WeChat has a growth problem. Its MAU hit 14.32 billion in Q1 2026, but the year-on-year growth rate is down to 2%. That is basically flatlining for an app that used to add hundreds of millions of users every quarter.…
Xiaomi finally did what users have been asking for years. In late 2024 the company announced it would open its Pengpai fast-charging protocol to third parties. Then, with the Xiaomi 17 series launch, it made the protocol completely free. Any…
In November 2025, CCTV and Meituan released a three-minute short film about a graphic designer who quits her desk job to deliver food in Dali, Yunnan. The film showed clean mountain air, scenic routes, and a life of freedom. Viewers…
DeepSeek released a preview of V4 on April 24, 2026. Two variants: V4-Pro at 1.6T total parameters with 49B active, and V4-Flash at 284B total with 13B active. Both ship with 1M context length as standard. The company says V4-Pro…
SMIC posted its Q1 2026 numbers last week. Revenue hit 176.17 billion yuan, up 8.1% year over year. Net profit? A measly 13.61 billion yuan, basically flat at 0.4% growth. The foundry is running at 93.5% average capacity utilization, yet…
I’ve been watching China’s app ecosystem long enough to know that “innovation” usually means another payment tab or a slightly faster QR scanner. But the past few months have been genuinely weird. WeChat is becoming a travel agent for Malaysians.…
I keep thinking about the phrase “new employment groups.” That is what Beijing calls them now. Delivery riders, livestreamers, ride-hail drivers. People who work through apps but not exactly for anyone. The Central Committee and the State Council issued a…
China’s AI labs have spent the last six months one-upping each other on parameter counts. The results are real. The hype is also real. Here is what actually shipped. Alibaba goes all-in at Cloud Computing Conference 2025 Alibaba Cloud held…
China’s tech scene right now is a mess of contradictions. Chips are getting more expensive, phones are selling worse, and somehow BYD put a LiDAR on a car that costs less than a used Honda Civic. Let me walk you…
Here is a sentence I did not expect to read this year: QQ is giving up on its own mini program platform and telling developers to just use WeChat’s instead. Tencent announced on July 1 that QQ will fully integrate…