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Jinzhongzi, an Anhui-based baijiu maker and former provincial heavyweight, has warned of a ¥150–190 million loss for 2025 — its fifth consecutive annual loss. The company is highly dependent on low-price and provincial sales, has failed to scale mid- and high-end channels, and remains without a permanent general manager after China Resources’ 2022 investment failed to deliver a turnaround.

China’s tech giants are reviving Lunar New Year cash giveaways to accelerate AI app adoption: Tencent’s Yuanbao will distribute 1 billion yuan, Baidu’s Wenxin 500 million yuan, and ByteDance is showcasing its cloud under the Spring Gala. The tactics expose a strategic split—consumer subsidies to buy attention versus infrastructure plays to win enterprise customers—and highlight the fragility of changing user habits with cash alone.

Alipay launched a physical 'tap' red‑envelope card on Jan 29 that lets users send and receive digital red packets by tapping their phones, with zero fees. The card is a marketing and engagement play aimed at converting offline gifting rituals into sustained digital payments activity, while raising routine security and data‑privacy considerations.

MiniMax’s launch of Music 2.5 — a music-generation model with stronger structural control and vocal fidelity — triggered sharp gains in Hong Kong AI stocks, highlighting a market pivot toward application-ready AI. Combined with open-source and deployment-focused releases from other domestic players, the episode underscores a broader shift in China’s AI industry from model-size competition to vertical, engineering-led commercialisation.

A Canada–Germany team has developed a CRISPR gene‑editing therapy delivered by nanoparticles designed for direct use on human skin, published in Cell Stem Cell. The approach promises localized correction of pathogenic mutations and could reshape treatment prospects for genetic skin diseases, though safety and durability must be proven in clinical testing.

OpenAI is developing a social network intended to be restricted to verified humans, using biometric checks such as Face ID or an iris scanner called World Orb. The plan seeks to tackle persistent bot problems that have plagued platforms like X but raises serious privacy, security and regulatory questions.

Moon’s Dark Side released Kimi K2.5 with founder Yang Zhilin personally presenting the incremental upgrade, signalling a strategic shift from parameter-led competition to engineering improvements focused on coding and agent orchestration. The release is a defensive, deliverable move to shore up market position ahead of an expected DeepSeek model launch and to buy time for a more substantive K3 upgrade.

Huadong Medicine and Suzhou Shian Biotech have confirmed a preclinical siRNA candidate aimed at an innovative weight‑loss mechanism and entered preclinical research. The move underscores China’s push into RNAi therapeutics for metabolic disease, but substantial scientific, delivery and regulatory challenges lie ahead before any clinical testing.

France is fast‑tracking unmanned naval and aerial systems by funding prototype competitions and using operational trials to pick winners, aiming to field armed surface drones and new loitering munitions within two years. Procurement reforms favour decentralised, experiment‑led buying and closer ties between start‑ups and large defence firms to accelerate capability delivery and preserve industrial capacity through exports.

The US military has tested a "one-to-many" drone tactic in which a single operator simultaneously controlled three armed drones to hit different targets, showcasing advances in AI-enabled autonomy. The exercise underlines both the tactical promise of swarming—rapid, distributed attacks that confer asymmetric advantages—and the operational challenges of scaling command-and-control and surviving electronic warfare in contested environments.

Tesla’s 2025 results show a sharp slump in profits and the first annual revenue decline in the company’s history, driven by weaker automotive sales, aggressive price cuts and intensifying competition. Energy storage and services are growing rapidly and provide cash flow, while a $2 billion investment in xAI and continued bets on robotaxis and humanoid robots underpin a high‑risk, high‑reward strategic pivot.

Kunlun Tiangong founder Zhou Yahui says the company’s Mureka V8 music model marks a 2026 inflection point for AI-composed music and plans to launch an overseas, Spotify-like AI music platform. The firm will avoid direct competition with China’s ByteDance and Tencent, collaborate domestically, and focus overseas on productising AI-generated music via creator tools, a consumer app and APIs. Zhou argues AI music and short-form AI dramas could be the first major categories disrupted by native AI platforms in the next 1–3 years.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will not permit the reconstruction of Gaza until it is fully demilitarized, rejected Palestinian statehood, and barred Turkey and Qatar from participating in any international stabilization force. His stance complicates a U.S. plan to move from ceasefire to phased governance, disarmament and rebuilding, and raises the prospect of a prolonged humanitarian and political stalemate.

France has dispatched its nuclear carrier Charles de Gaulle to join Orion 26, a large multinational exercise scheduled for February–April that French media place in the North Atlantic. The deployment, timed with diplomatic talks between Paris, Copenhagen and Greenland’s autonomous government, underlines Paris’s bid to shape security dynamics around Greenland and project high-end naval power in a strategically sensitive region.

India used its Republic Day parade to unveil a long‑range, truck‑mounted weapon the government presents as a hypersonic anti‑ship missile, alongside a suite of new indigenous platforms. The display signals New Delhi’s push to join a small group of states fielding advanced high‑speed strike systems, though technical and operational questions about the missile remain.

CENTCOM has announced a multi-day Ninth Air Force readiness exercise in the Middle East, emphasizing rapid, dispersed deployments, while the nuclear-powered Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group has entered the region. The moves heighten military pressure on Iran and signal US intent to deter threats while calibrating operational posture to reduce vulnerabilities from large force concentrations.

Unnamed sources cited by Reuters claimed the U.S. had not abandoned plans to militarily occupy Greenland, provoking alarm in Washington and among allies. While U.S. officials denied the plan was serious, the episode highlights Greenland’s strategic value and the diplomatic strain any such suggestion creates between the United States, Denmark and NATO partners.

Japan is considering a GOCO model — government ownership of munitions plants with private contractors operating them — to guarantee ammunition supply in a crisis. The plan, part of a broader defence‑industry reorganisation, is being coordinated with revisions to national security documents and reflects lessons from global ammunition shortages since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Taiwan’s domestically built submarine Hai Kun underwent its sixth sea trial on January 26 but did not complete a first dive, conducting instead a complex pre‑dive systems verification. The programme has been delayed from original schedules, with Taipei imposing contractual fines on the builder as it seeks an accelerated delivery later this year.

U.S. officials have informed Israel that preparations for possible military action against Iran are nearing completion, with operational windows expected to emerge in coming months but final action subject to presidential authorization. Public statements from Washington, Jerusalem and Tehran reflect heightened deterrent signaling that increases the risk of miscalculation and wider regional escalation.