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In-depth analysis of China’s AI industry, covering artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, robotics, AI chips, and large language models. This section tracks policy shifts, commercialization progress, and competitive dynamics shaping China’s rapidly evolving AI ecosystem.

ChinaBiz Briefing | CATL’s AI Bet, Xiaomi & Lenovo Margin Squeeze

Today’s developments highlight a stark divergence in China’s tech sector: the massive upside of AI transformation is colliding with severe hardware realities. While companies like CATL are aggressively deploying capital to dominate next-generation AI infrastructure, hardware giants including Xiaomi and Lenovo are battling brutal margin compression driven

Lenovo’s AI Transformation Boosts Profit as Memory Costs Rise

Lenovo has successfully transitioned from a legacy hardware vendor to an AI-native enterprise, marking the first time in its history that all three major business groups achieved simultaneous full-year profitability. Driven by a 105% surge in artificial intelligence-related sales, the company’s revenue for the 2025/26

MINISO Q1 Profit Boosted by AI Gains as US Growth Slows

A lucrative bet on artificial intelligence is heavily distorting the first-quarter profitability of MINISO Group Holding Ltd., masking a structural margin squeeze in its core retail operations driven by surging intellectual property costs and an increasingly capital-intensive overseas footprint. MINISO reported a 28.5% year-on-year revenue

Xiaomi Q1 Profit Plunges 43% as Memory Costs Rise and AI R&D Surges

Xiaomi reported a sharp earnings deterioration in the first quarter of 2026, with adjusted net profit plunging 43.1% year-on-year to RMB 6.1 billion (US$847 million) on revenue of RMB 99.1 billion (US$13.76 billion), down 10.9% year-on-year — a dual-line

Xiaomi Slashes AI Model Pricing by Up to 99% in Industry Race

Xiaomi Technology announced a permanent price reduction of up to 99% for its MiMo-V2.5 series APIs on May 27, 2026, marking the second major Chinese AI model provider to implement aggressive pricing cuts following DeepSeek's similar move earlier this year. The Beijing-based technology giant eliminated

China's Semiconductor Strategy Pivots as Xiaomi and NIO Drive Private Silicon Development

China’s semiconductor localization strategy has fundamentally decoupled from its traditional reliance on state-backed funding, with consumer electronics and electric vehicle manufacturers spearheading the development of advanced silicon in 2026. The structural transition is anchored by Xiaomi, which is advancing a 3-nanometer system-on-chip (SoC), and NIO,

ChinaBiz Briefing | Unitree’s Robot IPO Push, BYD's Japan Advance, and the PC AI War

Today’s developments highlight how Chinese companies are structurally adapting to technological and market ceilings. From Huawei engineering new semiconductor architectures to bypass trade restrictions, to tech giants reviving the PC to unlock AI’s full potential, the focus has shifted from pure scale to systemic efficiency. Meanwhile, as Chinese

China's Tech Giants Wage a New PC War — This Time, AI Is the Weapon

Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance are racing to plant AI agents on desktop operating systems, betting that the PC — long dismissed as a legacy terminal — may be the most defensible gateway to the next computing paradigm. The pivot is striking in its unanimity. Within months of each other in 2026, three

Huawei’s Six-Year Chip Push Tests Whether China Can Produce a Global Semiconductor Champion

When Huawei lost access to advanced global chip manufacturing after US export controls tightened in 2020, the company faced a structural problem shared across China’s semiconductor sector: how to sustain performance gains without access to the world’s most advanced lithography tools. Six years later, Huawei is attempting to

Unitree Races Toward China's First Humanoid Robot IPO, Betting Big on Embodied AI

A deliberate profit squeeze is the clearest signal yet that Unitree Robotics is pivoting from hardware champion to AI-driven platform company—even as it heads to the Shanghai Stock Exchange review panel on June 1. The Shanghai-headquartered robotics maker received formal notice on May 25 that the SSE