South China Morning Pos / Tech

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1. Frontier AI at a cost: what Anthropic’s Fable 5.1 means for the US-China model race

   Anthropic’s powerful new Claude Fable 5.1 model has widened its lead in performance benchmarks over Chinese rivals, even as budget-friendly open-weight models from China continue to gain commercial traction globally. The American company said on Wednesday that Fable 5.1, along with a restricted-access version called Mythos 5.1, was the world’s most advanced model for software coding and complex knowledge work. The standard version scored 66 on Artificial Analysis’ Intelligence Index, taking the...

2. China’s No 2 foundry Hua Hong invests US$2b in new fab to meet surging AI-driven demand

   Major Chinese foundry Hua Hong Grace Semiconductor is pouring US$2 billion into a massive capacity expansion in the Chinese chip production hub of Wuxi, racing to meet skyrocketing domestic demand for AI infrastructure and bypass US tech curbs. The fresh capital would fund the construction of a new 12-inch speciality line, its third facility in the eastern Chinese city, the country’s second-largest contract chipmaker said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Tuesday. Once fully...

3. China cracks down on AI ‘slop’, clearing out clutter from WeChat, RedNote, Douyin

   China is cracking down on artificial intelligence-generated “slop” – low-grade, mass-produced synthetic content cluttering social media and news feeds – as part of a sweeping campaign against the abuse of the generative technology, the country’s top internet watchdog said on Wednesday. In a statement posted to its website, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said it had scrubbed more than 5.61 million pieces of harmful or illegal content and removed some 49,000 accounts during its...

4. China’s AMEC unveils 6 chip-making machines in a day, boosting self-reliance ambitions

   Chinese chip equipment giant Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) has unveiled six new machines – at different stages of commercialisation – in a single day as the company accelerates research and development to feed soaring local demand driven by Beijing’s self-reliance push. The new line-up, announced at an industry conference in Wuxi on Tuesday, spans several steps in chip production, including etching tools that carve microscopic patterns into wafers, deposition systems that build...

5. Tencent’s Hy4 model gains in open-source AI rankings after ecosystem-driven training

   Tencent Holdings’ use of its vast product ecosystem to train its new Hy4 preview model gives it an edge in developing AI agents and brings its flagship model suite back into the top tier of open-source offerings, according to analysts. The Chinese tech giant’s “differentiated product-plus-model strategy”, where preview models were first deployed across Tencent’s suite of products, enabled it to collect user data before feeding the information back into subsequent rounds of training, Goldman...

6. Rethinking cybersecurity operations in the age of artificial intelligence

   [The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Cybersecurity is evolving from a manual operation to one driven by artificial intelligence (AI). The volume, speed and sophistication of modern cyber threats now exceed the capabilities of conventional processes to handle them alone. AI is reshaping the operating model by automating repetitive, high-volume work while improving accuracy and efficiency across the security life cycle. By accelerating threat detection...

7. Chinese internet giants set to reap artificial intelligence profits in 2 to 3 years: UBS

   Internet platforms with vast data and large user bases will capture a larger share of artificial intelligence profits in two to three years, even though macro headwinds have temporarily fuelled investor caution over aggressive AI spending by Chinese tech giants, UBS analysts said. Investors have been cautious over a weak macro environment in the second half of the year, and greater AI spending for hardware and infrastructure would drag down short-term profits, but the industry’s power balance...

8. Enflame’s US$900m IPO tests appetite for China’s ‘little dragon’ AI chipmakers

   As Enflame Technology gears up for a 6.12 billion yuan (US$910.3 million) initial public offering on Shanghai’s Star Market, the Chinese artificial intelligence chipmaker must convince investors that its specialised chip strategy can withstand fierce competition from Huawei Technologies and other domestic rivals, while reducing its heavy revenue dependence on major backer Tencent Holdings. Online and offline subscriptions open on Wednesday, after the Shanghai-based start-up announced on Monday...

9. China’s tech push fuels fastest profit growth in 4 years amid signs of economic divide

   Artificial intelligence demand and technological domestic substitution drove profit growth for Chinese listed companies to its fastest pace in four years in the first half of 2026, underscoring the nation’s “K-shaped” economic structure as it transitions away from credit-fuelled expansion. Profit for firms on the chip-heavy Star Market under the Shanghai Stock Exchange surged more than fourfold from a year earlier in the six months to June, while those on the similarly structured ChiNext board...

10. What’s next after China court freezes US$318m in Nexperia assets amid Wingtech battle?

    A Chinese court’s order to freeze 2.14 billion yuan (US$318 million) in Nexperia-affiliated assets has cemented the operational independence of its Chinese manufacturing engine from its European headquarters, leaving its local facilities increasingly isolated amid a prolonged custody battle. The Dongguan Intermediate People’s Court in the southern province of Guangdong, where Nexperia’s biggest assembly and test plant is located, has frozen the equity interests in four subsidiaries owned by the...

11. Call for Trump-Xi AI safety talks comes as state media slams US AI governance

    An OpenAI executive and former White House adviser is calling for AI safety cooperation between Washington and Beijing ahead of a summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, even as Chinese state media launch a scathing attack on American frontier governance in artificial intelligence. “I have always believed US/China AI safety collaboration would be desirable but thought it was unlikely to happen,” Dean Ball, OpenAI’s head of strategic futures, wrote on X on Tuesday....

12. China tells carmakers, suppliers to avoid price wars abroad to pave way for healthy growth

    Beijing has ordered Chinese carmakers and component suppliers to refrain from offering steep discounts in overseas markets as they accelerate their global expansion. For the first time, three ministry-level authorities published guidelines governing Chinese carmakers abroad, aimed at improving their global competitiveness, according to a statement by the Ministry of Commerce. “The guidelines aim to promote long-term, healthy development of the Chinese automotive industry in international...

13. Manus resumes solo operations after collapse of US$2 billion Meta deal

    The Chinese-founded artificial intelligence start-up Manus announced on Tuesday that it had formally resumed independent operations, more than four months after Beijing blocked its US$2 billion acquisition by Meta Platforms. The company’s founding team would continue to lead Manus as an “independent agent lab”, the firm said in a blog post on its website, as it sought to move on from a months-long saga that has sent ripples through the Chinese and global technology sectors. The announcement came...

14. As Chinese chipmakers snap up local gear, self-sufficiency drive faces commercial test

    Chinese chipmakers are setting increasingly aggressive targets to source production equipment locally, adding pressure on domestic toolmakers to come up with machines that are reliable in the exacting environment of high-volume wafer production. Several new wafer fabrication plants, or fabs, in the country were setting explicit localisation targets, according to Jie Chen, chairman of Britech Semiconductor Equipment (Shanghai) Corp, who spoke at an industry conference in eastern China’s Wuxi on...

15. Shein slips on Hong Kong debut amid fast-fashion challenges

    Fast-fashion retailer Shein fell on its Hong Kong trading debut as the unprofitable company contends with rising competition and the loss of tax breaks in key markets. Its shares dropped 0.1 per cent from the initial public offering (IPO) price to close at HK$48.50. They earlier slumped as much as 10 per cent. The company raised HK$13.6 billion (US$1.7 billion) in its IPO, the fourth biggest in Hong Kong this year. The sale valued Shein at about US$26 billion, compared with a peak of about...

16. Pallas-1 sees China’s Galactic Energy join reusable launch push, closing in on SpaceX

    Chinese rocket maker Galactic Energy has successfully sent its Pallas-1 medium-to-large reusable rocket into orbit, marking the latest milestone in Beijing’s drive to develop reusable launch capabilities and narrow the gap with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The two-stage, liquid-propellant rocket lifted off at 10am on Tuesday from a self-built launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre’s commercial pilot zone in northwestern China’s Gansu province before entering its designated orbit, according to...

17. Foreign investors expected to eye more China A shares – but pace set to ease: analyst

    Foreign investors are expected to keep adding to their China A-share holdings, though the pace of buying is likely to slow from the surge in the first half of the year, according to a UBS analyst. “We still expect net inflows in the second half, but the pace will be somewhat slower than in the first half,” said Meng Lei, China equity strategist at UBS Securities, at UBS’s annual China A-share strategy conference in Shenzhen on Tuesday. Foreign appetite for A shares – domestic shares of mainland...

18. Foreign investors boost Chinese stock holdings as AI hardware, green energy lure inflows

    Foreign investors boosted exposures to yuan-traded Chinese stocks by about a third in the second quarter, buying into companies tied to the artificial intelligence supply chain and China’s strategic green-energy industry. Global fund managers held a combined 10.1 billion shares in mainland-listed companies by the end of June, up from 7.5 billion in the first quarter, according to financial data provider Wind. The value of foreign holdings surged 87 per cent to 272.8 billion yuan (US$40.6...

19. China’s Z.ai revenue jumps 400% as total losses narrow on explosive cloud gains

    Chinese artificial intelligence company Z.ai on Monday reported a 400 per cent increase in first-half revenue, driven by explosive growth in its open platform and application programming interface business, which helped narrow total losses despite higher research and development spending. Revenue for the six months ended June 30 rose to 953.89 million yuan (US$142 million). Full-year sales were expected to expand 514 per cent to 4.45 billion yuan, according to consensus estimates from analysts...

20. Huawei, with an eye on self-reliance, ploughs 25% of revenue into R&D at expense of profits

    Huawei Technologies poured more than a quarter of its first-half revenue into research and development, prioritising long-term technological independence over short-term earnings as first-half profit plunged 36 per cent. R&D expenses jumped 25 per cent year on year to 121.4 billion yuan (US$18 billion) for the six months through June, accounting for over 25 per cent of total revenue, according to a filing on Monday with the Shanghai Clearing House, the primary central clearing counterparty in...