Chinese startup Minimax has unveiled an advanced model of the MiniMax-M2, AstraZeneca is opening a research centre in Beijing and Chinese scientists have achieved a breakthrough in the thorium reactor. We provide an overview of the key technological and economic milestones that are boosting China's ambitions in artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals and clean energy.
This week's main topics:
- Chinese e-commerce giants dominate Southeast Asia and now hold nearly half of the regional market share
- Anhui has overtaken Guangdong in car production, cementing China's position as a new power in electric car manufacturing
- China and France launch Green Maritime Corridor to move maritime trade towards zero carbon
- Chinese chipmakers are booming thanks to the AI boom, and domestic suppliers are quickly catching up to their US competitors
Chinese e-commerce giants now dominate the online shopping market in Southeast Asia
Chinese e-commerce giants, including Alibaba, Temu, Shein and TikTok Shop of ByteDance, which owns Tokopedia, now dominate about half of the online shopping market in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, according to a report by Bain and Company. This expansion comes at a time when Chinese companies are accelerating their global reach. Alibaba's international division, which includes ownership of a number of international platforms, including Lazada, reported a 19 % year-on-year increase in revenue to 34.74 billion yuan for the three months ended June 30. This year, Alibaba Taobao is expanding Singles Day shopping promotions to 20 regions around the world. China's e-commerce market, whose gross merchandise value (GMV) was $2.32 billion last year, is more than twice the size of the US market, whose GMV was $1.05 billion.
AstraZeneca opens new global R&D centre in Beijing
AstraZeneca has opened a new global research and development centre in Beijing, its sixth globally and second in China. The centre, located in the Beijing International Pharmaceutical Innovation Park (BioPark), is part of the company's US$2.5 billion investment plan in China. It has state-of-the-art facilities in artificial intelligence and data science aimed at advancing early-stage research and clinical trials. The centre will collaborate with local hospitals, universities and biotech firms to accelerate the development of innovative drugs. AstraZeneca currently employs approximately 1,700 people in Beijing and aims to strengthen its R&D capabilities in China and consolidate Beijing's position as a global life sciences hub. The company has been active in China since 1993, launching more than 40 innovative medicines and operating manufacturing centres in Wuxi, Taizhou and Qingdao.
China and France sign green maritime corridor agreement to „boost“ carbon-free shipping routes
China and France have signed an agreement to establish a green maritime corridor between China's Ningbo Zhoushan port and France's HAROPA ports to accelerate the decarbonisation of maritime transport. The initiative, which was unveiled at an event hosted by China's Ministry of Transport and the People's Government of Shanghai, includes a seven-point framework to promote clean energy vessels, near-zero carbon ports and green fuel supply and certification. The collaboration involves Bureau Veritas, CMA CGM, Zhejiang Provincial Seaport Investment & Operation Group, HAROPA Ports, MSC Group, MSC Terminal Investment Limited and China Waterborne Transport Research Institute. The agreement is based on a Memorandum of Understanding signed at the Maritime Silk Road Forum. The corridor will serve as a model for international cooperation in green shipping, in line with climate goals and strengthening maritime links between China and Europe. In May this year, Ningbo Zhoushan Port has already signed an agreement with one Spanish and two German ports to start developing green maritime corridors and promoting the decarbonisation of maritime transport.
MiniMax-M2 is the new king of open source LLM, beating Qwen and DeepSeek
MiniMax-M2, the latest large language model (LLM) from Chinese startup MiniMax, has become the new leader in open source LLM, especially for the use of AI agent tools. According to independent evaluations by Artificial Analysis, MiniMax-M2 ranked first among all open systems in the world in the Intelligence Index, a composite indicator of performance in reasoning, coding and task execution. The model achieved scores of 77.2 in τ²Bench, 44.0 in BrowseComp, and 65.5 in FinSearchComp-global, placing it at or near the level of top proprietary systems such as GPT-5. MiniMax-M2 is built on an efficient Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture with a total of 230 billion parameters and 10 billion active parameters per inference, making it practical for enterprise deployments. The model is available under a permissive MIT license that allows free use, deployment and retraining for commercial purposes. It is available on Hugging Face, GitHub and ModelScope, as well as through the MiniMax API.
Anhui province has overtaken Guangdong to become the most important province in China in terms of car production, 99 % EV owners are willing to buy another
Anhui province overtook Guangdong to become the top automobile-producing province in China in the first three quarters of 2025, producing just over 2.4 million vehicles, an increase of 32 % from the previous year. This surpassed Guangdong, which saw a decline of 45 % to 2.08 million vehicles. Anhui also led in new energy vehicle (NEV) production with nearly 1.22 million units, while Guangdong produced 730,200 units, a decline of 68 %. This change is due to the revised statistical approach, which now calculates production based on the location of production rather than the company's headquarters. Anhui is home to seven major automakers, including BYD, Nio, Chery Automobile and Volkswagen Anhui, as well as 2,800 supplier companies. Anhui is expected to maintain its leading position for the rest of this year.
A total of 99 % Chinese battery electric vehicle (BEV) owners are willing to purchase another EV in the future, significantly higher than the global average of 88 %. This high proportion reflects China's widespread political support for EVs, a mature EV ecosystem led by domestic industry giants, and a local culture enthusiastic about technology-driven mobility. China is the global leader in EV adoption, accounting for 49 % of total sales last year, up from 36 % in 2023. Global EV sales share rose to 25 %, with Europe remaining at 25 % and the US increasing from 9 % to 11 %. China's dominance in the EV market is supported by a steady increase in the number of models and rapid construction of charging stations, with Teld, StarCharge, YKC, State Grid Corporation of China and Xiaoju Charge controlling approximately 70 % of public charging stations in the country.
Chinese chipmakers are experiencing a gold rush as they try to localize production
The global race for dominance in AI is leading to a surge in semiconductor spending, with the US benefiting from massive capital investment and China seeking self-sufficiency amid sanctions. China is building a self-sustaining ecosystem and expanding AI applications, seeking to achieve comparable results to US chips through extensive system design and software optimization. China's demand for AI chips is estimated at US$39.5 billion for 2025, with the gap between demand and supply expected to widen to more than US$10 billion due to export restrictions. Chinese chipmakers such as Cambricon and Moore Threads are emerging, with Cambricon's revenues growing forty-fold to US$404 million in the first half of 2025. Huawei and Baidu have also made progress in developing their own chips, with Huawei unveiling a three-year strategy for AI chips to double computing power each year and Baidu deploying a cluster of 30,000 cards. Alibaba's chip unit, T-Head, has developed a processor that reportedly matches Nvidia's H20. Chinese investors are showing increased interest in the sector, which has seen Baidu and Alibaba's Hong Kong-listed shares rise by 50 % and 54 % respectively since September. Localisation efforts are leading to a rapid decline in the share of foreign chips in Chinese AI servers, which is expected to fall from 63 % to 42 % by the end of 2025.
Chinese audience increases online engagement with Western luxury brands
The Spring 2026 fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris demonstrate China's key role in shaping the global fashion debate. New York Fashion Week (NYFW) generated a global media impact (MIV) of US$408.2 million, with influencers and media generating 90 % MIV focused on China. London Fashion Week (LFW) generated an MIV of USD 7.9 million, with celebrities contributing 27 %. Milan Fashion Week (MFW) recorded 44 % of its USD 42 million MIV from the Asia Pacific region, led by South Korea with 14 %. Paris Fashion Week (PFW) led with US$80.5 million MIV from China, accounting for 7 % of global coverage, and ranked 5th. Brands such as Dior (US$11.7 million) and Miu Miu (US$5.9 million) topped the PFW rankings. Chinese pop star Cai Xukun's Instagram post from the Mugler show was the most popular individual post of the season, garnering over 1 million likes, while Chinese actress and singer Dilraba Dilmurat's post ranked second and achieved similar engagement - confirming the global appeal of Chinese talent on Western platforms as well. The data highlights the key role of Chinese celebrities, influencers and localised social platforms in driving global interest in fashion weeks.
China's first thorium fuel conversion paves the way for 100MW molten salt reactor
China has achieved a major breakthrough in advanced nuclear energy by successfully converting thorium to uranium fuel in a molten salt reactor (TMSR), the first ever thorium fuel conversion, confirmed by the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The experiment provides key data supporting the feasibility of using thorium in molten salt reactors and opens the way for China to exploit its rich domestic thorium resources. This fourth-generation reactor uses high-temperature molten salt as a coolant instead of water, which gives it inherent safety properties and the ability to operate at atmospheric pressure, reducing mechanical stresses. This achievement represents a significant step forward in the global development of next-generation nuclear power.
Tomáš Kučera & Yereth Jansen
China-insights.com / gnews.cz - GH
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