The Belt 
From research capability to industrial capability Li Auto is moving its in-house battery from a research project into a supply chain it controls. On 7 September the company drew a line in the day. Buyers who locked their order for the new MEGA before 15:00 still receive CATL’s 5C ternary lithium cells. Those who lock … Read more
Profit is leaving the car and landing in the battery China’s auto industry stands at a crossroads in how its value chain is carved up. In the space of a fortnight, Seres briefly left Huawei’s Harmony Intelligent Mobility ecosystem, then returned to sign a fresh five year cooperation. Around the same time, carmakers grew visibly … Read more
Jaime Xiao reads the city wall of Xi’an as an argument about how Chinese technology actually works. Below, his post on rammed earth, artillery and a system that is maintained rather than switched on.
Jaime Xiao calls the repricing of Chinese equities China Shock 2.0, and argues it is a valuation story rather than a trade story. Below, his comment and Kenan Machado’s launch of Asian Value Investor.
Anti-China Inc. is an industry rather than a conspiracy, and an industry’s budget scales with the threat it sells. Jaime Xiao’s comment below follows Brandon Zatt’s account of where the money comes from and who is paid to keep the problem alive.
On 28 September in Yichang, Hubei, the world’s first embodied robot built on a fully domestic electronic architecture was unveiled. The architecture, its backers argue, is the machine’s “intelligent nervous system”, and building it at home changes who controls the robot’s safety boundary. Illustrative editorial image. (Source context: OFweek) The electronic architecture spans operating system, … Read more
AgiBot, the embodied-intelligence unicorn also known as Zhiyuan, has opened a new financing round of roughly RMB 1.0 billion to 1.5 billion that is close to closing, at a latest valuation near RMB 50 billion, according to Caixin. The raise matters because of what it blocks: a 2026 listing. AgiBot humanoid robot (Source: Sohu) Founded … Read more
UBTECH’s Walker S1 humanoid robot stood in the company’s Shenzhen headquarters on 13 October, narrating the scene around it in real time, while a Walker S2 unit placed material bins into marked positions with practiced precision. The demonstration, staged for a provincial industry delegation, is the public face of a company now pitching itself as … Read more
On 22 August, inside Beijing’s National Speed Skating Oval, known as the Ice Ribbon, the second World Humanoid Robot Games opened, and China Media Group cut its cameras to an actual tennis court. A humanoid robot stood on the baseline. A ball arrived at more than 50 kilometres per hour. Within milliseconds it read the … Read more
At the 26th China International Industry Fair (CIIF), Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree, offered a candid self-assessment that few hardware founders volunteer. “The biggest mistake I made over the past decade was not believing in AI enough,” he said. Speaking to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily on the sidelines of the fair, Wang … Read more