World News by Wild Rose

Chinese artificial intelligence model developers DeepSeek and MiniMax have completed export registration procedures and proceeded with open-source releases and overseas licensing activities, according to Chinese state media, days after Beijing moved to tighten oversight on AI tech transfers. Yuyuan Tantian, an influential social media account affiliated with state broadcaster CCTV, reported on Thursday evening that the two AI companies had completed the required registrations after Beijing...

Tesla’s “flying” Roadster stunt has set social media alight worldwide, turning a car launch into a debate about technological innovation and China-US rivalry. At an event in Texas on October 15, Tesla unveiled its redesigned sports car, the Roadster, with stunts including a takeoff from a steep, curved ramp and a leap over parked cars. Pre-orders are open in China with a deposit of 332,000 yuan (US$50,000) for the street-legal, two-seat “Performance” package. The flying-car reveal quickly turned...

“Chip War” author Chris Miller says China may need five years or longer to catch up in advanced chips. Speaking on the sidelines of the Barclays Asia Forum in Singapore, he said restrictions on access to cutting-edge chipmaking equipment constrain the country’s capabilities. He appeared on Bloomberg’s Insight with Haslinda Amin. (Source: Bloomberg)

China has taken a major step in spearheading the standardisation of brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies, as it now chairs the secretariat of a subcommittee jointly overseen by two key international organisations and lists the technology applications as a national development priority. The China-led subcommittee, known as ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 43, was set to formulate global standards regarding the communication and interaction between brains and computers that are applicable across...

Chinese scientists have developed a 100-channel single-photon detector, a breakthrough promising to pave the way for broadband quantum networks. State-of-the-art single-photon detectors – essential components underpinning photonic quantum technologies – could previously support a maximum of 32 detection channels for photon signals. Now, a newly developed interconnect scheme by a Shanghai-based team has broken this bottleneck, supporting more than 100 detection channels while maintaining accurate...

A knife-wielding intruder is confronted. A car is lifted to free a trapped victim. A pedestrian is pulled from the path of an oncoming vehicle. The scenes described are not from a Hollywood blockbuster, but a promotional clip for a new “guardian” robot created by the Chinese technology firm Unitree Robotics. The footage for the H2-X model, released on Wednesday, underscores a wider shift in strategy by the Hangzhou-based firm, as it focuses on finding practical, real-world uses for its athletic...

Last month, the US published the fine print of a US$686 million upgrade deal for Pakistan’s F-16 fighter jets. The deal is for data link systems, new encryption gear and a refit that keeps the jets flying until 2040. The notice says Pakistan can protect the technology to “substantially the same degree” as the US government. The Pakistan Air Force is also the only declared interested buyer of China’s J-35 stealth fighter, a generational leap in technology. The Chinese jet first flew at the Zhuhai...

Beijing-based smartphone and electric vehicle giant Xiaomi announced in mid-October that it would promote 31-year-old Luo Fuli to its highest-level position, once again putting the “AI prodigy” at the centre of heated discussion. The move came 10 months after Luo joined the company as head of its large language model (LLM) unit. Luo attracted significant public attention in late 2024, when Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun said during a live-stream that he hoped to hire her at an annual salary of...

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has fully open-sourced an internally developed framework designed to run AI models efficiently, as a senior researcher at the company described the growing divide between open-source and closed-source AI as a battle between “light and darkness”. The company on Tuesday released DeepInfer, an inference framework tailored to support its DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash model on both Nvidia’s SM100 Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs) and Huawei...

Yuki Chen, a prolific Chinese cybersecurity researcher, has joined leading Chinese artificial intelligence model company Z.ai as the country’s AI sector grapples with the technology’s growing impact on global cyberspace. Chen’s appointment comes amid growing concern over AI-assisted cyberattacks and autonomous agents acting beyond their instructions, including recent cases involving Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings as well as US start-ups OpenAI and Anthropic. “New journey, new mission!” Chen...

China is ready to commercialise a 200-kilovolt transmission electron microscope with an information resolution down to 0.1 nanometres that could introduce a new challenger into a market long dominated by the US and Japan. Developed by Hefei-based manufacturer CIQTEK, the microscope features a point resolution of 0.25nm and an information limit of 0.1nm – on par with leading workhorse models on the market. This marks a shift for the country’s expanding advanced electron microscopy industry from...

For iPhone users in China, the calendar has long presented a small but recurring problem. On a Sunday designated as a make-up workday, an alarm might remain silent. On a regular Friday converted into a day off, it might ring anyway. Nearly 17 years after entering the Chinese market, Apple quietly updated its operating system in September to automatically recognise China’s official schedule of adjusted holidays and workdays. The fix is modest, but it points to a larger question: what happens when...

Artificial intelligence-powered glasses can act as tour guides, snap photos hands-free and translate foreign languages. The devices also sell at relatively affordable prices in China. But are they the perfect travel companion? Not yet. AI glasses were slowly catching on with travellers as the technology improved and more devices entered the market, analysts said, but technical hitches were slowing mass adoption of the smartphone-linked gear that could be worn like ordinary spectacles. “They can...

China’s artificial intelligence companies have spent years persuading consumers to pay for their technology. Now, Moonshot AI, the start-up behind Kimi, is taking a different approach: offering AI computing benefits through a credit card. The company has teamed up with the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) and American Express for what it calls “the world’s first AI native credit card”. After getting one for myself, the experience offered an intriguing way to bring AI services into everyday...

A fleet of artificial intelligence agents operating on a Tencent Holdings cloud platform made thousands of attempts to circumvent security protections on Alibaba Group Holding’s mapping service, according to findings by third-party researchers. It is one of the first reported “rogue” AI events involving Chinese companies, following a string of recent high-profile incidents in the US, including from OpenAI and Anthropic, highlighting the risks of increasingly autonomous AI systems. Agents running...

The much-anticipated opening of the revamped Huanggang Port border crossing between Hong Kong and Shenzhen on Monday was marked by excitement, eagerness and confusion. At around 8am, 1½ hours after the control point opened, many private vehicles were neatly lining up for immigration clearance. The use of new technology, a new location and a new facility meant that extra time and patience were needed. Visitors, mostly tourists and retirees travelling on foot, had a wow moment inside the modern...

China has begun building the world’s first utility-scale power plant combining two emerging technologies: supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) generation and large-scale molten salt energy storage. The Ruitan project, under construction at a coal-fired power station in Yantai in eastern China’s Shandong province, is intended to demonstrate how combining these technologies can reduce energy wastage and improve the stability of the electrical grid. Electricity produced when demand is low is stored...

New research has exposed a potential flaw in the memory-saving technology underpinning DeepSeek’s models, marking a rare challenge to a breakthrough that has helped the Chinese artificial intelligence lab close the gap with US rivals OpenAI and Anthropic with its low-cost approach. The findings were published late last month in a paper led by researchers from ByteDance and co-authors affiliated with Princeton University, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. The study,...

Xiaomi Corp shares jumped the most in three months after the Chinese electric vehicle maker reported strong order numbers for its SkyNomad model.