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Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 0.86% with major internet platforms declining as investors grew cautious on consumer‑facing tech. At the same time, semiconductor suppliers and AI model companies jumped sharply, reflecting a thematic shift toward hardware and generative‑AI plays.

China's internet regulators ordered platforms to remove accounts and content that published AI‑generated material without required labelling, leading to the handling of 13,421 accounts and the removal of over 543,000 items. The move reflects Beijing's broader strategy to regulate generative AI and to force platforms into active policing of synthetic content.

ByteDance has integrated its advanced video-generation model Seedance 2.0 into the Doubao app, letting users create short multi-shot videos from prompts and reference images. Early tests by creators show strong capabilities in multi-camera composition and audio-visual coherence, prompting excitement about creative democratization and concern about industry disruption, IP and ethical risks.

An investigative report links a network of ‘shadow’ firms tied to Vanke insiders with a string of quick‑turn land and project transfers into the listed group. These arrangements coincide with hundreds of billions of yuan in intercompany receivables and large impairment charges that have substantially worsened Vanke’s financial losses and raised fresh governance questions.

China’s internet regulator has removed over 543,000 pieces of AI-generated content and sanctioned 13,421 accounts for failing to label synthetic material. The enforcement targets fabricated human-interest videos, deepfakes impersonating public figures, grotesque edits of children’s characters, and marketplaces selling tools to strip AI labels.

Elon Musk has reorganised xAI into four focused product teams — Grok (core model), Grok Code, Grok Imagine, and Macrohard (digital agents) — while pressing an ambitious plan to scale compute through terrestrial clusters and lunar manufacturing. The restructure follows co‑founder departures and a SpaceX acquisition that folded xAI into a larger, capital‑intensive space and social‑media strategy.

Xiaomi Auto has publicly endorsed China’s new automotive pricing compliance guidelines, committing to transparent pricing, an end to price fraud and coordination with partners to enforce the rules. The move aligns Xiaomi with Beijing’s push to shift the auto industry away from discount‑led competition toward quality and technology‑driven value creation.

Three leading Chinese AI firms unveiled near‑simultaneous upgrades that signal a shift from demo‑level coding assistants to production‑oriented, agentic systems. Zhipu launched GLM‑5 as an open‑source foundation for long‑horizon engineering tasks, while MiniMax and DeepSeek pushed product and context upgrades aimed at real‑world throughput and extended interactions.

Xiaomi’s YU7 SUV sold 37,869 units in January, claiming the top spot on China’s passenger‑car retail chart and signaling the brand’s growing strength in the EV market. The result reflects Xiaomi’s retail channels and brand pull amid a soft season for car sales and comes as the company prepares for further model updates and possible overseas attention.

Deng Hong’s Hengchang distillery has been hit with RMB 132 million in tax arrears, exposing the failure of an aggressive, real‑estate style expansion into premium sauce‑aroma baijiu. Flooded by “debt wine,” collapsing retail prices and heavy fixed investments, Hengchang’s plight exemplifies a wider sector correction that is forcing mid‑tier brands to confront inventory, leverage and channel risks.

Insta360 awarded five Greater Bay Area apartments and six luxury cars at its 2026 annual gala, with all winners from the post‑90s generation and none senior executives. The move underscores intense competition for young talent in China’s tech sector and raises questions about corporate optics, tax implications, and long‑term effectiveness as a retention strategy.

The yuan climbed past 6.90 per dollar on February 12, reaching levels not seen since May 2023 as both onshore and offshore markets rallied. The move reflects softer dollar dynamics, renewed foreign inflows and cautious central-bank guidance via a conservative midpoint setting, but risks from U.S. policy shifts and domestic growth surprises remain.

Beijing’s market regulator held administrative talks with 12 major platforms over misleading practices in online railway‑ticket sales, demanding clearer pricing, the end of implied paid priorities, and fixes to deceptive add‑on products. The move underscores broader Chinese efforts to rein in opaque platform monetization and signals that repeat offenders face stricter enforcement rather than further admonitions.

China’s egg market has fractured into multiple price tiers as producers and retailers attach nutrient and production‑process labels to ordinary eggs. The premium reflects real feed and logistics costs for some features and ambiguous, often unverifiable claims for others; regulatory tightening in 2025 is beginning to force a reckoning over which labels correspond to enduring supply‑chain investments.

China’s presentation of a J-20 scale model to Iran’s air force commander is a symbolic signal of closer military-diplomatic ties rather than a precursor to sales of the stealth fighter. Analysts say Iran’s deeper problem is systemic: without airborne early warning, secure communications, sensors and integrated command systems, new fighters or long-range SAMs would have limited effect; more useful transfers would be point-defence, electronic-warfare equipment and civilian resilience gear.

Xueji Chaohuo, a fast-growing Chinese chain that styles itself as the luxury choice for roasted nuts, has provoked both ridicule and long queues with high prices and glossy mall stores. Its premium rests on mall location, heavy investment in store design and a carefully cultivated emotional pitch to middle-class gift buyers, but supply stabilization, fierce peer competition and wavering freshness claims expose the model’s fragility.

A French body has proposed that the EU impose an about 30% tariff specifically on Chinese goods, prompting Beijing to outline at least three retaliatory options including anti-dumping probes into EU (notably French) wine, anti-discrimination investigations, and reciprocal tariffs. The proposal is likely illegal under WTO rules and risks targeted Chinese countermeasures that would hit French exporters and strain EU unity on China policy.

Deng Zhangde, a decorated veteran of the 1952 Shangganling (Triangle Hill) battle in the Korean War, recounts survival, comradeship and survivor's guilt. Now elderly, he tours schools and military units to pass on the visceral realities of combat and to symbolically guard the peaceful era his fallen comrades never lived to see.

Cross‑border tourism between China and Vietnam has surged ahead of the Lunar New Year, with Guangxi ports reporting double‑digit growth in passenger flows. Policy easing, improved customs coordination and targeted local festivals are driving short‑haul trips that boost border city economies and expand people‑to‑people ties.

An Eastern Theater Air Force brigade conducted all‑weather training in fog and drizzle to sharpen pilots' emergency handling and air combat skills. The exercise underscored the PLA's emphasis on realistic, high‑tempo readiness and has implications for deterrence and operational resilience in the Taiwan‑adjacent theater.