Environmental policy in China is embedded into long-term planning cycles – most notably its Five-Year Plans – where emissions reduction, renewable energy, and what the Party call ecological civilisation, are treated as binding national priorities. At the same time, the global context has moved in China’s favour. It’s not surprising that in this context China is starting to look like the environment’s champion.  

Policy as industrial strategy 

China’s environmental push can easily be framed as rhetoric. But if we’re less cynical it can also be viewed as the design of a new system. Since the 2005 Renewable Energy Law, clean energy has been positioned as a strategic industry, supported by subsidies, financing mechanisms and mandatory grid integration. 

Out of that, we’ve seen a scaling. China now leads the world in solar deployment and manufacturing, holding more than a third of global installed solar capacity. It has also built dominance across adjacent sectors, including batteries and electric vehicles, turning climate policy into industrial policy. 

State-backed financing, domestic market scale and supply chain control have allowed China to compress costs and accelerate the rate of adoption. Over time, that scale has translated into real global impact: Chinese clean tech is now exported as infrastructure.  

The contrast with the United States has become pretty sharp under Donald Trump’s administration. Recent policy moves from the US – the world’s other pole for climate leadership – have included dismantling emissions regulations, reversing green industrial incentives and actively promoting fossil fuel development. Now, the energy sector is redirecting attention away from renewables toward fossil fuels, reinforcing a structural pivot in US energy policy.  

Climate leadership as geopolitical positioning 

Analysts have long argued that US withdrawal from climate commitments created a vacuum that China could fill. Their predictions have been proved right and that leadership is now materialising.  

China continues to expand renewable capacity at scale, with long-term plans to multiply wind and solar generation and reduce carbon intensity across its economy. Even where targets are criticised as conservative, they’re heading in a positive direction: one with more renewables, more electrification, more state coordination. 

China’s clean energy investment and manufacturing capacity now rival — and in some cases exceed — the combined efforts of the US and EU. Climate policy is now a playing field for international competition. It’s not just about emissions cuts or hitting green targets. They’re playing for who gets to produce the energy infrastructure we will likely rely on in the future.  

China’s climate strategy and the contradictions that remain 

None of this is without tension. China remains the world’s largest emitter in absolute terms, and coal still plays a significant role in its energy mix. Policy enforcement can be uneven, particularly at the local level where economic growth is still taken as top priority.  

But trajectory matters more than the baseline here. Emissions growth is slowing, renewable capacity is accelerating, and environmental policy is increasingly heading in a direction we could call positive.  

From catch-up to standard setter 

Grand reversals in reputation aren’t a surprise for anyone who’s been watching China for an extended time frame. That familiar strategic recalibration is at work here too. Particularly in the last Five-Year Plan.  

Climate policy in China has been reworked as an economic arrangement. Producing useful green tech that shapes industries, supply chains and global trade will bring in big money. Now Chinese EVs, solar panels and batteries are becoming the green tech of the future.  

That’s a new kind of leadership. Not moral, but material. Not driven by advocacy, but by capacity. As the US steps back, China is not just stepping in. It is redesigning the system around itself. 

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The model had appeared anonymously on the Artificial Analysis leaderboard, where it quickly took the No.1 spot in blind tests for video generation, sparking speculation over whether it came from a major tech player or an independent lab.  

Developed within Alibaba’s newly formed AI unit under its Token Hub (ATH) division, HappyHorse 1.0 is still in closed beta, with API access expected to roll out in the near future. The model supports both text-to-video and image-to-video generation, and is designed to produce relatively realistic, human-centric footage – a hot battleground in commercial AI content creation.  

What makes the launch notable isn’t just performance, but positioning. HappyHorse 1.0 outperformed or matched leading models from rivals including ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 – software that’s also been making a big splash recently – and Kuaishou’s Kling on benchmark rankings, putting Alibaba right back into a race it had previously lagged in.  

But why drop something so powerful anonymously? By releasing the model without attribution, Alibaba was effectively able to benchmark performance without brand bias. They let the product speak first, and then stepped in to cover themselves in glory. 

This wasn’t a poorly timed move. As mentioned above, video generation is a hot topic now. It’s also emerging as one of the few AI segments with clear routes monetisation. Those routes mostly seem to be coming from across advertising, entertainment and short-form content. And competition in China is fierce. Firms are moving aggressively to grab up a slice of the pie. At the same time, some western players are pull back or refocus efforts, leaving even more of the market up for grabs. 

HappyHorse’s longer-term impact probably won’t depend on the leaderboard rankings that made it such a splash. What matters now is execution. Can they offer pricing, compute efficiency and iteration speed to beat the competition. Its sudden rise does suggest something worth noting though. Alibaba is no longer playing catch-up in AI.  

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The slowdown is closely tied to policy changes. Subsidies previously drove mass adoption in China’s auto market – particularly in lower-priced EV segments. They’ve now been scaled back or restructured. Earlier fixed incentives have been replaced with price-based rebates, with tighter caps that reduce the effective discount per vehicle. At the same time, NEVs are no longer fully exempt from purchase tax, adding to upfront costs for consumers.  

It’s a big impact, and an uneven one. Budget-friendly models have been hit hardest, while automakers are shifting focus toward higher-margin vehicles and technology upgrades. The change has also reshuffled the competitive landscape. BYD, long the country’s top seller, lost its leading position to SAIC Motor in early 2026 as volumes declined. 

To offset domestic weakness, automakers are increasingly looking overseas. Exports surged more than 48% year-on-year in the same period, with NEVs playing a central role in that expansion. For many manufacturers, international markets are becoming a critical release valve for excess capacity at home. 

In the near term, the market is expected to remain soft. Industry bodies suggest the downturn could persist for several months as consumers adjust to higher prices and reduced incentives. In response, carmakers are turning to promotions, financing schemes and new model launches to stimulate demand. 

After years of subsidy-fuelled growth, China’s auto market is now transitioning toward a more market-driven phase, one where demand, rather than policy support, will determine the pace of expansion. 

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His questions about death put in the way children often ask them: direct, unresolved, and disarming. The shopkeeper’s slow recognition of what the boy is trying to do hits right in the feels.  

Directed by Li Ting and written by Yang Xuan, the film was generated almost entirely using AI. There are no live actors. Aside from a physical paper prop, everything on screen is synthetic. The team moved from storyboard to final cut in three days. 

In that time, they nailed down a pretty tight concept that draws on Chaoshan (潮汕) funeral customs – the paper offerings at the narrative’s centre. The specificity does work. It grounds the story in lived ritual that Chinese consumers will recognise rather than generic sentiment. 

Technically, Kling 3.0 is doing what it needs to. The hangups of bad AI production are absent. Character consistency, micro-expressions and motion are stable enough that viewers can stay with the story. A closing long take, paired with an AI-generated children’s song, brings the film to a slow, powerful finish. 

But what’s really cool is the story they chose to tell. Most AI-generated films play pretty heavy handedly with novelty or scale. Showy pieces like the recent SeeDance 3.0 film that saw director Jia Zhangke show himself through AI renderings of his own films are designed to induce awe. With Paper Phone Kling AI goes in the opposite direction, positioning AI as a tool for restraint. If earlier AI films asked what the technology can do, this one asks what it should do. The result is heartwarmingly human.  

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This Xiaomi SU7 toy is shaped either like an otter or maybe a cat (your choice), embedded with an NFC chip. Place it on a magnetic point inside the car and the system responds. The dashboard switches to a themed interface where animations appear on the central screen. Sound effects play throughout the cabin; ambient lighting shifts to match.  

With this Xiaomi SU7 toy, the brand is cleverly turning the car into a platform for lightweight emotional interaction. The toy is their entry point: low cost, high frequency, and easy to personalise. Any automaker can compete on hardware and spec. Any of them can wave performance metrics about like they’re all that’s important. But who else is trying to build an emotional bond with their drivers? 

You can see something of a broader trend here. Younger consumers increasingly want more from a product than just function. If a product can offer an emotionally resonant element, it often hits. 

It also reflects a wider industry direction. As EV makers converge on similar core technologies, differentiation is moving into software, ecosystems and user experience. Features that were once peripheral are becoming central to brand identity. 

That’s interesting because it opens up a new layer of competition. It could be that the future of the automotive business is not just who builds the best car, but who designs the best moments inside it. Are cars becoming media spaces, where interaction, mood and identity carry as much weight as movement or performance specs? 

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The pair have been named brand ambassadors, forming what Xiaomi is calling the ‘double SU’ pairing. That’s a pun if you didn’t get it. Su Bingtian and Shu Qi (yes, not quite Su, but close enough).  

The Xiaomi SU7 sticks closely to the brief that made the original vehicle a hit. But this time, Xiaomi is doubling down on performance and smart tech, promising tighter handling, better stability and a smoother, safer drive.  

Of course, the ambassador choice leans into that positioning. Shu Qi brings a kind of effortless, composed elegance – a nod to the ease and control Xiaomi wants drivers to feel. Her casting also has a layer of internet logic: when the first SU7 launched, Chinese netizens flooded social media with that homophonic link between her name and the car. Xiaomi has simply made the meme official. 

Su Bingtian, meanwhile, is more of a proof point. China’s fastest man has been driving an SU7 Max since 2024, making him exactly the kind of real user Xiaomi says it wants to spotlight. It’s a strategy that even CEO Lei Jun has outlined.  

Xiaomi has long built its brand around the people that actually use the products.  For this brand, ambassadors aren’t just faces, they act more like feedback loops. This strategy has formed a fiercely loyal following. But it has its drawbacks. The blowup with KOL critic of the brand Universal Big Bear is a fine example.  

Users who felt like they’d been betrayed kicked back and the partnership was dropped. For now though, Xiaomi’s brand strategy seems to be landing. Within 34 minutes of pre-orders opening, the new SU7 clocked more than 15,000 locked-in orders. 

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At the core of this dust-up is MakerWorld, Bambu Lab’s community platform where users share downloadable 3D models. According to the complaint, thousands of files based on Labubu were uploaded to the site, allowing users to print off unofficial replicas using consumer 3D printers.

Pop Mart argues that these files violate its copyright by reproducing and distributing designs linked to Labubu’s intellectual property. The case has been filed at the People’s Court of Pudong New Area in Shanghai and a hearing is scheduled for April 2.

The stakes are high because Labubu is no small franchise. The character is one of the company’s biggest hits, accounting for more than 30% of its total sales in 2025.

Fans ripped through blind-box packaging, often in front of massive online audiences, to find that one rare Labubu they were missing. So for Pop Mart, a 3D printer is a hell of a nemesis. Being able to print off the rarest Labubu like it was ink on paper undercuts the whole scarcity and collectability model the brand runs on.

And some MakerWorld files have reportedly attracted tens of thousands of downloads already. Add to that the fact that home-printed figures can cost just a few RMB to produce and Pop Mart have a real problem on its hands.

How will the Pop Mart 3D printing lawsuit play out?

The case hinges on whether they can prove Bambu Lab is responsible. BL itself did not create the models. Instead, the dispute will focus on whether a platform can be held responsible for copyrighted designs uploaded by its users. That question places the case squarely in the same grey area that once surrounded music-sharing services in the early days of the internet.

Since the lawsuit surfaced, Bambu Lab has removed Labubu-related files from MakerWorld. But the legal battle could still set an important precedent. If Pop Mart succeeds, platforms hosting 3D-printable models may face new pressure to police user-generated designs more aggressively.

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The exhibition brings B&O’s century-long design story to what’s arguably China’s most design-conscious city. If you’re in town and hit the event, expect a mix of heritage pieces, contemporary collaborations and the kind of sculptural speakers that have made the brand a staple of high-end interiors. 

At the centre of the Bang & Olufsen Shanghai Exhibition is something called Art of the A9, a creative project built around the brand’s Beosound A9 speaker – something of an icon in the brand’s portfolio. For this, B&O invited three creators from different disciplines to reinterpret the product as an artwork. 

Architect Zhang Yonghe (张永和) leans into minimalism. His version strips away excess design and channels a visual memory of the oversized speakers common in the 1970s and 80s. Designer Li Ximi (李希米) plays with perception. Her design uses textiles to mimic aluminium, creating subtle shifts between light and mid-grey tones that shimmer like metal under changing light. 

Meanwhile tech creator He Tongxue (何同学) takes a more playful route. His piece combines mechanical engineering with traditional Hangzhou embroidery, turning the A9’s circular surface into a kind of kinetic artwork with moving petals a la the classical Chinese garden’s moon gates. 

The exhibition also digs into B&O’s archives, displaying antique radios dating back nearly a century, alongside design classics, some of which are now part of the New York MoMA permanent collection. It’s a neat way to celebrate a centenary: the exhibition leans into the design prowess that B&O have built their brand around. For a brand that has spent a century turning speakers into design icons, celebrating the milestone with an art exhibition feels like a natural encore. 

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The breakthrough combines BYD’s latest version of its Blade battery with a new high-power charging platform. Under ideal conditions, the system can deliver about 70% charge in roughly five minutes. That kind of speed requires extremely powerful infrastructure: BYD says its system relies on ultra-fast flash charging stations capable of delivering up to 1,500 kilowatts of power – several times higher than most fast chargers currently on the market. 

Range is also part of the pitch. Vehicles equipped with the battery could achieve driving ranges of up to around 1,000 kilometres. That combination – long range and ultra-fast charging – is designed to directly target what’s known as range anxiety – the low-level fear among EV drivers that their vehicles may run out of juice far from a charging station. 

The thing is technology alone won’t solve the problem. BYD says it plans to build around 20,000 of these flash-charging stations across China, including roughly 2,000 along major highways, to support the system. These flash charging stations will need to be rolled out before range anxiety can truly be soothed. 

BYD nine-minute EV battery charging tech: the bigger picture

The move comes at an opportune time: China’s EV market has entered a new phase of competition with price wars squeezing margins across the industry, and regulation coming in to prevent further price slashing. This has pushed automakers to compete increasingly on tech. 

It looks like BYD has drawn its ranks on the battlefield of faster charging. If drivers can recharge an EV in the time it takes to nip into the petrol station to buy a coffee, the ever-lingering psychological barrier separating EVs from petrol vehicles starts to seem like less of a gulf. 

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Now AgiBot is taking that momentum overseas with a Munich unveiling of a new range of humanoid robots: the Expedition A3. The machine is designed for high-interaction work such as manning reception desks, navigating the nuances of retail and entertainment venues – basically customer-facing positions.  

That’s exciting news. We’re one step closer to having a robot serve us our popcorn next time we’re at the cinema. But the A3’s arrival signals more than just that. It’s AgiBot dipping its toes in the European market, and it reflects a broader shift happening across the robotics industry.  

For years AgiBot humanoid robots have been mostly experimental prototypes. Tools more for entertainment than actual help. Companies are now pushing toward real-world deployment – and fast.  

Industrial use is a testing ground. AgiBot’s Genie G2 humanoid robot has begun trial operations in factories, including deployments with automotive parts supplier Joyson Electronics. The robots are now performing hundreds of tasks across production lines.  

For now, they’re still learning the ropes. Early tests suggest productivity still only sits at about half that of a human worker, though the company expects this to rise to 70–80% of human efficiency by the end of this year.  

Behind the push sits one of China’s biggest advantages: supply chain density. Many of the core components needed to build humanoid robots can be sourced within a two-hour drive of Shanghai, anchoring development in the Yangtze River Delta’s manufacturing ecosystem. That location also puts them within easy shipping distance of the rest of the world – a market AgiBot now has its eyes firmly fixed on. 

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