China’s Spring Festival has emerged as a high-stakes arena for artificial intelligence and robotics companies, with tech giants Tencent Holdings and Baidu committing a combined 1.5 billion yuan (US$215 million) to their digital red packet campaigns. Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent announced on Sunday that its AI chatbot app Yuanbao would give away…
A new action plan released by the Qianhai authorities in Shenzhen aims to strengthen its position as a “key partner” to Hong Kong rather than a competitor, further bolstering the city’s status as a global hub for finance, trade and talent. The 2026 action plan, released recently by authorities, is set to deepen cooperation between…
Specialised data sets can make AI services more helpful to vulnerable users who have become progressively reliant on them for emotional support and health assistance, according to Lu Shiyu, a senior researcher at Tencent Research Institute (TRI). Since 2024, Lu’s team at TRI – the public strategy research unit of Shenzhen-based Tencent – has been…
“Biotechnology is a high-risk field like a ‘molecular casino’,” said founder Alex Zhavoronkov. “Even with artificial intelligence, you can lose 90 per cent of the time.” The 11-year-old company was training and testing an AI-powered drug-discovery tool, Pharma.AI, to “enable faster, cheaper and more successful drug discovery with higher novelty and confidence”, he said. Zhavoronkov…
Mannings, one of Hong Kong’s largest health and beauty chains, will cease all retail operations in mainland China, both online and offline, as it adjusts its strategy in the highly competitive market. In a letter to its members, Mannings China said “its physical stores on the mainland will close permanently after January 15, 2026”. Its…
Chinese fintech giant Ant Group has pressed ahead with its strategic move into the fast-growing healthcare sector with a major upgrade to its artificial intelligence health app AQ, positioning the platform to work like a fitness companion or a family doctor. The new features included integration of records from smart devices made by Apple, Huawei…
TH International (NASDAQ: THCH) launched an eco-friendly drinking straw on December 3, 2025, developed with Tencent’s CarbonXmade program and Suzhou Kunshen using Carbon Capture Utilization (CCU) to convert industrial CO₂ into PPC-TPU biodegradable material. The straw debuts in stores across Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen and was showcased…
Apple last week introduced a Mini Apps Partner Program whereby it would ask a 15% cut of purchases made using its systems in mini apps and games on the iPhone. The announcement was the result of a protracted negotiation with Tencent, China’s most valuable company, whose WeChat serves as the world’s preeminent mini apps collection….
A draft of the “Anti-Monopoly Compliance Guidelines for Internet Platforms”, published over the weekend by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), focused heavily on the sophisticated, often opaque ways in which online platforms with significant market power can exploit technological advantages to exclude rivals and harm consumer interests. The document identified eight “new risks”,…
China’s internet giants are poised to drive the continued adoption of artificial intelligence in the country, with AI chip shortages unlikely to pose significant obstacles for the sector in the short term, according to JPMorgan analysts. Sustained user adoption of AI features would be a key theme in the coming year despite the absence of…