RSS feed for Economy & Markets →
A sudden 7.7% correction in the Star 50 index on July 3 has jolted investors and policymakers who have debated for months whether China’s runaway AI rally is built on durable economic gains or speculative excess.
Hong Kong now processes more than half of the chips imported into China, a record share that underscores the city’s renewed importance as a gateway for semiconductor flows into the mainland.
China’s AI sector posted a blistering 65% gain across the first half of 2026, yet the mood among professional investors has shifted from euphoria to caution.
What Alibaba Cloud said and what the numbers mean Alibaba Cloud has signaled a marked acceleration in monetizing its Qwen family of models: according to Pandaily reporting and company disclosures, revenue tied to Qwen tokens rose 15-fold in the first five months of 2026.
China’s top governing body has laid out a sweeping policy agenda for the second half of 2026, covering three distinct but equally significant priorities: artificial intelligence, foreign trade, and the green economy.
As artificial intelligence rapidly transitions from experimental chatbots to autonomous agents capable of executing complex workflows, governments worldwide are grappling with the impending impact on the labor market. In China, the response is taking the form of a massive, state-directed data-gathering initiative.
The global semiconductor industry is witnessing a quiet but profound shift at the very foundation of its supply chain. Chinese chip material manufacturers are aggressively ramping up production of cutting-edge products, directly challenging the long-standing dominance of Japanese incumbents in a market valued at $73.2 billion.
As the United States and China vie for dominance in the global artificial intelligence race, a critical battleground is emerging in the Global South. Across Africa, Chinese technology companies are rapidly gaining ground, not by selling expensive proprietary software, but by aggressively promoting open-source AI models.
The massive capital expenditure driving the global artificial intelligence boom is no longer confined to high-end graphics processing units (GPUs) and advanced memory chips. The intense demand for AI hardware is now cascading through the supply chain, triggering significant price hikes and shortages of foundational upstream materials and basic electronic components.
After several years of sluggish activity and geopolitical headwinds, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) has staged a dramatic recovery. Driven by a massive influx of mainland Chinese artificial intelligence, semiconductor, and advanced manufacturing companies, the exchange has recorded its strongest first-half initial public offering (IPO) performance in five years.
The transition of humanoid robots from highly choreographed laboratory demonstrations to functional industrial deployment has taken a significant step forward. AgiBot, a prominent Shanghai-based robotics startup also known as Zhiyuan Robotics, has successfully completed a grueling six-day factory trial at Longcheer Technology’s manufacturing facility in Nanchang.
China’s manufacturing sector returned to unexpected growth in June, propelled by a massive surge in global demand for artificial intelligence hardware and advanced electronics. The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to 50.3, up from 50.0 in May, according to a survey released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The artificial intelligence price war that swept through China’s tech sector this spring appears to be hitting its physical limits. DeepSeek, the Hangzhou-based AI unicorn that triggered a massive wave of industry-wide price cuts in May, is now reversing course.
Despite intense geopolitical pressure and US export controls designed to constrain its technological advancement, China’s artificial intelligence sector is experiencing an unprecedented funding boom. The country is now minting new billion-dollar startups at a staggering rate.
The initial euphoria surrounding enterprise artificial intelligence is colliding with a harsh financial reality: running advanced AI models at scale is incredibly expensive. As businesses shift from simple chatbots to complex, autonomous AI agents, the computing power required, and the associated costs, are skyrocketing.
China’s new outbound investment regulations, due to take effect on July 1, are casting a spotlight on how Chinese AI companies pursue global markets.
The US pressure campaign against China’s semiconductor industry is running into a basic market reality: when global memory is scarce and expensive, buyers will look for supply wherever they can find it. ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China’s most important domestic DRAM maker, has reportedly secured a $3 billion memory supply agreement with Tencent Holdings.
The application of artificial intelligence to pharmaceutical research continues to generate massive commercial partnerships, underscoring the industry’s belief in AI’s potential to revolutionize drug discovery. In the latest major development, Hong Kong-headquartered Insilico Medicine has entered into a strategic research and development collaboration with South Korea’s SK Biopharmaceuticals.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), often referred to as the central bank for central banks, has issued a stark warning regarding the financial underpinnings of the global artificial intelligence boom.
The global artificial intelligence landscape is undergoing a massive, cost-driven realignment. While Silicon Valley continues to push the absolute boundaries of AI capabilities, Chinese developers have quietly launched a brutal price war that is fundamentally reshaping enterprise adoption.
