China Economic Review

China Vanke has nominated a new board entirely controlled by Shenzhen’s state-owned sector, reports Caixin. This marks the end of the embattled developer’s long-standing professional-manager system. All six candidates for non-independent director seats on its next board come from Shenzhen’s government or state-owned enterprises, according to a company filing Friday. None are from the developer’s longtime […]

American burger chain Five Guys will debut its first Beijing store next month, reports the South China Morning Post. Following the success of its Shanghai store, the move will see the company join a group of US fast-food brands newly entering or accelerating their expansion in China. Chains including Wendy’s, Chili’s, Texas Chicken and Popeyes are […]

China has imposed an immediate temporary ban on helium exports to protect domestic supplies of the critical semiconductor material as global disruptions intensify, reports Caixin. The Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs announced the measure Friday, citing China’s foreign trade law. The ban is aimed at insulating the country’s high-tech manufacturing and medical […]

Volkswagen Group plans to cut global production capacity by 1 million vehicles across China and Europe and reduce its vehicle lineup by as much as 50%, reports Caixin. The move is part of a broad restructuring aimed at improving efficiency and profitability. Management presented the plan Thursday at a closed-door supervisory board meeting in Germany. The […]

China’s exports are forecast to have risen 18.2% year-on-year in dollar terms, down from 19.4% in May, reports Reuters citing a poll of 20 economists. This comes as companies accelerated shipments to the US ahead of possible new ​tariffs, rode the AI boom, and competed aggressively on prices to win over cost-conscious consumers. Global AI investment is […]

Struggling property developer China Vanke, one of the giants of the sector, has named a new board of directors, with all members coming from the state sector, in yet another clear sign that the only way out of the country’s property slump has been the nationalization of its core. The previous board structure had a […]

China’s monthly auto exports topped 1 million units for the first time in June, reports Caixin. This comes as automakers stepped up overseas shipments amid intensifying pressure at home. Exports jumped 75.1% from a year earlier to 1.04 million vehicles, according to data released Thursday by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. New-energy vehicles drove much […]

Beijing has announced plans to reinvigorate bricks-and-mortar operators facing intense price competition from e-commerce platforms, reports the South China Morning Post. This comes as retail sales growth cooled in May to the slowest pace since December 2022 and persistent weakness remains in big-ticket items. The Ministry of Commerce, together with eight other relevant authorities, has released […]

The European Commission has imposed ‌anti-dumping duties on the import of ​tyres for cars ​and lighter trucks and ⁠buses from China, reports Reuters. The ​duties, which followed ​an investigation launched in November last year, vary from 4.3% ​to 45.3%. “Imports ​of passenger car and light ‌lorry ⁠tyres from China were entering the EU at dumped ​prices. This ​is ⁠causing injury to […]

China has tightened regulations for low-altitude aviation within 300km (186.4 miles) of Beijing’s geographic centre after a small plane hit a skyscraper, reports the South China Morning Post. Authorities are now requiring mandatory background reviews for pilots, according to a veteran aviation analyst. The regulatory move affected crewed aircraft near Great Wall tourist sites, aerial tours of […]

China’s securities regulator has approved Tencent-backed AI chip startup Shanghai Enflame Technology’s application for an initial public offering on Shanghai’s STAR Market, where the company plans to raise RMB 6 billion ($883 million), reports Caixin. Tencent Holdings has participated in five funding rounds for Enflame, investing a total of RMB 5.1 billion. Together with its affiliates, […]

China’s economy is not in good shape, but exports are still booming—auto exports up 70% in the first half of 2026 even as domestic auto sales fell 20%. Total auto exports in June topped one million in one month for the first time, which considering this was from a standing start just a few years […]

Retail sales of passenger vehicles in China fell 20.2% year-on-year in the first half of 2026 to 8.7 million units, reports Caixin. This comes as domestic demand weakened across all sectors. Domestic retail sales of new-energy vehicles (NEVs) dropped 14% in the first six months to 4.7 million units, while sales of traditional gasoline cars fell […]

Ant Group has completed a strategic investment in Chinese health management startup Boohee, reports Caixin. This makes it the largest external shareholder with a stake of more than 28%. The two companies, which announced the tie-up on Wednesday, plan to co-develop AI health services with a focus on weight management. Following the deal, Boohee founder and […]

China’s “big four” state-run banks are the largest in the world in terms of asset scale, reports the South China Morning Post. This underscores Beijing’s rising ambitions to build the country into a global financial powerhouse. The ranking released by The Banker magazine on Wednesday was topped by the four Chinese banks–Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China […]

A local government in China has been found to have falsified land sale deals to inflate fiscal revenues amid a five-year slump in the country’s property market, reports the South China Morning Post. The Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said that in one case, a plot of land in Nanning, the capital of southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang […]

A cybersecurity platform operated by China’s industry ministry ​has warned that it had identified ‌a serious security “backdoor” risk in Anthropic’s AI coding tool, Claude Code, reports Reuters. In a statement posted on its WeChat account, the National Vulnerability Database said Claude Code contains a built-in monitoring mechanism capable of transmitting sensitive information, including users’ geographic […]

Sales of passenger vehicles in China for the first half of 2026 were 20.2% lower than the same period the year before, reaching only 8.7 million units, while overseas shipments of passenger cars in the same period surged over 70% to 4.3 million units compared to the first half of 2025. This is in effect […]

Chinese startup DeepSeek is developing its own AI chip, reports Reuters citing inside sources. The push could reduce the company’s reliance on Nvidia and Huawei chips, which it has depended on to train and run its globally popular models. The chip is designed ‌for inference—the stage of AI computing in which a trained model generates responses for users—rather […]

Chinese authorities have held meetings ​with top tech firms over the past month about potentially restricting overseas access to China’s most advanced AI models, including those yet to be released, reports Reuters. Companies present at the talks included tech giants Alibaba and ByteDance as well as startup Z.ai, three people told Reuters, who were not authorized […]