eChina.news

Innovation

Chinese optical chip stocks extend rout amid fears of potential US curbs

Renewed fears of potential US trade curbs on next-generation optical transceivers for data centres have sent shares of Chinese suppliers tumbling, deepening a sell-off across artificial intelligence supply chain stocks. Shares of Chinese optical chipmakers extended their losses for a second straight session on Friday despite reassurances from major suppliers, while China’s benchmark CSI 300 Index slid 1.3 per cent by the midday break to its lowest level since August last year. Upstream laser...

October 9, 2026

Innovation

Can China match up with Meta’s Muse in race to harness AI agents?

Meta Platforms’ breakout Muse personal AI agent is shining a spotlight on a new battleground in artificial intelligence – one in which China’s biggest internet companies are already jostling for position. Launched on September 8, Muse surpassed 2.5 million downloads in its first two weeks and topped free-app rankings on Apple and Google’s US app stores. Its popularity has drawn fresh attention to the emerging market for what are known as agent harnesses. Unlike chatbots, which merely respond to...

October 8, 2026

Innovation

China’s AI chipmaker Biren tumbles 12% as it seeks US$510 million in share placement

Shares of artificial intelligence chipmaker Shanghai Biren Technology tumbled more than 12 per cent in Hong Kong on Thursday amid plans to raise HK$4 billion (US$510 million) through a share placement, as competition with other Chinese Nvidia challengers intensifies. The sell-off followed a stock exchange filing by the Hong Kong-listed company on late Wednesday, which revealed it had engaged placing agents on a “best effort” basis to issue 130 million new shares at HK$31.08 apiece. The offering...

October 8, 2026

Innovation

US AI firm Anthropic enables Chinese-language options for Claude chatbot

US artificial intelligence company Anthropic has introduced Chinese-language options to its Claude chatbot in supported markets, even as it continues to block users from mainland China. Checks by the South China Morning Post on Thursday confirmed that Claude’s web interface now lets users select simplified and traditional Chinese as their preferred on-screen language. China also briefly appeared as a billing country option before disappearing from the settings. Users on X have shared screenshots...

October 8, 2026

Innovation

Reporter’s notebook: my week with Huawei’s new US$3,500 trifold phone

When I took out the US$3,500 Huawei Mate XT 2 over a family dinner during China’s “golden week” – the long National Day holiday in early October – the trifold phone quickly became the centre of discussion: my father and his peers took turns playing with the device, marvelling at the sleek design while debating whether it was true innovation or pure luxury. It wasn’t the first time unfolding its massive 10.2 inch display raised a few eyebrows at dining tables during the week I spent trying out...

October 8, 2026

Innovation

China’s open-weight AI models are winning global users. Who is capturing the value?

China’s open-weight artificial intelligence models are taking off globally, but much of the money they generate is flowing to third-party providers rather than the companies that create them, according to a new study. Developers including DeepSeek and Moonshot AI make their model weights – essentially the “brains” of their AI systems – freely available for download. This strategy, which has accelerated global adoption over the past two years, allows other companies to run the models on their own...

October 7, 2026

Innovation

US risks ceding AI governance leadership to China and the EU

Standing alongside prominent technology executives, US President Donald Trump announced a voluntary agreement under which major artificial intelligence (AI) companies will use internal controls and monitoring, outside audits and board oversight to manage risks. The White House calls the commitments “morally binding”, but the accord does not create a comparable system of legal enforcement. The administration’s logic is understandable. AI is becoming a source of economic and military power, and...

October 7, 2026

Innovation

China’s ‘city of the future’, Xiongan, hunting high-value tech firms: sources

China’s Xiongan New Area is accelerating its hunt for technology firms as the city, designed partly to house state-owned institutions relocated from Beijing, moves to nurture its own industries, according to people familiar with its plans and local officials. Officials were looking to attract tech companies that could reach valuations of 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion), hoping some would list on stock markets, including Hong Kong’s, in the next few years, sources said, adding that the key...

October 7, 2026

Innovation

Would China agree to slow AI development? That’s the wrong question

The latest US-China summit covered a wide range of topics including artificial intelligence (AI). However, the official readouts from both countries did not touch upon an issue that has generated heated debate: whether the United States and China should agree to pause or slow down the development of frontier AI. That absence has triggered considerable discussion. During my recent visit to New York, many US friends asked whether Beijing would ever agree to some form of arrangement. Before...

October 6, 2026

Innovation

Nvidia-backed Reflection AI challenges Chinese dominance in open-weight models

An Nvidia-backed US start-up has unveiled an open-weight model to challenge China’s dominance in freely available artificial intelligence, releasing a system that early third-party testing suggests could be one of the most token-efficient open models in its class. Reflection AI on Monday debuted Beam, its first open-weight model built for coding, reasoning and agentic tasks. The US firm said Beam was “competitive” with GLM-5.2 from Z.ai – also known as Zhipu AI – and was “approaching” Alibaba...

October 6, 2026

Innovation

Dario Amodei’s American AI imperialism

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei seems to believe that he, the American artificial intelligence (AI) industry and the United States are the only ones who should have the right to determine the fate of humanity. While he pays lip service to involving other democracies in AI development, which ones remotely approach the technological capacities of the US and China? Do other non-democratic developing countries not count? His self-belief is far more dangerous than mere commercial greed. Like Peter Thiel,...

October 4, 2026

Innovation

Hong Kong users caught off guard as Anthropic tightens VPN access to Claude

US artificial intelligence company Anthropic appears to have stepped up enforcement of geographical restrictions on its Claude models in Hong Kong, with local users reporting abrupt account suspensions after accessing the service through virtual private networks (VPNs). A wave of complaints surfaced on social media platforms X and Reddit on Thursday, as users who had operated accounts for months using VPNs found them suddenly disabled. One Hong Kong-based user posted on the “r/claude” subreddit...

October 2, 2026