Welcome back to China Insights Weekly. Here are some of the highlights of this release:
- Sanofi and AstraZeneca deepen their presence in China
- The photoresist factory started mass production
- Humanoid robot control tested via satellite
- Smart rice farms increase yields
China switches to OpenClaw, Xiaomi impresses with new language model approaching Western standards
Chinese local governments are rapidly adopting OpenClaw, a tool for AI agents developed in the West. Longgang held a conference on OpenClaw in Shenzhen on March 14 with Moonshot AI, offering free installations, trial access to Kimi Claw, annual subsidies of up to 2 million yuan per company, and app rewards of up to one million yuan. The Hefei High-Tech Zone has introduced 15 supporting measures with funding of up to 10 million yuan and promotes a „one-man company“ business model. Changshu in Jiangsu Province introduced 13 similar measures including free deployment and training. Chinese tech giants Tencent, Huawei and startups Moonshot and Z.ai have launched home-grown alternatives that replace the „brain“ of the system with Chinese big language models for local data processing for security reasons.
Xiaomi has released the MiMo-V2-Pro, A trillion-parameter base model led by DeepSeek R1 veteran Fuli Lu, with 42 billion active parameters per forward pass and a contextual window of 1 million tokens via a 7:1 hybrid attention mechanism. The model ranked 10th in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with a score of 49, placing it alongside GPT-5.2 Codex and ahead of Grok 4.20 Beta, ranking 2nd in China and 8th in the world. Benchmarks show a 30% hallucination rate (down from 48 % in the Flash version) and 77 million output tokens needed to fully test the index, significantly less than the competition. The price is set at $1 per million input tokens and $3 per million output tokens for contexts up to 256K tokens, about a seventh of the price of GPT-5.2 or Claude Opus 4.6, with cache writing currently free. Xiaomi plans to release a variant as open-source after stabilization.
Sanofi to open innovation centre in Chengdu, AstraZeneca to build cell therapy centre in Shanghai
French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi inaugurated a new innovation and operations centre in Chengdu on Thursday. The facility is designed to strengthen the company's research and development capabilities, improve clinical operations and enhance its manufacturing and supply chain. This strategic expansion underscores Sanofi's commitment to deepening its operational footprint in China by leveraging Chengdu's local resources and the city's growing importance as a regional healthcare hub. The Chengdu centre is a key part of Sanofi's broader strategy to drive innovation and operational efficiency in the Chinese market.
AstraZeneca has announced plans to build a commercial cell therapy manufacturing centre in Shanghai's Lin-gang Special Zone and a research and development centre in Zhangjiang High-Tech Park, making it the first multinational pharmaceutical company with comprehensive cell therapy capabilities in China. These facilities are part of a US$15 billion investment commitment by 2030 announced earlier this year. The company also announced a standalone radioconjugate plant in Guangzhou for actinium-225-based prostate cancer treatment following its acquisition of Fusion Pharmaceuticals. With nearly US$6.7 billion in local sales in 2025, AstraZeneca is the largest foreign pharmaceutical company in China, where it operates two global R&D centers and four manufacturing bases. The company has also launched a life sciences collaboration programme between Shanghai and the UK with the University of Glasgow and King's College London.
Luckin Coffee owner buys premium coffee shop chain Blue Bottle from Nestlé
Beijing-based Centurium Capital, the majority shareholder of Luckin Coffee with 53.6 % voting rights, has agreed to acquire the global retail operations of Blue Bottle Coffee from Nestlé for less than US$400m. Nestlé, which bought a 68% stake in Blue Bottle for less than US$500m in 2017, will retain the fast-moving consumer business. Blue Bottle generated approximately US$250 million in revenue in the 12 months to 30 June 2025, with US$150 million from the US and US$100 million from Asia Pacific, with profitability expected in 2026. The specialty coffee shop chain operated 140 outlets globally by the end of 2025, including 31 in Asia and 15 in mainland China since entering the market in 2022. The acquisition supports Luckin's expansion into premium segments and international growth. Luckin currently operates over 30,000 stores domestically and approximately 160 stores abroad, primarily in Southeast Asia.
JD.com launches Joybuy in Europe with same-day delivery
JD.com launched its European e-commerce platform Joybuy on March 16, entering six markets including the UK and Germany to compete with Amazon and Chinese rivals AliExpress and Temu. Unlike the asset-light models of rivals that ship goods directly from China, Joybuy operates as a first-hand retailer with local warehouses and logistics networks, allowing same-day delivery for orders placed before 11am and free delivery for UK orders over £29. The company has also introduced JoyPlus, a monthly membership for £3.99 offering unlimited free delivery, undercutting Amazon Prime with a price of £8.99. After six months of beta testing, the platform offers L'Oréal Paris and De'Longhi branded stores and targets customers with authentic international brands. Joybuy plans to gradually expand warehouse capacity across Europe.
Dinglong Holdings has commenced mass production at China's first full process integrated circuit photoresist factory in Qianjiang, Hubei Province, with an annual capacity of 300 tonnes of KrF and ArF photoresist. The facility integrates the entire production chain from monomer synthesis to finished product and localizes key additives including acid photogenerators. The output targets high-end memory chips (3D NAND, DRAM) and logic chips at 14nm and below. Currently, domestic Chinese production accounts for only 3-5 % of the KrF market and less than 1 % of the ArF photoresist market, with Japanese and US suppliers dominating. The plant has production lines for more than 30 types of photoresist; several of these have gone into stable mass production, while more than half are undergoing customer validation.
Tomáš Kučera & Yereth Jansen
China-insights.com/gnews.cz - GH
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