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Explainers

In-depth guides that explain China’s technology, policy, and business landscape — from chipmaking and AI to space, energy, and geopolitics. Built for readers who want context, not just headlines.

China's Humanoid Robotics Industry: From Demo Stage to Commercial Reality

What it takes to build a sustainable robotics business — and why hardware alone is no longer enough What Is the Humanoid Robotics Industry, and Where Does It Stand Today? Humanoid and legged robotics represents a category of automation fundamentally different from conventional industrial machinery. Unlike fixed robotic arms on a

How Chinese EV Makers Choose Battery Suppliers

Battery sourcing has become an increasingly important issue for China’s electric vehicle industry. The key question is not simply which battery maker an automaker uses, but how it allocates battery orders across suppliers. August installation data from major EV makers and battery companies shows two distinct patterns: automakers often

Tencent Games' Global Strategy: Live Service, Evergreen IPs, and the AI Bet

What Is Tencent's Long-Term Gaming Strategy? Tencent is not simply trying to own the most gaming studios or publish the most titles. Its stated strategic logic rests on three interlocking pillars: building evergreen games that retain players for years or decades; making more disciplined overseas investments that

From Battery King to One of Many: How China’s EV Makers Are Reducing Their Dependence on CATL

The Battery King and Its Changing Court For most of the past decade, building a competitive electric vehicle in China almost certainly meant sourcing a battery from Contemporary Amperex Technology — better known as CATL, or Ningwang ("Battery King") in Chinese financial media. That arrangement is now changing in

NVIDIA's Hugging Face Acquisition: What It Means for China's Open-Source AI Models

Why Does NVIDIA Want to Buy Hugging Face? Hugging Face is the de facto distribution hub for AI models. Developers searching for model weights, deployment guides, and benchmarking data typically start here. The platform itself generates modest revenue — roughly $150 million annually — but its strategic value lies entirely in its

China's AI Capital Race: Why Every Major Player Is Raising Billions at Once

What Is Happening? Within the span of roughly two months in mid-2026, nearly every significant player in China's AI ecosystem — from internet giants to freshly listed foundation model startups — launched major capital raises in near-simultaneous fashion. Alibaba sold 710 million new shares on the Hong Kong

The US-China AI Race: Chips, Models, Value Capture and Three Ways to Win

The real competition spans chips, infrastructure, data control, and applications — and the scorecard looks different depending on whether you're a company, a government, or an individual. What Is This Really About? Most coverage of the US-China AI rivalry focuses on benchmark scores and model releases. That framing

China's EV Industry Has Won the Battery War. Now the Real Fight Begins.

For years, the defining question in China's electric vehicle market was simple: how far can it go, and how fast can it charge? Battery range and charging speed were the headline metrics, the centerpiece of every launch event, the first thing consumers asked about. That question has largely

China's Flash Model Race: Why Efficiency, Not Scale, Now Defines AI Competition

The battle among China's top AI labs has shifted from "who has the biggest model" to "who can do the most with the least." Here's why that matters — and what it means for the industry's future. What Is a "

China's Embodied AI IPO Wave: Real Technology, Unresolved Gaps

Why the listings of Unitree and AgiBot tell us more about capital cycles than commercial readiness What Is "Embodied AI" — and Why Is It Suddenly Everywhere? Embodied AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that interact with and operate within the physical world through a body — whether a humanoid