I got stood up by an AI agent, and tracked down its human owner in China

29 April 2026 at 05:00

I kept hearing about entrepreneurs in China running “one-person companies” with the help of artificial intelligence agents, which handle everything from coding to managing emails. How well do agents work?...

RedNote chases U.S. expansion after its “TikTok refugee” moment fades

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

14 April 2026 at 05:00

RedNote, one of China’s most popular social platforms, is trying to grow its social media and e-commerce businesses in the U.S. by hiring staff, hosting promotional events in universities, and...

Chinese entrepreneurs should go global before they go viral

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

10 April 2026 at 07:20

The $2 billion Meta deal was supposed to be a crowning moment for Chinese AI startup Manus, but it’s quickly become a sharp warning. For Chinese founders, the message is...

Free boba and “red envelopes”: China’s AI giants launch marketing blitz for Lunar New Year

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

5 February 2026 at 16:05

Chinese artificial-intelligence titans are gearing up for an intense marketing blitz in the run-up to the Lunar New Year, dishing out digital “red envelopes” filled with cash, giving away bubble...

AI agent Moltbot makes waves in China and Silicon Valley

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

30 January 2026 at 10:32

Artificial-intelligence superusers in China are rushing to test out Moltbot, the AI assistant that has gone viral in Silicon Valley, with cloud providers offering special packages to early adopters. Developed...

AI health care is taking off in China, led by Jack Ma’s Ant Group

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

30 January 2026 at 06:00

Ant Group, Alibaba’s fintech affiliate and parent of China’s ubiquitous payment app Alipay, is racing to lead the country’s digital health market with a chatbot designed to be a wellness...

In Chinese data factories, workers teach humanoid robots boring tasks

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou and Kinling Lo

7 January 2026 at 06:00

Inside a brightly lit office in Shanghai, Kim’s task for the week was to pretend he was opening the door of a microwave. Wearing a virtual reality headset and exoskeletons...

Humanoid robots follow technicians to learn job skills at the data collection area of an embodied AI robot innovation center on September 14, 2025 in Shaoxing, of China.

The UAE’s AI strategy winds through Silicon Valley

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

24 November 2025 at 06:00

The United Arab Emirates aims to become a global artificial intelligence powerhouse, and its latest investment is a new research lab in Silicon Valley. The state-run Mohamed bin Zayed University...

Rupesh Srivastava, Hector Liu, and John Maggs at the Sunnyvale, California, lab.

“I Deliver Parcels in Beijing”: Chinese literary sensation reaches U.S.

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

3 November 2025 at 06:00

Hu Anyan has held 19 jobs in six cities across China — selling bicycles, running a clothing store, working in a bakery, making 3D architectural renderings, doing night shifts at...

A delivery man pushes a trolley along a street in Beijing on September 20, 2022.

AI is reshaping childhood in China

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

1 October 2025 at 05:00

The runaway success of Chinese artificial intelligence models such as DeepSeek and Qwen has spurred every industry, from health care to agriculture to education, to integrate AI. Adoption of AI...

Banned in the U.S. and Europe, Huawei aims for the developing world’s AI

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

18 September 2025 at 05:00

Barred from many Western markets by U.S.-led restrictions, Huawei is doubling down on developing countries for its cloud and artificial intelligence businesses. The move has put Huawei on a collision...

A view of a Huawei retail store shows the company's logo and a large advertisement featuring a foldable smartphone on September 9, 2025, in Chongqing, China.

My mom and Dr. DeepSeek

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

2 September 2025 at 05:00

Every few months, my mother, a 57-year-old kidney transplant patient who lives in a small city in eastern China, embarks on a two-day journey to see her doctor. She fills...

China’s chip startups are racing to replace Nvidia

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

1 September 2025 at 05:00

DeepSeek said last month that its latest artificial intelligence model is compatible with domestic AI chips that would be released soon, unleashing a surge of interest in a handful of...

Why China has a tech manufacturing advantage over the U.S.

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

29 August 2025 at 05:00

China is good at making things and is getting better. Since launching economic reforms in the early 1980s, it has become the world’s hub for producing everything from toys to...

The 2025WAIC World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.

The Mongolian startup defying Big Tech with its own LLM

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

22 August 2025 at 05:00

Silicon Valley firms are rushing to train artificial intelligence models with tens of thousands of graphics processing units, and offering multimillion-dollar salaries to star researchers. Meanwhile, in Mongolia, Badral Sanlig...

As China goes all in on AI, tech workers scramble to learn new skills

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

1 August 2025 at 05:00

On a recent Monday evening, several Chinese participants joined a livestream on Zhihu, a Q&A platform similar to Quora, and were greeted by an instructor who said her name was...

The world’s top EV battery maker pulled off 2025’s biggest IPO. Here’s what to know

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

20 May 2025 at 05:00

China’s CATL, the world’s biggest electric battery maker, starts trading in Hong Kong this week, after a $4.6 billion IPO, the biggest so far this year. CATL has about 38%...

A launch event for the CATL Bedrock chassis in Shanghai, China, Dec. 24, 2024.

Why Apple can’t just quit China

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

13 May 2025 at 05:00

Patrick McGee’s new book, Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company, is out this week, just as the U.S. and China agreed to lower tariff levels for...

People are seen in the flagship Apple Store in Beijing, China, April 2025.

Chinese sellers and U.S. buyers prepare for the end of ultracheap shopping

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

23 April 2025 at 05:00

Phillip Dampier, in Rochester, New York, spends up to eight hours a day on Chinese shopping sites, and has already shelled out about $3,500 on electronics and home goods. He...

FILE -- A shopper at a Shein pop-up store at The Shops at Willow Bend in Plano, Texas, Aug. 26, 2022. Two bipartisan bills were introduced in Congress this week seeking to change a nearly 100-year-old trade law that allows imported packages that fall under a certain price threshold to receive less oversight while moving through the United States customs process. Shein is one of the companies the bills would affect. (Cooper Neill/The New York Times)

Trump’s tariffs are testing Nvidia’s chip supremacy. Can Jensen Huang weather the storm?

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

8 April 2025 at 10:20

Stephen Witt’s new book, The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip, is out this week, just as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs have prompted fears...

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