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Over three years Tencent’s stance on AI has shifted from cautious integration to active, capital‑heavy deployment. Ma Huateng has reorganised AI teams, beefed up compute spending and launched a CNY 1bn promotional push to seed an AI assistant inside WeChat, betting the company’s social graph and ad franchise can translate into AI dominance.
China’s top New Year variety show has become a critical marketing stage for domestic robot start‑ups seeking valuation uplift and orders before IPOs. Three robot companies — Unitree, Magic Atom and Galaxy General — have secured gala roles, prompting industry debate over whether polished performances obscure the tougher work of scaling and commercialization.
China's stock market closed higher on Tuesday with ChiNext leading gains, powered by sharp rallies in chip‑supply and gold‑miner stocks. However, the advance was narrow and accompanied by falling turnover and broad stock declines, signalling cautious participation and sector rotation rather than broad buying.
Hong Kong markets rose on Tuesday with the Hang Seng up 1.35% and the Hang Seng TECH up 0.5%, driven by gains in semiconductor stocks. Gold miners showed wide divergence, with some names surging while others fell, reflecting company-specific factors amid a broader rally in bullion prices.
Shenzhen’s Nanshan district surpassed 1 trillion yuan in GDP in 2025, the first sub‑city district in China to do so. The milestone reflects heavy concentration in software, internet and advanced manufacturing clusters, but also highlights risks from industry concentration, limited land, and external tech‑trade pressures.
Spot silver surged above $113/oz and Shanghai silver futures jumped over 7% as investors priced a mix of rate‑cut hopes, geopolitical safe‑haven demand, and industrial appetite from renewables. That market heat sat alongside structural shifts — electricity‑market liberalization, a national livestreaming standard, and a 35.6‑tesla superconducting magnet — that collectively underscore China’s simultaneous push for market discipline and technological self‑reliance.
Guangdong maintained its position as China’s largest provincial economy in 2025, driven by strong foreign trade, rapid expansion of high‑tech manufacturing and sustained R&D investment. The province plans to target 4.5%–5% GDP growth in 2026 while pivoting into new sectors such as the low‑altitude economy, but faces headwinds from SME digitalisation gaps and modest fiscal revenue growth.
President Trump announced an increase in U.S. tariffs on South Korean autos, timber and pharmaceuticals from 15% to 25%, blaming Seoul for not ratifying a bilateral trade deal. U.S. markets closed higher as investors focused on upcoming tech earnings and Microsoft’s launch of a new AI chip, while Intel slumped on weak guidance.
A Chinese influencer monetised viral seductive tutorials into a profitable “sex‑IQ” education business that reportedly earned over 24 million yuan through tiered online and offline courses before her verified account was banned. The episode highlights how the knowledge‑payment market monetises intimate anxieties, blurring lines between empowerment and exploitation and posing fresh challenges for platforms and regulators.
China’s Generation Z is transforming Lunar New Year consumption from bulk, family‑oriented shopping into personalised, social and digital rituals. Micro‑paid digital items, pet‑focused gifts, experience tourism and DIY gold‑making exemplify a broader shift toward emotional and social value over material abundance.
China’s KTV chains are investing heavily in AI to revive a flagging industry: real-time scoring, AI coaching and synthetic music videos aim to attract younger customers and cut costs. The result is a commercial uptick driven by gamified rewards, but also a cultural clash as cold metrics and monetised fixes collide with the convivial, emotional core of karaoke.
The U.S. is buying a roughly 10% stake in USA Rare Earth for $1.6 billion to hasten domestic rare-earth mining and processing and reduce dependence on China. While the investment is sizeable and politically significant, technical, environmental and resource-quality challenges mean breaking China’s dominance will be a slow and uncertain process.
A forged corporate seal and a multi‑layered interbank channel enabled the disappearance of Rmb3.5bn in a loan scheme that implicated multiple banks and asset managers. Criminal convictions followed, but a Supreme People’s Court ruling that the deposit was part of an illegal collusion left the originating bank to absorb the loss and restart litigation against several counterparties seeking partial recovery.
Flight-tracking data show a sharp rise in cancellations on China–Japan routes: 49 routes have no scheduled February flights and January cancellations hit 47.2 percent, up nearly eight points from December. Airlines have extended free refunds through March 28 as they contend with volatile demand and operational uncertainty, a development that could dent Japan’s inbound tourism recovery.
Shuibei jewellery sellers and livestream channels have popularized 1kg copper bars as a quasi-investment, creating a gap between retail prices and industrial valuations. The craze has exposed severe liquidity problems for sellers and buyers alike, with many investors forced to accept scrap-copper prices on resale and regulators moving to tighten market practices.
Gold surged past $5,000 an ounce on January 26 amid expectations of prolonged Fed easing, a weakening dollar and renewed safe‑haven demand from both central banks and retail investors. Central‑bank purchases, sizable ETF inflows and geopolitical jitters have combined to lift prices, but analysts warn of elevated short‑term volatility and key risks tied to future Fed policy and the pace of official buying.
President Trump announced a unilateral increase in tariffs on South Korean cars, lumber and pharmaceuticals from 15% to 25%, citing Seoul’s failure to ratify a bilateral trade deal, while U.S. markets rose as investors focused on tech earnings and Microsoft’s unveiling of its Maia 200 AI chip. The tariff move risks straining a strategic alliance and creating supply‑chain uncertainty even as competition among cloud providers intensifies over in‑house AI hardware.
China’s KTV chains are deploying AI scoring, coaching and synthetic music videos to revive a shrinking industry, with major investments from leading operators. The technology attracts customers with gamified rewards and cost-saving AI MVs, but it also provokes backlash over cold, intrusive judging, diminished emotional experience and ways for users to game the system.
A viral claim that the US is inflating gold prices to convert bullion into cash to pay down national debt is misleading. US debt management relies on rollovers, tax revenues, Fed liquidity and the dollar's reserve status, while gold holdings serve as strategic backing for the currency rather than a ready source of debt repayment.
A surge in precious-metal prices has attracted a wave of young Chinese investors buying physical gold and silver, ETFs and derivatives. Their enthusiasm is driven by portfolio diversification, central-bank buying and social-media-fuelled FOMO, but the rush underscores behavioural risks and the need for investor education amid broader macro shifts.
