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Doubao Ends Free Ride, Targets RMB 228M Monthly Subscription Revenue

ByteDance has flipped the monetization switch on Doubao, China's largest AI application by monthly active users, introducing a three-tier paid subscription model that directly challenges ChatGPT Plus—at half the price. The June 24, 2026 announcement marks a structural inflection point for ByteDance's AI strategy.

Unitree Enters Japan With GMO Deal, Targeting Labor-Starved Market With ¥100,000 Daily Rental Model

China's leading humanoid robot maker secures its first formal distribution agreement in East Asia, using a lease-first strategy to penetrate one of the world's most demanding robotics markets — ahead of most Western rivals. Unitree Robotics, the Hangzhou-based humanoid robot manufacturer, officially entered the Japanese

CATL’s TENER Marks Sodium-Ion Storage Breakthrough

Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world's largest battery maker, unveiled its TENER sodium-ion energy storage system at a product launch event in Munich, Germany on June 22, positioning the technology for its first large-scale commercial deployment and signaling a potential hedge against lithium price volatility for

China's Four E-Commerce Giants Diverge on Global Strategy as Growth Slows

Alibaba, JD.com, Temu, and TikTok Shop are no longer competing on the same terms — Q1 2026 data reveals four structurally distinct overseas playbooks, with consequences that will define which platforms survive a maturing cross-border market. The era of frictionless, parcel-direct globalization for Chinese e-commerce is over.

Doubao 2.1 Takes on Claude Opus 4.7: 80% Lower Cost, Comparable Coding

ByteDance has launched Doubao 2.1, a frontier AI model that undercuts Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7 on price by roughly 80% while matching it on key coding benchmarks — a combination that directly challenges the economics of enterprise AI deployment globally. The announcement came June 23 at the

Morgan Stanley Bets on China Humanoid Robots: 50K Units, $2B Market in 2026

Morgan Stanley's Asia industrials team published a sweeping upgrade to its China humanoid robot outlook on June 23, 2026, lifting its full-year shipment forecast by 79% to 50,000 units — up from a prior estimate of 28,000 — and projecting the market will scale to 446,000

ChinaBiz Briefing | Alibaba vs ByteDance AI Video Battle, Compute Crunch, and CATL's UK Debut

China's tech and industrial sectors delivered a dense set of signals on June 23: Alibaba and ByteDance traded blows in AI video generation, the structural cost crisis inside China's AI model industry came into sharper focus, CATL extended its battery infrastructure ambitions into the UK, XPeng

LandSpace's $10.4B IPO Bet: Chasing China's SpaceX Crown Amid Mounting Losses

China's most-watched commercial rocket startup files for a STAR Market listing that would value it at RMB 75 billion (US$10.4 billion) — a 275% premium over its last known private valuation — even as cumulative losses breach RMB 4.8 billion and revenue remains in the single-

Chinese EV Brands Capture 12% Share in Norway's Near-Total Electric Market

Norway registered 15,560 new vehicles in May 2026, a 9.1% year-on-year increase that marked the country's strongest May performance in four decades. Behind that headline figure lies a more nuanced picture: cumulative registrations for the first five months of the year stood at 53,

China's AI Firms Are Rationing Tokens. That's the Bubble Warning Nobody Wants to Hear.

China's artificial intelligence industry has hit a structural compute ceiling in 2026 — and the rationing of token capacity by the country's most advanced model companies signals a risk that goes well beyond supply-chain inconvenience: it raises the question of whether China's AI boom