World News by Wild Rose

Z.ai, the Chinese artificial intelligence model developer listed in Hong Kong, is seeking to raise about HK$15.7 billion (US$2 billion) through a placement of roughly 21.97 million new H shares at HK$714 apiece, according to a company filing on Sunday. The company also announced a 20.14 billion yuan (US$3 billion) convertible-bond sale, according to its filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange. Z.ai, also known as Zhipu AI, closed at HK$793 on Friday, down 73 per cent from its intraday high of...

The US-China race for artificial intelligence dominance has entered a new phase: using AI to build better AI. Leading AI companies in the United States and China are increasingly focused on deploying advanced models to write code, design experiments, and develop training techniques that can be used to improve more powerful models. The ultimate goal is to achieve what the industry refers to as recursive self-improvement (RSI) – the creation of AI systems that can train themselves...

A US congressional advisory body on China said on Friday that leading Chinese artificial intelligence firms declined to meet its members during a recent Beijing visit over concerns that doing so could expose the firms to US sanctions. But members also underscored the importance of the coming AI dialogue between Washington and Beijing. “We were told you guys are a really scary commission, and you do hawkish anti-China things, and they’re afraid if they meet with you, they might be put on the...

Fresh clues are emerging about a new type of Chinese drone being developed as a long-range intelligence and surveillance platform intended to operate deep inside contested airspace. New photographs circulated on Chinese internet forums earlier this month that appear to show the massive drone in the air, offering much clearer views of its wing shape than earlier images. The original source of the photos and exactly where they were taken have not been independently verified. Andreas Rupprecht, a...

American artificial intelligence (AI) giant Anthropic has accused its Chinese AI rivals DeepSeek and Moonshot on Thursday of covertly routing customer requests to its Claude models, then showing users the responses as if they were from their own models. The new allegations mark a further escalation in US criticism of China’s AI industry practices. Earlier this week, three US government agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), claimed...

DeepSeek has released its V4.1 Flash model, claiming it outperforms its previous flagship while cutting inference costs and boosting speeds – the latest salvo in China’s aggressive price-and-performance war. The Chinese artificial intelligence developer said on Thursday that V4.1 Flash used a new “Causal-Encoder-Decoder” architecture. While built on a massive 552 billion-parameter framework, it relies on a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) design. In traditional AI, every query runs through the entire...

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up Moonshot AI, developer of the popular Kimi K3 model, may explore options for dual listings in Hong Kong and Shanghai in pursuit of greater capital and exposure, according to two people familiar with the matter. Since a meeting with its financial backers in July, when the Beijing-based company negotiated detailed arrangements for an initial public offering in Hong Kong, it has hinted at options to also list on a mainland bourse afterwards, one source...

A selloff in Chinese optical-component stocks has only made the case for one of the hottest corners of the artificial intelligence trade more compelling, according to a top-performing money manager.

The Trump administration sanctioned Chinese-language marketplace Xinbi Guarantee on Wednesday, along with two affiliated organisations, as part of a wider crackdown on transnational cybercrime. The US Department of Justice also announced it had seized Telegram channels and cryptocurrency wallets tied to the platform, which has over 650,000 users, freezing more than US$52 million in potentially laundered funds in just one day. “This is not a distant overseas crime story,” said Jeanine Pirro, the...

Greg Reverdiau, an Arizona-based drone trainer, said he saw something highly unusual for politically polarised America when he waded through public comments on a US government proposal to restrict foreign-made drones: a consensus. Reverdiau, the founder of Pilot Institute, which helps aviators obtain licences, said he reviewed over 3,800 comments submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and estimates that about 98 per cent opposed the proposal or raised concerns about it. “Those...

If mastering drone-swarm technology was not difficult enough, China is now tackling the more complex task of integrating uncrewed land, sea and air platforms, according to the country’s leading developer in the field. In an article posted on China Electronics Technology Group Corporation’s (CETC) social media account on Sunday, the company’s Intelligent Technology Research Institute said drone-swarm technology was not merely “many drones flying together”, but an intelligent, distributed combat...

US cybersecurity researchers have demonstrated how artificial intelligence could help hijack WeChat accounts via unanswered voice calls, intensifying concerns about AI-driven cyber threats and prompting renewed calls for bilateral cooperation between the United States and China. US security firm Calif said on Tuesday that its AI system identified a critical flaw in Tencent Holdings’ widely used messaging and payments app in July. In just a little over a week, researchers developed WeWorm – an...

When President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington for his planned September 24 visit – his first state-level visit to Washington in more than a decade – artificial intelligence is expected to be near the top of the agenda. Both administrations are preparing for their first formal dialogue on AI. Washington has framed much of that conversation around the need for tighter controls on sensitive technologies. That framing is the problem. For much of the debate over US science and technology policy...

China’s top court has issued new guidance on how judges should handle civil cases involving artificial intelligence, setting out rules on liability for deepfakes, voice cloning, hallucinations and violations of personal rights. Although Beijing has yet to pass a dedicated AI law, the guidelines expand the country’s legal framework governing the technology. The Supreme People’s Court’s 24-article opinion, released on Monday, instead provides guidance for handling AI-related disputes under...

Remote locations are helping data centers avoid land and power issues seen in Europe and the US.

Fresh off a joint air drill, China will for the first time showcase several PLA Air Force aircraft overseas at an air show this week. The featured aircraft were selected for the air show in Egypt to demonstrate the air force’s integrated combat abilities and export potential, according to a military analyst. China’s armed forces on Tuesday posted pictures of Z-20, J-16, YY-20, and KJ-500 with its social media postings about the El Alamein International Airshow. The PLA Air Force said the...

We have put together stories from our coverage last weekend to help you stay informed about news across Asia and beyond. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China will never allow any country in this world to achieve AI dominance: Victor Gao 2. Curiosity beats perfect statements, UK elite universities tell Hong Kong students 3. China’s youth job crisis drives graduates to German vocational apprenticeships 4. Rich Dad, Poor Dad author’s vast debts...

China has been urged to draw on the lessons from Ukraine’s communications as it looks at new forms of wartime messaging. A recent study concluded that in the complex modern information environment, possessing advanced technology was not enough because success would depend on “weaving” together the information strategy and military operations. It said such campaigns should try to shatter the adversary’s sense of security while strengthening domestic resolve and gathering international...

China will thwart US ambitions for global artificial intelligence (AI) dominance, the vice-president of the Centre for China and Globalisation has said, while warning that Washington’s military-focused strategy was pushing towards “AI for evil”. Addressing the Penang Peace Dialogue in Malaysia on Sunday, Victor Gao said the US was “weaponising and militarising AI”, and integrating the technology into systems ranging from drones and ballistic missiles to everyday software and hardware. This drive...

Dubbed the ‘project of the century’ by Beijing, it has been included in China’s 15th Five-Year Plan for renewable energy; of concern to India is the impact it could have downstream, particularly in the aftermath of the recent devastating flash flood along the Nepal-China border

For four years, Beijing-based Clare Zhang worked as a research analyst at a corporate advisory firm, helping companies assess technologies and competitors for projects they planned to list – until late last year, when she was told that artificial intelligence had reduced the number of analysts the company needed and could afford. Her job involved combing through company filings and public records to produce market and competitor studies that sometimes ran to 500 pages. But AI could increasingly...

A team of cybersecurity experts has announced they successfully compromised the latest Starlink user terminals, crossing the security boundaries of the world’s largest satellite constellation. In a post on its social media account on Tuesday, Darknavy, an independent cybersecurity research institute headquartered in Singapore and Shanghai, said it had used sophisticated hardware attacks to gain full administrative control over the terminals, allowing it to run any custom code on the...

The US and China race to produce the world's leading artificial intelligence.

China’s science and technology minister Yin Hejun has called for global cooperation to manage the opportunities and risks posed by artificial intelligence, as Beijing and Washington face renewed trade and tech tensions ahead of a planned meeting between their leaders later this month. Speaking at the G20 Innovation Ministerial Meeting held in the United States, Yin said the development of AI and other emerging technologies had entered an “unprecedentedly active” period, with opportunities and...

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...