Welcome back to China Insights Weekly. Here are some of the key takeaways from this edition:
First CAR-T therapy for solid tumors, while China advances advanced cell therapy to a new market.
Sharp growth in sales of portable air conditioners in Europe, as Chinese brands benefit from demand during the heatwave.
Technical disciplines dominate university admissions, aligning students with industrial policy.
Clean energy targets are being tightened, from provincial quotas to surcharges for heavy industry.
Key News
DeepSeek speeds up LLM generation by 85%, Meituan opens a new high-performance LLM as open source (link)
DeepSeek has released DSpark, a framework for speculative decoding, as open source, which speeds up LLM inference by up to 85%. Under the MIT license, it increases overall throughput by 51% for DeepSeek-V4-Flash and 52% for V4-Pro, with gains for individual users ranging from 60–85% and 57–78% compared to MTP-1. DSpark also works with other open models, including Qwen, through published checkpoints. It combines a semi-autoregressive design with verification based on the degree of certainty, limiting unnecessary computations and making inference faster and cheaper for teams constrained by US access restrictions to models.
Meituan has released LongCat-2.0, a Mixture-of-Experts model with 1.6 trillion parameters and a context window of 1 million tokens, also under the MIT license. In the SWE-bench Pro test, it scored 59.5, and on OpenRouter, it ranked in the top three with 10.1 trillion monthly tokens. It was trained on over 50,000 domestic ASIC chips and is one of the strongest signals that leading AI performance can be scaled without reliance on Nvidia. The standard price is $0.75 / $2.95 per million tokens; promotional rates are $0.30 / $1.20. This release supports demand for cheaper open-source alternatives in light of US restrictions on GPT-4 and Claude Fable 5.
UBTECH launches consumer humanoid robots with 11,000 pre-orders (link)
UBTECH has unveiled its first consumer humanoid robot, the U1, under the UWorld brand. The lineup includes Lite, Pro, and Ultra models, with pre-orders exceeding 11,000 since their launch on June 2nd. These robots, ranging in height from 1.60 to 1.85 meters, combine 88 joints for a high degree of freedom and an AI emotional layer for long-term interaction; the main data remains stored locally and encrypted. Founder Zhou Jian stated that deliveries will begin in September. This move marks UBTECH's entry into consumer robotics and signals a significant shift from purely industrial applications to home use.
Chinese EV manufacturers are taking over European factories; CATL and Ford begin production at a US battery plant (link)
Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers are entering unused European factories while avoiding EU import tariffs. Chery will manufacture EVs in the former Nissan plant in Barcelona and is also negotiating for a Nissan plant in Sunderland. Geely is reportedly taking over part of the former Ford plant near Valencia, while BYD is reportedly considering half of Volkswagen's Dresden plant. Chinese brands sold a total of 285,000 cars in Europe in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 88% year-on-year, increasing their market share from 4.5% to over 8%. This shift gives Chinese players access to local production, distribution networks, and brand legitimacy, while European manufacturers face deeper dependence on Chinese platforms and batteries.
CATL has begun production at its Michigan battery plant through a technology licensing agreement with Ford, marking a shift from export to an integrated investment and trade model. The project was originally conceived as a $3.5 billion venture with a capacity of 35 GWh, but it was scaled down to $2 billion and 20 GWh after a political review and uncertainty regarding policy. The plant will supply LFP cells for Ford's electric pickup trucks, with the first deliveries expected in 2026. This comes as Ford has reported $19.5 billion in losses related to electric vehicles after the US ended tax credits. CATL's global network of battery swap stations has reached 2,000 in 180 Chinese cities and aims to reach 3,000 by the end of 2026.
China has approved the world's first CAR-T therapy for solid tumors (link)
China has approved the first CAR-T therapy for solid tumors. On June 22, the NMPA approved CARsgen Therapeutics' satri-cel for launch in China for advanced HER2-negative, Claudin18.2-positive gastric cancer. The treatment was developed by CARsgen and represents a significant breakthrough in a field that has historically been dominated by blood cancers. A U.S. clinical trial was suspended in 2023 due to manufacturing issues at its facility in North Carolina, and the pace of approvals in the U.S. remains generally slower, while China is accelerating the commercialization of cell therapies.
Chinese portable split air conditioners are experiencing a sales boom, while Europe is hit by heatwaves (link)
A heatwave in Europe is driving up demand for Chinese portable split air conditioners. Midea announced more than 70% year-on-year sales growth in France, Spain, Germany, and the UK; Gree recorded over 40% growth in the first half of the year in France, Italy, and Spain. Portable units that do not require permanent installation are selling much faster than traditional systems, with installation slots booked until August. Exports of these units increased by 70% in the first five months, while overall exports of domestic air conditioners to Western Europe rose nearly 10%. Chinese manufacturers are relying on the China-Europe Railway Express to protect delivery times.
China sets binding targets for clean energy consumption at end-users (link)
China's fifteenth five-year energy plan aims for non-fossil fuels to account for 50% of electricity generation by 2030, and new energy sources (wind and solar, or biomass) to contribute 30%, compared to the current roughly 22%. A separate plan sets binding targets for provinces and heavy industry in terms of low-carbon electricity and non-electric energy consumption, with progress monitored quarterly. The three-year industrial decarbonization plan, covering steel, aluminum, cement, chemicals, and coal power, aims to reduce energy consumption by more than 100 million tons of standard coal and CO2 emissions by more than 200 million tons per year by 2028. Heavy industry will face surcharges of up to 0.1 yuan per kWh for non-compliance. China's total installed electricity generation capacity reached 4,000 GW in May, with the share of coal in the energy mix falling to 32% and the share of non-fossil sources rising to 62%. China's total electricity generation capacity is greater than the combined capacity of the United States, the European Union, India, Russia, and Japan.
Chongqing Beer starts production in Malaysia, becoming the first Chinese beer brand to brew overseas (link)
Chongqing Beer, owned by Carlsberg, has become the first Chinese beer brand to brew beer abroad when it began production in Malaysia. The first cans rolled off the line at the Carlsberg Malaysia factory in Shah Alam last month, and on June 23rd, they went on sale at 99 Speedmart, the largest convenience store chain in the country. The Malaysian version contains 3.8% alcohol, less than the local average of around 5%, and is targeted at younger consumers looking for lighter options. Local production avoids import duties and excise taxes, giving Chongqing Beer a cost and price advantage over imported brands. Carlsberg has been operating in Malaysia for 55 years and provides established supply chains and distribution networks. This move represents a shift from the traditional export model of the industry, which relied on foreign distributors and low-cost OEM manufacturing. Carlsberg acquired a stake in Chongqing Brewery in 2008 and became the controlling shareholder in 2013. The expansion signals a new phase for Chinese beer brands: moving beyond exports to local production in overseas markets.
A Chinese startup with AI hearing aids has dominated Amazon's charts in 12 months and disrupted a long-standing monopoly (link)
ELEHEAR, a Shenzhen startup with AI hearing aids, gained 18% of the US over-the-counter hearing aid market on Amazon in just 12 months and rose from 1% to the top of sales charts. Its AI-powered devices, priced at $399, undercut traditional competitors, whose average price is $3,000, disrupting a sector long dominated by five conglomerates controlling 90% of the market. The breakthrough followed the FDA's OTC Hearing Aid Act of 2022. Annual sales exceeded $15 million, with year-over-year growth reaching 1108%. The return rate is less than half the industry average. The startup was named one of the most innovative companies of 2026 by Fast Company. ELEHEAR entered a neglected market with an affordable product that was good enough, and then moved into the higher segment.
Tomáš Kučera & Yereth Jansen
China-insights.com/gnews.cz – GH