recently gone viral. Several brokerages, banks and government bodies have moved to restrict staff access. At one of China’s leading brokerages, an employee, who asked not to be named, said the firm had issued an explicit risk warning earlier this week, banning OpenClaw from company computers. Staff who had already installed it were told to...
In late February, Hong Kong’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data co-signed, alongside 60 overseas organisations, a statement to bring attention to the rising misuse of deepfakes. With rapid technological developments, growing AI integration and lower barriers to access, swift action is needed to safeguard women and girls against growing forms of technology-facilitated violence. Technology-facilitated violence is not new; it has simply evolved. What began as pre-internet...
A unit of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has issued guidelines on best practices and prohibitions for adopting and using OpenClaw, the popular artificial intelligence agent that continues to dominate the market. The advisory, developed in collaboration with AI agent providers, vulnerability platform operators and cybersecurity firms, aims to address risks in typical use cases of “lobster”, OpenClaw’s mascot, according to a Wednesday statement from the MIIT-run...
Midea Group, the owner of industrial robot giant Kuka, is the latest Chinese company to pledge heavy investment in AI and robotics – another 60 billion yuan (US$8.7 billion) over the next three years – as traditional industries embrace futuristic technologies. The planned expenditure on research and development, with a focus on “AI, embodied intelligence and other cutting-edge areas”, matched its total spending over the past five years, the company announced in Shanghai on Tuesday. The strategic...
Eli Lilly has pledged an additional US$3 billion investment in China over the next decade to strengthen its local supply chain and manufacturing capabilities, deepening the footprint of foreign pharmaceutical giants in the world’s second-largest healthcare market. The move would bring the total cumulative investment of Eli Lilly, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company by market capitalisation, in China to nearly US$6 billion, according to a statement released on its WeChat account on...
China’s spring hiring season is revealing a sharp surge in demand for artificial intelligence talent as companies speed up the deployment of related technologies, turning it into one of the country’s hottest professional fields. The number of AI-related job postings in China in the first two months of the year grew about 12-fold year on year, far outpacing growth in other “new-economy” industries such as healthcare, renewable energy and semiconductors, People’s Daily reported on Tuesday, citing...
Betting on rising global demand for energy storage, shares of Chinese lithium battery makers continued to rally on Wednesday, led by Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL), which reported stronger-than-expected growth driven in part by its expansion into new energy storage markets. CATL shares surged more than 10 per cent to HK$608 during morning trading hours in Hong Kong on Wednesday – the highest level in five months – before closing 9 per cent higher at HK$599.50. That followed another 9...
China’s computer chip exports surged 72.6 per cent in the first two months of the year, far outpacing broad export growth, as technological advances help the country tap into a demand boom fuelled by artificial intelligence (AI). Shipments of integrated circuits totalled US$43.3 billion, with volumes jumping 13.7 per cent to 52.5 billion units, according to customs data released on Tuesday. Overall exports rose by 21.8 per cent, the most in four years. Memory chip prices have surged worldwide...
Halo, short for heavy assets, low obsolescence, has emerged as a major Wall Street theme in recent weeks. Investors are rotating from tech stocks to companies with real physical assets amid fears over artificial intelligence, geopolitical tensions and rising prices of resources and infrastructure. Here’s what you need to know about how the strategy gained popularity and why it matters to China. What is Halo? The term was coined last month by Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, to...
Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker Nio has forecast a surge of up to 97 per cent in first-quarter deliveries, underscoring the turnaround after posting its first-ever quarterly profit and defying a slowdown that has hit most of its domestic rivals. Nio, ranked the 15th bestselling Chinese EV maker last year, set a delivery guidance of 80,000 to 83,000 vehicles for the first quarter of 2026, representing a year-on-year surge of between 90 per cent and 97 per cent. The growth projection bucked...
Memory price hikes are likely to become “the new normal” for the next few years, according to an executive at storage giant Seagate Technology, as the artificial intelligence boom of the past two to three years pushes the industry into what he described as a supercycle. “It’s hard to tell if it will last forever,” Ban-Seng Teh, Seagate’s chief commercial officer, told the South China Morning Post. The current cycle was “very unusual because in the past we went through cycles of shortage and...
China’s cybersecurity agency on Tuesday issued a second warning about security and data risks tied to OpenClaw, despite a rush among local governments and tech companies to adopt the artificial intelligence agent amid a nationwide frenzy. At a time when major Chinese cloud service providers were touting easy deployment of OpenClaw to capitalise on its popularity, improper installation and use of the agent had also led to severe security risks, said the National Computer Network Emergency...
Chinese technology firms, including internet giants Tencent Holdings, Alibaba Group Holding and ByteDance, are offering easy or inexpensive access to OpenClaw, the popular open-source AI agent software amid a “lobster fever” in the country. Tencent on Tuesday officially launched QClaw, an artificial intelligence assistant built on OpenClaw that can connect to the company’s super app WeChat. After download and installation on a computer that takes about three minutes, users can remotely control...
China’s chip exports jumped in the first two months of the year, according to the latest customs data, underscoring how Beijing’s push for semiconductor self-sufficiency is boosting both domestic demand and global market growth. Integrated circuit (IC) exports reached US$43.3 billion in January and February, an increase of 72.6 per cent from a year earlier, data from the General Administration of Customs showed on Tuesday. It far outpaced China’s overall export growth of 21.8 per cent in the...
Beijing is planning “moderately proactive” technology infrastructure expansion covering artificial intelligence (AI), telecommunications and space internet, while emphasising strength in coordinating green energy planning in tandem with computing initiatives to solidify its advantage in infrastructure amid the AI race with the US. The infrastructure buildout plan forms a core pillar of the nation’s draft 15th five-year plan, released last week during the legislative “two sessions” meeting and...
Mainland Chinese investors can now buy shares in more than a dozen newly added Hong Kong-listed biotech and pharmaceutical companies after a reshuffle of the Stock Connect southbound trading list took effect on Monday, reflecting the sector’s growing role on the international stage. Foreign capital, however, remained cautious, analysts said. “Mainland buyers have been the main force behind the latest healthcare rally. They tend to chase smaller-cap names where a tight free float makes it easier...
China’s semiconductor entrepreneurs – including artificial intelligence chipmaker Cambricon Technologies and testing-and-packaging leader Tongfu Microelectronics – have voiced support for the country’s 15th five-year plan, which places renewed emphasis on the chip industry as a cornerstone of Beijing’s technology ambitions. “National policy direction and planning are very well designed,” said Chen Tianshi, founder and CEO of Beijing-based Cambricon. Speaking on the sidelines of the opening of...
Around the world, news organisations are racing to create rules for artificial intelligence. Editors debate whether reporters may use AI to draft text, summarise documents or help in research. Some outlets promise readers they will disclose when a machine helps write an article. Others hope credibility will come from avoiding AI altogether. But this debate begins with a mistaken assumption: that journalism earns trust because journalists physically write the sentences themselves. That has never...
Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) reported a 42 per cent jump in net profit last year to 72.2 billion yuan (US$10.4 billion) on strong battery sales and an expansion into new energy storage scenarios. The Chinese battery giant’s sales volume of lithium-ion batteries – a key component for electric vehicles (EVs) – reached 661 gigawatt hours (GWh), up 39 per cent from the previous year, according to a filing released on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Monday night. China’s EV industry...
Some local governments in China have rushed to support the adoption of OpenClaw, the artificial intelligence agent sweeping the country, even as warnings about privacy and security risks linger in the background. In Shenzhen, China’s southern tech hub, the AI and robotics agency of Longgang district published a draft on Saturday proposing sweeping measures, including subsidies of up to 2 million yuan (US$290,000) for approved projects. The initiative came a day after nearly a thousand people...
Representatives of China’s semiconductor industry are calling for stronger state backing in artificial intelligence chips and critical materials, aiming to fast-track core technology breakthroughs. During last week’s “two sessions” – the annual meetings of China’s top legislature and advisory body – scholars and entrepreneurs in the semiconductor sector urged Beijing to leverage the nation’s advantage in strategic chip raw materials and accelerate the commercial application of AI chips to secure...
[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Gartner has recently published its “Vendor Insight Report: Amazon Web Services.” This comprehensive analysis authored by industry experts Jim Hare, Lydia Leong, Ed Anderson, and Dolores Ianni helps Chief Information Officers (CIOs) evaluate strategic investments in complex IT vendors. The Vendor Insight Report complements other Gartner market and product research with a high-level overview of select vendors and their top...
As global concern rises over artificial intelligence and the potential for AI agents to disrupt lives and industries, people in southern China are rushing to embrace the technology even as privacy concerns intensify. On Friday, nearly 1,000 people lined up outside Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings’ Shenzhen headquarters to install OpenClaw – a popular open-source AI agent software – on their computers. The crowd, a mix of amateur developers, retired space engineers, housewives, students and AI...
China’s commerce ministry warned that the “Dutch side” should be held accountable if the latest dispute between Nexperia and its Chinese subsidiary triggers another global chip supply crisis, adding to concerns over further worldwide disruption. “Nexperia’s [latest] action has seriously disrupted the company’s normal production and operations,” a ministry spokesperson said in a press conference on Saturday. “If this again triggers a global semiconductor supply chain crisis, the Dutch side must...
The mobile industry buzzed with excitement over the artificial intelligence revolution showcased at MWC Barcelona 2026, but the optimism was overshadowed by the Middle East crisis and a memory crunch that could reshape the global smartphone supply chain. The AI showcase drew a large crowd, including King Felipe VI of Spain, to the booth of Chinese smartphone maker Honor, which displayed its “Robot Phone” with a built-in camera gimbal designed to become a companion to users. “This brings a...
China’s telecom and computing equipment maker ZTE on Friday reported revenue of 134 billion yuan (US$19 billion) in 2025, up 10.4 per cent, with its computing business surging 150 per cent year on year to account for 24.6 per cent of total sales amid the computing boom. However, net profit attributable to shareholders fell 33.3 per cent to 5.62 billion yuan, while net profit excluding non-recurring items dropped 45.5 per cent to 3.37 billion yuan, according to a post-trading earnings filing....
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has collaborated with researchers from Tencent Holdings and the University of Hong Kong (HKU) on a new AI-based method that can improve the accuracy of three-dimensional design. The team proposed Pointer-CAD, a framework built on Alibaba Group Holding’s Qwen 2.5 model, which helps designers select edges or faces of a 3D object, increasing the accuracy and efficiency in computer-aided design (CAD), a tool widely used in engineering, manufacturing...
China’s most powerful economic regions – the Yangtze River Delta and the Greater Bay Area – are racing to meet President Xi Jinping’s call for breakthroughs in core technologies including artificial intelligence, as Beijing maps out priorities for the coming 15th five-year plan during the “two sessions”. As part of the annual meeting on Friday, provincial and municipal leaders of Zhejiang province outlined an ambitious strategy to become a key area of AI development and cement the province’s...
China has outlined a basket of measures to support its technology sector, from creating a more flexible and inclusive fundraising ecosystem to boosting demand for hi-tech products. During a high-profile press conference in Beijing, the country’s top economic officials laid out plans to deepen reforms to ChiNext – China’s board for start-ups – and make it easier and quicker for companies to refinance. “Technological innovation requires high investment, long cycles, and carries significant risks,”...
China has for the first time included commercial health insurance in its 2026 government work report, signalling efforts to strengthen the country’s social safety net and support the growth of innovative drugs and medical devices. On Thursday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang said the government would “work faster to develop commercial health insurance” and promote the “high-quality development of innovative drugs and medical devices” to better meet people’s diverse needs. Behind the unusual emphasis...
Leading Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer BYD has unveiled a new-generation battery featuring charging speeds that the company says can rival a refill at a petrol station. BYD’s Blade Battery 2.0, launched on Thursday, can be charged from 10 per cent to 70 per cent in five minutes, and to 97 per cent in nine minutes, which the company said was the world’s fastest charging speed for a mass-manufactured unit. Even in extreme weather, with temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius...
China’s policymakers want the digital economy to account for 12.5 per cent of gross domestic product by 2030, as Beijing accelerates its push to build a modern industrial system anchored in advanced manufacturing. The goal represents a significant increase from the 10.5 per cent share achieved in 2025, which was announced on Thursday during the annual “two sessions” parliamentary meetings and exceeded the initial target. A large part of China’s digital economy – activities facilitated by data,...
Donald Trump and his attorney general were sued on Thursday by retail investors in two social media rivals of TikTok seeking to reverse the US president’s approval of a deal by the company’s Chinese owner ByteDance to form a majority American-owned joint venture. The lawsuit, the first legal challenge to the deal, argues that Trump’s approval last year violated requirements set out in a 2024 divestiture law. Two California residents who hold shares in Alphabet and Meta Platforms sued, backed by...
Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun reached a US$10 million settlement to resolve a US Securities and Exchange Commission civil fraud case over his trading activity. Thursday’s settlement requires court approval, with the payment made by one of Sun’s companies. It came as President Donald Trump, a Republican, pushes to make the US a global hub for the cryptocurrency industry. Sun and his companies did not admit or deny wrongdoing, the SEC said in a letter to US District Judge Edgardo...
Hong Kong-listed Insilico Medicine has signed a cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates’ drug regulator to advance the use of its artificial intelligence tools in drug discovery across the region, even as geopolitical tensions escalate in the Middle East. Shares of Insilico rose as much as 12.8 per cent in morning trading on Thursday before paring gains to close 8.6 per cent higher at HK$56.10. The advance outpaced the benchmark Hang Seng Index, which edged up 0.3 per cent. The...
China has pledged to provide a range of supportive measures to promote the diffusion of advanced technology through all levels of the country’s economy, as Beijing seeks to strengthen frontier industries such as artificial intelligence amid an intensifying rivalry with the United States. In its annual work report, the government urged state-owned enterprises to take the lead in opening their vast industrial ecosystems to emerging technologies, and vowed to supply the necessary funding for all...
Beijing has emphasised the safe and orderly development of artificial intelligence amid growing global anxiety about the disruptive impact of the rapidly advancing technology, as the country’s leaders put the final stamp of approval on China’s next five-year plan at this year’s “two sessions”. The 15th five-year plan elevates China’s AI Plus initiative as a top national priority, according to a draft version of the document submitted for review to the National People’s Congress, China’s top...
Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com reported a 2.7 billion yuan (US$392 million) loss in the fourth quarter and a halving of annual profit amid an ongoing food delivery battle it ignited last year. The fourth-quarter loss contrasted with a profit of 9.9 billion yuan a year earlier, marking the company’s first quarterly loss since the start of 2022, according to its earnings results on Thursday. Profit for last year dropped nearly 53 per cent to 19.6 billion yuan. However, by non-generally accepted...
Mainland China and Hong Kong should ease listing rules for biotechnology companies and lower takeover thresholds for listed firms to capitalise on renewed foreign interest in the healthcare sector, venture capitalist Nisa Leung said. “Besides artificial intelligence, Premier Li Qiang also highlighted biomedicine in the ‘two sessions’ annual government work report,” said Leung, a managing partner at Aulis Capital. “We are paying attention to medical insurance and commercial insurance, but at the...
China’s top semiconductor executives have called for a nationwide push to build a domestic alternative to Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML, urging the industry to “abandon illusions and prepare for struggle” amid US sanctions. The current industry was too “small, fragmented and weak”, which was “dispersing numerous public resources”, according to an article co-authored by the co-founder of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) and leaders of Empyrean, Yangtze Memory...
Alibaba Group Holding is forming a dedicated internal task force headed by CEO Eddie Wu Yongming in a bid to funnel greater resources into its foundational AI model development efforts. On Thursday, Wu said in a letter to members of the company’s artificial intelligence research lab Tongyi that the task force would “jointly coordinate group-wide resources to accelerate foundational model development”. “In technology, standing still means falling behind,” Wu said in the letter, which was provided...
The momentum in China’s venture-capital industry, which is recovering after years of decline, is likely to continue this year, mainly bolstered by government financing, but an expert warned that the lack of funding diversity poses a hidden risk. Fundraising picked up in 2025, with most of the gains coming from government sources, as central policymakers loosened rules to allow local governments to issue more bonds to finance government guidance funds, according to a report released on Tuesday by...
Alibaba Group Holding has recruited a research scientist from Google DeepMind to bolster development efforts for its Qwen artificial intelligence models, in an internal restructuring that has seen the departure of previous technical lead Lin Junyang. While no successor to Lin was announced, former Google senior staff research scientist Zhou Hao was joining Alibaba as head of post-training research, replacing Yu Bowen, who also departed this week, two sources said. Zhou, who holds a PhD from the...
Wang Jian, a prominent Chinese artificial intelligence scholar and director at Zhejiang Lab, said China had both the “resources and responsibility” to make AI more accessible globally at a time when other countries, such as the US, were increasingly acting in their own interests. Speaking to the South China Morning Post on Wednesday on the sidelines of China’s annual legislative “two sessions” meetings in Beijing, Wang said the world remained far from the goal of turning AI into an...
The pace and size of outlicensing deals between Chinese drug makers and global partners have accelerated this year, highlighted by two agreements announced this week, each worth more than US$1 billion. The string of deals shows how China is becoming a sought-after source of drug candidates for multinational pharmaceutical companies, which are increasingly looking for long-term partnerships rather than one-off arrangements, analysts said. The latest deals, Sino Biopharmaceutical’s agreement with...
Technology stocks across China, South Korea and Japan have taken a beating as risk-off sentiment sweeps markets amid escalating fears that the US-Iran war may further disrupt tech infrastructure and supply chains. Hong Kong and Chinese tech stocks have been affected to a lesser degree than their Korean and Japanese peers because of the different levels of exposure to energy and shipping disruptions caused by the Middle East turmoil, analysts said. In Seoul, the Kospi index sank over 12 per cent...